THE DINOSAUR

In Latin American literature, there is a story  titled ‘The Dinosaur’ by the great Guatemalan writer Augusto Monterroso, who was well-known for his terse minimalist style of writing like that of Hemingway. The story has just nine words:
‘When he woke up, the dinosaur was still there’

 A perfect story. Unbeatable power of persuasion, remarkable concision, perfect drama, color, suggestiveness, and clarity. A real minimalist narrative gem. ‘The Dinosaur’ is an interesting piece of writing because its simplicity makes it so complex. Monterroso leaves this text in suspense and offers to the reader an opportunity to become co-fabulator here. This enigmatic work has given rise to numerous doctoral theses.

In the book ‘Letters to a young Novelist’, the great Peruvian Novelist Mario Vargas Llosa discusses this story from the points of view of -the narrator, space, time and Level of reality. I have summarized it below.

The narration in ‘The Dinosaur’ is made in the past tense. So the narrator is situated in the future, narrating something that happened-when? In the near or middle past from the narrator’s future point of view? In the middle past. How do we know that the narrator is situated in the near or middle past in relation to the time of the narrator? Because between those two times there is an unbridgeable abyss, a gap, a barrier that abolishes all link or continuity between the two (The comma). This is the determining characteristic of the tense the narrator employs: The action is confined to a closed- off past, split from the time the narrator inhabits. The action of ‘Dinosaur’ takes place, therefore, in a middle past.

What is the point of view in terms of level of reality in this story? The narrative is situated in the plane of the fantastic, since in the real world you and I inhabit, it is improbable that prehistoric animals that appeared in our dreams–or in our nightmares–would turn up as an objective reality, and that we should encounter them in the flesh at the foot of our beds when we opened our eyes. It’s clear, then, that the level of reality of the narrative is an imaginary or fantastic reality. Is the narrator (omniscient and impersonal) situated on the same plane? We could venture to say that he is not, that he establishes himself instead on a real or realist plane–in other words, one that is essentially opposite and contrary to that of the narrative. How do we know this? By the tiniest but most unmistakable of indications, a signal or hint that the careful narrator gives the reader as he tells his pared-down tale: the adverb, ‘still’. The word doesn’t just define an objective temporal circumstance, indicating a miraculous occurrence (the passage of the dinosaur from a dreamworld to objective reality). It is also a call to attention, a display of surprise or astonishment at the remarkable event. Monterroso’s still is flanked by invisible exclamation points and implicitly urges us to be surprised by the amazing thing that has happened. (”Notice, all of you, what is going on: the dinosaur is still there, when it’s obvious that it shouldn’t be, since in true reality things like this don’t happen; they are only possible in a fantastic reality.”) This is how we know the narrator is narrating from an objective reality; if he weren’t, he wouldn’t induce us through the knowing use of an amphibious adverb (still ) to take note of the transition of the dinosaur from dream to life, from the imaginary to the tangible.

The Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes rightly remarked the following about Monterroso – ‘He is one of the cleanest, most intelligent, transparent and smiling authors in the Spanish language’.No wonder, ‘The Dinosaur’ became such a hit in Latin American literary history.

CONTINUITY OF PARKS

“Time is the substance of which I am made.
Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which mangles me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire.
The world, unfortunately, is real; I, unfortunately, am Borges.”

No Latin American writer of twentieth century has achieved such iconic status as the Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges (Pronounced as Bor-Hess. 1899-1986). This year marks the 110th birth Anniversary of this legendary writer. During his life, Borges wore many hats. He was, variously, a poet, an essayist, a short-story writer, a librarian, and, for a short time, a poultry inspector. As a hauntingly original essayist and short story writer, his three or four dozen short stories and essays is mentioned in the same breath with the tomes of Thomas Mann or James Joyce. This blind octogenarian (His was a particular kind of blindness, grown on him gradually since the age of 30 and settled in for good after his 58th birthday) became a legend in his own time so much so that 'Borgesian', eventually became a common neologism like the adjectives 'Orwellian' or 'Kafkaesque' .

In his life, Borges was an extremely shy person and possessed an exceptional modesty that makes him endearing. Though a supreme writer, he always underrated his writings as an escape from the boredom of a blind man. I can vouch his humility from reading the countless interviews that appears in the book , 'Conversations with Borges'. His face lights up when anyone praises his work; yet he habitually conveys the deep stillness of a man with few illusions about himself or the world. He also conveys sweetness and wisdom, those refinements of perception that sometimes accompany old age. “Beside real short story writers,” he says, “my stories hardly exist.”

Perhaps no writer of modern times was as bookish and multilingual as Borges. His aristocratic upbringing, cosmopolitan outlook and exposure to different cultures gave him a universal mind. As a precursor of the “Magical Realists”, he ingeniously mixed philosophy, fact, fantasy and mystery in his stories. They are written in dense and challenging prose. Unlikely images and situations are woven into a richly complex tapestry that arouses questions of identity and the self, of reality and the possibility for dreams.

Intellectual Labyrinths , time, space, infinity, memory, mirrors (Borges delights in the multiplicity of things; he is fascinated with mirrors because they multiply) and libraries are some of the principal themes in his works. Borges’ stories take place in a world that is half commonplace, half fantastic. Dreams occur within dreams; time loses its significance. What counts is momentary impulse and observation.

Economy, grace, humor and precise sounding historical and referential details and ingenious plots are hall marks of his style. The great Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa in his 'Letters to a young Novelist' lauds Borges as the greatest prose stylist in Spanish language. He says, 'Borges's style is unmistakable and functions extraordinarily well, giving life and credibility to a world of sophisticated intellectual and abstract ideas and curiosities. In this world, philosophical systems, theological disquisitions, myths and literary symbols, reflection and speculation, and universal history are the raw material of invention. Borges's style adapts itself to its subject matter and merges with it in a powerful alloy, and the reader feels from the first sentences of his stories and of many of his essays that these works have the inventive and sovereign quality of true fictions, that they could have been told in this way, in this intelligent, ironic, and mathematically precise language-not a word too few, not a word too many-with its cold elegance and aristocratic defiance, privileging intellect and knowledge over sensation and emotion, playing with erudition, making a technique of presumption, eluding all sentimentality, and ignoring the body and sensuality'. Vargas Llosa says that Spanish was suddenly “purified,” “intellectualized” by the inimitable prose style of Borges.

