by Hilda Hilst
The tetralogy began with Lori Lamby’s Little Pink Notebook, narrated by an eight-year-old sex worker whose surname is a play on the verb “to lick.” Although the tetralogy was meant as “an act of aggression” toward an arriviste literary community with middlebrow tastes and bourgeois morals, it was consistently misunderstood as pornography, and the minor scandal surrounding the works gained Hilst further notoriety as a “pornographic” writer. Hilst herself did little to dispel these misconceptions, responding to interviewers with mordant sarcasm when questioned about the book’s alleged pornography. Though a work of devious genius, the Brazilian literary community confused Lori Lamby’s Little Pink Notebook with a cheap last-ditch attempt at fame, and some of the same critics who had extolled her previous works condemned Lori Lamby as trash. In these late years, Hilst was also becoming a legendarily volatile persona, known for her prickly treatment of the journalists who bored her and the writers who discounted her work. Erstwhile members of her elective family were excommunicated from Hilst’s inner circle. Once, in a rare appearance at a book launch, she broke a glass and threatened to stab another writer who had publicly disapproved of her unorthodox love life.
In the 1990s she began drinking heavily, from seven o’clock onward each evening. It was her way, friends say, of confronting age and mortality. Yet despite immoderate indulgence in whiskey, Hilst was never out of sorts the next day, ready to keep her usual hours of reading and writing. It was only in the final years of her life, when she had stopped writing, that Hilst began to overcome the hindrance of her reputation as a “hermetic” writer of arcane philosophical concerns and forbidding difficulty. Editora Globo, a large commercial publishing house, began reissuing her work in special critical editions in 2000, and her books are now available in shops across Brazil.
The task of translating Hilda Hilst has also faced intransigences, but her work is finally being made available to an English-reading public. In undertaking this translation of With My Dog-Eyes, I was aided by the opportunity to consult Hilst’s immense personal library at the Casa do Sol; her marginalia and annotations were illuminating guides to the literary, philosophic, mathematical, and occult allusions embedded everywhere in her prose. Since it would be nearly impossible to comment upon them all, notes to the text are kept to a minimum, and I will not address their many potential interpretations here.
One exception, however, is called for: the title of With My Dog-Eyes is a mystery. The book was originally titled “The Obscure”; Hilst’s notes show that this was in part to anagrammatically spell “TAO” with the titles of three consecutive books (Tu não te moves de ti, 1980; A obscena senhora D, 1982; and O Obscuro). It is unclear why Hilst changed the title to With My Dog-Eyes, though it is obviously related to her own extraordinary love of dogs. Her dogs accompanied her at the dinner table, watched over her while she wrote, and crowded around her as she moved through the Casa do Sol. In nearly every photo of Hilst, there are dogs and more dogs. Though they were extravagantly numerous, she always knew all of their names. Hilst disdained those who disliked dogs, and the first question she asked visitors and new acquaintances brought to her house by friends—before proceeding to ask them about their zodiac sign and the details of their sex life—was whether or not they liked dogs. Anecdotes about Hilst’s strange ability to communicate with dogs abound. One resident of the Casa do Sol recalled the way her dogs rushed to break Hilst’s fall when she fainted upon hearing the telephone ring one day, having correctly intuited that someone was calling to tell her a friend had succumbed to AIDS. Though she kept hundreds of dogs throughout her life, her diary entries record the deep pain she felt when any of them died. When euthanasia was required, Hilst sometimes administered the injection herself.
The title of With My Dog-Eyes might have been inspired by Kafka’s “Investigations of a Dog,” in which a dog gives voice to some of the same philosophical, scientific, and existential concerns that preoccupied Hilst. Or it may be that the title derives from a verse in book 11 of The Odyssey, one which Faulkner was believed to be quoting in the title of As I Lay Dying. The verse is spoken by Agamemnon, who when visited by Odysseus in the underworld, explains his murder by his unfaithful wife Clytemnestra. “As I lay dying,” he tells Odysseus, “the woman with the dog’s eyes would not close my eyes as I descended into Hades.” The villainous Clytemnestra is too evil to perform this death rite for her husband as she dispatches him into the underworld. A Portuguese translation of The Odyssey in Hilst’s library refers to Clytemnestra as a cachorra, the Brazilian Portuguese word for a bitch or she-dog, reminiscent of the one that appears near the end of With My Dog-Eyes. Perhaps it is the gaze of Clytemnestra herself that Hilst invokes as she sends her readers, open-eyed, into the depths of madness.
