La Recoleta
Saturday, September 10, 2016
As the dark and wet days for nights that are November it is easy to lie in bed and in melancholy reflect on death. I do this a lot perhaps after having lived so many years of my formative years in Mexico. One of my favourite places in Buenos Aires is the cemetery of La Recoleta. This past April I visited it with my friend Nora Patrich and our favourite model/subject Yuki. Yuki is a frequent visitor of La Recoleta. She has a friend. Her friend is the particular cat in the photograph. There are many cats in La Recoleta but this is one that she feeds with regularity.
Borges wrote several poems about La Recoleta and he mentioned how he would end his living days there. Alas this was not to be. He is buried in Geneva not far from Charlie Chaplin.
La
recoleta - Jorge Luís Borges
Convencidos
de caducidad
por
tantas nobles certidumbres del polvo,
nos
demoramos y bajamos la voz
entre
las lentas filas de panteones,
cuya
retórica de sombra y de mármol
promete
o prefigura la deseable
dignidad
de haber muerto.
Bellos
son los sepulcros,
el
desnudo latín y las trabadas fechas fatales,
la
conjunción del mármol y de la flor
y las
plazuelas con frescura de patio
y los
muchos ayeres de a historia
hoy
detenida y única.
Equivocamos
esa paz con la muerte
y
creemos anhelar nuestro fin
y
anhelamos el sueño y la indiferencia.
Vibrante
en las espadas y en la pasión
y
dormida en la hiedra,
sólo la
vida existe.
El
espacio y el tiempo son normas suyas,
son
instrumentos mágicos del alma,
y cuando
ésta se apague,
se
apagarán con ella el espacio, el tiempo y la muerte,
como al
cesar la luz
caduca
el simulacro de los espejos
que ya
la tarde fue apagando.
Sombra
benigna de los árboles,
viento
con pájaros que sobre las ramas ondea,
alma que
se dispersa entre otras almas,
fuera un
milagro que alguna vez dejaran de ser,
milagro
incomprensible,
aunque
su imaginaria repetición
infame
con horror nuestros días.
Estas
cosas pensé en la Recoleta,
en el
lugar de mi ceniza.
Recoleta Cemetery
By Jorge Luis Borges
Translated by Stephen Kessler
Convinced of decrepitude
by so many certainties of dust,
we linger and lower our voices
among the long rows of mausoleums,
whose rhetoric of shadow and marble
promises or prefigures the desirable
dignity of having died.
The tombs are beautiful,
the naked Latin and the engraved fatal dates,
the coming together of marble and flowers
and the little plazas cool as courtyards
and the many yesterdays of history
today stilled and unique.
We mistake that peace for death
And we believe we long for our end
when what long for is sleep and indifference.
Vibrant in swords and in passion,
and asleep in the ivy,
only life exists.
Its forms are space and time,
they are magical instruments of the soul,
and when it is extinguished,
space, time, and death will be extinguished with it,
as the mirrors’ images wither
when evening covers them over
and the light dims.
Begnign shade of trees,
wind full of birds and undulating limbs,
souls dispersed into other souls,
it might be a miracle that they once stopped being,
an incomprehensible miracle,
although its imaginary repetition
slanders our days with horror.
I thought these things in the Recoleta,
in the place of my ashes.
The Golem - This is my foot, this yours, and this the rope
Tuesday, September 06, 2016
At my ripe age of 74 I am most certainly showing my age. The turkey neck is emerging and I sometimes limp. But my feet are as beautiful (if beautiful feet can be) as they have always been. While I do not swim with style my mother (who had lovely feet) said my feet are swimmer's feet. I have never had blisters or corns in my feet because I have a poor man's body. I can buy clothes that fit me perfectly and shoes, too. This last year I have been wearing most the time with few exceptions my locally made Natives. They are made of some sort of plastic/rubber. They offer support and a cushion so that when I walk my weakening knees do not feel the impact. I tell people (including my wife who has very bad feet) of the charms and convenience of Natives. But nobody listens! In April I spent two weeks in Buenos Aires and walked miles with my Natives. Not only that they are comfortable to wear in long flights. I plan to buy some new ones in a more elegant colour (black).
I wanted to have an excuse to place these two photographs of feet and a bit more. Natives and Borges have amply given me justification. Below in English and in Spanish Borges's El Golem
El Golem - Poemas del Alma - Jorge Luís Borges
Si (como
afirma el griego en el Cratilo)
el
nombre es arquetipo de la cosa
en las
letras de 'rosa' está la rosa
y todo
el Nilo en la palabra 'Nilo'.
Y, hecho
de consonantes y vocales,
habrá un
terrible Nombre, que la esencia
cifre de
Dios y que la Omnipotencia
guarde
en letras y sílabas cabales.
Adán y
las estrellas lo supieron
en el
Jardín. La herrumbre del pecado
(dicen
los cabalistas) lo ha borrado
y las
generaciones lo perdieron.
Los
artificios y el candor del hombre
no tienen
fin. Sabemos que hubo un día
en que
el pueblo de Dios buscaba el Nombre
en las
vigilias de la judería.