Among his stories, my personal favorites are, 'The Aleph', 'Garden of Forking Paths', 'Death and the Compass', 'Pierre Menard', 'The secret Miracle' and 'The Circular Ruins'. Let us dwell on the themes in some of them . In his story 'Funes the Memorious', a gaucho is confined to bed for the rest of his life after being thrown by a horse. He hardly cares. The fall has miraculously sharpened his perception so that his memories are boundless: “He knew by heart the forms of the Southern clouds on the 30th of April, 1882, and could compare them in his memory with the mottled streaks on a book in Spanish binding he had only seen once and with the outlines of the foam raised by an oar in the Rio Negro the night before the Quebracho uprising.” Borges contrasts this world of heightened perceptions due to total memory with the real world of clumsy generalizations.

Another famous story titled 'The Aleph' tells about a point in space that contains all other points. Anyone who gazes into it can see everything in the universe from every angle simultaneously, without distortion, overlapping or confusion . The story explores his fascination with infinity. And in an imaginative murder mystery called 'The Garden of Forking Paths', considered as one of his best, time is envisioned as a complex network of planes on which spatial events may occur independently of one another'"unless, of course, the planes happen to intersect accidentally.

Burges' fictional universe was born from his vast and esoteric readings in literature, philosophy, and theology. He sees man’s search for meaning in an infinite universe as a fruitless effort. In the universe of energy, mass, and speed of light, Borges considers the central riddle time, not space. He believed in an infinite series of times, in a growing, dizzying net of divergent, convergent and parallel times. This network of times which approached one another, forked, broke off, or were unaware of one another for centuries, embraces all possibilities of time.

In the story 'Death and the Compass', murders in the four corners of Paris are matched to the four Hebrew letters of the name of God. The killer in this story leaves clues indicating religious motives: a distortion of kabalistic tradition in which murders reveal the divine name, letter by letter. Seeing that the first three murders form an equilateral triangle on the map and took place at regular intervals, the detective Erik Lonnrot pinpoints the time and place of the final murder, only to discover he has been set up for a trap: A common outlaw has lured Lonnrot there to murder him. The detective knows this but he is so fascinated by the pattern that he goes anyway, thus solving the mystery of his own murder.

One of Borges's most famous stories ,'The Circular Ruins', unfolds a pitch-perfect fable of riddling existence in the twentieth century . A wizard retreats from the world to a location that possesses strong mystical powers: the circular ruins. There, the wizard tries to create another human being from his own dreams. Sleeping and dreaming longer and longer each day, the magician dreams of his young man becoming educated, and wiser. After time, though, the wizard can no longer find sleep, and he deems his first attempt an inevitable failure. After many sleepless nights, the wizard dreams of a heart; vaguely at first, but more and more clearly each night. Years pass and the wizard creates the boy piece by piece, in agonizing detail. The wizard calls upon the god Fire to bring his creation to life. Fire agrees, as long as the wizard accustoms his creation to the real world, and that only Fire and the wizard will be able to tell the creation from a real human. His creation is sent to a distant temple of the god Fire, and becomes famous as, because it is not real, it can walk through fire unharmed. The wizard hears of this, but at length he awakes to find the ruins ablaze. As he ultimately walks into the flaming house of Fire, the wizards notices that his skin does not burn. “With relief, with humiliation, with terror, he understands that he too was a mere appearance, dreamt by another.'

The color and grace of his stories lies in his use of marvelous adjectives . For example, look at the line , 'No one saw him disembark in the unanimous night' which is the opening line in the story ,'The Circular Ruins'. What an odd adjective, 'unanimous'. It is so odd, in fact, that one is sorely tempted to put something like 'all-encompassing', so as to make it 'comprehensible' to the reader. Similarly many such weird adjectives and adverbs , violent and unexpected metaphors such as '”the readers at their studious lamps“, 'nebulous grey beard', 'concave hands', 'immortal monkey', 'Clouds of smoke which rusted the metal of the nights' are sprinkled in his fiction and poetry . Disparate imageries and clinical contextual details in describing a place sometimes create a surreal landscape reminiscent of a Dali. The overall effect of his language is simply magical.

The unemphatic style of Borges often achieves effects with a single exploding word or phrase, dropped almost as though off-handedly into a quiet sentence: “He examined his wounds and saw, without astonishment, that they had healed.” This laconic detail “without astonishment“, coming at the very beginning of “The Circular Ruins”, will probably only at the end of the story be recalled by the reader, who will, retrospectively, see that it changes everything in the story; it is quintessential Borges. Borges’ writing has often been called intellectual, and indeed it is dense with allusion. But it is also simple: the sentences are almost invariably classical in their symmetry, in their balance.

To conclude, Borges was a world-class artist-a brilliant, lyrical miniaturist, an uncomplicated genius who could pose the great questions of existence on the head of a pin. Reading him might alter the way you look at everything, including yourself. The perfection of his language, the extent of his knowledge, the universalism of his electrifying ideas, the originality and inventiveness of his fiction, and the beauty of his poetry still continue to enchant the literary minds all over the world.

Half a Day: Naguib Mahfouz

Introduction

Every now and then one encounters a story that leaves an indelible impression long after it is read. I read this short short story written by Naguib Mahfouz shortly after his winning the Nobel Prize for literature. I was enamoured by its rich and ornate style, its narrative technique, universal theme and dramatic ending. Quite recently, I suggested a speaker to present it as a monodrama and it was well-received by the audience.

Egyptian writer Mahfouz is the only Nobel Laureate in Arabic Literature. I had the delight to visit the Naguib Mahfouz Cafe (Earlier known as Fishawy’s Caf� in Khan Al Khalili market, one of the most ancient surviving markets in the World) during my visit to Egypt last year. Naguib used to write many parts of his Cairo Trilogy in a special place in this caf�. In his 33 novels, including his masterpiece, "The Cairo Trilogy"; his 16 short story collections; 30 screenplays; and several plays he invented a vast human comedy populated by the inhabitants of Cairo's sprawling metropolis whose lives embodied the history of his country: wily shopkeepers and heartless bureaucrats, wheedling beggars, voluptuous women, whores and holy men, desperate parents and starving students. Mahfouz passed away in 2006.

The following story is my personal favorite.

