A Brief History of Portable Literature by Enrique Vila-Matas Page B
Authors: Enrique Vila-Matas
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was stunned by these words and cast around for help; several professors came over and surrounded García Lorca. Someone took advantage of this moment to take a photograph, in which the Granadian poet can be seen, looking like a detainee, between Alberti and Chavás.
But then all the black men and women broke into song. It was quite the scandal, the triumph of insolence as fine art. For a few minutes the gossip reached a crescendo, between songs and fireworks that were set off all around the room. Only then did Dámaso Alonso sense that Shandyism could literally be true. He went over to Rita Malú to ask if she was also part of the portable conspiracy.
“Impossible,” said Rita Malú, “because the Shandies are all angels, and I am not.” He then inquired as to where those angels lived. In
Letters from Mogadishu
, Rita Malú says that she gave the following answer, putting him on the right track: “Men, you men, your testicles are brimming with angels.”
A phrase that puts us precisely on the right spermy track as to the potential energy, the very essence of Shandyism, which didn’t disappear even when Crowley—after leaving the Ateneo—opened the window of his Seville residence and, with a histrionic flourish, dissolved the secret society. It was an energy that didn’t disappear but rather, in its scattering, became more potent; the experience of literature is living proof of this scattering, proof of that which escapes unity for good reason. We shouldn’t be surprised, therefore, that the scattering of the secret society—and with it, of portable literature—would mark the moment when it began to approximate itself and finally began to be genuinely portable.
A SHANDY DRAWS THE MAP OF HIS LIFE
“I travel to know the geography of myself.”
—Journal entry of a madman,
quoted by Marcel Réja in
L’art chez les fous
(Paris, 1907)
Together, all the Shandies make up the face of one imaginary Shandy. The incidents that configured their tragic face can be read in the lines of this portable portrait, the map of their imaginary life. In this face—in all the Shandy faces for that matter—there have been deep lines since youth, lines that will gradually widen until they become emptiness itself. This unique mask—the synthesis of all portable masks—will be found in the tenuous light of a visit to Seville that pays homage to the majesty of time. (Time has ravaged this singular, solitary face, the face of the last Shandy.)
In most of the portraits his eyes are downcast. His right hand is held near to the face. The oldest example I know shows him in 1924, not long after his nervous breakdown beside the enormous towering rock where the concept of eternal recurrence came to Nietzsche. He has dark, wavy hair and a high forehead. He looks young, almost handsome; his eyes downcast—with the gentle, dreamy gaze of the shortsighted—seemingly floating toward the picture’s lower left-hand corner.
In the photograph of him at the party in Vienna, his wavy hair has receded just a little, but no trace of his youth and beauty remain; the face has flattened out, and the upper torso seems not just puffed, but burly, enormous. The hand—clenched into a fist with the thumb between two figures—covers his mouth, the fleshy lower lip. The gaze is opaque, or simply more inward, and there are books behind his head.
In another photograph, taken at the bottom of the sea, he’s standing immersed in thought in the
Bahnhof Zoo
, looking very elderly in a white shirt, tie and trousers over which dangles the chain of his pocket watch; his disheveled figure gives the camera a truculent look.
Finally, in the clear light of a room in Seville, he is consulting the final pages of a volume held open on a table by his left hand; it’s as though he’s looking toward the lower left-hand corner of the photograph; he seems, surprisingly, much younger than three years before and gives the impression of having achieved his goal of
But then all the black men and women broke into song. It was quite the scandal, the triumph of insolence as fine art. For a few minutes the gossip reached a crescendo, between songs and fireworks that were set off all around the room. Only then did Dámaso Alonso sense that Shandyism could literally be true. He went over to Rita Malú to ask if she was also part of the portable conspiracy.
“Impossible,” said Rita Malú, “because the Shandies are all angels, and I am not.” He then inquired as to where those angels lived. In
Letters from Mogadishu
, Rita Malú says that she gave the following answer, putting him on the right track: “Men, you men, your testicles are brimming with angels.”
A phrase that puts us precisely on the right spermy track as to the potential energy, the very essence of Shandyism, which didn’t disappear even when Crowley—after leaving the Ateneo—opened the window of his Seville residence and, with a histrionic flourish, dissolved the secret society. It was an energy that didn’t disappear but rather, in its scattering, became more potent; the experience of literature is living proof of this scattering, proof of that which escapes unity for good reason. We shouldn’t be surprised, therefore, that the scattering of the secret society—and with it, of portable literature—would mark the moment when it began to approximate itself and finally began to be genuinely portable.
A SHANDY DRAWS THE MAP OF HIS LIFE
“I travel to know the geography of myself.”
—Journal entry of a madman,
quoted by Marcel Réja in
L’art chez les fous
(Paris, 1907)
Together, all the Shandies make up the face of one imaginary Shandy. The incidents that configured their tragic face can be read in the lines of this portable portrait, the map of their imaginary life. In this face—in all the Shandy faces for that matter—there have been deep lines since youth, lines that will gradually widen until they become emptiness itself. This unique mask—the synthesis of all portable masks—will be found in the tenuous light of a visit to Seville that pays homage to the majesty of time. (Time has ravaged this singular, solitary face, the face of the last Shandy.)
In most of the portraits his eyes are downcast. His right hand is held near to the face. The oldest example I know shows him in 1924, not long after his nervous breakdown beside the enormous towering rock where the concept of eternal recurrence came to Nietzsche. He has dark, wavy hair and a high forehead. He looks young, almost handsome; his eyes downcast—with the gentle, dreamy gaze of the shortsighted—seemingly floating toward the picture’s lower left-hand corner.
In the photograph of him at the party in Vienna, his wavy hair has receded just a little, but no trace of his youth and beauty remain; the face has flattened out, and the upper torso seems not just puffed, but burly, enormous. The hand—clenched into a fist with the thumb between two figures—covers his mouth, the fleshy lower lip. The gaze is opaque, or simply more inward, and there are books behind his head.
In another photograph, taken at the bottom of the sea, he’s standing immersed in thought in the
Bahnhof Zoo
, looking very elderly in a white shirt, tie and trousers over which dangles the chain of his pocket watch; his disheveled figure gives the camera a truculent look.
Finally, in the clear light of a room in Seville, he is consulting the final pages of a volume held open on a table by his left hand; it’s as though he’s looking toward the lower left-hand corner of the photograph; he seems, surprisingly, much younger than three years before and gives the impression of having achieved his goal of
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