Chapter 34 Aleph

Ah God, even though I'm stuck in a nutshell, I still think I'm the king of infinite space. Hamlet, Act II, Scene II They will teach us that eternity is the immobility of the present, which is what the philosophical schools call the freezing of time; but they or anyone else do not understand this any more than they understand that infinite The same as the solidification of space. Chapter 4, Section 46 of "Leviathan" Beatrice Viterbo suffered a lot of pain before her death, and neither sentimentality nor fear could relieve the pain for a moment. Finally, she passed away on a hot morning in February. On that day, I found that the towering advertising frame in Syntagma Square had been replaced by an unknown brand. Cigarette advertisements; that saddened me because I knew that the wide, unstoppable world had moved away from her, and that the billboard change was the first in an endless series of changes.The world may change, but I am the same, I thought with mournful vanity; I know that my unreasonable admiration for her has sometimes been intolerable to her; No humiliation either.April 30th, I think, is her birthday; it was justifiable, justifiable, perhaps justifiable, on that day to visit her father and her cousin, Carlos Argentino Daneri, at their house in Via Garai avoid.I will wait again in the dark, small reception room full of decorations, and look at her many photos with different backgrounds again.Colored profile of Beatrice Viterbo; photograph of Beatrice wearing a mask at Carnival 1921; Beatrice's first communion; Beatrice and Roberto Alessandri on her wedding day; Beatriz at the Riding Club luncheon shortly after her divorce; Beatriz with Delia San Marco Poser and Carlos Argentino In Quilmes; Beatriz with the pug that Villegas Aedo gave her; frontal and sideways shots of Beatriz, smiling with her chin in her hand... I Instead of bringing a few books for her as an excuse to visit as usual, I finally learned to cut the pages of the rough-edged books first, so as not to be embarrassed to find them intact after a few months.

Beatrice Viterbo died in 1929; every year since then I have visited her house on the 30th of April.I usually arrive at a quarter past seven and sit for more than 20 minutes; I go a little later every year and sit for more time; a heavy rain in 1933 helped me: they had to keep me for dinner.I certainly didn't miss that good start; it was past eight o'clock when I came to her house in 1934, and I brought Santa Fe's macaroons;Thus, in the midst of a sad and somewhat mournful anniversary, I gradually won the confidence of Carlos Argentino Daneri. Beatriz is tall and frail, leaning a little forward; her gait (if oxymorons are allowed) has a graceful awkwardness, a hint of intoxication; Carlos Argentino is ruddy, The body is strong, the hair is gray and white, and the eyebrows are beautiful.He held an unimportant post in an obscure library in the southern suburbs; he was rather imperious, but ineffective; and since not long ago he had stayed at home in the evenings and on holidays.Although two generations later, his Italian accent and the profusion of gestures with which he speaks remain.His mind was alive, excited, changing, but insignificant, full of useless analogies and superfluous scruples.His hands (like Beatrice's) are slender and beautiful.For a few months he was fascinated by Paul Ford, not for his ballads but for his impeccable reputation. "Ford is the prince of French poets," he said vainly. "It will be useless to attack him; your poison-soaked arrows will not hit him."

On April 30, 1941, I added a bottle of domestic brandy to the marzipan.Carlos Argentino tasted the wine, thought it was good, and after a few glasses, he began to defend the modern man. "I think of the modern man in his study," he said with inexplicable excitement, "as if in a castle tower, equipped with telephone, telegraph, record player, wireless telegraph, movie player, slide projector, dictionary, timetable, handbook. ,briefing……" He commented that a person with such conveniences need not travel at all; our 20th century has transformed the allegory of Muhammad and the mountain;

I found the ideas so stupid and the way they were expressed so pretentious that I immediately connected them with literature; I asked him why he didn't write about them.He answered, as expected, that he had done so: for years he had been writing a long poem, never preaching, never boasting, with only the two crutches of industry and solitude, in which those ideas and other equally novel concepts contained In the introduction, commentary, or simply called the preface of a long poem.He first opened the floodgates of imagination; then he chose words and sentences to rhyme.The title of the poem is "Dagan World"; it mainly describes the earth, and of course there is no shortage of embellished digressions and handsome particle particles.

