{"id":459,"date":"2020-10-26T07:45:15","date_gmt":"2020-10-26T06:45:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sullivan.ba\/?p=459"},"modified":"2020-10-28T06:47:18","modified_gmt":"2020-10-28T05:47:18","slug":"the-secret-language-of-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sullivan.ba\/?p=459","title":{"rendered":"The Secret Language of Love"},"content":{"rendered":"

Albus McInerney edits a literary magazine.<\/em><\/p>\n

The latest editorial meeting began in somewhat sombre mood \u2013 understandably, of course, with the pandemic and climate change and problematic politics across the globe. Rami had just given a lecture on the poetry of Octavio Paz, however, which turned out to be an effective if unlikely antidote to current woes.<\/p>\n

\u2018It\u2019s not as though turbulence is new,\u2019 Rami said. \u2018The sixties were even more fraught, and what people remember are miniskirts and the Beatles.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018And the lesson is?\u2019 Kim asked.<\/p>\n

\u2018Maybe the lesson is that we should be wary of learning lessons,\u2019 Rami said.<\/p>\n

\u2018What do you mean?\u2019 Patrice\u2019s tone bordered on tetchy. From his perch in Hongkong, he is preoccupied with ominous undercurrents in the Chinese body politic.<\/p>\n

\u2018The variables are infinite,\u2019 Rami said. \u2018History is unpredictable. Mankind is \u201cthe personification of indeterminism\u201d. I think Paz was right about that.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018He had certainly seen a thing or two,\u2019 I noted. \u2018Spain during the Civil War, Mexico in \u201968.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018He was also good on climate change,\u2019 Rami said, \u2018which was unusual for his time. And when he accepted his Nobel Prize he spoke about how the free market pollutes souls as well as ecosystems. He warned that love and friendship \u2013 and people \u2013 are being bought and sold like consumer products.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Oh, the free market!\u2019 Patrice said very gloomily. I thought he was going to add something, but he didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\u2018The point is,\u2019 Rami said, \u2018people can buck the trend. Eras of upheaval, as Paz and others have noted, produce great art, great poetry. Maybe the present age will witness a cultural renaissance.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Oh, Rami!\u2019 Kim said with considerable feeling. \u2018That stretches optimism further than it ought to be stretched!\u2019 Being about to vote in Illinois, Kim is acutely attuned to the momentous course setting now underway in the United States.<\/p>\n

\u2018Didn\u2019t Paz and the other Latin Americans opt out a little, though?\u2019 Dimitri asked. \u2018Magical realism and such are surely a kind of retreat from everyday experience?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018A retreat to things that matter,\u2019 Rami said. \u2018He believed that reconnecting with the world is the lifelong pursuit of all human beings, after expulsion from the womb.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018That\u2019s not going to fix the present state of things,\u2019 Patrice grumbled.<\/p>\n

\u2018It is and it isn\u2019t, as Paz might have put it,\u2019 Rami said. \u2018Art changes nothing and it changes everything. It changes how we understand what happens, even if it doesn\u2019t change what happens.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Tus dedos de agua mojan mi frente, \/ tus dedos de llama queman mis ojos, \/ tus dedos de aire abren los parpados del tiempo<\/em>,\u2019 I said. The lines were from long ago, when I first encountered Octavio Paz\u2019s wistful world of Iberian melancholy. \u2018The lover\u2019s fingertips,\u2019 I said, \u2018are imagined as water and fire and air \u2013 the elements of reality disarticulated and then assembled once again.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Oh dear, but they\u2019re still fingertips,\u2019 Kim said.<\/p>\n

\u2018Esta hora tiene la forma de una pausa \/ La pausa tiene tu forma \/ Tu tienes la forma de una fuente \/ No de agua sino de tiempo<\/em>,\u2019 I quoted some more Paz, maybe just because I could.<\/p>\n

\u2018Enlighten me,\u2019 Dimitri said.<\/p>\n

\u2018The moment is a pause that assumes the shape of the lover, which in turn is a fountain \u2013 a fountain of time.\u2019<\/p>\n

Even as I spoke, I grasped the fragility of words in the face of reality, but Rami said, \u2018And the man who wrote that was a diplomat. His world was tumultuous, with duelling superpowers and civil unrest at every turn, but he believed, quite rightly, that time spent on metaphysical conundrums is well spent.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018It isn\u2019t absolutely satisfactory, though.\u2019 Patrice spoke with a kind of gentle resignation. \u2018I\u2019m with Dimitri. There\u2019s a kind of retreat here \u2013 a retreat into wishful thinking.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018But perhaps it\u2019s enough,\u2019 Rami said. \u2018Paz argued that poems are translated into new sensibilities as well as new languages. Poetry is the secret language that allows us to communicate across the things that divide us \u2013 culture, ideology, physical distance. It doesn\u2019t solve problems. It\u2019s better than that, it enables us to live; it enables us to love.\u2019<\/p>\n

This, I felt, was a bracing conclusion, but I remembered another line by Paz. \u2018And in the end,\u2019 I said, \u2018desembocamos al silencio.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018Albus!\u2019 Kim said, \u2018You know very well that none of us<\/em> will ever be silent!\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018That\u2019s true,\u2019 Dimitri said.<\/p>\n

\u2018It is,\u2019 Patrice agreed. \u2018And when you look at it that way, it does seem less depressing.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Albus McInerney edits a literary magazine. The latest editorial meeting began in somewhat sombre mood \u2013 understandably, of course, with the pandemic and climate change and problematic politics across the globe. Rami had just given a lecture on the poetry of Octavio Paz, however, which turned out to be an effective if unlikely antidote to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":374,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[118,117],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/sullivan.ba\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/cropped-banner-K1-1.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sullivan.ba\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sullivan.ba\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sullivan.ba\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sullivan.ba\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sullivan.ba\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=459"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/sullivan.ba\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":463,"href":"http:\/\/sullivan.ba\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459\/revisions\/463"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sullivan.ba\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sullivan.ba\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sullivan.ba\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sullivan.ba\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}