Retropost #35: 19 de noviembre de 2004

19 de noviembre

Hoy he recibido las separatas del artículo sobre Nabokov, "The Poetics of Subliminal Awareness" que me ha publicado el European Journal of English Studies, mi mayor pica en Flandes hasta la fecha (si bien el publisher ya no es Swets&Zeitlinger sino Routledge). ¿Alguien me da la enhorabuena? "Tant d'heures enfuies / au mirage des mots" que decía la Gréco. Y los destellos de luz en un ojo, casi imperceptibles en medio de tanto papel. No me resisto a recomendar este fragmento de Shakespeare como comentario adicional:

Why! all delights are vain, but that most vain,

Which with pain purchas'd doth inherit pain:

As, painfully to pore upon a book

To seek the light of truth; while truth the while

Doth falsely blind the eyesight of his look:

Light seeking light doth light of light beguile:

So, ere you find where light in darkness lies,

Your light grows dark by losing of your eyes.

Study me how to please the eye indeed,

By fixing it upon a fairer eye,

Who dazzling so, that eye shall be his heed,

And give him light that it was blinded by.

Study is like the heaven's glorious sun,

That will not be deep-search'd with saucy looks;

Small have continual plodders ever won,

Save base authority from others' books.

These earthly godfathers of heaven's lights,

That give a name to every fixed star,

Have no more profit of their shining nights

Than those that walk and wot not what they are.

Too much to know is to know nought but fame;

And every godfather can give a name.

En un rato de aburrimiento en un examen, termino de leer el libro sobre el estilo de Middleton Murry, me dedico a hacer dibujos y compongo (o ensamblo non ex nihilo) este poema, al que nombro, como su godfather,

Keats's Living Hand

 

"This living hand, now warm and capable

Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold

And in the icy silence of the tomb,

So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights

That thou would wish thine own heart dry of blood

So in my veins red life might stream again--"

--No, better say you've wished your own heart dry of blood,

So in her veins red life might stream for you,

And you be conscience-calm'd--Impatient (like the wind)

You turn to share the wish, with whom but her,

But in those eyes unmovéd, cold like holograms,

You see no warmth--you grasp the wind, the story's known,

It's often been rehearsed, unhappy shadow;

Follow still your fair sun, till both at once do fade,

The sun unmovéd, cold, the shadow (now a shade)

Forever telling what is told, still grasping out,

But who will shake hands with the dead.

--And yet that hand, this living hand

--see here it is--

I hold it towards you.

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