I asked him to read a verse to me, even if it was shorter.He pulled out a drawer of his writing desk, took out a large folder containing a note bearing the name of Juan Chrysostomo Rafinuel's library, and began to recite smugly: I saw the cities of men like the Greeks, Work, bright days, hunger; I do not correct facts nor falsify names, But the voyage I'm describing is a sleepover in a room. "Obviously a very interesting stanza," he judged himself. "Although the first sentence was not appreciated by the purple scholars who accounted for the majority of public opinion, it was applauded by professors, academics, and scholars who studied ancient Greek culture; the second sentence changed from Homer to Hesiod ( as if the front of a new house, which is quite an implicit compliment to the father of teaching poetry), and innovates on the method of summarizing piles that can be traced back to the Bible; the third sentence--Baroque, Decadentism, Purification of Form, and Frenzied Worship?—Contains two symmetrical half-sentences; the fourth line is self-explanatory and bilingual, and anyone who is open-minded and has a sense of humor admires me in this line I don’t need to talk about rhyme and skills. I’m not showing off. The four lines of poems contain three incisive metaphors of the condensed literature of three thousand years: the first refers to “Odyssey”, the second refers to “Work and Days”, and the first The three refer to the immortal little poem left to us by the wonderful pen of the Savoyard..." Once again, I realized that modern art requires the adjustment of laughter, some jokes.Goldoni's words are indeed true!

He also read many verses, praised himself, and made a lot of comments.I'm not impressed; I don't even think they're any worse than the previous section.Diligence, patience, and chance can be seen in Darnery's poems, but not what he himself called talent.I understand that the poet's energy is not expended on poetry, but on trying to find reasons for his poetry to be admired; naturally, this effort enhances the status of his work in his heart, but it can't change the status of others. view.Darnery's recitation was wild; but, except in rare cases, the clumsy rhyme prevented him from transmitting that wildness to his lines.

Only once in my life have I had the opportunity to peruse the 5,000-line twelve-syllable poem of Poliobiam Buwan, Michael Drayton's topographical epic, which records the flora, fauna, hydrology, mountains, military and monasteries of England history; I would venture to say that this substantial but limited work is less tiresome than Carlos Argentino's tome of the same nature.He was ambitious to represent the entire globe in poetry; by 1941 he had settled several hectares in Queensland, more than a kilometer of the Ob River, a gas tank north of Veracruz, the district of Concepcion His main business house, Mariana Cambáceres de Aveal's villa on 11th September, Belgrano, and a hammam not far from Brighton's famous aquarium.He read again the strenuous passages of his poems about Australia; the long, shabby Alexandrian lines lacked the more exciting stuff of the introduction.I might as well transcribe a section:

listen.to the right of the usual stake (Needless to say, of course, coming from the north and northwest direction) There's a boring skeleton—color, white— Gave the sheepfold the appearance of a house of bones. "Two strange usages, nothing short of wonderful," he exclaimed ecstatically. "I've heard you screaming inwardly! I admit it, I admit it. The first is that adjective. Usually, it hits the nail on the head with the inherent and inevitable dullness of pastoral farming. "Gondo Sombra" never dared to point it out so vividly. Secondly, the boring skeleton that is straightforward but piercing through the back of the paper will be regarded as heresy in the eyes of affectation poets, but critics who appreciate the boldness of the way will not. The fate of love. In addition, the whole stanza is of high taste. The second half of the third line chats with the reader lively; it anticipates the reader's eager curiosity, asks a question through the reader's mouth, and then answers it .As for the innovative Tianbai, how do you evaluate it? That vivid new word reminds people of the sky, and the sky is a crucial factor in the Australian landscape. Without that association, the tone of the whole poem will inevitably be too dark, and the reader's heart is deep. will be overwhelmed by unrelieved sorrow, and will be forced to bury his head and sigh."

