The Illogic of Kassel by Enrique Vila-Matas Page A

moment. Perhaps the conversations of the guests in the room above would reach me clearly through that chink. When I was in Barcelona with John William Wilkinson, we’d thought I might set myself up on the top floor of the Chinese restaurant facing the forest, but now I could see that none of that was happening or would happen, rather the complete opposite: the place the dark forces seemed to have offered me to spy on wasn’t beneath, but above; it was as if Galway Bay were out there above the ceiling of that room. And there was one more problem. Seeing it properly, it was clear no such scenario existed, that the reflections of light on the ceiling had simply created it, perhaps connected with my lighthouse in the hotel annex, my lighthouse in the night.
    22
     
    I got up from the bed in order to escape from my private Galway Bay, and I had a depraved glance at Cela’s
Journey to the
Alcarria
: “The peddler has perfectly naked eyelids, without a single lash, and a wooden leg crudely fixed to the stump with thongs.” 
    Afterward, I played the game of pretending to myself that what I’d read astonished me. Peddler, naked eyelids, wooden leg. I feigned surprise when I knew perfectly well that in reading Cela I was bound to encounter the medieval: another world a thousand light-years from where I found myself.
    Then I went straight to the computer and looked up information about the city I was in, and the first thing I came across was material about the Documenta of 1972. If I read that 72 backwards, I got my room number. This didn’t exactly compel me to keep reading, but it did make me take more interest in what I read. An admirer of “that historic Documenta”—the one in ’72—claimed to have discovered in it that the latest members of the avant-garde belonged to the purest strain of romanticism, the beatniks in particular.
    Suddenly, for reasons that still escape me today, my attention focused entirely on the beatniks. What did I know about those people? For a moment, I was disorientated by my own question. I only managed to leave the muddle of the beatnik mystery behind when I remembered I had that old copy of
Romanticism
, by Rüdiger Safranski, lying in my suitcase. Once again, I hadn’t made a mistake in choosing it for company. I opened it to the page where I could read that only as aesthetic phenomena are the world and existence eternally justified.
    I thought: Didn’t I come to Kassel precisely to seek the aesthetic instant? Yes, but not only that. Besides, I’d never found that instant in my entire life so far, and everything seemed to indicate that things would go on the same for me after passing through Kassel. In fact, I didn’t even know what an aesthetic instant might really be, since up to that point I’d only managed to get glimpses of it, not much more. I paused to think. Why had I traveled to that city? I’ve come, I told myself, purely to think. I paused thoughtfully. I’ve come to mentally construct a cabin, a human refuge in which I can meditate on the lost world. I paused thoughtfully. I’ve come to read something about a peddler and his stump and an incurably gloomy Spain. I’ve come to discover the mystery of the universe, to initiate myself into the poetry of an unknown algebra, to seek an oblique clock, and to read about Romanticism. I paused thoughtfully. I’ve come to investigate what the essence, the pure, hard nucleus of contemporary art is. I’ve come to find out if there still is an avant-garde. In fact, I’ve come to carry out research on Kassel. I paused thoughtfully. I’ve come simply so that on my return home I can tell people what I’ve seen. I’ve come to find out what beatniks are. I paused thoughtfully again. I’ve come to get acquainted with the general condition of the arts. Again, I paused thoughtfully. I’ve come to recover enthusiasm. I paused a little less thoughtfully. I’ve come so I can narrate my journey later on, as if I’d been to the country