Gogol's Wife

by Tommaso Landolfi

  “But, my dear sir,” I then intervened, “leaving aside the languages you have just mentioned—about which I don’t believe I have really grasped your idea—and simply dealing with those you mentioned first . . . those languages, I would say, are real inasmuch as their existence is presupposed on the basis of inscriptions, even though meager—but, beware!—presupposed in their lexical, grammatical and syntactical entirety. The inscriptions preserve the traces of a structure, of an articulation which places them in time and space, without which it would be impossible to distinguish them from just any sign marked on just any stone, precisely like the indecipherable languages. These inscriptions, I would say, cast light on an unknown past, yet from that past they gain their very significance. That past is nothing but a complex of norms and conventions which attribute a specific meaning to a specific expression. Now what past can you attribute to my friend’s three poems, and from what can they take their meaning? Behind them lies not a complex of norms and conventions, but simply a momentary whim, a whim which has not been codified in any manner and which has vanished as irremediably as it arose.”

  The great critic looked at me, frowning, still thinking of that “beware” which had annoyed him. Not at all intimidated, I continued:

  “A language reconstructed on the basis of meager inscriptions does not acquire substance until one proves that, on the basis of those inscriptions, that language and only that language could be reconstructed. But in our case, on the basis of so fragile a collection of data, it might be possible to construct or reconstruct not one but a hundred languages. Thus one would be confronted by the amusing case of a piece of poetry which could have been written in any one of a hundred languages, each dissimilar from the others and from the first. . . .”

  And at this point I stopped talking, rather satisfied with my sophism. But the great critic replied:

  “This,” he said, “seems to me nothing but a sophism. In the first place, in such cases philology proceeds precisely by suppositions. Suppositions, it is true, which have all the characteristics of relative certainties, but are nevertheless suppositions; nor, theoretically, is just one language reconstructible on the basis of certain inscriptions. In the second place, what does it matter to you that a poem might turn out to be written in more than one language at the same time? The essential is that it be written in one language, and it is beside the point that this language has something in common with another, or, as you say, with a hundred others, so as to permit interchanges of the sort you are imagining. And lastly, I should like to bring it to your attention, my dear sir, from a more, ahem, elevated point of view, that a work of art can be free not only from linguistic conventions but from all conventions and that it creates its own rules.”

  “Certainly not,” I cried, seeing the better part of my argument slipping away. “You can’t get out of it that easily. Now you’re in danger of relying on a sophism yourself. You are taking it for granted that what is involved is a work of art. But this is precisely what has to be examined: where and what are the criteria you use for your evaluation? Let me sum up my preceding argument. When I said that an inscription has behind it and implies a complex of norms, I meant also that certain of its purely linguistic data are enforced and supported by a knowledge which is not exclusively linguistic: I refer to ethnic knowledge. On the basis of what we know about a certain people, we may even take it for granted that a certain expression is not only valid in one particular position, but also in all other analogous positions. For example, simply knowing that a people has used a given language for its internal and external relationships, provides us with sufficient guarantee of the constant value of a word. Behind an inscription, my dear sir, there is also an entire people! But behind any of these poems there is nothing but a whim. So then, who will guarantee for us that the same expression does not change its meaning radically from one instance to the next? In the separate compositions, or in the very same composition there is, I beg you to observe, not one word which is repeated twice throughout all three poems. Theoretically, my dear sir, one can suppose that each of the three poems unfolds a particular image—or concept, if you prefer—and, at the same time, since not one of the words has a well-defined meaning, one hundred, one thousand, a million other images, or concepts.”

  “I beg your pardon, I beg your pardon,” the great critic shouted, beside himself, “it is just because of this that the problem is quickly resolved. The inscriptions, that is, the poems, can be considered bilingual. Signor Y can always tell us what he intended to say and translate them for us. As you see, your objections do not hold water.” And he looked at me triumphantly. But I did not retreat:

  “You forget, my dear sir, that a poem is not only an image, or concept, but is constituted of an image, or concept, plus something else. By judging my friend’s poems on the basis of the translation which he makes of them, you will find yourself in the position of someone who judges a foreign poet by versions of his work. You must agree that this is neither honest nor honorable. Furthermore, my friend himself is, strictly speaking, in no position to know what he wanted to say” (Here Y threw me a nasty look.) “since he has conceived his compositions directly in this special language. It follows that his would only be a version, comparable to the one you or I could make, if the need arose, and therefore incomplete and faulty by its very nature. It might even be completely arbitrary and have nothing in common with the text; it could be a false interpretation. Finally, I do not need to remind you, my dear sir, that a work of art is of necessity a realization closely related to certain conventions and judgeable in their light. By its very nature, a result can be evaluated only in terms of the means employed. Except with God, absolute results do not exist, and the very concept of a result is a relative concept. Results range along an infinite ideal scale, though inside the limits of a single moral value. But let us not digress. Well now, my dear sir, what are the criteria you intend to apply to your evaluation?”