It was almost midnight when I said goodbye. Two Sundays later Darnery called me, for the first time in his life as far as I can remember.He invites me to meet at four o'clock, "to drink milk at the nearby bar-saloon, the new corner café by the pioneering minds of Sunino and Songri--my landlord, you remember-- Museum; you should see this place." I reluctantly agreed without much interest.We had a hard time finding a table; the "bar salon" was modernized and a little less bad than I thought it would be; patrons at a few adjacent tables talked excitedly about Sunino and Songri being unsparing huge investment.Carlos Argentino pretended to be amazed by the sophistication of the lighting design (he must have seen it before), and said to me solemnly:

"Whether you like it or not, you have to admit that this place can be compared to the most exclusive cafes on Flores Street." Then he read another four or five pages of his poem to me.He made revisions according to the principle of showing off his rhetoric: where it was originally written as azure, it is now changed to Lan Jingjing, Lan Yingying, or even Lan Yingying.He didn't think the word milky white was bad at first; when describing the wool-washing pool, he changed milky white, milky white, milky white... He scolded the critic; then, he kindly referred to the critic as " The kind of gold and silver that does not have its own coins, and does not have steam presses, rolling mills, and sulfuric acid, but can show others where to hide iron."He later denounced preface fetish, which "the genius of geniuses has ridiculed in the elegant preface of Don Quixote." Yet he admits that it would be better to have a prominent preface on the title page of the new book, by An endorsement signed by a person of renown and status.He said he intended to publish the first few chapters of the long poem.I understood the motive of that peculiar telephone invitation; the man wanted me to write a foreword to his pedantic potpourri.My fears were unfounded: Carlos Argentino said with bitter admiration that Álvaro Melian Rafinul was a man of learning who would gladly write a preface to a long poem if I begged him , his extensive and profound reputation is worthy of the name.In order to prevent the most inexcusable blunders, I have to lobby for two unfinished virtues: perfect form and rigorous scientific content, "because in that garden of graceful similes and images the smallest detail conforms strictly to truth."He also said that Beatriz and Álvaro had always gotten along very well.

