The Art of Flight

by Sergio Pitol

  Venice is boundless and unfathomable. There is always something to see on the next trip, because a church is under restoration, a painting is on loan, the museums are on strike, a thousand reasons. Each trip means corrections, amplifications, surprises, dedications, and demystifications. During my first trips Longhi did not even exist for me, yet today he is one of the painters I am most drawn to. I waited many long years to be able to see Carpaccio’s amazing mural St. George and the Dragon. For many years, time and again, I walked the long route from La Fenice et des Artistes hotel, where I always stay, to the church of San Giorgio degli Schiavoni, and each time I encountered an unexpected obstacle: closed for restoration, admission denied due to some special ceremony, the walls draped in thick curtains without any explanation whatsoever. During my last trip, when I was finally able to see that and the other frescoes the San Giorgio holds, I felt as if I had at long last planted a pike in Flanders.

  The first time, it bears repeating, I saw the city without seeing it. Instead I saw it in fragments, emerging and disappearing, with incorrect proportions and altered colors. The spectacle was at once unreal and marvelous. Over the years I have corrected that vision, each time more magnificent, each time more unreal. In some way my travels around the world, my entire life, have had that same character. With or without glasses, I’ve never achieved more than glimpses, approximations, mutterings in search of meaning in the narrow space that runs between light and darkness. I’ve dreamt that I was a voyager in that fantastic ship of fools painted by Memling, which I once contemplated with amazement in the Naval Museum of Gdansk. What are we, and what is the universe? What are we in the universe? These are questions that leave us speechless, and that we are accustomed to answering with a joke so as not to seem ridiculous.

  We, I would venture to guess, are the books we have read, the paintings we have seen, the music we have heard and forgotten, the streets we have walked. We are our childhood, our family, some friends, a few loves, more than a few disappointments. A sum reduced by infinite subtractions. We are shaped by different times, hobbies, and creeds. As I write these pages, I can divide my life into one long, enjoyable, gregarious phase, and another, the most recent, in which solitude seems to me a gift from the gods. For many years, going to parties, lunches, tertulias, cafés, bars, restaurants was a daily pleasure. The transition to the other extreme occurred so gradually I’m unable to explain the process’s distinct movements. My years in Prague coincided with an intense inner energy. Writing became an obsession; I believe the unbearable social life that I was obliged to lead, for reasons of protocol, in some way nourished the novels I wrote there with anecdotes, episodes, gestures, phrases, and habits.

  I live in Xalapa, a provincial capital surrounded by exceptional landscapes. In the morning I go out to the countryside, where I have a cabin, and I spend several hours writing and listening to music. From time to time I take a break to play with my dog in the garden. I return to the city for the midday meal, and in the afternoon I write again, listen to music, read, and sometimes I watch an old movie on videocassette. I talk to friends on the phone. After six p.m., except on rare occasions, nothing can make me leave the house. I am indebted to the architect Bernal Lascuráin, to his imagination, to his taste and his talent, for the pleasure of inhabiting these houses, each one built as a complement to the other. If I had to live under house arrest in them, I would be perfectly happy. I work until two or three in the morning. That rhythm of life which others might find maddening is the only one that appeals to me.

  Those things of importance that happen to us in life are due to instinct, Julien Green says. “All sexualities are a part of the same family: instinct. But there is something in it that always escapes us, of which we are conscious. It is what makes our life exciting. Every human being carries a mystery of which he is unaware.” What doesn’t matter, I suppose, what is the same for everyone in the world, what makes an epoch trivial, is created naturally by society. We condition ourselves to it without realizing it; that is one of its great labors and the source of a thousand misfortunes. But then one believes he is behaving like a robot, acting mechanically, marching like a sleepwalker, like an army of tiny little men, and, in the end, it turns out that the force of instinct has worked in the opposite direction. As a child Rosita Gómez dreamt of being a stripper and ended up being an honest bank teller; she never learned to dance, not even waltzes. Marcelino Góngora dreamt of being in the mafia, the head of a criminal gang, the terror of the underworld, yet before the end of adolescence he was a sacristan in his village church. The book that someone intended to write, and for which he took countless notes for years, suddenly came to a standstill, ceased to be a project; something unexpected, beyond his control, began to take shape. That’s how things work. Ask again what we are, where we are going, and a fist in the mouth will rid you of the few teeth you have left.

