Refoto

 

Darkness at Dawn

Un pueblito oscuro

Especializándome en fotos oscuras.  Hay todavía terreno para trabajar, en la oscuridad.

—oOo—

Retropost #656 (16 de diciembre de 2005): Oscuros discursos

Veo que en un artículo de Las Provincias aparecido el 12 de agosto, "Discursos oscuros", un tal R. Marí me menciona en estos términos:

"No sabe uno a estas alturas qué decir sobre los discursos oscuros. Los políticos utilizan a veces una retórica insoportable: muchas palabras, pocass ideas. Vacuidad que revela la pobreza del pensamiento y las falsedades del discurso.
En cuanto a los intelectuales... Siguen resultándome extrañamente obscenos párrafos como estos: "Sus libros van sobre ese fenómeno, las distorsiones debidas al conocimiento retrospectivo (que la retrospección proporciona conocimiento está claro, éstos parten de ahí y le buscan las pegas a ese conocimiento). Quizá también podríamos llamarlo la falacia narrativa, porque es un fenómeno inherente a la representación narrativa de los acontecimientos" (José Ángel García Landa)."

Conclusión de Marí:

"Los intelectuales del 98 (salvo Azorín) tampoco captaron la relevancia del cine como el gran acontecimiento cultural del siglo XX. Se puede ser inteligente y arcaico a la vez. Profundo y sin olfato. Visionario y miope."

No sé si dejarlo tal cual, o (con un bostezo) señalar que es de mala educación, y peor baba, descontextualizar el discurso de uno para intentar ponerlo en la picota, no sé por qué razón, como si yo me dedicara a proferir sandeces sin sentido por ahí. Yo también podría ahora citar un sesudo artículo científico sobre la hemoglobina, pongamos, como ejemplo del insoportable tecnicismo de algunos escritores en revistas especializadas. Pero no soy tan vurro, Marí. Y si querías pasajes oscuros, los tengo mucho más lucidos, pero claro, si no llegas ni a éste, ya te vale. Por lo menos, eso sí, para hacerme pasar mejor por memo, podías coger una frase entera, pues en tu cita (sacada del blog de Arcadi Espada) no se sabe a quién se refiere "sus", ni "ese fenómeno", ni "éstos". Así cualquiera, ¿eh? --cortándome las frases por la mitad. ¿No te das cuenta de que se te ve el dedo en la balanza, tramposo? Como si yo cito de tu artículo la frase "pocass ideas. Vacuidad que revela la pobreza", y lo presento como si fuese un resumen adecuado de lo que dices. Pues sabes qué te digo, que lo voy a hacer. Porque en este caso lo es.


(Carta enviada hoy a Las Provincias. No deja de tener cierta justicia poética que si hubiese entendido algo del artículo que cita, el autor no diría las tonterías que dice sobre los intelectuales del 98 y su falta de perspicacia ante la importancia futura del cine. R. Marí sabe que Azorín tenía olfato, y sin duda también lo hubiera sabido en 1898. Una vez visto, todos listos).

(Me contesta  R. M. al correo, muy atentamente por cierto, asegurándome que a pesar de haberse referido en esos términos a lo que yo escribía, no era su intención ofenderme, ni escribía él con la conciencia de que le podría sentar mal a alguien lo que ponía; que sólo buscaba poner un ejemplo de lenguaje incomprensible y (vaya) dio con el mío escribiendo a toda prisa. Pues nada, disculpado, y qué se le va a hacer. Me disculpo yo también por mi indignación, y quedamos en que pelillos a la mar -- Ah, y gracias por la respuesta, normalmente no se tiene la elegancia de contestar educadamente a un cañoneo verbal, aunque sea defensivo).

Retroposts

—oOo—

Two Poems of Darkness

I

A Nocturnal upon Saint Lucy's Day,
Being the Shortest Day

John Donne

'Tis the year's midnight and it is the day's,
Lucy's, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks;
    The sun is spent, and now his flasks
    Send forth light squibs, no constant rays.
        The world's whole sap is sunk;
The general balm th'hydroptic earth hath drunk,
Whither, as to the bed's feet, life is shrunk,
Dead and interred; yet all these seem to laugh,
Compared with me, who am their epitaph.

Study me, then, you who shall lovers be
At the next world, that is, at the next spring;
    For I am every dead thing
    In whom love wrought new alchemy.
         For his art did express
A quintessence even from nothingness,
From dull privations and lean emptiness.
He ruined me, and I am re-begot
Of absence, darkness, death: things which are not.

All others from all things draw all that's good,
Life, soul, form, spirit, whence they being have;
    I, by love's limbeck, am the grave
    Of all that's nothing. Oft a flood
        Have we two wept, and so
Drowned the whole world, us two; oft did we grow
To be two chaoses when we did show
Care to aught else; and often absences
Withdrew our souls, and made us carcasses.

But I am by her death (which word wrongs her)
Of the first nothing the elixir grown;
    Were I a man, that I were one
    I needs must know; I should prefer,
        If I were any beast,
Some ends, some means; yea plants, yea stones detest
And love. All, all some properties invest.
If I an ordinary nothing were,
As shadow, a light and body must be here.

But I am none; nor will my sun renew.
You lovers, for whose sake the lesser sun
    At this time to the Goat is run
    To fetch new lust and give it you
        Enjoy your summer all.
Since she enjoys her long night's festival,
Let me prepare towards her, and let me call
This hour her vigil and her eve, since this
Both the year's and the day's deep midnight is.

                 

II

Darkness

Lord Byron

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watchfires—and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings—the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consum'd,
And men were gather'd round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's face;
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch:
A fearful hope was all the world contain'd;
Forests were set on fire—but hour by hour
They fell and faded—and the crackling trunks
Extinguish'd with a crash—and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smil'd;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and look'd up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnash'd their teeth and howl'd: the wild birds shriek'd
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl'd
And twin'd themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless—they were slain for food.
And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again: a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;
All earth was but one thought—and that was death
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails—men
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meagre by the meagre were devour'd,
Even dogs assail'd their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famish'd men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lur'd their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan,
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answer'd not with a caress—he died.
The crowd was famish'd by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,
And they were enemies: they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place
Where had been heap'd a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage; they rak'd up,
And shivering scrap'd with their cold skeleton hands
The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld
Each other's aspects—saw, and shriek'd, and died—
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend. The world was void,
The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless—
A lump of death—a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirr'd within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp'd
They slept on the abyss without a surge—
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The moon, their mistress, had expir'd before;
The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them—She was the Universe.

 

 

 

—oOo—

The Road, and Company