I wholeheartedly agree.To make it more realistic, I state that I am not on Monday, but talking to Alvaro about it at the usual small dinner on Thursday after the Writers Club meeting. (There is no dinner party, it does take place on Thursday, Carlos Argentino Daneri can verify it from the newspapers, and believe me there is some truth in it.) He said, half guessing, half cleverly, that in mentioning Before going to the prologue, I will introduce the unique concept of the work.We parted; before turning into the Rue Bernardo de Yrigoyen I saw two possibilities before me without prejudice: 1. Talk to Álvaro and tell him about Beatriz. The cousin (I can only mention Beatriz in that euphemism) has written a long poem, which seems to extend the possibility of nagging and confusion without limit; two, do not talk to Álvaro.I soberly foresee that my lazy self will choose the second possibility. Since early Friday morning, the phone has made me uneasy.What annoys me is that the device that used to carry the voice of Beatrice, who can no longer be heard, could now at any moment be the object of the useless, even angry, whining of that disappointed Carlos Argentino Daneri Pass the microphone.Fortunately, he didn't call, but that person first forced me to do something difficult, and then forgot about me completely, which made me very unhappy. The phone was no longer a scary thing, but one day at the end of October, Carlos Argentino called me.He was so anxious that at first I couldn't make out his voice.He said with hatred and anger that those two greedy fellows, Sunino and Songri, were going to demolish his house under the pretext of expanding their lawless cafe. "The home of my ancestors, my home, the deep-rooted home of Garay Street!" He was so angry that he probably forgot to consider the rhyme. It was not difficult for me to share his distress.After forty years, any change was an unbearable symbol of the passage of time; besides, that house was always for me a reflection of Beatrice.I try to explain this very subtle feature; the other side simply doesn't listen.He said that if Sunino and Songri persisted in their ridiculous plan, his lawyer, Dr. Sunny, would sue them for damages based on the facts and pay 100,000 pesos. Sonny's name holds me in awe; his firm in Rue Caseros-Tacquari is well established.I asked him if he had already taken on the case.Darnery said to speak to him that afternoon.He hesitated for a moment, then said in a flat, objective tone, as if confiding something very private, that the house was necessary in order to complete the long poem.Because there's an Aleph in the corner of the basement.An Aleph, he explained, is an all-encompassing point of space. "It's in the basement right under the dining room," he explained, lowering his voice with distress. "It's mine, mine, I found it before I went to school when I was a kid. The stairs in the basement are steep and my uncle won't let me go down, but I heard people say there's something special in the basement. I found out later that it was referring to a big box, but At that time, I thought it was a world. I sneaked a look, stepped on the forbidden stairs, and rolled down. When I opened my eyes again, I saw Aleph." "Aleph?" I said. "That's right, a spot in every part of the world, seen from every angle. I didn't tell anyone what I found, but I went back. A kid doesn't understand that he's got the gift of sculpting poems when he grows up! Sunny Nuo and Songgri don't want to throw me away, no, not a thousand. Dr. Sunny holds the code and will prove that my Aleph is non-negotiable." I'm trying to do some reasoning. "Isn't the basement very dark?" "Truth does not enter into the mind that refuses to understand. Since all parts of the world are included in the Aleph, of course all lamps and all sources of light are also included in it." "I'll go see it right away." I was afraid that he would refuse, so I hung up the phone immediately.A trifle is enough to confirm a series of suspicions that had not been thought of before; I wonder why Carlos Argentino was not known to be mentally ill before then.The Viterbos, and... Beatrice (I used to say that myself) was an exceptionally perceptive woman, ever since she was a child, but she had negligence, distractions, sloppiness, and genuine cruelty that might need to be addressed from a pathological perspective. The point of view is to find out why.I gloated that Carlos Argentino was out of his mind, and we had always hated each other in our hearts. When I got to Garai Street, the maid asked me to wait.The older kid was developing photos in the basement as usual.Next to the empty vase on the useless piano, a large, garishly colored photograph of Beatrice smiles (not so much anachronistic as timeless).No one could see us; in a moment of emotion I approached the picture and said to her: "Beatrice, Beatrice Elena, Beatrice Elena Viterbo, dear Beatrice, Beatrice lost forever, yes I am Borges." After a while, Carlos came.His tone was cold; I understood that he was preoccupied with losing Aleph. "You drink a shot of brandy," he ordered, "and then go down into the cellar. You know, you have to lie on your back. In the dark, be