  And from instinct, which is a mystery, I would like to shift to the subject of tolerance, which is an act of will. There is no human virtue more admirable. It implies recognition of others: another way of knowing oneself. An extraordinary virtue, says E.M. Forster, although hardly exciting. There are no hymns to tolerance, as there are, in abundance, to love. It lacks poems and sculptures that extol it. It is a virtue that requires a constant effort and vigilance. It has no popular prestige. If one says of a man that he is tolerant, most people instantly believe that his wife has cheated on him, and the rest make him out to be a fool. One would have to return to the eighteenth century, to Voltaire, to Diderot, to the encyclopédistes, to find the true meaning of the word. In our century, Bakhtin is one of its paladins: his notion of dialogism allows for the possibility of responding to different and opposite meanings equally. “We only harm others when we’re incapable of imagining them,” writes Carlos Fuentes. “Political democracy and civilized coexistence between men demands tolerance and the acceptance of values and ideas different than our own,” says Octavio Paz.

  Norberto Bobbio offers a definition of the “civilized” man that embodies the concept of tolerance as daily action, a working moral exercise: The civilized man “lets others be themselves irrespective of whether these individuals may be arrogant, haughty, or domineering. They do not engage with others intending to compete, harass, and ultimately prevail. They refrain from exercising the spirit of contest, competition, or rivalry, and therefore also of winning. In life’s struggle [civilized men] are perpetual losers. […] This is because in this kind of world there are no contests for primacy, no struggles for power, and no competitions for wealth. In short, here the very conditions that enable the division of individuals into winners and losers do not exist.”1 There is something enormous in those words. When I observe the deterioration of Mexican life, I think that only an act of reflection, of critique, and of tolerance could provide an exit from the situation. But conceiving of tolerance as it is imagined in the Bobbio’s text implies a titanic effort. I begin to think about the hubris, arrogance, and corruption of some acquaintances, and I become angry, I begin to list their attitudes that most irritate me, I discover the magnitude of contempt they inspire in me, and eventually I must recognize how far I am from being a civilized man.

  In the second entry of Lezama Lima’s diaries, dated October 24, 1939, the Cuban writer writes of the relationship between Voltaire and Frederick II. In the beginning, the rapport between the monarch and the philosopher seemed perfect: “Both constantly lose all sense of measure in their praise.” But a single criticism by Voltaire regarding the spelling mistakes that spoil Louis XIV’s prose is enough to poison the relationship. A king is a king and therefore his greatness cannot be dishonored by a solecism or a spelling mistake; a philosopher, no matter how genius, is only a philosopher and should know his place. Caesar est supra grammaticam, that must never be forgotten. The age-old connection between writer and prince has been undermined by misunderstanding; it is a dangerous friendship. A novelist must learn to carry on a dialogue with others, but especially with himself,
he must learn to scrutinize and listen to himself; this will help him know who he is. If he fails, instead of a novel, he will build a verbal artifact that attempts to simulate a narrative form, but whose breathing will be wrong. It will, perhaps, pick up something in the atmosphere. The author knows that he will please either Caesar or the masses, it makes no difference; he has written it for one of those two deities. A few years later, it will end up on the scrapheap. Literature is worse than la belle dame sans merci, that woman beloved and feared by the symbolists. When they play tricks on her, when she senses that she’s being used for spurious reasons, her revenge can be ferocious.

  To begin by invoking the annals of Venice and to end bogged down in a literature of lies is a vulgarity. This fact allows me to realize how far I am from the civilized man that Bobbio envisions. Rather than yield to that irritation, I would like to comment on the attitude of two writers who have been decisive as models for my life of retirement: Luis Cernuda and Julien Gracq. It is well known that temperament is destiny, and in temperament I feel that I belong to the same family as those writers. From the outside, and out of slapdashness, one might think that it is a question of authors determined to read life instead of live it. The truth is a little more complex and at the same time much simpler.

