Macedonio Fernández - The Museum of Eterna's Novel

“Your inventions and plots are powerful enough, friend, but are they for living people or novel people?”

Reader: “Enough of characters’ stories and more story for the novel! It’s been motionless for several chapters. It’s lazy to make a novel where the reader has to do everything! There’s nothing understood here, it has to all be spelled out.”

Author: “Please, don’t ask me to hide the outcomes from you, it flatters your taste for the all-valiant gunfighter, for the all-knowing investigator, for the dressmaker who marries a millionaire, for the princess who falls in love with the chauffeur, for the injustice neatly avenged; Reader, I ask you not to vulgarize me, since authors are very vulnerable to this and you have to support them when they attempt true art. Didn’t you read my prologues?”

“Sure, it’s easy to skimp on plot when you lack imagination; how does your novel end?”

“That’s all you wanted!”

The rest of the readers: “Get out of here, you ending-reader! We’ll give you a ‘novelistic rose.’ And if this isn’t enough for you, one of us will tell you the plot. Or we’ll call the characters and free them from your curiosity. Here’s one now.”

Character: “I’m going to tell what happens in the novel right away; I laugh at hidden endings, unguessable endings, since some call themselves musicians and yet everything they’re able to do is an imperfect chord whose resolution the public awaits. My life…”

Reader: “Excuse me, I’ve rectified myself. We’ll see whether I’m able to give up caring whether or not this novel ends.”

The rest of the readers: “We all hope so.”

Author: “Reader, I’m feeling very defeated. I’ve let you sleep in the margins, now let me sleep.”

The rest of the readers: “Let’s not bother the author. Any work of art in which an end is expected is not an art work, and has no emotion. Mend your ways, reader. Do not water down our passions.

May this novel never end. There’s no more artistic moment than the fullness of reading in the present.”

The President (questioning the author): “What are these mutterings? Another page without Eterna? Why don’t you show us Eterna, author?”

Each of the characters tries to do something to give Eterna life. One talks about finding a moonbeam in a rose, another of finding a sparrow wing etching itself across the face of the full moon.

Until one interrupts:

“How can we give a life, when we haven’t any?”

The Lover breaks the disconcerted silence:

“What you need, on the contrary, is to not have life; what we don’t know is whether Eterna wants it. Until now we haven’t thought of that. Only the President can say for sure. Let him tell us. Does Eterna want life?”

President: “Don’t torment me further with such a question. She would want life if there were someone in the world worthy of her love. But this hasn’t happened, and until then her only mode of happiness is that of the character.”

WHAT'S HERE? PAIN

CHAPTER WITH ITS BACK TURNED

TRUNCATED

They conquered Buenos Aires in the name of beauty and of the mystery and everyone hoped to return to the estancia, that is, to their friendship. The old life in “La Novela” has been taken up again. One wants to work in the garden or restore the paintings, and others initiate a whitewashing project for the house, so that life can continue as before.

The Action has been carried out, and the spirits have not been satisfied; Action without Passion continues to have no meaning for the President. He identified this point with the intention of following through with the action in all of its aspects, with the result that he hoped this would come out of it, but at the same time he felt that his spirit had achieved nothing. There’s no contentment in him; his attitudes and conduct presage that life in “La Novela” will not return to how it was of old. There’s a bitter feeling in all the characters that comes with knowing something will only last a short while, that it will be cut off or truncated.

And now even this last attempt, to give Life to Eterna, has been frustrated by the President’s vacillation.

Their happiness threatens to expire. The President is out of sorts, and again it’s feared that he’ll change his mind. In the end, he leaves for a metaphysical meditation.

Only the Lover, the Gentleman Who Doesn’t Exist, thinks the action just as good as no action at all, and he feels himself just as happy as before, and knows what he’s going to do.

AUTHOR TO THE READER:

So what just happened: reunited at the President’s request in one of his sessions, he makes clear to them, with great torment, that he will leave “La Novela.” And as he saw that nobody wanted to stay there without him, he invited them to an eternal goodbye among all of them, and for each of them to choose a path that would take them farthest from the others, so as to assure, at least, that no one had to experience in another that other farewell, death. And so they were saved all the bitterness of separation because of death, so totally that this collective farewell felt mortally charged.

Only Simple wanted to speak, he’s the only one who threatened to rebel, to try and hold on to the possibility of happiness for all. Nobody heard him, surely, but he murmured (any final term of a President should have this infallible threat of uprising, which authenticates every President):

“Why choose Pain, why? We flee unhappiness. Go for the Good!” But the Lover, the man to whom death had the most to offer, makes his way among the others with a grave expression and takes his leave, saying:

“Please, have pity on a happy man: let me pass.”

Death was his Truth.

There couldn’t have been more unhappiness. Except for the Lover, everyone whom the President had brought together the previous year in his estancia, “La Novela,” has been derailed, since they once knew happiness. Who suffers the most, isn’t it Eterna?

All that is seen are the curved backs of the characters as they depart.

FINAL NOTICE

Sweetheart will never resign herself — as she has said — to two things: to the life in “La Novela” and to live that life with the President. She leaves to search him out. Maybegenius is enchanted. He’ll give his all to support her.

Hope remains with those who remain in “La Novela.”

Happiness. Happiness does not resign. Any citizen can resign from the presidency, but a Novel President cannot resign.

At the time of publication this novel has achieved the dispersion of backs, the farewell without looking, academic death.

All destiny is: a downward gust of wind hitting the crazy swirls of choking smoke from the chimney, and, from heights it sometimes is able to achieve the velocity of an anxious escape.

Nevertheless there’s intellectual perfection, and love, clear and warm hearts, limpid mobility, a pulsing clarity, the line made by the waters of the sea, clear souls, always pulsing with some Sentiment— these are the hearts of great matrons, and of the Lover.

There is also the perfection of adversity for the destiny of a full and clear soul. Eterna’s sorrow is too much, she wanted totalove, and out of desperation, she made herself a slave to chastity, which is love’s frustration. She shouldn’t have done so.

Don’t love the President, and don’t hate him; there is no worse bedfellow for Intelligence than Heat. Intelligence, which has a singular being, should not be curious about the Heartbeat. It’s despicable.