Leopoldo Marechal - Adam Buenosayres

Nevertheless, Adam, the researcher, gratified Prince Charming with a smile.

— Fine, he said. Could you give us a sample of your art?

— Hmm! grunted the Prince, almost flattered. Well, I’ve got my ten-liners, like “Night in July”; it came out in The Soul That Sings . 6I talk about a down-and-outer, freezing to death outside a luxurious mansion, while the bourgeois pigs are inside squandering pots of money on an orgy.

— Bravo! exclaimed Adam. That’s talking truth, Prince, very accurate. But look, art doesn’t aim for the truth for its quality of being true but for its beauty.

— Allow me to disagree, the Prince shot back. I don’t go in for grammar and stuff like that. You’ve got to speak to the public in ordinary language, give ’em the straight goods.

Adam turned to Ciro Rossini and asked:

— Does the public put up with it?

— Corno! answered Ciro. The Prince just has to open his mouth and they all start chatting among themselves. Ecco!

— Bunch of bourgeois! grumbled the Prince, magnificent in his disdain.

— And yet, Pereda confronted Ciro, you have the Prince on contract here. There must be a reason.

— Cripes! Ciro admitted. When the Prince gets talking about hunger and privation, he depicts it with such verità that everybody in the audience gets ravenous. The grill can’t keep up with the demand.

Loud laughter from the commensals greeted Ciro’s explanation. He laughed too, somewhat surprised at his success. The laughter got even louder when Prince Charming, with an air of offended majesty, turned his back on the assembly and showed off his remarkable profile, whose two salient features were a chin receding between the dual wings of a floppy necktie, and a professional mop of long hair raining down over a grimy wing-collar. The trio of comedians hadn’t been left behind; their greenish faces beamed with malicious delight.

— Bah! Adam Buenosayres said, pointing his finger at the trio. I prefer the humorists, at least they’re serious people.

— Per Bacco! Ciro said in praise. They’re really worth their keep. You should hear the howlers they come out with. Do they ever make people laugh!

— Laughter! Prince Charming denounced bitterly. The laughter of clowns!

— Yikes! said one of The Bohemians. I think we’re on now!

— Do you sing or recite? Adam asked.

— Sing.

— What?

— Nonsense. Senseless gibberish.

— For example? insisted Adam.

It didn’t take much begging. Coordinating their timing with a mutual glance, The Bohemians barked out the following ditty:

The pampa has the ombú

and marrow bone has the stew.

Shake the Venetian blind

’cause here comes Clementine.

Five times eight is forty

birdy in bread that’s shorty.

Who shooed you off the branch?

You’re gone from the rosebush. 7

— Lord thundering jeepers! bawled Franky on hearing that monstrosity. It’s a wonder they haven’t been shot yet!

— It’s pure Dada! exclaimed a delighted Pereda.

Adam Buenosayres had listened to the drivel with perfect sang-froid, and now he spoke:

— That isn’t nonsense. Bah! It’s too logical to be nonsense. Truth be told, chemically pure nonsense doesn’t exist. It’s impossible.

The three Bohemians gaped at him in utter surprise.

— Listen, insisted Adam. If I say, for example, The laxative jacket of melancholy tossed a sea-green guffaw in front of the luxuriously decorated navel , my sentence is invincibly logical, in spite of everything.

— No, no! protested a few voices.

Adam sent a glassfull of Latin wine down the hatch.

— Let’s consider, he expounded. Might I not metaphorically give melancholy the form of a jacket, since many others have given it the form of a veil or tulle or some sort of cloak? And since melancholy can work to purge the soul, what’s so strange about calling it a “laxative”? Moreover, using the trope of personification, I can easily assign to melancholy a human act such as a guffaw, which implies the laughter of melancholy is in fact its death, its swan song. And as for luxuriously decorated navels, a literal reading would be quite realistic.

Adam’s thesis was received in consternation by The Bohemians and by Tissone. Prince Charming’s disdain grew more acute. Ciro was labouring in arduous cogitations. Schultz endorsed it unconditionally, while Luis Pereda and Franky Amundsen had serious doubts.

— Hmm, said Franky, rummaging in his head. Let’s see. The exquisite anchorite stuck an adolescent button to the three-storied plain … No, too logical!

Then Luis Pereda tried his luck.

— The loud-pedalled sneeze is not unworthy of the soluble clothes-closet with the false teeth … Nope, that doesn’t do it either.

— Ergo, concluded Adam, nonsense is not of this world.

— Why not? Bernini inquired gravely.

— Try naming for me any two things that have nothing to do with each other, then juxtapose them through some link we know to be impossible in reality. First off, in the two names, the intellect perceives two real forms quite familiar to it. Then comes the astonishment of seeing them associated through a link they don’t have in the real world. But intelligence is not merely a second-hand store, chock-a-block with apprehended forms; it’s a laboratory that works on those forms, puts them into different relationships, and in a way frees them from the limits within which they live, restoring to them at least a shadow of the unity binding them in the Divine Intellect. That’s why our intelligence, after acknowledging the absurdity of such an arbitrary linkage on the literal level, will soon find some reason or correspondence on the allegorical, symbolic, moral, or anagogical level… 8

— Outrageous! griped Franky, covering his ears.

— Hence, Schultz explained, the only absolute nonsense is the belief that human intelligence is capable of absolute nonsense. Bah! Absolute nonsense belongs to the order of the angelic.

Franky Amundsen looked piteously at the payador Tissone, his rival lost in thought.

— Tissone, old pard’ he said. Them’s mighty deep waters for a Christian soul to navigate all by his lonesome.

— That’s right, that’s right, Tissone agreed, looking back at the payador Amundsen with the same sad expression.

But Adam Buenosayres was beaming with an inspiration that was irrepressible, even if fermented and bottled on Italic soil, and he was not about to let up. Again he spoke to the commensals:

— Just look, gentlemen. By formulating a thesis on nonsense, we’ve been led to poetics. Playing with forms, removing them from their natural limitations and giving them, by miraculous fiat, another destiny: that is poetry.

— Let’s have an example, demanded Franky.

— Per Bacco , Ciro supported him. An example!

Adam reflected for a moment.

— If you compare a bird with a zither, he said at last, the zither breaks with its natural limits and in a way begins to share the essence of the bird, and the bird the essence of the zither. Look: if it isn’t absolute nonsense, poetry gets close to nonsense.

— He’s trying to justify his ridiculous metaphors! shouted Franky.

The pipsqueak Bernini laughed, the trio laughed, the payador Tissone laughed. And all of a sudden Adam recalled similar laughter, in Saavedra, issuing from the mouths of fresh young girls, while Lucio Negri recited in a mocking voice:

And love, happier

than a child’s funeral. 9

However, the painful memory didn’t last. In spite of the storm rising among the commensals, Adam insisted:

— The poet is forced to work with forms already given, and therefore he’s not an absolute creator. His true creation…