Story

I proceeded alongside my father, clutching his right hand, running to keep up with the long strides he was taking. All my clothes were new: the black shoes, the green school uniform, and the red tarbush. My delight in my new clothes, however, was not altogether unmarred, for this was no feast day but the day on which I was to be cast into school for the first time.

My mother stood at the window watching our progress, and I would turn toward her from time to time, as tough appealing for help. We walked along a street lined with gardens; on both sides were extensive fields planted with crops, prickly pears, henna trees, and a few date palms.

“Why school?” I challenged my father openly. “I shall never do anything to annoy you.”

“I’m not punishing you,” he said, laughing. “School’s not a punishment. It’s the factory that makes useful men out of boys. Don’t you want to be like your father and brothers?”

I was not convinced. I did not believe there was really any good to be had in tearing me away from the intimacy of my home and throwing me into this building that stood at the end of the road like some huge, high-walled fortress, exceedingly stern and grim.

When we arrived at the gate we could see the courtyard, vast and crammed full of boys and girls. “Go in by yourself,” said my father, “and join them. Put a smile on your face and be a good example to others.”

I hesitated and clung to his hand, but he gently pushed me from him. “Be a man,” he said. “Today you truly begin life. You will find me waiting for you when it’s time to leave.”

I took a few steps, then stopped and looked but saw nothing. Then the faces of boys and girls came into view. I did not know a single one of them, and none of them knew me. I felt I was a stranger who had lost his way. But glances of curiosity were directed toward me, and one boy approached and asked, “Who brought you?”

“My father,” I whispered.

“My father’s dead,” he said quite simply.

I did not know what to say. The gate was closed, letting out a pitiable screech. Some of the children burst into tears. The bell rang. A lady came along, followed by a group of men. The men began sorting us into ranks. We were formed into an intricate pattern in the great courtyard surrounded on three sides by high buildings of several floors; from each floor we were overlooked by a long balcony roofed in wood.

“This is your new home,” said the woman. “Here too there are mothers and fathers. Here there is everything that is enjoyable and beneficial to knowledge and religion. Dry your tears and face life joyfully.”

We submitted to the facts, and this submission brought a sort of contentment. Living beings were drawn to other living beings, and from the first moments my heart made friends with such boys as were to be my friends and fell in love with such girls as I was to be in love with, so that it seemed my misgivings had had no basis. I had never imagined school would have this rich variety. We played all sorts of different games: swings, the vaulting horse, ball games. In the music room we chanted our first songs. We also had our first introduction to language. We saw a globe of the Earth, which revolved and showed the various continents and countries. We started learning the numbers. The story of the Creator of the Universe was read to us, we were told of His present world and of His Hereafter, and we heard examples of what He said. We ate delicious food, took a little nap, and woke up to go on with friendship and love, play and learning.

As our path revealed itself to us, however, we did not find it as totally sweet and unclouded as we had presumed. Dust-laden winds and unexpected accidents came about suddenly, so we had to be watchful, at the ready and very patient. It was not all a matter of playing and fooling around. Rivalries could bring pain and hatred or give rise to fighting. And while the lady would sometimes smile, she would often scowl and scold. Even more frequently she would resort to physical punishment.

In addition, the time for changing one’s mind was over and gone and there was no question of ever returning to the paradise of home. Nothing lay ahead of us but exertion, struggle, and perseverance. Those who were able took advantage of the opportunities for success and happiness that presented themselves amid the worries.

The bell rang announcing the passing of the day and the end of work. The throngs of children rushed toward the gate, which was opened again. I bade farewell to friends and sweethearts and passed through the gate. I peered around but found no trace of my father, who had promised to be there. I stepped aside to wait. When I had waited for a long time without avail, I decided to return home by my own. After I had taken a few steps, a middle-aged man passed by, and I realized at once that I knew him. He came toward me, smiling, and shook me by the hand, saying, “It’s a long time since we last met - how are you?”

With a nod of my head, I agreed with him and in turn asked, “And you, how are you?”

“As you can see, not all that good, the Almighty be praised!”

Again he shook me by the hand and went off. I preceded a few steps, and then came to a startled halt. Good Lord! Where was the street lined with gardens? Where had it disappeared to? When did all these vehicles invade it? And when did all these hordes of humanity come to rest upon its surface? How did these hills of refuse come to cover its sides? And where were the fields that bordered it? High buildings had taken over, the street surged with children, and disturbing noises shook the air. At various points stood conjurers showing off their tricks and making snakes appear from baskets. Then there was a band announcing the opening of a circus, with clowns and weight lifters walking in front. A line of trucks carrying central security troops crawled majestically by. The siren of a fire engine shrieked, and it was not clear how the vehicle would cleave its way to reach the blazing fire. A battle raged between a taxi driver and his passenger, while the passenger’s wife called out for help and no one answered. Good God! I was in a daze. My head spun. I almost went crazy. How could all this have happened in half a day, between early morning and sunset? I would find the answer at home with my father. But where was my home? I could see only tall buildings and hordes of people. I hastened on to the crossroads between the gardens and Abou Khoda. I had to cross Abou Khoda to reach my house, but the stream of cars would not let up. The fire engine’s siren was shrieking at full pitch as it moved at a snail’s pace, and I said to myself, “Let the fire take its pleasure in what it consumes.”

Extremely irritated, I wondered when I would be able to cross. I stood there a long time, until the young lad employed at the ironing shop on the corner came up to me. He stretched out his arm and said gallantly, “Grandpa, let me take you across.”

Tarbush: red hat similar to the fez worn especially by Muslim men

Post Script:

Time is telescoped into a morning’s walk, the first day in the school, and the return journey home. To Mahfouz, our entire life can be condensed into just 'Half a Day" in the school of life, from sunrise to sunset. Everything you learn in school repeats in life as well (Learning to work, love, play, obey rules, break rules). Being a follower of Bergson's philosophy Mahfouz has made a stunning masterwork on 'Time', both lived and straight. The narrator emerges from the gates of the school oblivious that his entire life has passed, and that he is now no longer a young boy but an old man. Life is a tragedy.

It is a gentle story tinged with nostalgia for time irrecoverable.

Introduction

“You do not understand. This is a clean and pleasant cafe. It is well lighted.

The light is very good and also, now, there are shadows of the leaves.”

An old man sits alone in a clean, well-lighted cafe. It is late, long after midnight, and he sips his drink with no sense of urgency, no thought of home. Who is he? Why is he drinking so late? Why does he not want to go home?

