Luis Chitarroni - The No Variations - Diary of an Unfinished Novel

Harried by misfortune, it is my fate

To live my life fastened to that wing

As an ember always rooted in the ash

As a Goncourt brother, a Siamese twin]]

It’s not unusual, representative examples of the “brushstroke I didn’t see.”

The lack of completeness. The final draft.

7.

At that time, in response to an ad, a timid ingénue, Inés Maspero, joined the editorial team at Agraphia . She told Ingrid, Urlihrt’s secretary, that she was an art critic. She contributed to the magazines Expert, The Night Watch , and The Court of Apelles , all of them insignificant. She said she’d begun working at fourteen, sorting out court records. Despite Inés claiming to be a specialist at something that didn’t exist in the country, Ingrid and I were moved [sic] by her former Galdosian trade, so we hired her without further quibble. Inés arrived the following day with a letter of recommendation from Belisario. [Elena, who spent her lunch breaks in the office next door, noted that] she was chewing her nails, she was a nail-biter. The second person who came in the door was the first who fell in love with her.

Elena Siesta, Dead Aunt’s Diary

8.

I went to Cambridge in 1992 at the behest of my friend (and, in time, my editor), Henrietta [Bonham-Carter / Hornsby-Gore], to follow up on two investigations I’d started on in Barcelona. The first concerned the musician, Bruce Montgomery, who was known for writing a series of crime novels — utter tosh he’d written under the pseudonym, Edmund Crispin. Secondly, I had to meet up with a scholar, who was giving me a copy of his thesis on an Argentine literary group, a cenacle of unequivocal and “magical” influence, which functioned almost as a sect. But both investigations were interrupted. The first, because a magistrate of the High Church intervened (I remember the series of gestures — three — with which Henrietta took for granted my discretion and obedience. In English, primado and primate are both subsumed in the latter word).The second, tragically, because the scholar was found dead in his Cambridge dorm. It isn’t known whether the cause of death was suicide or misadventure. We assisted the youth’s father in arranging the funeral service. He was a jobbing actor based in London, who was forced to get by — as many were in the decade following the one of excess — mainly on welfare. The next day, there began a series of events that would bring us from Cambridge to London, which I tried to adapt in a work of fiction — my oft-repeated “St. Mawr.”

Eduardo Manjares, Postcard from the Inquisitor

#2 EMPHASIS

1.

One doesn’t write well when not writing, one doesn’t write ill when writing well. The writer doesn’t really want to write, he wants to be; and in order to truly be, he must face up to the difficult challenge of not writing at all — not even a single line — of not theorizing, of not lifting a finger. I took the precaution of becoming deaf. There are whole days that go by when I don’t hear a single word, when not a single thought obtrudes upon my thoughtlessness. It doesn’t matter if there are voices around me, speaking, so long as I cannot hear the words they say. Everything I know or have learned to do well, I don’t know how to teach. Everything I could know or learn how to teach, I cannot do well. Our age is too pessimistic to allow us to pass comment on complex matters, or even simple matters, without recrimination. After all, didn’t you know our age is a tribunal? A tribunal of vultures. The kind of chopped up verse you only disregard, I regard with utter contempt (as I do poets who’d make firewood of King Arthur’s table): verse without measure, without form, ephemeral, ill-fated. The time goes by so slowly, and slow is the memory that reckons the delay: I was almost twice as old as this age is old when I realized this for the first time. The poets whose recitals I attend are therefore twice as old as you. The world never changes, only the cast of players. Yet, the work doesn’t seem to improve. [He lifted his head to see if we were taking note of what he was saying.] Apart from plagiarism, the only natural cure I know for this particular kind of drunkenness is inspiration, but in our age, sobriety is inimical to inspiration … Or maybe we should give up the plagiarism. Remember what Sterne did with Burton. *

“Memory is the least attractive of the muses. And although she always changes her appearance, I only ever remember the least appealing. But why should this be if imagination dresses herself like a bawd in her rouge and seamed stockings — surely gaudiness is worse than ugliness …? It had been some years since my divorce from memory, but only a few months ago, there was a reconciliation.” (…) “There’s no better example of this than Dámaso Alonso, a man capable of discerning the significance of every syllable in a poem, and yet incapable of writing a poem with a single discerning syllable …” And he repeated Barnet Newman’s maxim, “Aesthetic is to the artist as ornithology is to the bird.” But he thought he was quoting Wallace Stevens.

Nicasio Urlihrt, A Toast with Death at Night / Nocturnal Toast with …

Cheers, [Cheerio]

*The plagiarist laboratory is absolutely beyond the scope of the word-for-word copyist drudging away at his desk. Let’s not forget about Mallarmé, who, according to Valéry, restored syntax to its proper place on the summit of mount Helicon. And so we all continue to aspire — as Duchamp, as Leonardo — to achieve the draft, the final draft.

2.

Elena Siesta was obstinate; Nicasio Urlihrt a pedant, who brayed solemnly about succession and inheritance. Lester was, and then he was no more. Felipe Luini never was: although he tried to be. Belisario Tregua faded away years before he died. The Scacchi brothers faded away before they could even be. Inés Maspero, alias Eloísa Betelgeuse, killed herself; many others tried the same, without consummating the act. Because of love, despair. (The key year 1979?)

#3 LITURGIES

Annick Bérrichon was one of the most prestigious literary critics; (which is the only reason why) Nicasio had been greatly interested in her. Besides this, she was also a professor of Balkan literature, although no one knew how she obtained the title or to what institution she was affiliated. But this last mystery is what piqued Belisario’s interest. Annick’s friendship with Elena soon led to her being introduced to the most prominent committee members of Agraphia , including Nicasio. One afternoon in June, almost seven months after Eloísa’s death, they met with a medium in the house on calle de las Posadas ( not the one on calle de las Piedras).

Miss Bérczely’s face was a grotesquery of warts and other excrescences, an especially nasty case of what Elena termed — post-laforgian, post-lugonian—“lunarism.” She spoke with what sounded like an imitation German accent with a hint of French in the guttural. Everyone pretended to understand what she was saying.

Those present were Dos, Oliverio Lester, and someone else who came with them; Elena had dragged along her best friend, Sofía Sarracén, who was even more superstitious than she — a pianist with certain mediumistic talents, who brought along her fiancé [Eloy Armesto: Lupanal …] — a student of Bérrichon’s — to introduce him to the rest of the group.

At last, Nicasio arrived. His system of responses resembled those adopted by Elena to translate Blevgad: quibbling, nibbling, double negatives — disagreeable in any language — delivered in the passive, reflexive , voice …

As it was a commemorative date — June 23, launch of Oxyrhynchus— the committee was hoping Hilarión Curtis would attend (who not only owed the journal but also his fellow Argentine citizens answers).