Adam Morris
Acknowledgments
Special thanks are due to the Susan Sontag Foundation, the Instituto Hilda Hilst, Olga Bilenky, Daniel Bilenky Mora Fuentes, Jurandy Valença, Caroline Nascimento, Lyris Wiedemann, Marília Librandi Rocha, and Aaron Joseph.
In memory of Ernest Becker
And to my friends
José Antônio de Almeida Prado
Mário Schenberg
Newton Bernardes
Ubiratàn d’Ambrosio
“Vita brevis, sensus ebes, negligentiae torpor et inutiles occupationes nos pancula scire permittent. Et aliquotients scita excutit ab animo per temporum lapsum frandatrix scientiae et inimica memoriam praeceps oblivio.”
“The shortness of life, the dullness of the senses, the numbness of indifference and unprofitable occupations allow us to know but very little. And again and again swift oblivion, the embezzler of knowledge and the enemy of memory, shakes out of the mind, in the course of time, even what we knew.”
—Copernicus
“[…] je saisis en sombrant que la seule verité de l’homme, enfin entrevue, est d’être une supplication sans réponse.”
“… I grasp while sinking that the sole truth of man, glimpsed at last, is to be a supplication without response.”
—Georges Bataille
The cross on my brow
The facts of what I was
Of what I will be:
I was born a mathematician, a magician
I was born a poet.
The cross on my brow
The dry laughter
The scream
I discover myself a king
Sequined in darkness
Knives striking
Time and wisdom.
God? A surface of ice anchored to laughter. That was God. Even so he tried to cling to that nothing, sliding frozen somersaults until finding the anchor’s thick rope and descending descending in the direction of that laughter. He touched himself. He was alive, yes. When the child asked his mother: and the dog? The mother: the dog died. And so he threw himself on a patch of earth curdled with squash, hugged himself against one, a twisted cylinder with an ocher head, and choked out: died how? died how? The father: woman, this boy’s a fool, get him off that squash. He died. He fucked himself said the father, just like that, he brought the clenched fingers of his left hand down against the flattened palm of his right and repeated: he fucked himself. This is how he learned of death. Amós Kéres, forty-eight years old, mathematician, stopped his car on the top of a small hill, opened the door, and got out. From where he was he could see the University building. Whorehouse Church Government University. They all looked alike. Whispers, confessions, vanity, speeches, vestments, obscenities, brotherhood. The dean: Professor Amós Kéres, certain rumors have come to my attention. Okay. Care for a coffee? No. The dean removes his glasses. Gently chews one of their tips. Sure you don’t want some coffee? No, thank you. Well, let’s see, I understand that pure mathematics avoids the obvious, do you like Bertrand Russell, Professor Kéres? Yes. Well, you should know that I’ve never forgotten a certain phrase from one of those magnificent books. One of my books? Have you written a book, Professor? No. I refer to the books of Bertrand Russell. Ah. An
d the phrase is this: “obviousness is always the enemy of correctness.” Of course. Well then, what I know about your classes is that not only are they not at all obvious, they … excuse me, Professor, hello hello, of course my love, obviously it’s me, I’m busy right now, of course my dear, then take him to the dentist, I know I know … Amós passed his tongue over his gums. He should go to the dentist too (of course he had to go), with age everything gets worse he told me the last time I went, when was that again? it doesn’t matter, but he said Mr. Kéres there’s a tension all along your jawbone, the tension of a bankrupt executive, it’s amazing, don’t you wake up with pain in your jaw? I do. Then it looks like we need to adjust your arch. How much? Ah, it’s a difficult procedure. But how much? (but, my love, the boy’s just whining, he has to go, all dentists these days are hot babes, let me talk to him, just a second longer, Professor). Of course. Ah, it’s pricey, look, we need to align all the top teeth and almost all the bottom ones, and the bottom ones are extremely important, you should never lose a bottom tooth, they’re supports for future bridges, and yours down here are all worn away (hey kid, daddy wants you to go to the dentist, don’t start with that, sure I’ll buy those sneakers, candy, I know, what? shorts? ah, I can’t promise it, all right I’ll take you I’ll take you, okay kid, hello, obviously it’s me my love, yes he’ll go, I get home early yeah, bye-bye). Well now, where were we, Professor Kéres? I respond: the obvious. Ah yes. He put his eyeglasses back on: you don’t seem to be taking me seriously. How so? I noticed that you had a bit of a smile there, let’s say, Professor, a bit of a condescending smile, as if you thought I were … silly? Just your impression, I was also recalling a phrase. Go ahead, Professor. And so then I say the phrase: “Hence we invent some new and difficult symbolism, in which nothing seems obvious,” and he rather liked it. Who’s that? Bertrand Russell. Ah. Let’s proceed, Professor, I can’t stay much longer, so please just take a leave of absence, twenty