Hemingway's “A Clean Well-Lighted Place” centers around the conversation of two waiters, one old and the other young, in a comfortable, homey Spanish cafe. They are discussing one of the regulars, a quiet, dignified old man who comes into the cafe every evening and runs up a table which he is careful to pay before leaving for the night. He has, we discover, recently attempted suicide.

The younger waiter is impatient with the old man; he just wishes the customer would quit drinking and go home, so that the waiter could go home too. He cannot relate to whatever causes the old man to nurse so many drinks over so long a period, night after night, in the quiet cafe.

The older waiter, on the other hand, understands despair only too well. He is saddened when the young waiter insults the old man and is even more grieved when the young waiter closes the cafe and sends the old man away. As he says to the younger waiter, “You have youth, confidence, and a job. You have everything.” The old man, on the other hand, has nothing — no one to go home to, nothing to look forward to, no pleasure left in life except the small comfort of being able to spend a little time in a clean, well-lighted place.

After the younger waiter leaves to go home to his waiting bride, the older waiter “continue the conversation with himself.” He knows the value of his cafe; when you have nothing else to live for, a place like that can be a small fortress against the huge, all-encompassing darkness of existence. It is an illusion, but a necessary one. What lies beyond the warm glow of the cafe is nothingness: a great existential nothingness. It is too horrible to contemplate that kind of nothingness all the time; sometimes it is necessary to simply muffle it in something lovely and warm, like his cafe.

What is so special about this very short story is the way Hemingway manages to evoke the universal and timeless dichotomy between the young waiter, who, with his whole life ahead of him, is “all confidence” and the elderly patron of the cafe who realizes there is literally nothing to live for. The pivotal character here is the older waiter, who, unlike the young waiter, realizes that the world is “nada and pues nada” (nothing and more nothing), but who nonetheless has the stoicism to keep on living.

A Clean, Well-lighted Place addresses the loneliness of human existence and man's inexhaustible search for meaning in a world in which meaning is not readily apparent.

James Joyce applauded this story as one of the greatest stories in Literature

I was reminded of this story while reading a poem titled "Midnight Caf�" by one of the best poets in the iland-KB

A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

By Ernest Hemingway

It was very late and everyone had left the cafe except an old man who sat in the shadow the leaves of the tree made against the electric light. In the day time the street was dusty, but at night the dew settled the dust and the old man liked to sit late because he was deaf and now at night it was quiet and he felt the difference. The two waiters inside the cafe knew that the old man was a little drunk, and while he was a good client they knew that if he became too drunk he would leave without paying, so they kept watch on him.

“Last week he tried to commit suicide,” one waiter said.

“Why?”

“He was in despair.”

“What about?”

“Nothing.”

“How do you know it was nothing?”

“He has plenty of money.”

They sat together at a table that was close against the wall near the door of the cafe and looked at the terrace where the tables were all empty except where the old man sat in the shadow of the leaves of the tree that moved slightly in the wind. A girl and a soldier went by in the street. The street light shone on the brass number on his collar. The girl wore no head covering and hurried beside him.

“The guard will pick him up,” one waiter said.

“What does it matter if he gets what he’s after?”

“He had better get off the street now. The guard will get him. They went by five minutes ago.”

The old man sitting in the shadow rapped on his saucer with his glass. The younger waiter went over to him.

“What do you want?”

The old man looked at him. “Another brandy,” he said.

“You’ll be drunk,” the waiter said. The old man looked at him. The waiter went away.

“He’ll stay all night,” he said to his colleague. “I’m sleepy now. I never get into bed before three o’clock. He should have killed himself last week.”

The waiter took the brandy bottle and another saucer from the counter inside the cafe and marched out to the old man’s table. He put down the saucer and poured the glass full of brandy.

“You should have killed yourself last week,” he said to the deaf man. The old man motioned with his finger. “A little more,” he said. The waiter poured on into the glass so that the brandy slopped over and ran down the stem into the top saucer of the pile. “Thank you,” the old man said. The waiter took the bottle back inside the cafe. He sat down at the table with his colleague again.

“He’s drunk now,” he said.

“He’s drunk every night.”

“What did he want to kill himself for?”

“How should I know.”

“How did he do it?”

“He hung himself with a rope.”

“Who cut him down?”

“His niece.”

“Why did they do it?”

“Fear for his soul.”

“How much money has he got?”

“He’s got plenty.”

“He must be eighty years old.”

“Anyway I should say he was eighty.”

“I wish he would go home. I never get to bed before three o’clock. What kind of hour is that to go to bed?”

“He stays up because he likes it.”

“He’s lonely. I’m not lonely. I have a wife waiting in bed for me.”

“He had a wife once too.”

“A wife would be no good to him now.”

“You can’t tell. He might be better with a wife.”

“His niece looks after him. You said she cut him down.”

“I know.”

“I wouldn’t want to be that old. An old man is a nasty thing.”

“Not always. This old man is clean. He drinks without spilling. Even now, drunk. Look at him.”

“I don’t want to look at him. I wish he would go home. He has no regard for those who must work.”

The old man looked from his glass across the square, then over at the waiters.

“Another brandy,” he said, pointing to his glass. The waiter who was in a hurry came over.

“Finished,” he said, speaking with that omission of syntax stupid people employ when talking to drunken people or foreigners. “No more tonight. Close now.”

“Another,” said the old man.

“No. Finished.” The waiter wiped the edge of the table with a towel and shook his head.

The old man stood up, slowly counted the saucers, took a leather coin purse from his pocket and paid for the drinks, leaving half a peseta tip.

The waiter watched him go down the street, a very old man walking unsteadily but with dignity.

“Why didn’t you let him stay and drink?” the unhurried waiter asked. They were putting up the shutters. “It is not half-past two.”

“I want to go home to bed.”

“What is an hour?”

“More to me than to him.”

“An hour is the same.”

“You talk like an old man yourself. He can buy a bottle and drink at home.”

“It’s not the same.”

“No, it is not,” agreed the waiter with a wife. He did not wish to be unjust. He was only in a hurry.

“And you? You have no fear of going home before your usual hour?”

“Are you trying to insult me?”

“No, hombre, only to make a joke.”

“No,” the waiter who was in a hurry said, rising from pulling down the metal shutters. “I have confidence. I am all confidence.”

