Counterparts

Most of us are comfortable with the notion of failure (epitomized perhaps by the maxim "Fail better" from this Irishman); the only matter left to define is failure itself. We accept failure at a certain age because our body signals that it can no longer improve, that actions once easy and insouciant have now become concerning and treacherous. The lightness of youth seems long gone. In its place come for the privileged among us more cerebral tasks and, indeed, more responsibilities. The mind develops, strengthens, maybe even never ceases to peak, but the body descends into simpler routines, longer rest and more fervent adherence to medical advice. Failure can also be perceived as relative, an unfortunate byproduct of a world in which we constantly wonder about the other side and its emerald hills. Which brings us to this nasty, brutish, and short tale.  

Our protagonist acts anonymously most of the story, but is eventually revealed as a Dubliner by the name of Farrington. Farrington is a large and violent man in frame and temperament. The aspirations of his youth, while unabandoned, seem distant although their aspirer is not old. His elbows twitch atop a desk he detests beneath the office of a man he hates even more, and all that he seeks in his mind has as little to do with his reality as we are permitted to imagine it. Since this is a tale of petty failure the details of the story are appropriately frivolous, yet a few deserve mention. As in this famous story Farrington labors as a scrivener, spending his time copying out the words and ideas of others without the slightest possible amendment of his own other than proper spelling. Such work may be vapid, but it also suggests living in the shadows of those who have succeeded. They have succeeded because their words mean action; and action signifies movement in life, change, improvement, the approbation of others, their consent and, finally, authority over them and power. It would hardly be exaggeration to claim that all these qualities are lacking in Farrington's professional life. What we learn, however, is that this effeteness extends into all aspects of his ineluctable modality.

As we begin our brief glimpse into what must be a daily plight, we find Farrington summoned to the office by Mr. Alleyne, his boss. Alleyne is a typical boss in the sense that he offers little to support his statements other than his mandarin authority. He is slight, bald, and redolent of something distinct yet unpleasant. Alleyne has nothing nice to say to our man: according to Alleyne, Farrington lunches too long, copies poorly, shirks the menial tasks he accrues, resorts to that most despicable habit of quoting others as sources of information (a great way to offend your boss), and in general evinces little interest in his work or the well-being of the firm that so graciously hired him. Upon hearing this tirade, Farrington's thoughts are opened to our inspection:

Mr. Alleyne bent his head again upon his pile of papers. The man stared fixedly at the polished skull which directed the affairs of Crosbie & Alleyne, gauging its fragility. A spasm of rage gripped his throat for a few moments and then passed, leaving after it a sharp sensation of thirst. The man recognised the sensation and felt that he must have a good night's drinking. The middle of the month was passed and, if he could get the copy done in time, Mr. Alleyne might give him an order on the cashier. He stood still, gazing fixedly at the head upon the pile of papers. Suddenly Mr. Alleyne began to upset all the papers, searching for something. Then, as if he had been unaware of the man's presence till that moment, he shot up his head again, saying: 'Eh? Are you going to stand there all day? Upon my word, Farrington, you take things easy!' 'I was waiting to see...' 'Very good, you needn't wait to see. Go downstairs and do your work.' The man walked heavily towards the door and, as he went out of the room, he heard Mr. Alleyne cry after him that if the contract was not copied by evening Mr. Crosbie would hear of the matter.

A paterfamilias – Farrington is the resentful father of five – should not, in a logic-fitted world, yearn to go boozing with the boys; nor should he, in that same world, pawn off a watch chain to afford such debauchery. Were the author himself not Irish, he might be accused of cheap stereotyping (there is no expensive variant). But Joyce knows the kind he describes because Farrington contains a lot of him, and even more of more common men. That is to say, perhaps it is indeed natural for a man burdened by insatiable accountability to want to return to lighter days, evenings that lasted as long as one's thirst, dreams that extended those evenings down rich and glorious paths. But what Farrington undertakes later that evening with a bacchanalian crew, and then at home with his children, makes us lose all hope for his redemption.

Had the story been entitled "Farrington," "The Family Father," or "The Long Night after the Long Day," we might have concluded our analysis at the aforementioned points; failure, after all, has been one of literature's most enduring topics because, over time, tragedy and failure slip into synonymity. Yet "Counterparts" is as curious a headline as Farrington's actions are almost egregiously predictable. It has been proposed that the foil to our surly scribe is none other than his young son, who has little of his father so far, trapped in some narrow, infantile bliss that permits many to survive their childhoods. One might just as rationally argue for the ostensible pleasures gained by Alleyne as he hosts a female guest in his office, and then Farrington when he encounters a woman from London during his pub crawl. Another duo, however, can be taken into consideration, one of whom is certainly Farrington and the other of whom may well have been Farrington in an idealized future whose energy comes purely from the past. The only question is to what degree they have decided to co-exist in this plain and awful present.   

Rilke, "Eva"

A variant of a sonnet ("Eve") by this Austrian poet.  You can read the original here.

