No Variations (Argentinian Literature Series) (12 page)

The dogma, mysticism

Only
Agraphia
’s rite of initiation, the transporting of those orphic vessels of ceremony, demands academic candor; the rest is eschatology: the situations conceived, the roles played, the rigorous sentimentality, are repeated indefinitely. On the threshold, motionless, stands the invunche. The introduction of the
go-between
; the divinization of the
feticheur
; the tribunal duties of the nine malic molds; the transformation of the
Septic Midrash
into a gospel ministry [paschal]. Urlihrt’s shamanistic character is revealed in his managerial approach: he responded to every polite request with an act of tyranny. When asked to be merciful on Belisario, he published “Early”; denounced all the conspirators in the lycergical glossary; in advance

The anamorphosis: “the distant far away.” Sister Juana. Baphomet.

From the beginning, Urlihrt wanted to do away with “loose ideas.” His aim: winnow the “spellbinding grains” from the chaotic mass of apathetic, indifferent, dogmatic, “tyrannically unwarranted” chaff …

Irene: Lemprière’s Dictionary …

“I’d like to transform this journal, which is a pandemonium of columns and pillars with no personality or style, into a paradise where calumny is warranted, and pillory is praised” (A purpose met by other contributors, collaborators, deuteragonists).

Reproductive entities

Meaulnes’s grammatical question; to those he knew as “the inventors of modes.” He’s no master of style: all he does is imitate, practicing the modes of kleptographia and kleptolalia

The gratuitous and the fortuitous

Those tireless reproductive entities continue to “breed” catastrophes. And catastrophism, that lovesickness, reproduces itself in the gratuitous sense of a
flatus vocis
, a mere accidental. So every effect is the product of at least two causes. Thus, the propensity for imitation and plagiarism proceeds first from the masterful work of Francisco Aldecoa Inauda—a contemporary of Rodrigo Caro—Francisco de Herrera, and the Argensola brothers; and second, from the maladroit bungling of Hilarión Curtis [no notable contemporaries]. The ancestors of the first are Urlihrt, Luini, and Lester; of the second, Tregua and Prosan. One name is missing, and that’s the person Lester had insisted be excluded lest he “overshadow the genealogy.” Outside the system is, for example, Sabatani, thought a heretic—a heresiarch in fact, for he was around before all the corruption began.

At the same time, “textual exposure” is what really concerns us. And
Agraphia
’s “texts” give the impression of thematic
foreclusion
: “The Dreadmist,” “Sircular Cymmetry,” “Out of a Greek Gift” … For every decade of tolerance, there are always three or four exceptions we overlook.

These interferences are outside excursions for
Agraphia
, holidays from their seclusion. Times when nothing is concealed.

Beginning with libel—“Sircular Cymmetry,” which can only be found in two places: the issue of
Agraphia
in which it appeared and in Uribe’s anthology (“Holy Fridays”)—there is a categorical imperative of considering
La Colunnia
(Botticelli’s painting in the Uffizi) as a parable. There is a terrible scene showing Apelles being dragged by the hair before a tribunal, consisting of a single judge, for he knows not what crime (the title gives it away), escorted by the Graces—the always beautiful, always gracile Simonetta in her various guises—and a Venus (the Anadyomene, one of the few works the maestro managed to complete). It’s difficult for laypeople today to determine the nature of Apelles’s slander. Lemprière, in his dictionary, offers the following anecdote: “They say he was accused in Egypt of conspiring to assassinate Ptolemy and that he would have been executed had the true conspirator not been found.” Only a few people involved with the journal are aware of the anecdote. Otherwise, more than one would have admired and followed in the steps of Remo.

All the styles are one, and
one
is the unquantifiable “whatness” of
Agraphia
: its penchant for idealism and anonymity. The reserves, which together make up this singular subjectivity—defended at all costs by Elena—comprise the list, the partial compendium of cast members of
Agraphia
, and descriptions of them [using pairs of adjectives] are adapted from descriptions of favorite pianists. Nicasio—or rather his style—is “tentative, proboscidal”; Luini, “dark, erratic”; Tregua, “complex, trivial”; Lester, “exuberant, introspective” … Elena herself, “tender, neurasthenic” …

In the zigzagging genealogy, Nicasio does his best to justify the sententious approach that’s characteristic of the journal (“Ysir is not visibly Ysir, not what God wants but what God is”), for it is the fulfillment of a promise, of a prophecy, a malediction: Nicasio Urlihrt is, in the twentieth century, the cryptographical, the cryptogrammatical incarnation of Hilarión Curtis: the consonants throttling the single vowel.

The number of heretics

And also, finally, the hypochondria, the ills, the diseases of
Agraphia—
cryptodermia, kleptolalia, cryptophasia, Elena’s migraines and tachycardia, Inés’s asthma, Belisario Tregua’s gout, dyspnea, and partial deafness, Luini’s stammer, Urlihrt’s crustaceous deafness, Zi’s prescription telescopes [28]

Family doctors.
An addition?

After many years, and countless investigations, the mystery remains. What was it that was so modern about
Agraphia / Alusiva
? Despite its longstanding resistance to signing and dating works (“practices to which it has become inured as one would a chronic hernia,” to quote the first manifesto), the year can often be deduced by examining the many scathing, self-indulgent references (“Early” is the best example): “if what I told you comes to pass, if the Manchurian candidate wins, I’ll either go into exile or kill myself”; “It was better back in the day,” the
dernier cri
of belated followers of Guyotat and Derrida; the trophies of a previous decade recovered on the beach of a future one like jetsam after a wreck: late eighties, early nineties, difficult times for the journal (
facts
,
deeds
) … The “actualization” of “The Imitation of an Ounce” had little to do with the story that was published under another title—“Specular Soup”—in issue number (?) [Eiralis: “I don’t remember the story having such a title”]. I think Nora Fo’s original submission was in the late sixties. But there were many changes, including the addition of a tribute to the co-author [dates: the days leading up to Inés’ death is reflected in the children’s timetable in “The Imitation of an Ounce”], so the final submission had to be in the mid-seventies.