  One might think that renouncing a large portion of the world’s customs is a way to make arrogance, and occasionally pride, pass for humility. This is not the case. For me it’s a matter of intense relaxation, a pure form of hedonism. Walking through my garden; seeing all my books collected at last, knowing that I have reached the desert island with more options than the ten titles demanded by polls; being far from everything—without refusing to observe the world—scrutinizing it, reading it, trying to decipher its signs, sensing its movements, is overall a pleasure. This does not exclude traveling, dreaming of walking once again the streets of Lisbon, Prague, Marienbad, Venice…

  Venice has been a frequent setting in my literature. It is an imagined Venice like Hofmannsthal’s, an ideal Venice, which produces in me the certainty of man’s biological unity with everything that surrounds him and his mythical fusion with the past.

  I once wrote:

  “All times deep down are a single time. Venice comprises and is comprised of all cities, and the young tourist who, Baedeker in hand and eyes half-closed, stops to contemplate a whimsical façade on the Via degli Schiavoni, the collar of his raincoat raised to protect his weak bronchial tubes from the prevailing dampness, is the same young Levantine with almond eyes and curly hair who contemplates with amazement the riches of the market that runs along the recently erected Rialto Bridge, and also the slave with a coarse mop of dirty-green hair captured in a Kashubian village on the Baltic coast in order to dig the first palafittes of what would later become the most colorful, the most eccentric, the most spectacular of all cities. Each one of us is all men. I have been, the protagonist seems to proclaim, Othello and also Iago and also Desdemona’s lost handkerchief! I am my grandfather and those who will be my grandchildren! I am the vast stone that lays the foundation for these wonders, and I am also its cupolas and estipites! I am a lad and a horse and a piece of bronze that represents a horse! Everything is all things! And only Venice, with its absolute individuality, could reveal that secret.”

  Xalapa, February 1996

  1Translated by Teresa Chataway. Throughout the text, Pitol quotes from a variety of literary texts written in Spanish and in other languages. Because he does not cite the quotations, it is impossible to know the source of the translated quotations. For consistency, where possible, I have opted to use published English translations of all quotations. A full bibliography of these translations and their sources is included in the Appendix. Unless otherwise noted by a footnote, all translations of these quotations are mine. —Trans.

  WITH MONSIVÁIS THE YOUNGER

  ONE DAY IN 1957

  I’m waiting for Monsiváis in the Kilos on Avenida Juárez, opposite the El Caballito statue. We agreed to meet at two, have lunch, and go over the final pages of the text I was to publish in the Cuadernos del Unicornio (The Unicorn’s Notebooks). I don’t know how many times I’ve reread the proofs, but I’ll feel more secure if he takes a look at them. Carlos was the first person to read the two stories that will make up the notebook; the first, “Victorio Ferri Tells a Tale,” is dedicated to him. I see him almost daily, even if just in passing. We met three years ago—yes, in 1954—during the days preceding the “Glorious Victory.” At that time we were participating in the University Committee for Solidarity with Guatemala; we collected protest signatures, distributed fliers, attended a rally together that began in the Plaza de Santo Domingo. We saw Frida Kahlo there, surrounded by Diego Rivera, Carlos Pellicer, Juan O’Gorman, and some other “greats.” She was already living entirely against the grain; it was her last public appearance: she died shortly thereafter. From then on I began to see Carlos regularly: in the café at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters; at a cineclub; in the editorial office of Estaciones; or in the home of mutual friends. More than anywhere else, I ran into him at bookstores.

  Not long after we met, he came to my apartment, on Calle de Londres, when the Juárez neighborhood had not yet become the Zona Rosa, to read a story that he had just finished: “Fino acero de niebla” (Fine Steel of Mist), about which the only thing I remember is that it had nothing to do with the Mexican literature of our generation. The language was popular, but highly stylized; and the structure was very elusive. It demanded that the reader more or less find his own way. The fiction written by our contemporaries, even the most innovative, seemed closer to the canons of the nineteenth century next to his fine steel. Monsiváis brought together in his story two elements that would later define his personality: an interest in popular culture—in this case the language of the working-class neighborhoods—and a passion for form, two facets that do not usually coincide. When I expressed my enthusiasm after the reading, he immediately snapped shut, like an oyster trying to dodge lemon drops.

