César Aira: The Musical Brain: And Other Stories

I don’t know if we hypnotized each other, or were led to believe what we wanted to believe by our fervent commitment to literature, but we ended up convincing ourselves. Once we were sure our venture would continue, we felt we could indulge in some fine-tuning. Our guiding principle was a kind of symmetry. All the numbers of the magazine had to be equivalent to the others, in number of pages, amount of material, and “specific gravity.” How could we ensure that? The solution that occurred to us was curious in the extreme.

We’d noticed that literary magazines often brought out “double issues”: for example, after number 5, they’d bring out 6–7, with twice as many pages. They usually did this when they got behind, which wouldn’t be the case for us, because we’d already opted for irregularity. But it gave us an idea. Why not do it the other way around? That is, begin with a double issue, 1–2, not with double the pages, though, just the 36 we’d already decided on. That way, we’d be covered: if we had to make the second issue slimmer, it could be a single issue: 3. If, on the other hand, we maintained the same level, we’d do another double issue, 3–4, and we’d be able to go on like that as long as the magazine prospered, with the reassuring possibility of reducing the number of pages at any time, without losing face.

It must have occurred to one of us that “double” was not an upper limit; it could be “triple” too (1–2–3), “quadruple” (1–2–3–4), or any other multiple we liked. There were known cases of triple issues: rare, admittedly, but they existed. We hadn’t heard of anything beyond triple. But there was no reason for us to be deterred by a lack of precedents. The whole aim of our project was, on the contrary, to innovate radically, in the spirit of the times, producing the unusual and unheard-of. There were practical reasons, too, why the double-issue solution didn’t merit our immediate adhesion. From a strictly logical point of view, if we had to cut back, who was to say that we would have to cut back by exactly half? It would have been very strange if we did. Our publishing capacity could have been reduced by lack of funds, inflation, fatigue, or any number of accidents, all unforeseeable in their magnitude as well as their occurrence, so we might well have had to cut back to less than half. . or more. That’s why starting with a triple issue (1–2–3) gave us more flexibility: we could cut back by a third, or by two thirds, so the second issue could be double (4–5) or single (4). But if, as we hoped, we managed to sustain the momentum, the second issue would be triple again (4–5–6). There was something about this speculation, so lucid and irrefutable (given the premises), that excited us and carried us away, as much as, or even more than, the rushes of literary creation itself.

We wanted to do a good job. We weren’t as crazy as it might seem. After all, editing a literary magazine, the way we were doing it, is a gratuitous activity, rather like art with its unpredictable flights of inspiration, or play, and for us it served as a bridge between the future and the childhood we’d just left behind. Though we hadn’t left it behind entirely, to judge from our abstract perfectionism, so typical of children’s games. To give you an idea. .

The triple issue ruled out the possibility of cutting back by exactly half. That possibility, with its strict symmetry, was, we had already decided, very unlikely to correspond to reality, but we were sad to be deprived of it, even so. Especially since there was no reason to deprive ourselves of anything: all we had to do was start with a quadruple issue (1–2–3–4), that way we’d still have the possibility of cutting back by half (the following issue would be double: 5–6), or if our means were not so far reduced, we could cut back by just a quarter (and follow the inaugural quadruple issue with a triple: 5–6–7), or if our laziness or lack of foresight or circumstances beyond our control obliged us to do some serious belt-tightening, the second issue would be a single: 5. If, however, providence was kind, we would bring out another normal, that is, quadruple issue: 5–6–7–8.

It’s not that we thought, even for a moment, of producing a first issue three or four times thicker than the one we had at first envisaged. Those initial plans remained intact, and they were very reasonable and modest. We never thought of making it any bigger; our first issue, as we had designed it, with its thirty-six pages, seemed perfect to us. The texts were almost ready, neatly typed out; there were just a few unresolved questions concerning the order (should the poems and the essays be grouped separately or should they alternate?), and whether or not to include a particular short story, whether to add or remove a poem. . Trifling problems, which, we were sure, would resolve themselves. If not, it wouldn’t matter much: we wanted Athena to have a slightly untidy, spontaneous feel, like an underground magazine. And since there was no one breathing down our necks, we took our time and went on calculating for the future.

All this was notional, which gave us free rein to speculate boldly. It was like discovering an unsuspected freedom. Maybe that’s what freedom always is: a discovery, or an invention. What, indeed, was to stop us from going beyond the quadruple issue to make it quintuple, or sextuple. .? Beyond that, we didn’t know the words (if they existed), but that in itself was proof that we were entering territory untouched by literature, which was the ultimate aim of our project. We were embarking on the great avant-garde adventure.

If we presented the first issue of Athena as a “decuple” issue — that is, numbers 1–2–3–4–5–6–7–8–9–10—we would, at one stroke, secure a marvelous flexibility with regard to the size of future issues. We’d be covered against all contingencies, able to cut back in accordance with our straitened circumstances, without having to resign ourselves to gross approximations. If the cost of the first issue was a thousand pesos (an imaginary sum, solely for the purposes of demonstration), and it was a decuple issue, and if we ran short for the second and could muster only seven hundred pesos, we’d make it a “septuple issue” (11–12–13–14–15–16–17). If five hundred pesos was all we could get, it would be a quintuple issue (11–12–13–14–15); but if we raised a thousand pesos again, it would be another decuple (11–12–13–14–15–16–17–18–19–20). And if our utter idleness prevented us from collecting more than one hundred pesos, we’d make the next issue a single: 11. The “single” issue, containing a single number, would be as low as we could go. Whatever the first issue was would be “normal.”

We found these fantasies exhilarating, as I said, and it’s true. Even today, so many years later, writing these pages, I can still feel some of that exhilaration, and I still understand it as we did back then: this was the world turned upside down, and we were venturing into it with the exuberance that the young bring to everything that happens in their lives. Wasn’t that the definition of literature: the world turned upside down? At least, of literature as we imagined it and wanted it to be: avant-garde, utopian, revolutionary. We delighted in the idea of swimming against the current: dreams are usually dreams of grandeur, but ours were of smallness, and they were dreams of a new kind: dreams of precision and calculation, poetry adopting the unprecedented format of real equations. We thought of our project as the first literary version of Picabia’s mechanical paintings, which we adored.

We continued on this route, spurring ourselves on. Why should we be limited by the number ten? There was, perhaps, a practical, concrete reason. It determined a minimum number of pages if we had to economize drastically: three. A magazine of fewer than three pages (which is how many it would have if, at some point, compelling economic considerations forced us to bring out a single issue) would not be a magazine. A practical, concrete limit wasn’t going to hold us back, but we complied with it provisionally, and put it to the test. We found two holes in the reasoning that I have set out schematically here. First, there could be a magazine of fewer than three pages. It could consist of a single page. And, more important, a tenth of our decuple issue wouldn’t be three pages, but 3.6, since the inaugural issue of Athena would conform to the printers’ standard format that we had adopted as our norm: thirty-six pages.