still, let your eyes get used to it. You lie on the brick floor, staring at Up to the nineteenth step of the stairs. I'm leaving, lower the floor door, and you're alone. Maybe a few rats will startle you, it couldn't be easier. You'll see Aleph in a few minutes. The microcosm of alchemists and mystic philosophers, the embodiment of the familiar proverb: A sparrow may be small, but it has all the internal organs!" In the dining room, he said again: "Even if you can't see it, your incompetence obviously doesn't refute...go on; you'll soon be able to talk to all forms of Beatrice." I'm tired of his nonsense, let's go quickly.The basement was not much wider than the stairs, much like a well.I searched for the big box that Carlos Argentino spoke of, but couldn't find it.In one corner were boxes of bottles and some canvas bags.Carlos took a canvas bag, folded it in half, and put it in a specific place. "The pillows aren't good enough," he explained, "but any more than one centimeter and you can't see anything, it's a shame. You just lay flat on the ground and count nineteen stairs." I complied with his ridiculous request; he finally walked away.He closed the floor door carefully; though I later found a gap, the cellar was dark.Suddenly I realized my danger: I drank a glass of poisoned wine and was buried in the ground at the mercy of a madman.Carlos's big words expressed the fear that I would not see the miraculous phenomenon; Carlos had to kill me in order to maintain his delirium, because he didn't know that I was crazy.I felt uncomfortable, but I attributed that to the lying position, not the anesthetic.I closed my eyes and opened them again after a while.I saw Aleph. Now I come to the inexpressible center of my story; where my despair as a writer begins.Any language is an alphabet of symbols, and the use of language must be based on the shared past experience of the interlocutors; my ashamed memory can hardly contain the infinite Aleph, how can I convey it to others?The mystics, when confronted with similar difficulties, made great use of symbols: the Persians, when they wanted to express their divinity, spoke of a bird of birds; Alanus de Insulis spoke of a sphere with The circumference is nowhere; Ezekiel is speaking of an angel with four faces, facing east, west, north, south, simultaneously. (It is not unreasonable for me to recall these incomprehensible parallels, as they relate to the Aleph.) Perhaps Shinto would not forbid me to discover a comparable vision, but the story would be tainted by literature and fiction.Moreover, the central problem is unsolvable: it is impossible to summarize an infinite total, even a part of it.In that marvelous moment, I saw millions of scenes, pleasant or horrific; what surprised me most was that all the scenes were in the same place, without overlapping, without transparency, and that what my eyes saw happened at the same time : What I wrote down has a sequence, because language has a sequence.Anyway, I remember part of it. I saw a small gleaming ball at the bottom of the stairs to the right, so bright that people dare not look at it.At first I thought it was spinning; then I understood that the dazzling spectacle contained in the ball created the illusion of spinning. The diameter of Aleph is about two or three centimeters, but the universe is included in it, and the volume is not reduced proportionally.Every thing (say mirror glass) is an infinite thing because I see it clearly from any angle in the universe.I saw the vast ocean, dawn and dusk, the crowds of America, a silvery spider's web at the center of a black pyramid, a maze of ruins (that was London), and countless eyes approaching like mirrors. Look at me, see all the mirrors in the world, but none of them reflect me, I saw in the backyard of a house in Soler Street, thirty years ago in the front hall of a house in Fry Benton Street I saw clusters of grapes, snow, tobacco leaves, metal veins, steam, raised equatorial deserts and every grain of sand, I saw in Inverness a place I would never forget. I see a woman with beautiful hair, a tall body, breast cancer, a circle of dry men on the pavement where there used to be a tree, I see a manor in Adrog, I see Philemon English translation of the first edition of Pliny's "Natural History" published by the Dutch company, seeing every letter on every page at the same time (I used to wonder when I was a child, how the letters are not confused when a book is closed, why not after a night? disappear), I see the sunset in Querétaro as if reflecting the color of a rose in Bengal, I see my empty bedroom, I see a globe between two mirrors in a room in Alkmaar , reflecting each other, to infinity, I see horses with flying manes galloping at dawn on the beach of the Caspian Sea, I see the delicate skeleton of a hand, I see the survivors of a battle sending postcards, I am in Mir I saw a deck of Spanish playing cards in the shop window in Zapoor, I saw the oblique shadows of ferns on the greenhouse floor, I saw tigers, pistons, bison, tides and armies, I saw all the ants in the world, I saw a The astrolabe of ancient Persia, seeing the obscene, unbelievable but true letter