Pavle Goranović: Confusion in the underworld
| INFINITIVES To have no clue of tomorrow. To be unfamiliar with historic facts, but, again, to know how many Montenegrins died in the Balkans' wars. To quote a minor Latin-American poet. To talk to a one-time criminal about deceptions. And the history of art. To score a goal in an irrelevant match on the southern outskirt's playground To stay alone in the house in the season of city fancy-dress balls. To live in the provinces, and thence experience the pain of the world. To see the splendor of orthodox monasteries. To unselfishly offer to others Sources of personal pathos. To have someone at your side. All of that, and the aggregate of other essential and unessential matters, probably is in no way whatever enough for redemption. CONFUSION IN THE UNDERWORLD Hastily we drain our cold drinks, first we talk about days past, and then we stare - at the floor, at the ceiling, or at someone else's eyes. Little by little, we lose our perception of time. We observe the passersby with looks of accomplices: Mostly, the past seen before is what we see, and even more foreseeable future. The place is filled with smoke and consumed lives. Epochs pass by, big games, big romances. Day dissolves in the spring sun. At one point I felt like saying: When I consider the curious habits of man I confess, my friend, I am puzzled.* I give up, since this might not be a convenient moment And we will be leaving soon - into a similar certainty. ________________________ *These are, in fact, lines from Ezra Pound's Meditatio TEXT UNFOLDING I do not have Agathon's glory! I do not write for the sake of escape but for reconciliation with the world. Typically, for each letter I paid a high price. But have adroitly arranged pieces I live on: the string begins with the book-lined study. From an alchemist I borrowed use of the word melancholia so as to start the search for the ubiquitous. Indeed, that rancor should be set somewhere in the beginning. So, we are witnessing the text unfolding. READING remains, uncommon possibility of surviving. SILENCE At times, and it may take hours, I embark on eliminating any speech. I keep on hiding words, and put myself, their would-be creator, away together with them. Thus I renounce most tremendous goods. My own feelings, experiences and earthly adventures simply, stay unsaid: I am silent. After that incident it happens that for an instant I cannot distinguish the Brahman way of life from the silence in the town library. (It is, certainly, a consequence of my fetishistic attitude toward books.) And each silence, it must be so, possesses different meanings. Then, what consolation my adoration of mystics offers? People say all stories have been told. But, what if every silence has been used up, if there is nothing left to be silent about? ON OBLIVION I speak now. When it becomes apparent at some point, I feel ill at ease. I do not remember dates and events, gestures, maxims, deals... It takes time Typically not reckonable by verse. And again, I often pray for it to exist, to spread all over the imposed bitterness. There, I forgot the Spanish expression for happiness and the equivalent to our word - silence. I keep forgetting spy novels' plots: you may easily plant different twists and turns on me. In a flash, I cannot remember what mint, tea or rice taste like. I keep forgetting how many times I have dreamt insects walking over my bedclothes. (Could it be that I place fewer and fewer things into my memory?) That was how I even forgot the way Otto Weininger had chosen to overcome life. The existence of oblivion, however, makes daily continuance easier. With such oblivion, I meet requirements for staying in reality; through recollection, already, I recreate poetry. From one case to another - I rejoice in oblivion. SŘREN KIERKEGAARD'S DIZZINESS IV Life ahead of me goes by suffering. In fact, the lives of all of us are echoes of particular sufferings. If we are unaware, we get over them more easily; we do not touch the sorrow even while passing by, which might be worth admiring. On this earth, I can be trained only for trembling. I was flung into life I have been living absent-mindedly. Cannot define myself, the others - do not want to, it would not be decent. I am crucified between possible ends. I wonder, however, how I still manage to supply myself with days. Being, consequently, I cannot define. Moreover, to others I cannot guarantee that it takes place now and here. Staying in this world resembles any other exile, and always takes intense loneliness along. I can feel it, when I start taking credit for wrapped phrases, and when I keep letting myself into raising many questions. As all good beginners do, after all. V Cold is this life, as the streets of Copenhagen. Solitude, apparently the key feature of existence, is being nurtured everywhere. I find small comfort in asking myself, for all the wasted time and under the guise of other names, what truth was revealed that ominous (or promising) night, when Socrates drank off poison from the goblet. As of that ancient Greek night, I guess, there is little doubt about the freedom of choice. Now, even these writings of mine become different owing to recollection of the incident. My talk, hopefully, cannot ever be ad se ipsum. All my sentences are last wills. I am telling you this as a natural Hellene, an individual alienated from the present. Once I convey my messages from the will to you, feel free to judge - how skillfully I have managed to disguise myself and record occurrences. And if I have repeated myself, I have done it with success, indeed, since in repetition I have recognized the only purpose of my writing. If I have quoted, I have toured all the necessary worlds. I have taken the plunge of living - that is my greatest sin. SIMULATING AN ACCOMPLICE Here we go: I can imagine streets you unsteadily walked along, practice steps and recognize odors of rooms, clothes and household furniture. The insomnia I already possess, and have long since traveled through labyrinths. With a little help from imagination, I could re-enact events from my childhood and youth. (The hardest would be, indeed, the dark period.) Fictions are, anyway, incomparably more reliable than facts. I would study a language, practice the accent. Would learn all kinds of things about wars, religions, the most about books, and about love and tigers - somewhat. I would cope somehow even with too inquisitive people, but would always pick only one to speak to. While they would be reading me, people would know it is their lives they are reading about. Time and space, my states of mind - would not matter much. Of course, I would lay claim to your verse, too; others would say it is in the manner of your games with doubles. All in all, I would honorably play the accomplice's role. THE LAST SONNET FOR LAURA I must not swear any longer in future. Now, after all, your suffering is my delight, all the more so when I know that you have been long waiting for my look, too unassuming one; You are, at any rate, used to the image of continuation within an eternal circle. I am not late to realize: I am really worthy of the dream I fashioned for myself, by singing about your beauty. Eventually, even the last thought died with you - and I separated the worlds. Translated by: Uroš Zeković |
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