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Jorge Luis Borges: Everything and Nothing
Nadie hubo en él; detrás de su rostro (que aun a través de las malas pinturas de la época no se parece a ningún otro) y de sus palabras, que eran copiosas, fantásticas y agitadas, no había más que un poco de frío, un sueño no soñado por alguien. Al principio creyó que todas las personas eran como él, pero la extrañeza de un compañero, con el que había empezado a comentar esa vacuidad, le reveló su error y le dejó sentir para siempre, que un individuo no debe diferir de su especie. Alguna vez pensó que en los libros hallaría remedio para su mal y así aprendió el poco latín y menos griego de que hablaría un contemporáneo; después consideró que en el ejercicio de un rito elemental de la humanidad, bien podía estar lo que buscaba y se dejó iniciar por Anne Hathaway, durante una larga siesta de junio. A los veintitantos años fue a Londres. instintivamente, ya se había adiestrado en el hábito de simular que era alguien, para que no se descubriera su condición de nadie; en Londres encontró la profesión a la que estaba predestinado, la del actor, que en un escenario, juega a ser otro, ante un concurso de personas que juegan a tomarlo por aquel otro. Las tareas histriónicas le enseñaron una felicidad singular, acaso la primera que conoció; pero aclamado el último verso y retirado de la escena el último muerto, el odiado sabor de la irrealidad recaía sobre él. Dejaba de ser Ferrex o "Tamerlán y volvía a ser nadie. Acosado, dio en imaginar otros héroes y otras fábulas trágicas. Así, mientras el cuerpo cumplía su destino de cuerpo, en lupanares y tabernas de Londres, el alma que lo habitaba era César, que desoye la admonición del augur, y Julieta, que aborrece a la alondra, y Macbeth, que conversa en el páramo con las brujas que también son las parcas. Nadie fue tantos hombres como aquel hombre, que a semejanza del egipcio Proteo pudo agotar todas las apariencias del ser. A veces, dejó en algún recodo de la obra una confesión, seguro de que no la descifrarían; Ricardo afirma que en su sola persona, hace el papel ene muchos, y Yago dice con curiosas palabras no soy lo que soy. La identidad fundamental del existir, soñar y representar le inspiró pasajes famosos.Veinte años persistió en esa alucinación dirigida, pero una mañana le sobrecogieron el hastío y el horror de ser tantos reyes que mueren por la espada y tantos desdichados amantes que convergen, divergen y melodiosamente agonizan. Aquel mismo día resolvió la venta de su teatro. Antes de una semana había regresado al pueblo natal, donde recuperó los árboles y el río de la niñez y no los vinculó a aquellos otros que había celebrado su musa, ilustres de alusión mitológica y de voces latinas. Tenia que ser alguien; fue un empresario retirado que ha hecho fortuna y a quién le interesan los préstamos, los litigios y la pequeña usura. En ese carácter dictó el árido testamento que conocernos, del que deliberadamente excluyó todo rasgo patético o literario. Solían visitar su retiro amigos de Londres, y él retomaba para ellos el papel de poeta.
La historia agrega que, antes o después de morir, se supo frente a Dios y le dijo: Yo, que tantos hombres he sido en vano, quiero ser uno y yo. La voz de Dios le contestó desde un torbellino: Yo tampoco soy; yo soñé el mundo como tú soñaste tu obra, mi Shakespeare, y entre las formas de mi sueño estabas tú, que como yo eres muchos y nadie.
Everything and Nothing
There was no one in him; behind his face (which even in the poor
paintings of the period is unlike any other) and his words, which were
copious, imaginative, and emotional, there was nothing but a little
chill, a dream not dreamed by anyone. At first he thought everyone was
like him, but the puzzled look on a friend’s face when he remarked on
that emptiness told him he was mistaken and convinced him forever that
an individual must not differ from his species. Occasionally he thought
he would find in books the cure for his ill, and so he
learned the small Latin and less Greek of which a contemporary was to
speak. Later he thought that in the exercise of an elemental human rite
he might well find what he sought, and he let himself be initiated by
Anne Hathaway one long June afternoon. At twenty-odd he went to London.
Instinctively, he had already trained himself in the habit of pretending
that he was someone, so it would not be discovered that he was no one.
In London he hit upon the profession to which he was predestined, that
of the actor, who plays on stage at being someone else. His playacting
taught him a singular happiness, perhaps the first he had known; but
when the last line was applauded and the last corpse removed from the
stage, the hated sense of unreality came over him again. He ceased to be
Ferrex or Tamburlaine and again became a nobody. Trapped, he fell to
imagining other heroes and other tragic tales. Thus, while in London’s
bawdyhouses and taverns his body fulfilled its destiny as body, the soul
that dwelled in it was Caesar, failing to heed the augurer’s
admonition, and Juliet, detesting the lark, and Macbeth, conversing on
the heath with the witches, who are also the fates. Nobody was ever as
many men as that man, who like the Egyptian Proteus managed to exhaust
all the possible shapes of being. At times he slipped into some corner
of his work a confession, certain that it would not be deciphered;
Richard affirms that in his single person he plays many parts, and Iago
says with strange words, “I am not what I am.” His passages on the
fundamental identity of existing, dreaming, and acting are famous.
Twenty years he persisted in that controlled hallucination, but one morning he was overcome by the surfeit and the horror of being so many kings who die by the sword and so many unhappy lovers who converge, diverge, and melodiously agonize. That same day he disposed of his theater. Before a week was out he had returned to the village of his birth, where he recovered the trees and the river of his childhood; and he did not bind them to those others his muse had celebrated, those made illustrious by mythological allusions and Latin phrases.
He had to be someone; he became a retired impresario who has made his fortune and who interests himself in loans, lawsuits, and petty usury. In this character he dictated the arid final will and testament that we know, deliberately excluding from it every trace of emotion and of literature. Friends from London used to visit his retreat, and for them he would take on again the role of poet.
The story goes that, before or after he died, he found himself before God and he said: “I, who have been so many men in vain, want to be one man: myself.” The voice of God replied from a whirlwind: “Neither am I one self; I dreamed the world as you dreamed your work, my Shakespeare, and among the shapes of my dream are you, who, like me, are many persons -- and none.”
Twenty years he persisted in that controlled hallucination, but one morning he was overcome by the surfeit and the horror of being so many kings who die by the sword and so many unhappy lovers who converge, diverge, and melodiously agonize. That same day he disposed of his theater. Before a week was out he had returned to the village of his birth, where he recovered the trees and the river of his childhood; and he did not bind them to those others his muse had celebrated, those made illustrious by mythological allusions and Latin phrases.
He had to be someone; he became a retired impresario who has made his fortune and who interests himself in loans, lawsuits, and petty usury. In this character he dictated the arid final will and testament that we know, deliberately excluding from it every trace of emotion and of literature. Friends from London used to visit his retreat, and for them he would take on again the role of poet.
The story goes that, before or after he died, he found himself before God and he said: “I, who have been so many men in vain, want to be one man: myself.” The voice of God replied from a whirlwind: “Neither am I one self; I dreamed the world as you dreamed your work, my Shakespeare, and among the shapes of my dream are you, who, like me, are many persons -- and none.”
Jorge Luis Borges: Everything and Nothing, from El hacedor (1960); English version by Mildred Boyer
BULGARIA - Dancers wearing costumes perform a ritual dance next to a bonfire during the Kukeri Carnival in Batanovtsi. By Nikolay Doychinov: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 14 January 2017
Stunning.
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