  A tomblike silence had fallen in the office of the great critic. Letting his eyes stare into the void, he pretended not to have heard my question. He made a show of shaking off a mood of deep contemplation and, to gain time, said to Y, with his most beautiful smile:

  “But why, sir, don’t you let us hear these famous poems of yours, which are giving rise to such a graceful battle of wits?”

  “I have only one poem with me,” faltered Y. Encouraged by a sign from the great critic, he drew from his pocket some sheets of paper covered with bizarre and miniscule characters, all slashes and commas, and read in a trembling voice:

  Aga magéra difura natun gua mesciún

  Sánit guggérnis soe-wáli trussán garigúr

  Gúnga bandúra kuttavol jerís-ni gillára.

  Lávi girréscen suttérer lunabinitúr

  Guesc ittanóben katír ma ernáuba gadún

  Vára jesckílla sittáranar gund misagúr,

  Táher chibíll garanóbeven líxta mahára

  Gaj musasciár guen divrés kôes jenabinitúr

  Sòe guadrapútmijen lòeb sierrakár masasciúsc

  Sámm-jab dovár-jab miguélcia gassúta mihúsc

  Sciú munu lússut junáscru garulka varúsc.2

  In the deep silence which followed, the great critic smoothed his mustaches with the point of the scissors, waiting, while Y bent forward and stared at him. At last Y burst out:

  “Did you hear those u’s in the last lines, did you hear those rhymes in usc? Well, what do you think of them?” The poor fellow had forgotten that he owed us some explanation.

  “Indeed, indeed, pas mal, really pas mal,” the great critic said. “Now would you be so kind as to translate?”

  Then Y, improvising on the text, translated as follows:

  Her weary face crying with happiness,

  the woman told me of her life

  and assured me of her fraternal affection.

  And the pines and larches of the avenue gracefully arched

  against the background of the war
m-pink sunset

  and of a small villa which flew the national flag,

  seemed the furrowed face of a woman who did not realize

  that her nose was shiny. And that shininess flashed

  for me a long time, ironic and stinging,

  I felt it leap and twist like a little clowning fish

  In the shadowy depths of my soul.

  “Good, truly very good.” The great critic was profuse in his praise. “Now I understand the reason for all those u’s in the last verses! Excellent, excellent. It fits the subject perfectly and happily it is not at all contrived.”

  Having taken care of these formalities, he turned to me:

  “As you see, your suspicions are unfounded and” (He smiled.) “rash. Did you notice how fluently he translated?”

  “By no means,” Y complained. “Such a free translation does not give the faintest notion of the original. Translated, the poem is unrecognizable and loses everything. It has been stripped of all meaning.”

  “As you see,” I said in my turn, “this sets the problem before us unchanged. A little while ago, my dear sir, I took the liberty of asking you what criteria you would use. I should now like to repeat that question.”

  There was no longer a way out for the great critic, and he had to consent to reopening the discussion. This he did by again skirting the difficulty.

  “Actually,” he began, “I, as you have rightly pointed out, am not competent to judge these poems; therefore I’m not even trying to define what criteria should be adopted. The only one who is competent to judge them is the author himself, just as he is the only one who knows, more or less, the language.”

  “If I am not mistaken,” I broke in, “I had already implicitly anticipated this statement. Not even the author, since, as I have already said . . .”

  But Y, who had remained silent (though I had the impression that he was preparing something), decided to look at it from another angle:

  “Do you mean to say that a poem can be a work of art even if there is only one person in the world, only its author, competent to judge it?”

  “Precisely.”

  “Does this mean that from now on in writing poetry one can start with the sound instead of the sense?” These were Y’s words, and one had to commiserate with him. “Put together beautiful and sonorous, or evocative and obscure words, and then attribute a meaning to them—or simply see what has come out?”

  “Excuse me, I don’t quite understand the connection . . .”

  “But there is one. Nobody can prevent the poet from arranging the first sounds which flash through his ear according to a particular rhythm, and then attributing to them a beautiful significance. In this way he will create a new language; and little does it matter that this language is truncated and confined to a few sentences—those of the composition—since there will always be someone who knows it, its own creator, and there will always be someone competent to judge the composition: its own author.”

  “Now, wait a moment, don’t go to extremes. Although, if you’ll pardon me, it doesn’t seem to me very much to the point, I am in full agreement with at least the first part of your argument. But as to the second part, now, please . . . do not emballer yourself in a dangerous Weltanschauung, do not raise such risky topics. I, personally, prefer commonplaces.” The great critic had outdone himself.

  But Y replied:

  “I don’t care, if you’ll forgive me, that my argument does not seem to the point. I’m now concerned with determining something else. But you say that you are in agreement with the first part?”

  “Of course,” the great critic declaimed, “on what takes place in the most secret penetralia of an artist’s soul, our profane eyes must not intrude. Of course, an artist is free to put together his words even before attributing a meaning to them, free even to expect from those words, or from a single word, the whole significance and meaning of his composition. Provided that this composition is . . . art. That is what matters. On the other hand, I wouldn’t want you to forget that significance and meaning are not at all indispensable. A poem, gentlemen, can also not have meaning. It must only, I repeat, be a work of art.”

