No Variations (Argentinian Literature Series) (2 page)

Revol
t against the Crepuscular Spirit in Modern Poetry
(Pound)

An anthology collecting work published in
Agraphia
(Unwritten) [or
Alusiva
(Allusive)?], a journal exactly as old as me—since the first issue was published the day I was born—and to which, under various assumed names (pseudonyms, not heteronyms) I will of course be the sole actual contributor.

The anthology is edited by one Víctor Eiralis (a character I created for my book
Siluetas
—a collection of miniature biographies of authors both real and imagined—to introduce me to the works of his “shadow,” W. Gerhardie) at the behest of Antonio Arguimbau, proprietor of a publishing house that’s on the verge of being sold, and a compulsive womanizer to boot, who only agreed to publish it after he was seduced by Urlihrt’s second widow. Eiralis writes the preface. There’ll be an exchange of letters between editor and publisher inserted “by accident” at the back, as though to fill up space. Over the years, the original contributors will have become more or less famous, but at the time of their collaboration, none of the stories were signed. So Eiralis—a disgruntled drifter, typical among editors who’ve realized too late they’ve chosen the wrong profession—will have the invidious task of matching each story with its author. He happens to be the least suitable for the job, because he despises all of them.

Clausás. Julio Clausás

Lame: a lame anthology

Exergue: “Being familiar with many styles / he imitated all.”

??? Aldecoa Inauda, presumed ancestor (of Eiralis or Urlihrt?)

Kleptolalia / Cryptodermia

Chronology of
Agraphia
: 1958–1999

Ages [as of circa 1974]:

Nicasio 49

Elena 46

Oliverio 34

Luini 22

Portrait by Fantin-Latour,
Coin de table
?

It’s likely that people of such disparate ages wouldn’t get along. Let the combination of disloyalties within the group provide insight into the secret/key to
Agraphia
: vengeance through anonymity, with a little help from plagiarism.

Aubrey

N. Urlihrt is short and stocky, but with a paradoxical softness; in fact, he’s very gentle, glib (in every sense of the word), full of nervous energy, but soft as a cotton ball on the outside. Avoid emphasizing this last aspect. Avoid making him look like an ass.

He writes in longhand. Born in 1913 or 1914? Make it 1913, like Dad. A year older than Cortázar and Bioy.

Eiralis isn’t tall. Need to make this clear from the outset. Is underfed, has all the hallmarks of undernourishment. Affects elegance to conceal indigence. Clothing: raincoat, checkered shirt, corduroy pants. Drinks Cubano Sello Verde. Campari. Bols gin. Domestic whiskey. Born in 1941?

Sabatani is tall. One of those lanky Italian types. He writes a short story called “Sircular Cymmetry” [not sure whether this text should actually appear in the novel], dramatizing the night
Agraphia/Alusiva
held its first meeting—without Urlihrt—as though this were as momentous as the night when, during a meeting of the Rosicrucians at Whitehall Palace, John Florio stood in front of an assembly that included the poet Philip Sydney, and translated some works by their honored guest, Giordano Bruno, about the possible existence of life on other planets, etc. (Details in Frances Yates, though sparse.)

Basilio Ugarte is very short. A sort of Juan-Jacobo Bajarlía. He has unusual eyes: pale blue, vacant—indicating (appropriately enough) both candor and malice. Fashion conscious. Small, insignificant, almost invisible: see the Bartlebyian short story “Janóvice” by Denevi … Does Beerbohm ever mention Enoch Soames’s height?

Oliverio Lester is taller than everyone except Sabatani, behind whom he likes to lurk, and in whose shadow he’s content to hide. As a clerk, or a beadle, or a beadle’s clerk (did I get the word “beadle” from
Moby-Dick
?)—a bureaucrat through and through, in other words—he’s the pet pencil pusher at
Agraphia/Alusiva
—that bordello of letters. He shuffles along with his briefcase pressed close to his chest, arms crossed, in the same solemn attitude as a Native American (Iroquois?) carrying a peace pipe. Or were the Iroquois not a peaceful tribe? Let’s say the Sioux then.

Crossword bordello.

Edition/Sedition. Sounds like a stupid hippy slogan from the seventies.

According to Benito (a mutual friend of mine and Abelardo Castillo’s), one of them is a
ufologist
, like Borges, William Empson, and Benito himself. The first time I heard the word, I thought “ufologist” meant someone who played the euphonium in an orchestra. Ah, those good old hippy crackpots.

Good old Julian Cope!

The land where everything is possible (especially if it isn’t true), because there’s no such thing as criticism there. THD’s (Toribio Hesker Dubbio’s) niggling praise of Quaglia’s novel (
Existential Resignation
?) is an obvious example: like one of those old Unitarian matrons, a grande dame who, having read her first novel, commends the author’s diligence and intelligence for having brought its historical setting to life … and not merely a historical setting but a geographical one to boot—although lacking an appendix of fold-out maps, sadly. The kind of mordant observation the resentful Eiralis would make.

Beneath the sign of the capital [S]: sibilant, sinuous—more than deserving of those protective parentheses: brackets guarding against all the excess, malice, and falsehood in the world.

Luini isn’t tall. Neither is he short. In fact, no one quite knows his height [see Kenner on Pound]. He’s cynical, he’s droll. And he lives in an age when this conjunction of qualities boils down to the single abominable adjective: intriguing. He edits, corrects—usually what’s already been corrected. He practices the art of supererogatory copyediting.