“You have youth, confidence, and a job,” the older waiter said. “You have everything.”

“And what do you lack?”

“Everything but work.”

“You have everything I have.”

“No. I have never had confidence and I am not young.”

“Come on. Stop talking nonsense and lock up.”

“I am of those who like to stay late at the cafe,” the older waiter said. “With all those who do not want to go to bed. With all those who need a light for the night.”

“I want to go home and into bed.”

“We are of two different kinds,” the older waiter said. He was now dressed to go home. “It is not only a question of youth and confidence although those things are very beautiful. Each night I am reluctant to close up because there may be some one who needs the cafe.”

“Hombre, there are bodegas open all night long.”

“You do not understand. This is a clean and pleasant cafe. It is well lighted. The light is very good and also, now, there are shadows of the leaves.”

“Good night,” said the younger waiter.

“Good night,” the other said. Turning off the electric light he continued the conversation with himself. It is the light of course but it is necessary that the place be clean and pleasant. Certainly you do not want music. Nor can you stand before a bar with dignity although that is all that is provided for these hours. What did he fear? It was not a fear or dread. It was a nothing that he knew too well. It was all a nothing and a man was nothing too. It was only that and light was all it needed and a certain cleanness and order. Some lived in it and never felt it but he knew it all was nada y pues nada y nada y pues nada. Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee. He smiled and stood before a bar with a shining steam pressure coffee machine.

“What’s yours?” asked the barman.

“Nada.”

“Otro loco mas,” said the barman and turned away.

“A little cup,” said the waiter.

The barman poured it for him.

“The light is very bright and pleasant but the bar is unpolished,” the waiter said.

The barman looked at him but did not answer. It was too late at night for conversation.

“You want another copita?” the barman asked.

“No, thank you,” said the waiter and went out. He disliked bars and bodegas. A clean, well-lighted cafe was a very different thing. Now, without thinking further, he would go home to his room. He would lie in the bed and finally, with daylight, he would go to sleep. After all, he said to himself, it’s probably only insomnia. Many must have it.

THE MAD POMEGRANATE TREE

In these all-white courtyards where the south wind blows
Whistling through vaulted arcades, tell me, is it the mad pomegranate tree
That leaps in the light, scattering its fruitful laughter
With windy willfulness and whispering, tell me, is it the mad
   pomegranate tree
That quivers with foliage newly born at dawn
Raising high its colours in a shiver of triumph?

On plains where the naked girls awake,
When they harvest clover with their light brown arms
Roaming round the borders of their dreams-tell me, is it the mad
   pomegranate tree,
Unsuspecting, that puts the lights in their verdant baskets
That floods their names with the singing of birds-tell me
Is it the mad pomegranate tree that combats the cloudy skies of the
  world?

On the day that it adorns itself in jealousy with seven kinds of feathers,
Girding the eternal sun with a thousand blinding prisms
Tell me, is it the mad pomegranate tree
That seizes on the run a horse’s mane of a hundred lashes,
Never sad and never grumbling–tell me, is it the mad pomegranate tree
That cries out the new hope now dawning?
Tell me, is that the pomegranate tree waving in the distance,
Fluttering a handkerchief of leaves of cool flame,
A sea near birth with a thousand ships and more,
With waves that a thousand times and more set out and go
To unscented shores-tell me, is it the pomegranate tree
That creaks the rigging aloft in the lucid air?

High as can be, with the blue bunch of grapes that flares and celebrates
Arrogant, full of danger–tell me, is it the mad pomegranate tree
That shatters with light the demon’s tempest in the middle of the world
That spreads far as can be the saffron ruffle of day
Richly embroider with scattered songs-tell me, is it the  mad
  pomegranate tree
That hastily unfastens the silk apparel of day?

In petticoats of April first and cicadas of the feast of mid-August
Tell me, that which plays, that which rages, that which can entice
Shaking out of threats their evil black darkness
Spilling in the sun’s embrace intoxicating birds
Tell me, that which opens its wings on the breast of things
On the breast of our deepest dreams, is that the mad pomegranate tree?

At the beginning of his luminous career, the great Greek poet and Nobel Laureate  Odysseus Elytis said: “I write so that black does not have the last word.”

Black and light, sunshine and darkness, these were the two poles of Elytis’ poetry, a pendulum between passion and patience, a bewilderment stretching throughout the day. At the beginning, he was acclaimed as the poet of the sparkling Aegean .The best of his Poetry - such as The Mad Pomegranate Tree, Commemoration, Aegean Melancholy,  Body of Summer, and Drinking the Sun of Corinth, distils vividly and evocatively the typical features of the Aegean scene: its closeness to the natural world, its startling colours, and its hints of the simple and the unsophisticated.

There is a radiating quality in many of his great poems. He is a poet of sunshine, vitality, colour, and exuberance.  It was endemic in his personality, his geographical setting and spiritual awareness. I have never experienced so much light, light, light, sun, sun, sun, fire, fire, fire as in the poems of Elytis. But his greatness lies in the fact that when engaging in simplicities of such elemental features, he interpolates also his unique ingredients of the inspirational and the spiritual; so that, in the end, all of it becomes universal in its significance, and enduring in its meaning. 

The sun can burn and kill as well as illuminate our earth. And the dark silence can be even greater than the light. But though aware of them, Elytis was never attracted by the darker aspects of the world. That is obvious by looking at the images he returns to again and again in his poems: the Aegean sea, young men and women, or boys and girls, often naked, poppies, pebbles, vineyards, butterflies, branches, olive trees, almond trees, pomegranate trees etc.

In one of my favorite poems titled “The Mad Pomegranate Tree”, the poet answers to the difficult questions hanging from its branches (”Tell me, that which opens its wings on the breast of things / On the breast of our deepest dreams, is that the mad pomegranate tree?”).One has the feeling that it is the mad pomegranate tree that drives the world. The unabashed pomegranate tree dances and dances in the ear. It sings and stuns the mind  with extravagant repetitions.( ‘Tell me, is the mad pomegranate tree’). The sound of joy repeating and rushing seems to careen wildily ahead of our thought with tickling uncontrolled energy. This poem is a pure Mozartian rhapsody. 