Birthday mission

Elena Siesta:

“Sweet Fatherland, fountainhead of chía,

I have carried you away with me for Lent …”

RLV

What do we learn about the author from reading his novel
Las Patrias
?

1) That he was born December 15, 1858.

2) That his death was neither by murder nor accident.

3) That he’s of Irish, Spanish, Portuguese, and Jewish descent.

4) That he fell in love with a married woman (whose name isn’t mentioned), and fearing for his life, [was forced] felt he had to go back—exile himself—to Montevideo in 1878.

5) That he never had [didn’t have] to work for a living.

6) That he began writing
Las Patrias
in 1914 [1904?]

7) That his father was a friend of Juan Crisóstomo Lafinur.

8) That, on various occasions and in many different cities, he met Paul Groussac, Emilio Becher, W. H. Hudson, Hilario Ascasubi, Euclides Da Cunha, Ireneo Funes, Alma-Tadema, The Prince of Faucigny Lucinge, Doctor Parkinson [Sinclair?], Foucauld.

9) That he also wrote a play in Alexandrines,
La Calumnia
, and shorter play in three acts that he wrote in French (
Une Petite Gare Desafectée
) [but not in that order, says Eiralis].

As one sees, they [these biographical notes] don’t even reach ten, which are distributed among twelve chapters. Perfect economy. Rightly or wrongly, one can complain (in other words, give thanks) “that the sparse information deprived me even of those two guides that remain after I empty myself of everything else to begin the writing process: ignorance and unpreparedness” (Chap. I). And then: “that the questionable dates and chronology in general will relieve me [exempt me] of those two circumstances that are fatal to writing: Continuing to live [Being alive], being awake” (Chap.VI).

The Excluded

The Reference The Referent

He lived at quite a distance from her body (1), which suited him because his body had become (or he transformed it into) a kind of [surd] transmitter of resonances, the majority [of them] going unanswered. For a while it was believed these resonances or vibrations were meant for someone in particular, until the belief became a solid conviction (2). That someone, the recipient of these transmissions, might have been the daughter of a certain accountant [Elvioapeles Momigliano] (3), a girl he admired unreservedly (4, see after “La mia figlia”), who worked as an administrator in one of the schools, whom he pursued determinedly, or instead of a girl, it could have been a diffident youth, one with a furtive gaze (5, Proust), a student of a subject he cannot recall (6). The first case is intriguing: we can only guess that she must have extracted from these messages some small or mysterious residue of what was communicated in the originals; of the latter case, through his prudence and
obstinacy
[
tenacity
], some flattering suggestion was perhaps received, something propitiatory though inhibitory (7, Lampedusa). But let’s forget about them for the time being. There will always be another
occasion
.

Of the various principles and scruples of conscience that governed the life of Enzo Nicosi (1913–1979/80), or at least the scruples he mentioned when he was alive, there is one in particular that casts light on his [predominant] tendency of speaking about one thing with reference to something else (in order to affirm that this other thing [always] evokes the former, whether because of the aptness or remoteness of the comparison), which is illustrated by quoting the following: “Latin literature is the most important solely because it was preceded by the Greek” and “I cannot speak or write without disorientation” (8).

That the first (9, Galileo,
Dialogue
…) (10, Hume …)

In 1958, when most of us first got to know him (11, Funes, second hand, Flaubert, Bovary—description of school briefcase), he was [already] “the man who would help guide us in life,” which was expressed with a kind of negative clairvoyance [like the capability] (12, Keats, Shelley, Coleridge) by our parents in those circumstances in which most of us, being part-time pupils at the Balmoral of Adrogué, were demanding explanations for our extraordinary regimen of study. Even then he was incredibly antiquated, pompous, withered, and lacked any peculiarities to set him apart from others. His moustache was trimmed according to the fashion of the times; it resembled that of many others of a certain age (including Miss Aserson) who kept those kinds of moustaches, which our parents admired for being like those of Errol Flynn, Clark Gable, Laurence Olivier, Ángel Magaña (deleted in final version, 13) … Many years later, once we saw through his mask, that symbol of his claudication, we summoned the image of Von Aschenbach, as interpreted by Dirk Bogarde in the Visconti film (14, reference to Gathorne-Hardy, anecdote in the book about English public schools).

We first learned that Balmoral should be stressed in the second syllable, correcting the local habit of stressing the first syllable of every foreign word that looked Anglo-saxon in origin (or the last syllable of every word that looked French). Then, being a wise instructor in the ideals of Benjamin Constant’s, he left us alone with a bunch of riddles to solve.

The origin of this strange calling, this way of instructing pupils, this way of addressing people in general—never directly—of dropping clues without ever hitting the nail on the head [the mark], seems to be in the way he himself was educated—or technically, in something he learned before receiving any formal instruction, something that happened not too far away in Lobos.

Orphaned at a young age, he was adopted by aunts who got their money’s worth when they sold, for a good price, the umbilical cord that nearly strangled him (15), for he spent his early years listening only to them. “Girl, open the shutters so Phoebus’s rays can unsettle the Lord’s diadem,” he remembered the eldest asking her younger sister when she wanted some light in her room. Pilar Rosario and Adelaida Barriolo … referred to eggs as “homemade abortions”; to rides downtown in a sulky or tilbury as “baleful journeys to the ninth circle.” Adelaida’s only suitor, an Englishman in the merchant navy, was received by Pilar with the question, “A vicissitudinous journey, was it?” The two women were known as the “Belfry Owls.”