Luini, a disciple of Leonardo. Opacity.

Dos is homosexual (
smart
,
camp
,
bitchy
). He’s the first to extol the genius and glamor of the women in the group, their absent muses: Elena, Eloísa, Irena, Inés.

The painting is from the early seventies, based on the original photograph showing them all seated together at a table in Estrambote, a restaurant belonging to Dos (double, Charlie). Nicasio’s prominent place in the picture is intended to highlight [“underscore,” perhaps?] the position of Inés (Eloísa), who’s attempting to imitate Rimbaud’s pose in the F-L original, despite there being no
coin
in the frame. Nicasio sits with his barracan jacket slightly open, his hand reaching—in plenipotentiary gesture—for his wallet (“ample as a library,” according to Dos) so he can pay the bill. To his left, Elena—slouched forward like a haystack—has a puzzled expression, her hand seeming to tug at a piece of thread, as if to unravel the solution to some cryptic name game; and seated next to her, the Dostoyevsky of the group, Lalo (Sabatani), seems to be searching for a way out of the shot. Above left, in the top hat, Luini stands next to the leisurely Dos, who has a “silk scarf draped in modest abandon” around his neck, standing in stark contrast to the shy and bespectacled Prosan. Ah, and I almost forgot about the cadaverous figure of Belisario Tregua (or Basilio Ugarte?), seated bottom left. The photo was taken by Remo Scacchi, but the barely conspicuous watercolor hanging on the wall (deep down he liked to imagine that it was his own portrait of Elena hanging there, sketched in sanguine chalk) was actually painted by his brother. In the early stages of his painting, he took care to capture her likeness accurately, but in the end he succumbed, as he always did, to his annoying proclivity for disfiguring his work with brash and gaudy brushstrokes. Reckless Expressionism, I call it.

Eiralis describing either the first group meeting or the first group photo.

People like B[] P[] who, in his strict observance of Q’s exercises in obedience, has become impervious to the teachings of Borges.

Another one smuggling in Glenn Gould under his shirt.

Who, because of his droning inanity, and making use of one of his own awkward metaphorical niceties, was given the nickname: “Luminous puree.”

Lunar puree. Woolen puree.

Add after A.P. on the women who

Intersection of adulteries / collaborative writing

Some bit of idiocy, as in Guattari?

Analysis of the variations provided by only two options (remember, two wasn’t even a number before Socrates [see the pre-Socratics, Barnes, Watts]): two bloodlines: two illnesses:

Aldecoa Inauda / Hilarión Curtis

Kleptolalia / Cryptodermia

And vice-versa: kleptodermia—cryptolalia

Oliverio’s story about the Venus who repeatedly swaps her true form for human “furs” … Nicasio’s instance of cryptolalia: the mute little brothers in his short story, “The Imitation of an Ounce.”

Collaborative writing. Comprised of two varieties:

Analysis of all possible combinations

Plagiarism

Laurence Sterne / Lautréamont

Stewart Home / Bajarlía

Basilio Tregua / Belisario Ugarte

Incoherency / Contradiction. Postpone dealing with this for the time being.

Title of the first story: “Early”

Or else rename it “Too Late”? It’s quite an old story (from back in ’86, or earlier) about the wanton world of plagiarism, a two-dimensional world existing in a two-dimensional space, populated by ferociously competitive inhabitants with two-dimensional outlooks. It appeared in an anthology published by Monte Ávila of Venezuela, edited by Héctor Libertella.

Unease: there are always extenuating circumstances.

Strategic reassurance and remorse. Would like to include the sestinas on departure and return (formalist nonsense!)—and the short poems in English from
The B(achelor) in B(edlam)
that Charlie was so fond of.

I wrote “Early” for a meeting of
The Cause
—which was either a writer’s group none of us founded or a magazine none of us launched, in order to fulfill the mandate to start such organizations that was issued by (cacophony of resentment) the magazine
El periodista de Buenos Aires
(ah, that brings me back!). And before that?

I think I was the only one who did his homework that time. The meeting was held in Charlie’s flat on Independence Street (the one from Ignatieff’s
The Lesser Evil
). Charlie, Alan, Chefec, Guebel, Bizzio, and myself. I remember them all going over the pages I typed on my mechanical Hermes while I waited, having nothing better to do. The Pole was the first to finish reading, or the only one who didn’t give up. “I like it,” he said, “I think it’s very sentimental.”

The capriciousness of memory. I can’t imagine even Sergio or Danny being able to follow all this.

Speaking of Sergio, in
Trichinopoli
(a novel I was writing in jest while others were working on theirs in deadly earnest), the basic unit of currency was the “chefec” (derived, supposedly, from the phrase
check feckless coin
). Sergio B[izzio], who was always prissy and pedantic, told me he could never read a book with such a title. It’s the name of a city in southern India, I puffed affectedly (being even more prissy and pedantic than he). There’s also a brand of breadsticks called
Grissinopoli
.

Now let life obscure the difference between life and art
.

—
J.C.

Another reminder re: “Early”: The Répide Stupía book the narrator plagiarizes is a collection of poems, not short stories. Same title, however:
Accents
.

The beginning [#5]

I won a literary competition with a story actually written by Francisco Répide Stupía. Every page of the story is basically a word-pimp’s larding-on of obscurities and contradictions, the better to obfuscate the plagiarism—and written in a light tone to sugar over the gravity of the crime.