No a la
manera de otras que una vaga
sombra
insinúan en la vaga historia,
aún está
verde y viva la memoria
de Judá
León, que era rabino en Praga.
Sediento
de saber lo que Dios sabe,
Judá
León se dio a permutaciones
de
letras y a complejas variaciones
y al fin
pronunció el Nombre que es la Clave,
la
Puerta, el Eco, el Huésped y el Palacio,
sobre un
muñeco que con torpes manos
labró,
para enseñarle los arcanos
de las
Letras, del Tiempo y del Espacio.
El
simulacro alzó los soñolientos
párpados
y vio formas y colores
que no
entendió, perdidos en rumores
y ensayó
temerosos movimientos.
Gradualmente
se vio (como nosotros)
aprisionado
en esta red sonora
de
Antes, Después, Ayer, Mientras, Ahora,
Derecha,
Izquierda, Yo, Tú, Aquellos, Otros.
(El
cabalista que ofició de numen
a la
vasta criatura apodó Golem;
estas
verdades las refiere Scholem
en un
docto lugar de su volumen.)
El rabí le
explicaba el universo
"esto
es mi pie; esto el tuyo, esto la soga."
y logró,
al cabo de años, que el perverso
barriera
bien o mal la sinagoga.
Tal vez
hubo un error en la grafía
o en la
articulación del Sacro Nombre;
a pesar
de tan alta hechicería,
no aprendió
a hablar el aprendiz de hombre.
Sus
ojos, menos de hombre que de perro
y harto
menos de perro que de cosa,
seguían
al rabí por la dudosa
penumbra
de las piezas del encierro.
Algo
anormal y tosco hubo en el Golem,
ya que a
su paso el gato del rabino
se
escondía. (Ese gato no está en Scholem
pero, a
través del tiempo, lo adivino.)
Elevando
a su Dios manos filiales,
las
devociones de su Dios copiaba
o,
estúpido y sonriente, se ahuecaba
en
cóncavas zalemas orientales.
El rabí
lo miraba con ternura
y con
algún horror. '¿Cómo' (se dijo)
'pude
engendrar este penoso hijo
y la
inacción dejé, que es la cordura?'
'¿Por
qué di en agregar a la infinita
serie un
símbolo más? ¿Por qué a la vana
madeja
que en lo eterno se devana,
di otra
causa, otro efecto y otra cuita?'
En la
hora de angustia y de luz vaga,
en su
Golem los ojos detenía.
¿Quién
nos dirá las cosas que sentía
Dios, al
mirar a su rabino en Praga?
The Golem
Jorge Luis Borges
Translated by James Honzik
If (as affirms the Greek in the Cratylus)
the name is archetype of the thing,
in the letters of “rose” is the rose,
and all the Nile flows through the word.
Made of consonants and vowels,
there is a terrible Name,
that in its essence encodes God’s all,
power, guarded in letters, in hidden syllables.
Adam and the stars knew it in the Garden.
It was corroded by sin (the Cabalists say),
time erased it, and generations
have forgotten.
The artifice and candor of man go on without end.
We know that there was a time in
which the people of God searched for the Name
through the ghetto’s midnight hours.
But not in that manner of those others
whose vague shades insinuate into vague history,
his memory is still green and lives,
Judá the Lion the rabbi of Prague.
In his thirst to know the knowledge of God
Judá permutated the alphabet through complex variations
and in the end
pronounced the name that is the Key
the Door, the Echo, the Guest, and the Palace,
over a mannequin shaped with awkward hands,
teaching it the arcane knowledge of
symbols, of Time and Space.
The simulacrum raised its sleepy eyelids,
saw forms and colors that it did not understand,
and confused by our babble
made fearful movements.
Gradually it was seen to be (as we are)
imprisoned in a reverberating net of
Before, Later, Yesterday, While, Now, Right, Left,
I, You, Those, Others.
The Cabalists who celebrated this mysterium,
this vast creature, named it Golem.
(Written about by Scholem,
in a learned passage of his volume.)
The rabbi explained the universe to him,
“This is my foot, this yours, and this the rope,”
but all that happened, after years,
was that the creature swept the synagogue badly.
Perhaps there was an error in the word
or in the articulation of the Sacred Name;
in spite of the highest esoteric arts
this apprentice of man did not learn to speak.
Its eyes uncanny,
less like man than dog and much less than dog but thing
following the rabbi through the doubtful
shadows of the stones of its confinement.
There was something
abnormal and coarse in the Golem,
at its step the rabbi’s cat fled in fear.
(That cat not from Scholem but of the blind seer)
It would ape the rabbi’s devotions,
raising its hands to the sky,
or bend over, stupidly smiling,
into hollow Eastern salaams.
The rabbi watched it tenderly but
with some horror. How (he said)
could I engender this laborious son?
Better to have done nothing, this is insanity.
Why did I give to the infinite
series a symbol more? To the coiled skein
on which the eternal thing is wound,
I gave another cause, another effect, another grief.
In this hour of anguish and vague light,
on the Golem our eyes have stopped.
Who will say the things to us that God felt,
at the sight of his rabbi in Prague?
Jorge
Luis Borges – 1958