There is a lyrical surrealism lingering all along. Whenever I read this poem, I gain a rare ‘ Elan vital ‘ (the current of life, the way Bergson used it). I feel that I have the heart of Bacchus to revel and rejoice; I am charged with 440 V  to recklessly rush forward, to dance,  to fly, to laugh around and do all the naughty things I had dreamed of. My God, there is Viagra in Poetry!

The mad pomegranate tree will continue to toss in the wind and “scatter its fruit-laden laughter” lifting up my spirits with buoyancy and bliss in my ritual for renewal 

Source: Odysseus Elytis: Selected Poems

Odysseus Elytis (Author), Edmund Keeley (Editor, Translator), Philip Sherrard (Editor, Translator), George Savidis (Translator), John Stathatos (Translator), Nanos Valaoritis (Translator): Viking Press

Octavio Paz (Author of the Story )

Great Mexican Poet and Nobel Prize winner for 1990. His Poem 'Sunstone' is considered as one of the ten greatest poems in Latin American literature. He was the Ambassador of Mexico to India from 1962- 1968 and was an ardent admirer of India's priceless cultural Heritage and had special interest in Tantricism. He last came to India in 1994 to present Jnanpith Award to the renowned Malayalam writer 'Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai' of 'Chemmeen' fame. He had close relationship with many Indian writers and artists like Raja Rao, Srikanth Verma, Vivian Sundaram, Jayanth Mohapatra etc. His last prose work  titled 'Light on India' is an amazingly accessible treatise on the legacy of India. Paz passed away in 1998.

My thoughts on the Story

There are abundant situations in everyday life where your dear life is in the hands of a maniac who wants to kill you or molest you to satisfy his flimsy fancies or desires. The villain of the following story is such a character who is in search of blue eyes to present a  bouquet of blue eyes to his beloved. It shows the extent of idiocy and cruelty that senseless love and passion can sometimes entail. The story also makes us to ponder over suspended terror in everyday life. An apparently calm moment can turn sinister and stage macabre scenes. A bouquet of flowers can turn into a bomb to annihilate us (Remembering Rajiv Gandhi). A cozy trip can culminate in a traumatic incident to stab our memory. This story beautifully captures this angst that pervades in our everyday life

A disheveled man wakes from a sweat-drenching nightmare, furiously shaking his shirt and pants free of possible small jungle creatures, and hastily dresses to face the utterly dreamlike reality of remote Mexico, a torpid limbo. He is a lost soul from the American middle-class, middle aged and unmoored, now alone in a squalid hotel. The owner of the makeshift inn, one-eyed man, warns him to stay put for his own safety. Disregarding this the man  takes a brief, circular walk through the alley and he is suddenly set upon by a stranger. The predatory figure bears a machete and a slender knife, which he will use to cut the eyes from his head in order to present this penitent, macabre offering of “a bouquet of blue eyes” to his bewitching lover. The fervor of the man's obsessed mission, his dizzying persuasiveness to grab the sacrificial price that might reunite him with her, and his menacing wit and insight, push the victim's wit to its limits.

The story is rich in ironic pathos, humor, cruelty and metaphor.

We know almost nothing about the man threatened with the loss of his eyes, since the crux of the story is not biography but confrontation- that moment of danger in which the man finds himself, a moment such as any of us could experience. Faced with such danger, he loses whatever fragment of individuality he may have for us, and all that matters is the color of his eyes.

The Blue Bouquet

I woke covered with sweat. Hot steam rose from the newly sprayed, redbrick pavement.  A gray-winged butterfly, dazzled, circled the yellow light.  I jumped from my hammock and crossed the room barefoot, careful not to step on some scorpion leaving his hideout for a bit of fresh air.  I went to the little window and inhaled the country air.  One could hear the breathing of the night, feminine, enormous.  I returned to the center of the room, emptied water from a jar into a pewter basin, and wet my towel.  I rubbed my chest and legs with the soaked cloth, dried myself a little, and, making sure that no bugs were hidden in the folds of my clothes, got dressed. I ran down the green stairway.  At the door of the boardinghouse I bumped into the owner, a one-eyed taciturn fellow.  Sitting on a wicker stool, he smoked, his eye half closed.  In a hoarse voice, he asked:

        'Where are you going?'

        'To take a walk.  It's too hot.'

'Hmmm-everything's closed.  And no streetlights around here.  You'd better stay put.'

I shrugged my shoulders, muttered, 'back soon,' and plunged into the darkness.  At first I couldn't see anything.  I fumbled along the cobblestone street.  I lit a cigarette.  Suddenly the moon appeared from behind a black cloud, lighting a white wall that was crumbled in places.  I stopped, blinded by such whiteness.  Wind whistled slightly.  I breathed the air of the tamarinds.  The night hummed, full of leaves and insects.  Crickets bivouacked in the tall grass.  I raised my head: up there the stars too had set up camp. I thought that the universe was a vast system of signs, a conversation between giant beings.  My actions, the cricket's saw, the star's blink, were nothing but pauses and syllables, scattered phrases from that dialogue.  What word could it be, of which I was only a syllable? Who speaks the word? To whom is it spoken? I threw my cigarette down on the sidewalk.  Falling, it drew a shining curve, shooting out brief sparks like a tiny comet.

I walked a long time, slowly.  I felt free, secure between the lips that were at that moment speaking me with such happiness.  The night was a garden of eyes.  As I crossed the street, I heard someone come out of a doorway.  I turned around, but could not distinguish anything.  I hurried on.  A few moments later I heard the dull shuffle of sandals on the hot stone.  I didn't want to turn around, although I felt the shadow getting closer with every step.  I tried to run.  I couldn't.  Suddenly I stopped short.  Before I could defend myself, I felt the point of a knife in my back, and a sweet voice:

'Don't move, mister, or I'll stick it in.'

 Without turning, I asked:

'What do you want?'

'Your eyes, mister,' answered the soft, almost painful voice.

My eyes? What do you want with my eyes? Look, I've got some money.  Not much, but it's something.  I'll give you everything I have if you let me go. Don't kill me.'

'Don't be afraid, mister.  I won't kill you.  I'm only going to take your eyes.'

'But why do you want my eyes?' I asked again. 

'My girlfriend has this whim.  She wants a bouquet of blue eyes.  And around here they're hard to find.'

'My eyes won't help you. They're brown, not blue.'

'Don't try to fool me, mister. I know very well that yours are blue.'