from Beatriz to Carlos Argentino in the desk drawer (the writing on the letter makes me tremble), I see the Chacarita a worshiped monument, I see the horrific remains of what was once beautiful Beatrice, I see the circulation of my own dark red blood, I see the bonds of love and death Change, I see the Aleph, see the world in the Aleph from every angle, see the Aleph again in the world, see the world in the Aleph, and I see my face and guts , seeing your face, I feel dizzy and I cry because I have seen with my own eyes that secret, hypothetical thing whose name is so often misused but which no one looks at: the incomprehensible universe. I feel infinite reverence and infinite sorrow. "You're going crazy looking at it like this," a bored voice teased. "I've opened your eyes, and you've racked your brains for a hundred years and can't figure it out. What a marvelous observatory, Brother Borges!" Carlos Argentino's shoes appear on the top rung.Fumbling in the dark, I stood up and said vaguely: "It's amazing, it's really amazing." My indifference surprised me too.Carlos Argentino pressed eagerly: "Did you see it all, colored one?" That's when I figured out how to get revenge.I thanked Carlos Argentino Daneri graciously, sympathetically but uncomfortably, for the kindness of showing me his basement, and then asked him to use the demolition of his house to leave the harmful big city, which spared Nobody, yes, anybody!I politely but firmly said nothing about Aleph; I hugged him goodbye and reiterated that the country and the tranquility were two good doctors. On the street, on the steps of Constitution Avenue, on the subway, every face seemed familiar to me.I worry about not having a face that will amaze me, that the impression that comes back will never fade.Fortunately, after a few sleepless nights, forgetting worked on me again. Postscript on March 1, 1943: Six months after the demolition of the house on Garay Street, Procusto Publishing House, not intimidated by the length of the long poem, released an anthology of Fragments from Argentina.There is no need to repeat what happened; Carlos Argentino Daneri won the second prize of the National Prize for Literature.The first prize went to Dr. Aita; the third prize went to Dr. Mario Buffanti; incredible, my work, The Gambler's Cards, didn't get a single ticket.Incomprehension and jealousy once again prevailed!I have not seen Darnery for a long time, and the papers say that another volume of his anthology will be published soon.His lucky pen, now unencumbered by the Aleph, has devoted itself to rewriting Dr. Acevedo Díaz's overview into verse. I would like to add two points: one is about the nature of the Aleph; the other is about its name.As you know, Aleph is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet.Using it as the title of my long-winded story doesn't come easily.In Jewish mystical philosophy, this letter refers to the infinite, pure god; it is said that its shape is a person pointing to the sky and the earth, indicating that the world below is a mirror and a map of the world above; in the theory of set theory, it is a symbol of an ultra-infinite number in which the sum is no greater than its component parts.What I want to know is, did Carlos Argentino come up with the name himself, or did he see it in the countless articles revealed to him by his Aleph, and use it to refer to another point where the dots converge Woolen cloth?It seems unbelievable, but I think there is (or was) another Aleph, and I think the Aleph on Garay Street is a fake. I will talk about my reasons. In 1867, Captain Burton served as the British Consul in Brazil; in July 1942, Pedro Enriquez Ureña found a manuscript of Burton in a library in Santos, Brazil, and talked about the The mirror that directed Alexander the Great of Macedon to conquer the East.That mirror finally reflects the entire universe.Burton also mentions other similar utensils - Kai Yoslu's sevenfold cup, a mirror found in a tower by Tariq Benziyad (, 272nd Night), Luciano The mirror through which de Samosata could see the moon (True Stories, Book I, Chapter 26), Jupiter in Petronius's Satyricon, Book I The mirror function of the spear, the wizard Merlin's all-encompassing mirror, "round and hollow, like a glass world" ("Fairy Queen", Book III, Chapter 2, Section 19)-and so said Strange words: "What was said before (aside from its non-existent shortcomings) is nothing more than some optics. Devotees who go to worship at the Al-Amr Mosque in Cairo know well that the universe is in the center of one of the many stone pillars surrounding the central compound. Inside... of course, no one can see, but whoever puts his ear to the pillars soon claims to hear the bustle of the universe..." The mosque was built in the 7th century; The monastery moved here, as Abenjaldun writes: "In a republic established by nomads, any civil engineering required the assistance of foreign craftsmen." Is there an Aleph inside the stone?Do I see it when I see everything?Our memory is perishable; and I myself have distorted and forgotten Beatrice's face under the tragic erosion of time. To Estella Cantor The above is translated from "Aleph"