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
1 Translated 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.
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 Ouspensky’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