'Don't take the eyes of a fellow man.  I'll give you something else.'

'Don't play saint with me,' he said harshly. 'Turnaround.'

I turned.  He was small and fragile.  His palm sombrero covered half his face.  In his right hand he held a country machete that shone in the moonlight.

'Let me see your face.'

I struck a match and put it close to my face.  The brightness made me squint. He opened my eyelids with a firm hand.  He couldn't see very well.  Standing on tiptoe, he stared at me intensely.  The flame burned my fingers.  I dropped it.  A silent moment passed.

'Are you convinced now? They're not blue.'

'Pretty clever, aren't you?' he answered. 'Let's see. Light another one.'

I struck another match, and put it near my eyes.  Grabbing my sleeve, he ordered:

'Kneel down.'

I knelt.  With one hand he grabbed me by the hair, pulling my head back.  He bent over me, curious and tense, while his machete slowly dropped until it grazed my eyelids.  I closed my eyes.

'Keep them open, ' he ordered.

I opened my eyes.  The flame burned my lashes.  All of a sudden he let me go. 

'All right, they're not blue.  Beat it.'

He vanished.  I pulled myself together.  Stumbling, falling, trying to get up again.  I ran for an hour through the deserted town.  When I got to the plaza, I saw the owner of the boardinghouse, still sitting in the front of the door.  I went in without saying a word.  The next day I left the town.

Some years ago I had to deliver a monodrama speech project. I chose the one below which is a short story written by Heinrich Boll, the great German writer and Nobel Prize winner for literature (1972). The character Laughter may remind you  of the touching Hindi movie "Mera Nam Joker" or that professional mourner ‘Shanichari’ in Kalpana Lajmi’s film ’Rudali”. Laughter is a person who records canned laughter for soap comedy TV serials like "Lucy Show".  I consider this as a little gem , a moving grandiloquent soliloquy . I liked it for  its great poignancy and irony of life

THE LAUGHTER

When someone ask me what business I am in, I am seized with embarrassment: I blush and stammer, I who am otherwise known as a man of poise. I envy people who can say I am a mason. I envy barbers, bookkeepers and writers the simplicity of their avowal, for all these professions speak for themselves and need no lengthy explanation, while I am constrained to reply to such questions: I am a laughter. An admission of this kind demands another, since I have to answer the second question: " Is that how you make a living?" truthfully with "Yes". I actually do make a living at my laughing, and a good one too, for my laughing is commercially speaking ' much in demand.

I am a good laughter, experienced, no one else laughs as well as I do, no one else has such command of the fine points of my art. For a long time, in order to avoid tiresome explanations, I called myself an actor, but my talents in the field of mime and elocution are so meager that I felt the designation to be far from the truth: I love the truth, and the truth is that I am a laughter. I am neither a clown nor a comedian. I do not make people gay, I portray gaiety: I laugh like a Roman emperor, or like a sensitive schoolboy, I am as much at home in the laughter of the seventeenth century as in that of the nineteenth, and when occasions demands I laugh my way through all the centuries, all classes of society, all categories of age: it is simply a skill which I have acquired, like the skill of being able to repair shoes. In my breast I harbor the laughter of America, the laughter of Africa, white, red, yellow laughter- and for the right fee I let it peal out in accordance with the director's requirements.

I have become indispensable: I laugh on records, I laugh on tape, and television directors treat me with respect. I laugh mournfully, moderately, hysterically, I laugh like a streetcar conductor or like a helper in the grocery business: laughter in the morning, laughter in the evening, nocturnal laughter and laughter of the twilight. In short: wherever and however laughter is required-I do it.

It need hardly be pointed out that a profession of this kind is tiring, especially as I have also-this is my specialty-mastered the art of infectious laughter, this has also made me indispensable to third-and forth-rate comedians, who scared-and with good reason-that their audiences will miss their punch lines, so I spend most of the evenings in night clubs as a kind of discreet claque, my job being to laugh infectiously during the weaker parts of the program. It has to be carefully timed: my hearty, boisterous laughter must not come too soon, but neither must it come too late, it must come just at the right spot: at the pre-arranged moment I burst out laughing, the whole audience laugh with me, and the joke is saved.

But as for me, I drag myself exhausted to the checkroom, put on my coat, happy that I can go off duty at last. At home I usually find telegrams waiting for me:" Urgently require your laughter. Recording Tuesday," and a few hours later I am sitting in an overheated express train bemoaning my fate.

I need scarcely say that when I am off duty or on vacation I have little inclination to laugh: the

Cowhand is glad when he can forget the cow, the brick-layer when he can forget the mortar, and the carpenters usually have the doors at home which don't work or drawers which are hard to open. Confectioners like sour pickles, butchers like marzipan, and the baker prefers sausage to bread, the bullfighters raise pigeons for a hobby, boxers turn pale when their children have nose bleeds: I find all this quite natural, for I never laugh off duty, I am a very solemn person, and people consider me-perhaps rightly so- a pessimist.

During the first years of our married life, my wife would often say to me: "Do laugh" but since then she has come to realize that I cannot grant her this wish. I am happy that I am free to relax my tense face muscles, my frayed spirit, in profound solemnity. Indeed, even other people's laughter gets on my nerves, since it reminds me too much of my own profession. So our marriage is quiet, peaceful one because my wife has also forgotten how to laugh: now and then I catch her smiling, and I smile too. We converse, in low tones, for I detest the noise of nightclubs, the noise that fills the recording studios. People who do not know think me that I am taciturn. Perhaps I am, because I have to open my mouth so often to laugh.

I go through life with an impassive ex-pression, from time to time permitting myself a gentle smile, and I often wonder whether I have ever laughed. I think not. My brothers and sisters have known me as a serious boy

So I laugh in many different ways, but my own laughter I have never heard.

Vienna 1921. Closeted inside an apartment there, my favorite writer is deeply engrossed in writing a play on "Buddha'. He had been grooming himself into a state of ascetic discipline for sometime to write this play. Cut off from the enticing city outside , he listened to the voice of this new master sitting inside him - " Desire is flame, love is flame, virtue, hope ,"I" and "you", heaven and hell are flames. One thing and one thing only is light: - the renouncement of flame". His mind was like a yellow heliotrope and Buddha the sun. Slowly my writer was getting submerged in Buddha.