She stands beside Cathedral step,                 
Reflected in rose window's glare;           
In apple pose, an apple's stare,                      
Guiltless and guilty, as time wept.                 

She stands beside the child she bore,                                
Since she in love slipped from the ring                                
Immortal, for her fight to sing
And like young year through earth to soar.

O in this land she would have stayed              
And lingered on in unity,                                  
In empathy with beasts that roamed.  

But as she found Man's mind was made,                          
She went with him their death to seek,
And God had she yet hardly known.

Blok, "Тебе, Тебе, с иного света"

To Alexandra on her birthday a work ("O You, You of another world) by the greatest Russian poet of the twentieth century.  You can read the original here.                                   

O You, You of another world, 
My Friend, my Angel, and my Law!
Forgive this poet, mad, absurd,
To you again he will not crawl.

Insane and sad was I, it seems,     
Hard fate I sought if but to urge;
Yet I, hurt by some golden dreams,
Will in my grave with secrets merge.

From night you shined on through to me,
From penury you led me forth;
Into the dale your eyes did flee, 
And took my Muse as destined course.

And in my grave, it's birds I hear:
The spring awaits; the earth is wet.
That girlish golden tress so near 
Reminds me of my languid bet.

Der Kaufmann

A very short story ("The Merchant") by this German-language writer. You can read the original here.

It is possible that some will sympathize with my plight, yet such is not my feeling. My small business so fills me with worry and concern that my temples and forehead ache. I do not even have the satisfaction of believing that this will improve, for my business is truly small. For hours in advance I am obliged to meet certain stipulations, possess a butler's memory, avoid terrible mistakes, and in one season calculate the fashions and tastes of the subsequent season. These are not, mind you, the tastes that would predominate among people like me, but among those inaccessible populations of the countryside.  

My money is in the possession of strangers; I might not know the true state of their financial affairs; and I cannot know the misfortune which could befall these people. How then could I defend them from it! Perhaps they have all become spendthrifts, regaling themselves at a party in a beer garden, whilst others, on their way to absconding to America, stop in for a short time.

Every workday evening now, when my shop is locked up, before my eyes flash hours during which I will not be able to see to my business's continuous demands. The very next morning, however, this anticipatory excitement dissipates like the receding tide. Yet it does not die out entirely and, without explicit purpose, takes part of me along with it.  

And yet such a mood does me no good. As my face and my hands are dirty and sweaty and my clothes stained and dusty, as my work cap sits on my head and my boots are scratched up by crate nails, I can only go home. And home I go as if atop a wave, the fingers of both hands clacking, and I glide on the hairy heads of children coming my way.

Yet the way home is short. I am almost immediately in my building. I open the elevator door and step inside.

Now I see suddenly that I am alone. Others forced to take the stairs grow somewhat tired and have to wait, their lungs pumping rapidly, until someone opens an apartment door for them. It is these people who have cause for annoyance and impatience. They come now into the hallway, where they hang up their hats, and only once they have crossed through their own glass doors and reached their own rooms are they truly alone.

I, however, am immediately alone here in the elevator. Bracing myself on my knees, I peer at the narrow mirror. As the elevator begins to lift itself upwards, I say:

"Be still, step back! Do you wish to go into the shadow of the trees, behind the window drapes, into the bower?"

I speak through my teeth and the landings glide by the frosted glass panes like tumbling water.

"Fly away. Your wings, which I have never seen, might take you to some provincial valley or to Paris, if it is thither that you so desire.

"Yet enjoy the vista from your windows as, from all three streets, the processions emerge. None will yield or give way to the others; all three will intersect and interweave; and, as you glimpse their final rows separating, so again shall you see empty space. Wave with your towels, be appalled, be touched, admire and laud the beautiful lady coming by.

"Go over the stream on those wooden bridges, nod to the bathing children, and revel in the hurrah of the thousand sailors on the distant ironclad.

"Pursue only the inconspicuous man, and once you have shoved him into a gateway, rob him, and then look back, each of you with your hands in your pockets, and behold how he sadly resumes his path into the alley on the left. 

"Spread atop their horses, the mounted police restrain the beasts and drive you back. Let those who would, I know, venture down empty alleys make those alleys unlucky. May they, I say, ride off slowly over the street corners and fly over the squares."     

Now I have to get out, leave the elevator, and ring the doorbell, and the girl opens the doors as I greet her.

