I was saying, the four beds at the end of the infirmary held an alchemist, a poet, a geometer, and an economist.
Scipio
: I remember seeing these characters.
Berganza
: Anyway, one afternoon last summer, with the shutters closed and me lolling under one of their beds, the poet started to complain piteously about his fortune, and when the geometer asked him what the matter was, said it was his bad luck.
“Don’t I have a reason to complain?” he went on. “After keeping to the rule Horace laid down in his Arse Poetica, not to publish anything that hasn’t spent ten years in a drawer, I now have one twenty years in preparation and a dozen in editing, great in subject, admirable and new in invention, stately in meter, entertaining in its episodes, the stanza breaks marvelous—all because the beginning echoes the middle and the end in a way that makes the poem high-flown, sonorous, heroic, tasteful, and substantial. And yet, despite all this, I can’t find a prince to dedicate it to! A prince I say, intelligent, liberal, and generous. What a miserable and depraved age ours is!”
“What’s it about?” asked the alchemist.
“It deals with everything that Archbishop Turpín didn’t say about King Arthur of England, with a continuation of the story about the quest for the Holy Grail. It’s in heroic verse, part in octaves and part in free verse, but all dactylic—that is, in dactylic proper nouns, and without a single verb.”
“Me,” answered the alchemist, “I understand little of poetry, so I won’t know how to judge the misfortune you complain of, save that, were it greater, it still wouldn’tequal mine. If only I had the proper instruments, or a prince to support me with the necessities required by alchemy, I’d be lousy with gold, with more riches than Midas, than Crassus or Croesus.”
“Mr. Alchemist,” asked the geometer, “has your Excellency ever experimented with transmuting base metals into silver?”
“I …” the alchemist began, “I haven’t done it yet, but really, I know that it can be done, and inside two months I’ll have the philosopher’s stone. With that, I can produce silver and gold even from rocks.”
“Your Excellencies have exaggerated your woes,” said the geometer, “because in the end, at least one of you has a book to dedicate, and the other is on the point of discovering the philosopher’s stone.
“But what about my problem, which is so singular that I have nowhere to turn? Twenty-two years I’ve been trying to find the fixed point, the Aleph. I look for it high and low. Just when it seems I’ve found it at last, and it can’t escape me, before I know it I find myself so far away from it that I’m amazed. The same thing goes for the squaring of the circle. I’ve come so close to finding it that I can’t understand, can’t even think how it’s not in my pocket. My anguish puts me in mind of Tantalus, who was right next to the fruit but dying of hunger, and close to the water yet perishing of thirst. One minute I think I’ve found the very heart of truth, and the next I’m so far from it that I have to trudge back up the mountain I’ve just climbed down—with the boulder of my work on my back, like some latter-day Sisyphus.”
Up till then the economist had held his tongue, but here he unleashed it and said, “The four of us are kvetching as if we’d been hounded by the Grand Caliph. But we only wound up at this hospital because we’re poor, so to hell with our trades, which neither feed nor amuse their practitioners. I, sirs, am an economist, and I’ve given His Majesty various advice—all to his gain, and without disadvantage. Now I’ve petitioned him to grant me an audience for a new scheme I have that will erase the national debt. Unfortunately, to go by what’s happened to me with other petitions, I daresay this one will wind up in the wastebasket too. But so you won’t take me for a dolt, and though my proposal will now become
Scipio
: I remember seeing these characters.
Berganza
: Anyway, one afternoon last summer, with the shutters closed and me lolling under one of their beds, the poet started to complain piteously about his fortune, and when the geometer asked him what the matter was, said it was his bad luck.
“Don’t I have a reason to complain?” he went on. “After keeping to the rule Horace laid down in his Arse Poetica, not to publish anything that hasn’t spent ten years in a drawer, I now have one twenty years in preparation and a dozen in editing, great in subject, admirable and new in invention, stately in meter, entertaining in its episodes, the stanza breaks marvelous—all because the beginning echoes the middle and the end in a way that makes the poem high-flown, sonorous, heroic, tasteful, and substantial. And yet, despite all this, I can’t find a prince to dedicate it to! A prince I say, intelligent, liberal, and generous. What a miserable and depraved age ours is!”
“What’s it about?” asked the alchemist.
“It deals with everything that Archbishop Turpín didn’t say about King Arthur of England, with a continuation of the story about the quest for the Holy Grail. It’s in heroic verse, part in octaves and part in free verse, but all dactylic—that is, in dactylic proper nouns, and without a single verb.”
“Me,” answered the alchemist, “I understand little of poetry, so I won’t know how to judge the misfortune you complain of, save that, were it greater, it still wouldn’tequal mine. If only I had the proper instruments, or a prince to support me with the necessities required by alchemy, I’d be lousy with gold, with more riches than Midas, than Crassus or Croesus.”
“Mr. Alchemist,” asked the geometer, “has your Excellency ever experimented with transmuting base metals into silver?”
“I …” the alchemist began, “I haven’t done it yet, but really, I know that it can be done, and inside two months I’ll have the philosopher’s stone. With that, I can produce silver and gold even from rocks.”
“Your Excellencies have exaggerated your woes,” said the geometer, “because in the end, at least one of you has a book to dedicate, and the other is on the point of discovering the philosopher’s stone.
“But what about my problem, which is so singular that I have nowhere to turn? Twenty-two years I’ve been trying to find the fixed point, the Aleph. I look for it high and low. Just when it seems I’ve found it at last, and it can’t escape me, before I know it I find myself so far away from it that I’m amazed. The same thing goes for the squaring of the circle. I’ve come so close to finding it that I can’t understand, can’t even think how it’s not in my pocket. My anguish puts me in mind of Tantalus, who was right next to the fruit but dying of hunger, and close to the water yet perishing of thirst. One minute I think I’ve found the very heart of truth, and the next I’m so far from it that I have to trudge back up the mountain I’ve just climbed down—with the boulder of my work on my back, like some latter-day Sisyphus.”
Up till then the economist had held his tongue, but here he unleashed it and said, “The four of us are kvetching as if we’d been hounded by the Grand Caliph. But we only wound up at this hospital because we’re poor, so to hell with our trades, which neither feed nor amuse their practitioners. I, sirs, am an economist, and I’ve given His Majesty various advice—all to his gain, and without disadvantage. Now I’ve petitioned him to grant me an audience for a new scheme I have that will erase the national debt. Unfortunately, to go by what’s happened to me with other petitions, I daresay this one will wind up in the wastebasket too. But so you won’t take me for a dolt, and though my proposal will now become
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