When he finished the play, he felt that he had paved a new road to salvation. Now he had no fear as no desire could conquer him. He slowly opened the window of his apartment. Leaning out of the window he looked at the men, women, cars, groceries, fruits and drinks on the street outside. He then went to the street outside to mingle with that wave of crowd and to breathe the city. He walked to the nearby movie theater to see what was going on there. The movie appeared boring. Next to him sat a girl and he could smell her cinnamon breath. From time to time her knee touched him. He shuddered, but he did not draw away. In that semi darkness, he could see her smiling glance. He got up to leave and she followed him. Strangely, he struck up a conversation with her and soon they were in a park outside. It was summer and the night was sweet as honey. The moon shone above and the song of a nightingale hidden deep in the lilacs could be heard.

"Frieda, Will you spent night with me ". These terrible words escaped from his lips.

 "Not tonight. I will come Tomorrow", the girl replied

He came back to his apartment. Something terrible suddenly happened to him. His face started swelling and he heard the blood rushing to his head. His soul had become enraged. Little by little, his lips, cheeks and forehead bloated into a big mass. Stumbling along the room, he went to look at the mirror and he was aghast with his horribly disfigured face. His eyes were like two barely visible slits.

Suddenly he remembered the girl Frieda. He called the chambermaid and gave her a telegram to be sent to Frieda "Don't come today, Come tomorrow". A day went by, two, three and a week had passed with no improvement in his illness. Afraid that the girl may come, he kept on sending her the telegram "Don't come today, come tomorrow". Finally he could not stand it any longer and fixed an appointment with Dr. William Stekel, the renowned disciple of Sigmund Freud. The professor began to hear his confession. He related his life history, the events in Vienna, his search for salvation in Buddha. At the end the professor burst into a shrill, hysterical laughter and said -"Enough, enough !. . He then said "The disease you are suffering is called "Ascetics' disease" and it is rarely common in our times.  In ancient times, the saints who stayed In Theban deserts used to run to the nearest city when they felt compelled to sleep with a woman. Just as they reached the city, their face used to turn as revolting just as yours. With such a face they could not face any woman. So they ran back to their hermitage in desert thanking God for delivering them from sin. You have the same situation. You will be rid of the mask glued to your face only if you leave this city".

My writer returned home. He did not believe it. Scientific fairy tales, he said to himself. He waited another two weeks. The disease showed no sign of parting. Finally, one morning he packed his suitcase and headed to the railway station to leave Vienna. The city was awakening. The sun had come down to the streets. He was in a fine mood and he felt weightless as he walked. He could move his eyes now. A cool breeze caressed his face like a compassionate hand. He could feel the swelling subsiding. When he reached the station, he took out his hand mirror and uttered a cry of joy. He had regained his normal face. The disease was gone.

In a country like India where spiritual experience is full of sham shading, this experience of a spiritual adventurist is profound and authentic. The man who underwent this spiritual adventure was the literary giant of Modern Greece and one of the greatest novelists of the last century- Nikos Kazantzakis. This is not only the opinion of a humble admirer like me but also of great men like Albert Schweitzer, Jawaharlal Nehru and great writers like Thomas Mann and Albert Camus.

There are certain writers that influence our very being from the very first moment of reading of his works. Like good wine, years have only matured my profound appreciation of this writer. No writer of the last century has experienced the interminable struggle between the flesh and the spirit as Kazantzakis. As a result, every molecule of his writing carries the dye of his flesh and blood.

Kazantzakis was born in Crete, an island that is now part of Greece but was once a Turkish colony. During the Cretan revolt of 1897, his family moved to Greece. He studied law in Athens and in 1907 he went to study under the great philosopher Henri Bergson, who influenced his writing considerably. Berg son's  '�lan vital'-the life force that can conquer matter became his motif in many of his astonishingly beautiful Novels like- Zorba the Greek, Greek Passion (I personally rank it as one the greatest novels of Twentieth century) , Freedom or Death, Last temptation of Christ and his famous autobiography "Report to Greco", from which I have narrated the above incident. In 1945, he married his lifetime companion and Greek intellectual, Helen Kazantzakis. Helen has incidentally written a famous biography about Mahatma Gandhi.

Kazantzakis was a highly religious man but he did not belong to any religion. He imbibed many ideologies like socialism and communism but never lifted any flag. The Greek Orthodox church excommunicated him as he sought his own Christ in his famous Novel "Last Temptation'.  When he died on October, 1957 due to an Asian Flue he contracted in a clinic in Germany, his body was not allowed a burial Greek soil. He came to sleep beside his Grandfather in his birthplace Herakleion in Crete. His epitaph is a summation of his ideals "I hope for Nothing, I fear nothing, I am free".

There is another fascinating incident Kazantzakis mentions at the beginning of his autobiographical novel 'Report to Greco'. It is an imaginary encounter with another great Cretan El Greco, the famous painter. He imagines himself being led up to the summit of 'God-trodden Sinai'. Suddenly he senses that the God with whom he has wrestled all his life is about to appear for a final reckoning. He turns, 'with a shudder'. But

"It was not Jehovah, it was you, grandfather, from the beloved soil of Crete. You stood there before me, a stern nobleman, with your small snow-white goatee, dry compressed lips, your ecstatic glance so filled with flames and wings. And roots of thyme were tangled in your hair. You looked at me, and as you looked at me I felt that this world was a cloud charged with thunderbolts and wind, man's soul a cloud charged with thunderbolts and wings, that God puffs above them, and that salvation does not exist."

Yet Greco's message is not that 'salvation does not exist'. When Kazantzakis beseeches him for a command, Greco answers- "Reach what you can, child."  But this does not satisfy him. He asks again. '"Grandfather give me a more difficult, more Cretan command." ' Now Greco vanishes, but 'a cry was left on Sinai's peak, an upright cry full of command, and the air trembled: "Reach what you cannot!"

'Reach what you cannot' can be motto for every one of us. Unfortunately we fail to transcend and realize our full potential in our daily drudgery for survival. We become slaves to the taverns of hope and cellars of fear in the path of our life. We have to smash boundaries, deny whatever our daily eyes see, rivet our eyes on our mission, ascend without descend and die every moment to give birth to the impossible. That alone gives a human meaning to our superhuman struggle.

Dear Kazantzakis . May we have the courage to liberate ourselves from the manacles of our fear and forge ahead with full steam to "Reach what we cannot"