Antiguas literaturas germánicas

Given the ingenuity and thoroughness of Northern European philologists, it seems odd that anyone might consider a Spanish study of ancient Germanic texts to be a relevant groundswell of information – but then again not every book is authored by this Argentine. The imagination and style necessary for great fiction comprise the acme of literary artistic talent. So it is a great pleasure when such a mind does us the favor of expressing his or her views on the content and history of texts often reserved for more obscure interpreters. If you are familiar with Borges’s oeuvre, you are aware that his learning is not only breathtaking, it is systematic, a fortress built on a million precisely positioned bricks that render the whole formidable, impenetrable and, with the exception of this poet, unparalleled in the history of modern letters. To create a story, or poem, or essay, one of these bricks is taken and examined as closely as one can without letting it slip into the woeful chasm of triviality. This one brick then reminds its builder of other bricks, some of which may sit next to the one he is examining, others of which might be located on the farthest end of his battlements. But only one base is required to build his structures, one beach-found pebble, one flickering amidst the “heaventree of stars” (a metaphor proposed in this novel) to re-imagine an entire realm of gods, of giants, of dwarfs, and their interaction with us mere humans. And the brick for this book is a runic drawing of something that terrified generations of coastal dwellers, a Viking longship.

We begin with ancient Britain and conclude with ancient Germany, but in between we find the richest of all long-gone Germanic traditions: the Scandinavian. Students of that beautiful incantation, Old Norse, will not only be quick to point out that modern Icelandic is this tongue’s direct and close descendant, they will also invoke the primacy of this tradition as the most remarkable in Europe at the time. Now, as much as I am captivated by Norse mythology and most things Nordic, we must be fair in stating that Greek and Latin mythology, reinforced by the Christian credos that were spreading at the time of the composition of some of these epics, were primary sources for their structure, and to a lesser degree, their content. This notwithstanding, Borges reiterates one facet of this literary development that makes it unique:

In Iceland, the new Christian faith was not hostile to the old. In contrast to what occurred in Norway, Sweden, Germany, England, and Denmark, conversions here were bloodless. Those Norwegians who had settled in Iceland displayed the religious indifference of aristocrats; their descendants looked back upon the pagan faith with nostalgia, just like other old things lost over time. What happened to Germanic mythology was exactly what had happened earlier to the myths of the Greeks: no one believed in them anymore, but a firm knowledge of their stories was indispensable for learned persons.

There are other reasons for the survival of Norse traditions that in some countries have now been transformed into modern paganism, and no reason is more significant than the gods’ mortality. You will have heard about Ragnarök (Götterdämmerung in the Wagnerian cycle), which is traditionally rendered as “twilight of the Gods,” a German mistranslation akin to what Herder did with ellerkonge. Scholars of Scandinavian languages will tell you, however, that it really means the “fate of those who reign,” which could be gods, or lords, or run-of-the-Althing despots. It is this eschatological feature that separates the Norse tradition from the Greek and Latin, and makes it more palatable to the martyrdom of Christianity in which a God, only one in this case, knows his end in his beginning.

That Antiguas literaturas germánicas is primarily designed as a survey for Spanish speakers of a hitherto little-researched field for Latin Americans is a correct supposition. But Borges could not possibly have written something simply for pragmatic purposes.  We must consider, therefore, the investigation’s poetic value, and most relevant to his works are the kennings, the famed Scandinavian metaphors with which Borges is more than a little enamored, and which he lists with relish in the middle of his work. Among many others, he includes: “the battle ice,” “the wrath stick,” “the helmets’ fire,” “the helmets’ rodent,” “the blood branch,” “the wolf of wounds” (for “sword”); “the whale roof,” “the swan land,” “the waves’ path,” “the Viking field,” “the gulls’ meadow,” “the whale path,” “the islands’ chain” (for “sea”); and “the ravens’ delight,” “the raven beak’s reddener,” “the eagle gladdener,” “the helmet tree,” “the sword tree,” and “the swords’ dyer” (for “warrior”). Here was an endless font of poetry for a bilingual English-Spanish speaker who many feel wrote with a surfeit of adjectives placed before nouns.  Borges, his vision fading, slowly became so taken by these sagas that he began to believe they had all actually happened. He even confessed in an interview that, while he might not be a Christian in the strict sense of the word, he “believed in the Norse gods,” a response that did not surprise the interviewer and should not surprise us. The advent of Christianity did change something in the tone of these sagas. As Borges laments:

The saga, like all novelistic works, is nourished on the richness and complexity of its characters. The new faith resulted in banning this disinterested contemplation and shoved it out in favor of a dualistic world of virtues and vices, of punishments for some and rewards for others …. From these awful syntactical equivalences …. it should be noted that the movement from a ‘storm of arrows’ [for ‘battle’] to a ‘firebrand of a storm of arrows’ comprises the degeneration of the poetry of Iceland.

Thus the violent and mystic images of the Vikings, above all for kinship and military terms, were replaced by the black-and-white simplicity of good versus evil. But much more than that, a whole world was submerged beneath frozen waters for the good of mankind, which had the remarkable foresight not to forget about it. Perhaps, for this reason, you will be stunned at the coherence of such an endeavor, of the revivification of the invaders, their hymns and dirges, their macabre prophecies and sayings. And in the end, through several centuries of asides and esoteric learning, we picture quite clearly Bede, Snorri Sturluson, and Otfried of Weissenburg under one bright Northern sky. That is, a “cloud house and the sister of the moon.”