  “Therefore,” Y insisted, “a work of art can also not have a common meaning; it can be made up of musical impressions alone and suggest to a hundred million readers a hundred million different things. It can be completely devoid of meaning?”

  “That is so, a thousand times, my dear sir.”

  “Then why the devil do you refuse to admit that even if those sounds are taken from a nonexistent language, what results from it has just as much right to the title of a work of art?”

  The great critic glanced furtively at his watch and, thinking perhaps that this interview had already lasted long enough, declared:

  “Very well, if you really feel strongly about it, I’ll admit it.”

  “By God, now you’re talking!” Y said, smiling. But it seemed to me that his smile had a diabolical nuance. Then he added, with sudden theatrical effect:

  “Very well, I renounce the meaning of these poems and I shall bring all of them to you, written out carefully with a facing transliteration so that you can judge them without taking their meaning into account.”

  “Certainly, certainly,” stammered the great critic, taken by surprise, “no doubt, but . . . after all, why do you want to give up their meaning? Why, just think, if you weren’t to do so, the path to fame would be much easier, since you would have to reckon with only one person capable of judging you, of appreciating and praising you—that is, with yourself. Believe me, it is better to deal with one person than with too many. Believe me . . . do not be afraid of what might happen if you should, as I hope, come to regard yourself as a great poet, since your fame would be just as complete and full, not even inferior to that of Shakespeare. You would be famous for all those who understand your poetic language, who, by chance, would be one person only. But that hardly counts: fame is not a matter of quantity but of quality. . . .

  The great critic was joking subtly but I could sense that he was in a cold sweat.

  “Well then, I surrender to your arguments,” Y said at last, and again I saw him sneer to himself. “But you must assure me that on that first point you are completely in agreement with me. You are, aren’t you?”

  “Of course, of course. Good heavens, absolutely!” The great critic looked at his watch, openly this time, stood up and said:

  “Unfortunately my office duties demand my presence elsewhere. Now, to come to a conclusion on the problem which led you to visit me I will say that in the course of our interview we have determined that, for the three poems in question, the only competent judge is their own author, Signor Y, whom I wholeheartedly wish will be able to enjoy in tranquillity his unchallenged fame, which is besmirched by neither envy nor malevolence.”

  Now that the danger had passed he had reacquired all his assurance. Escorting us to the door, he slapped us familiarly on the shoulders.

  “But you won’t mind if I come to see you once in a while?” Y asked him.

  “Of course, certainly, any time you wish.”

  I was not at all satisfied and before leaving I tried again:

  “But art . . .”

  “Art,” the great critic broke in, with amiable impatience, “what art is everybody knows.”

  The sequel to this story is too sad for me to recount it in detail. For the reader it should suffice to know that, after our visit, my friend’s brain became slightly addled. A good deal of time has passed, yet he still insists on carrying around from editor to editor strange poems without head or tail, demanding that they be published and that he be paid for them. By now everyone knows him and he is unceremoniously shown the door.

  He has stopped going to see the great critic, since the day that, to escape his pestering, that personage himself was compelled to throw him down the stairs. Or something of the sort.

  Translated by Raymond Rosenthal

  1I feel it necessary t
o state that it was the great critic who chose, in addressing us, the second person plural; we followed suit docilely. This circumstance conferred on our colloquy, as the reader will note, a delightfully fantastic tone.

  2According to the transcription which I later obtained from Y.

  The Two Old Maids

  IN A disheartening quarter of a city which itself was in many respects disheartening, on the second floor of a middle-class apartment house, lived two old maids together with their old mother. And the reader can be thankful that I do not feel obliged—as it would appear, other writers so imperiously do—to describe such places in minute detail! If I did, even the best disposed among you would die of melancholy. And I don’t see what would be gained by that. So I shall try to confine myself to the bare essentials, which are far too much.

  The quarter resounded with the great patriotic battles of the Risorgimento, such as Montebello, Castelfidardo, etc., and the streets thus named ran into or nearby a piazza which was dubbed, needless to say, Piazza Independenza. Yet here all this glory was utterly out of place, even jarring, though it did not in the least disturb the tranquil, worthy and rather somnolent life of both men and things. In short, along those streets, infrequently traversed by vehicles and even pedestrians, between one house and the next extended long tracts of garden wall over which appeared, at intervals, a miserly, dust-laden tree tuft, most likely a eucalyptus or some such vegetable eunuch. These gardens belonged in fact to the many monasteries and convents of the quarter and, since they adjoined the houses, and for other, profounder reasons, spread their domination and odor partly over and within them. Thus, to put everything in one hasty sentence, the air of the entire quarter was saturated with an indefinable miasma of meanness and reaction, in open conflict with its topographical nomenclature. One also caught the whiff of a somewhat hypocritical reserve and, much more pertinently, a smell of votive candles and dirty linen. Not that this very much troubled the righteous composure of the inhabitants; yet to the uninitiated visitor this quarter would always seem a place where most of the people were in partial mourning and forever had sweaty noses. In a word, he would get the sensation that on everything lay an impalpable layer of thin gray dust.