  He had just finished reading when Luis Prieto arrived. He greeted Carlos warmly, and Carlos immediately shoved the pages into a folder, as if they were compromising documents. Luis told us that he had just come from Las Lomas, from a very entertaining gathering with a group of English philosophers, followers of Ouspensky; one of them, who was very rich, Mr. Tur-Four, or Sir Cecil Tur-Four, as the group’s members referred to him, had proposed building a place for meditation—a temple, to be exact—The Eye of God, on the outskirts of Cuautla, where the community would be able to perform the necessary rites. Some thirty people had attended to express their gratitude. Luis said he didn’t understand why they had invited him. It didn’t surprise me; I had accompanied him on many of his adventures through the impenetrable labyrinth of eccentricity that lay hidden within the city at the time, a world that included locals and foreigners, teachers, notaries, archeologists, old Balkan countesses, Chinese restaurateurs, Italian mediums, famous actresses, anonymous students, choreographers, rural school teachers, and opulent collectors of African, Oceanic, and pre-Hispanic art that had traveled the world, exhibited in the most famous museums, but also others, much more modest, who collected cigarette boxes, beer bottles, and shoes. Luis was also a friend of two nuns who had been cloistered during the time of religious persecution; one of them, congenitally ill-natured, a Mexican, and daughter of an Englishman, Párvula Dry, who at the slightest provocation would recount to whomever was standing in front of her, even a perfect stranger, her thorny post-convent odyssey, her arduous journey toward the Truth. The other never spoke; instead she just agreed solemnly with whatever her spokeswoman said. Every time I saw them with Luis, Párvula Dry would repeat, in almost the exact same words, that if both she and the other, the former Mother Superior, had managed to find themselves, it was due not to psychoanalysis, to which they had both turned, nor to tantric Buddhism, which is a mere fallacy, nor to the teachings of Krishnamurti, from which they learned nothing, but to their discovery of Ouspen
sky’s Tertium Organum. Luis was like a fish in water with these over-the-top characters. He eventually described the meeting in detail, the characters in attendance, the events that transpired; he told us that, in the middle of Mr. Tur-Four’s report on the progress of the construction of The Eye of God, a very large man, monster-like in his obesity, fell suddenly into a trance and from his lips the Maestro, Ouspensky of course, violently insulted the patron and the two dissolute nuns who were manipulating him, whose mere presence, he said, sullied their Work. He described the uproar that occurred in the room at these words and his astonishment when several of the participants, instead of attempting to silence the giant who continued his trance-induced tirade, began to savagely insult each other. Some fell into a trance and produced conflicting messages. A skeleton-like woman, who in her normal state sounded like a bird chirping when she spoke, emitted a thunderous voice with which she threatened the snake, the worm who claimed to be the Maestro’s messenger, with expulsion from the sect, and added that the former nuns, slaves of papism in the past, had already been redeemed and that, like the magnanimous Sir Cecil Tur-Four, they were absolutely necessary to the revelation of the Truth. Some fell into convulsions only to hurl increasingly inappropriate insults at each other; Luis Prieto deepened his voice and in a cavernous tone announced: “The session has been suspended!” At that moment they all came out of their trance, stood up and, like good Englishmen, said their goodbyes with the greatest propriety imaginable, except for a single elderly woman who became flabbergasted and kept repeating in English, “Two-four, stop! Two-four, stop!” and who had to be carried out on a stretcher. Luis reproduced the session in so many different voices and so many details that it looked as if a demiurge were recreating that amazing theosophical pandemonium before our eyes. Until then, for as long as I had known Carlos, I had never seen him laugh so much, nor could I imagine that a person so introspective and ensconced in books would be so receptive to such madcap humor. It was the first time I heard his inimitable guffaw. Luis and I began to tell variations of the story, adding characters, exaggerating some scenes for effect, and, to my surprise, the neophyte not only laughed like Rabelais but also contributed very skillfully to the construction and deconstruction of that verbal puzzle, the great game, of which Luis’s verbal synopsis had been only a starting point.