days, relax. But sir, you still haven’t been clear with me about the rumors. Very well: there are obvious signs of wandering off. Pardon? Of aloofness, if you like, yes, of aloofness on your part during classes, sentences that break off and only continue after fifteen minutes, Professor Kéres, fifteen minutes is too much, they say you simply disconnect. I disconnect? What sentences were they? It doesn’t matter, please just rest, take vitamins, tranquilizers. He takes off his glasses again, covers his top lip with his bottom one, sighs, smiles: come on come on, don’t worry yourself, you’ve always been impeccable, just excellent, but between us … The dean clasps me by the arm, squeezes my wrist in his fingers: between us, they’re not understanding anything anymore. Who? Your students, Professor, your students. Strange I say, in the last class we rethought diapers, beginnings … the square root of a negative number. I cited a mathematician from the twelfth century, Brahmin Bhaskara: “the square of a positive number, as with a negative number, is positive. Thus the square root of a positive number is double, positive and negative at the same time. There is no square root of a negative number, since the negative number is not a square,” nevertheless Cardan, in the sixteenth century … The dean bit his lower lip, or rather the right corner of the lower lip, stared at me for a while, and extended his hand: good luck, Professor, a leave of absence. I cross the patio. Then corridors, lawns. When I was a kid the writing teacher asked for three short stories. Short stories, boys and girls, do you know what short stories are? The nerds raised their hands. Very good, whoever doesn’t know can ask the others, very good. Two of my classmates showed me imbecilic little stories, the rustling of the fluttering leaves on the branches breezes on the face, etc. I wrote:
First tale (aka short stories)—Mommy, I’m sick and tired of your nonsense about morality and family at the dinner table. I’ve seen you sucking Daddy’s cock plenty of times. Leave me in peace. Signed, Junior.
Second tale (aka short stories)—My love, think it over, you’re fifty and I’m twenty-five. You say that it’s the spirit that matters. I understand, my love, but I gotta split. Don’t get depressed. We’ll run into each other now and then, okay? Signed, Laércio. All this was talk I overheard while drinking guaraná on a balcony at a department store. He was a big strong guy, and she was squat and black-eyed.
Third tale (aka short stories)—His name is Sun and Adultery. My husband’s is Elias. My children are named Enilson and Joaquim. I want them all to die. Except him. (That first one, light and bed.) I’m very sorry, my God, but there it is. Signed: Lazinha. I like this one a lot. Adultery seemed to him in adolescence a beautiful word. Now too. After AIDS, less so. Light and bed was an inspiration. The teacher slapped him in the face. All the rest with the rustling of the fluttering leaves on the branches breezes on the face were awarded with a picnic. Only tip-top writing grades for those nerds. Amós was expelled. He flunked the year. He caught pneumonia. His classmates sent him a short poem: He thought he was a smarty-pants, so slippery and sly / but then the one to fuck himself / was Amós, little wise guy.
Stuck between walls
I’m myself and the die:
I live separate from myself.
On all four sides
A taste for alacrities:
The chance to be thrown
Down your deep tunnel.
He had understood only in that instant. And now never again? He recalled everything perfectly. He had gone like always to the top of that little hill. He liked to be there, where you could still glimpse some dusky greens, a hurried lizard scurrying across a trail, and if he turned his back on the University building he saw fields of cotton and coffee. He would stay there just looking. Emptied. Sometimes he would ponder his modest destiny. Had he cherished any illusions? When he was younger, he wanted a nonobvious to be demonstrated, a short and harmonious equation that would scintillate the as-yet unexplained. Words. These were the fine veins that he had never managed to wholly extract from the mass of hard and rough earth where they lay deposited. He didn’t want deceiving effects, or empty sonorities. As a child, he had never figured out how to explain himself. A hurricane of questions whenever he’d taken an aimless walk, just over that way to see the neighbors’ dog or the flock of parakeets that came around in the late afternoon, I just went overthatway, that’s all. They’d say: Why? What for? What dog? At this hour? To see what about the dog, what parakeets? I’d respond: Over that way because they’re pretty. He’d blush saying the words over that way because they’re pretty. Later, he’d get furious, when they’d ask him about feelings. How to formulate exact words, various letters brought together, chained, short or long words, to extract from inside himself those fine veins that lay untouched there inside him? They were there, he knew it, but how to extract them? Everything would come undone. He liked reading Japanese poets. One of them, Buson, has a poem like this:
Behold the mouth of Emma O!
