Macedonio Fernández - The Museum of Eterna's Novel

“Why can’t we continue like this all of our lives, in this Carriage, without time passing, without losing appreciation for one another, all together, in ‘La Novela?’”

“Why not?”

And at this very instant the Traveler (Our Traveler does not go to museums; he looks at what’s alive, not at the Past) approaches the beach on the banks of the River Plate, facing the gates of the estancia. “And can you be happy now, Traveler, with your search at an end?”

“Maybe, because it’s an invented quest, it was not imposed.” 1

1 From here on the author continues alone. The last readers have dropped him. And, naturally, they plan to write.

AND THE PRESIDENT? AND ETERNA?

The President, who is only impulsive after he’s thoroughly analyzed every facet of his conduct (and whose life has been spent in the resolution of the problem of consciousness), has gone a long time without meditating, in the full sense of the word.

And so it is that after the Conquest of Buenos Aires in the name of beauty, and having returned to “La Novela,” he awoke one day with the sadness of having discovered that the city is an irremediable ugliness, which is why it rejects the most accessible, unlimited, and constant recreation and stimulus: Nature.

The Conquest had to be finished for him to feel the vacuum created by this confusion in his work: Should the city exist? Isn’t it poor comprehension, uncultivated thought to believe in a beautiful city, to sustain in Beauty what lives in the omission of Nature? Nothing is known without us seeing it, hearing it. Books make it known; facts, thoughts in great citizens, is there anyone who knows something whole, something total?

The contemplation of nature, of savage animal life in its spontaneity, and the spontaneity of humanity’s most ancient dwellings and works, with their suggestion of time; human dwellings, not so much pyramids and dolmens; the pyramids want to live for the future, while houses want to live for the present, they live to die, for the actuality of each instant; here are the three incitements and mental suggestions without which nothing, absolutely nothing, can be seen of the mystery.

(At the same time the President realized that the simplest way to suppress war is to suppress cities; since you can’t go to war against a nation that’s dispersed fifteen million of its cities’ inhabitants on farms spread out over a hundred fifty million hectares.)

In the President’s spirit, then, the sadness of all unmotivated Action swelled, action that is not intrinsically interesting to the actor (who survives after the enterprise), the sadness that has the same theme as the action: the City versus Nature.

The President and Eterna.

Eterna sees everything on earth except the Mystery; the President sees the Mystery in everything.

Eterna thinks of everyone on earth, and of the nothingness of eternity. Eterna believes in death. She denies Eternity, but believes and accepts love’s farewell, which is death. The President believes that death is nothing: that there’s no other death than Oblivion (without corporeal annihilation), for those who love each other.

The President gives Eterna little lights, and Eterna gives him the soft, cool pillow of her shoulders, which brings sleep.

Eterna gave everything to love; the President, everything for thought.

Eterna says: that all of her love’s present is robbed of the notion that there was a past, in which the President did not know of her existence, he didn’t love her, didn’t even guess of her presence, could have passed by her without seeing her. This horrifies her. What would you say to this, reader? It’s fine to write a novel to respond to what Eterna thinks and suffers. The President has not known until now how to dissipate Eterna’s nighttime abyss in their every conversation, when everything seems so perfectly complete, when Etema’s feeling — of not being able to contemplate possession, their love, when it didn’t exist before and might not have existed at all — fatally arises. Is there any hope that the President might one day possess the lucidity to convince her?

Eterna has God, and the President does not; Eterna — and not the President — wants a maternal aspect to her love, wants him to rest his head on her breast.

The two nonexistences between the President and Eterna are: one that only Eterna knows, and one that only the President knows. (Meanwhile, there’s the nonexistence who doesn’t yet know Eterna and he’s on his way to meet her, and this is the Gentleman Who Does Not Exist, who reflects: “The author seeks nonexistences and I am very comfortable with nonexistence, as comfortable there as a woman is comfortable in existence, since a man can never get used to existence.”)

Already The Lover told you: the President will always be sad, and if you want it otherwise, give him a different past.

And Eterna changed this past, and she also brought him an exchange of Thought for Love. But there was one thing she couldn’t do: change her own past, or even other people’s pasts where it concerned her. That’s her impossibility, that she can’t be understood.

And what has the President given Eterna? Since he has not won her full love, because he didn’t know how to elevate himself to the grace and tenderness of the Lighted One (who didn’t want him to have forgotten her, during the time before he met her) — what could he give her?

Eterna possesses a never-possessed power: of changing our pasts, and the greatest impossibility for herself: to tolerate the fact that there was no love in the past, that her lover did not know her: there’s nothing to do for this impossibility, which only exists for her. (Another impossibility: to be understood?)

Eterna is greater than the most elevated daydream, and just as real as she is perfect, since that which is totally dreamed, in all its detail and desire, even as an idea, is real, since now, confronted with the real we do not find ourselves in a new state of being. The President found all he dreamed of in her, or he dreamed greatly; and everything he dreamed and everything he found was less than the simple, original perfection of Eterna. She is real perfection.

If you would like a new past, Eterna can give it to you. The President, on the other hand, would only be a Historian, changing Humanity’s Past, giving it something different than history has given it. He would give to Man a Present, of which History strips him. Presentism: to live only in the Present, without History or future Progress, this could be his slogan. Since to start, or not to start— in — another, not a future, to not resemble anyone, this is what we all are. History and Evolution, two types of emphasis, don’t explain anything, since it’s not because of the future but because of existing that we are the mystery.

Training, Friendship, Action. . What did the President lose? Thought?

The President’s drama is: thought as passion, because Love is being, is more than Being, and Thought is the seed of the notion (or problem) of Being. Passion is the highest form of being and being is the highest form of thinking. For this reason Thought can be Passion. But in his Thought-Passion the President is unhappy: he is missing the Real of an imagined Eterna, the personification of the Real in thought.

Does Art matter for someone who is mortified by this absence? The President works on his worldless novel, perhaps, in the name of his own liberation; he works, but without joy.

There still remains one hope for the President, and perhaps for us all: the pro-reality transfusion of Eterna; a collection of “life” for Eterna. But the saddest thing is that after having all felt the antipathy and risks of the President’s proposal to leave behind Friendship in favor of Action, the characters got excited about Action, and hoped it would bring them happiness; and it’s the President himself who has given them this disillusionment with action, which they believed they had done so well and so thoroughly.