It seems that she’s about to spit
A peony!
Poetry and mathematics. The black stone structure breaks and you see yourself in a saturation of lights, a clear-cut unhoped-for. A clear-cut unhoped-for was what he felt and understood at the top of that small hill. But he didn’t see shapes or lines, didn’t see contours or lights, he was invaded by colors, life, a flashless dazzling, dense, comely, a sunburst that was not fire. He was invaded by incommensurable meaning. He could say only that. Invaded by incommensurable meaning. And the previous night? His wife, the singular Amanda, ranted and raved from one corner of the room to another, her dark arms rising up and tumbling down agitatedly: Amós, numbers are fine when it comes to a bank account, okay? The nightgown is pale green, cotton, the one that sticks to her tits, her belly, he thinks I couldn’t have married or had a kid, and then the kid comes into the room: mom, dad is good at math, tell him to do this problem here. No way I say. I touch myself. I’m also in light-green pajamas. She’s crazy about matching colors. I look at the headboard. In the middle there’s a circular weaving, branchlike. What color? Light green. I feel a bit nauseous. All beds should be dynamited. Thi
s one. I look at the back of my hands, the veins seem more pronounced, I think of what these hands might have done. Carpentry would have been nice. Tables chairs, why not lecterns? Would I be kneeling now? Cots. Only one person fits in a cot. Those narrow ones. The boy starts crying. I say give it to me later. Amanda: what’s the big deal, he did the problem himself and just wants to check? It’s bedtime. The boy keeps crying. What a sham all this of kids and marriage, I think of a shot in the chest and the other one’s still ranting eternally in her light-green nightgown, her tits, her thighs. A shot in the chest. It’s necessary to love, Amós, after all she is your wife, he’s your son. Go to bed, son, do it yourself, it’s better for you. The boy leaves. Come here, Amanda. She doesn’t come. It’s a long lecture. A few bits stayed with me: dinner, friends’ house, restaurants, sometimes dancing, why not. Amanda dragged on. Her arms continued their aerial battle. Dancing. I’m remembering Osmo, whose friend was he? I’m not sure, I know he killed one or two women because of this obsession with dancing. He was all tangled up with God, in abysses (he was a philosopher), and the women were always wanting to dance. I try to make Amanda lie down. She wants to keep lecturing. A shot in my chest or in hers? I tell her to lecture lying down. She finally lies down. Just what is it between me and Amanda? What are feelings anyway? How is it that they vanish without a vestige? Were they ever there? Everything leaves a trace. In death, bones, later ashes. Vestiges in an urn. Someone’s footstep. He was wearing sneakers. This one was wearing boots. Look at the mark of the heel, right there. Strands of hair remain everywhere. Preserved teeth. They never go away if they’re well preserved. In the mouth they rot. In a metal box, that little tooth there: forever. Your little baby tooth, look, son. And a fully grown man of fifty. That tooth there. Toujours. In aeternum. Where are you going, Amós? I’m going to go get my tooth from the drawer. Now? Yes now, Amanda. I open the drawer and peer in. It’s there. Well now it won’t be. I go to the toilet. I flush. It winds its way down through the pipes, I presume, winds its way down, and then to the sewer? Forever in the sewer? Or will it get all worn down as it would in a mouth? Sewer-mouth. What did you do, Amós? Mouth-sewer. Mewer. I respond to the others. To some. I forget the “consider” “therefore” “let us assume” “thence it follows” and attempt the incoherency of many words, at first spelling some secretly beside my heart, for example, Life, Understanding, and if a question comes my way, pop a brass shell on the person who asks, died eh? died of letters. How so? Well, he asked this mathematician something and the guy hadn’t spoken anything but numbers for years, you see, and hemorrhaged words. What? Just that, spurts of words. The other guy couldn’t take it. The most learned cadaver that I ever saw, a beautiful thing, man, all darkened with letters. Let’s go. At twenty Amós would take his books to a brothel. Infinitesimal calculus. Topology. Such a tranquility there in the morning. There was also the very strange Libitina. And the madam, Maria Ancuda: you can stay here, gorgeous, stay stay, stay here studying, as long as afterward you give me a little hand with that beast of an account book. And Libitina. Over there. Your name is really Libitina? Yes it is, they confused it with another.