Three of chronic CIUDAD PAPER in Portuguese version.
The BLACK SWAN STREET MARINGÁ
Caulaincourt
CHRONICLE OF BUENOS AIRES: JOURNEY TO THE CITY'S UNDERWEAR
The BLACK SWAN MARINGÁ
I was talking to the Maringa of Baudelaire. Maringá is the way to the heart of South America, and for me, this trip was to enter the mainland directly. As the city of São Paulo, Maringá is also on the Tropic of Capricorn. Following the Tropic, and after many hours, the State of ends, the map is misleading, and we are in the North of Paraná, far from the capital, Curitiba, but much closer to the Mato Grosso. Continuing the journey on the Tropic, will emerge the extreme north of Paraguay's borders with Bolivia and Argentina to the Atacama Desert in Chile. But I was in Maringa, to speak of Baudelaire.
My theme, in short, was the failure of the critique from a sonnet by The Flowers of Evil, that "À une passante." Would make a critical survey of the poem as a document that Paris which changed under the Second Empire, the novelty of anonymity on the streets. The riddle of the poem that included the passer psychoanalytical and I ventured in sado-masochism Baudelaire, through "the pain that fascinates and the pleasure that kills." Citations of Michel Foucault, so accurate, they could not miss, nor Walter Benjamin, or the mystery implicit in the poem that basically (and partly the way) was the topic of my talk.
Maringá has 294,380 inhabitants. As it is the capital of a region and is surrounded by dormitory towns, the whole urban area has half a million inhabitants. So your university, EMU, this "University Maringá State "is one of pride and great locations. The city has reason to be proud of herself. One of his proud nature is so integrated into the urban map that sometimes we doubt if it is really a "city". One sees few roads, and many broad avenues, with gigantic trees, and through them to the side, royal palms, jacaranda, ipe, these trees instead of green leaves are covered with flowers. There are those of lilac and yellow flowers. And besides, there are several parks in the city center. Coatis and monkeys come out of the parks and they are given the right to walk among the trees on sidewalks, the gardens and backyards of nearby homes. The heat is scorching during the day, overnight softens a little, perhaps because the city is 554 meters high, and the hotel bed where I was staying, I discovered that the birds that I saw him arrive in the morning, east of Mato Grosso, were the same as returned in the evening, flying in a perfect design, under a sky dizzy with all variations of pink, red and purple edging closer to black.
Maringá The speakers are, like to talk, "chat", they say. No "chat" with people would be almost an insult, or something of an outsider hopeless. They like to tell that Maringá almost no past. The city was founded on May 10, 1947. It was a pristine wilderness and, first, the English, the "Parana Plantations Company," from the '20s, pioneered forests, and then the task was continued by the "Company Improvements North of Paraná, from 1939. That red earth like fire (podzolic purple, "they told me) was good for growing coffee. They speak with pride of the "pioneers" who came from São Paulo and Minas Gerais. They came to work. Today are monuments and memorials to them. Actress Sonia Braga, Dona Flor, perhaps the most famous maringaensis, but say little it. It is seen that prefer the story of the pioneers. Like they were poor immigrants, "retreating", and with much effort, have become the City Song, or the City Green.
Green explained clearly. But the epithet Song compel them to stop the "prose" to sing the song "Maringá" - pathetic - who gave his name to the city. It tells the story of another immigrant, this mythical, who was called Mary of Inga, Paraiba coming due to a drought, now transformed into "Maringá", "It takes one / That cabocla Maringá It became a migrant / That gave more what talk. The author of the letter is Joubert de Carvalho, composer known at the time and the song would be 1935. At that time the myths bifurcate into different versions. Some say that a "pioneer" widower sadly sang this song to lull your child into a net. But all agree that since the time of the English, every stream, every clearing they found, without know what name to give them, pedestrians invented a name, almost always in Guarani, or baptized with the name of some woman or other precious thing : cigarette brands (the case of the stream of "Glow"). In any case, the region that would Maringá, took the most beautiful name. No one was chatting
me when I saw the black swan in a lake of central park. I myself have looked for someone to share the impact of such elegance, beauty and breathtaking, this swan infinity. To chat there was only one guard, a man already in years (63, told me later, because they also told me his life, will prose, prose comes with a part). The swan was a widower. After the death of the "swans" placed him alongside other swans, also black and beautiful (I saw them in another part of the lake) and he refused. The "prose" included parts moralizing, because you said, forget the men who love them, but "he," this swan which he cares for years, not. He said that with the implicit admiration for his friend swan.
The story of loyalty, a swan, did not surprise me as much as the beauty of this animal, mythical and touchingly real. I was in Maringa speak a sonnet Flowers of Evil Days of French Studies at EMU. So where was this black swan that was not Ruben Dario? Baudelaire, was clear. I came from Baudelaire.
"The Swan" ("Le Cygne") of Baudelaire's tragic, and the poem is perhaps one of the most desolate of the "Tableaux Parisiens," the Parisian tables, and even the whole of the Flowers. It is dedicated "Victor Hugo", the poet at the time exiled on the island of Guernsey English. I was the talk of Maringa and a passer-by passers-by in front of me was the swan. I went to a city whose past is only the nature, timeless, and appeared to me that old black swan, which is white and dirty Baudelaire ("Baignait nerveusement ses ailes dans la poudre," looking the water and bathed in powdered) lost, that in a city works and that "changes" ("Paris change!"), martyr of modernity and the swan appeared to me now widowed and black in a lake in the heart of South America
True, the Poet announced since the second stanza: "la forme d'une ville / Change plus vite, alas! that le coeur d'un mortel ". Evidence that the form of a city changes faster than a mortal's heart was the very Maringá, its existence, the photos you see in Memorials of the city and reporting of "prose" Maringá. May arise from a virgin jungle town.
In the poem, the poet thinks. Thought and prose. Je think, "he repeats, and will enumerating the homeless of the past, the hopelessly lost. The final list is vast. Andromache pass, a widow ("Andromaque, je pense à vous!"), The swan in search its lake, which the poet saw one morning (like me, poor me!), the black phthisis seeking the African palm "Derrière la muraille immense du brouillard", behind that wall of smog (and this verse when I had moved : Do not read Baudelaire in South America the same way in Paris). They also lie in what we thought the losers can not find anymore ("The Quiconque a perdu ce qui ne if retrouvé / No, never!) Are sailors forgotten on an island, prisoners, and the losers. And we listen, and trembles, the Remembrance, the "forest" of the soul, written in uppercase so that final trumpet sound: "Un vieux Souvenir sonne to plein souffle du color!")
The black swan arrived Maringá, widower and faithful. In Baudelaire was "Comme les exiles, ridicule et sublime, ridiculous and sublime as an exile. But I found again in South America, the land where mestizo also immigrated from Inga Maria and thousands, millions of men, many exiles who are no longer ridiculous. My swan was sublime, indeed, because, with the widower and Remembrance, redeemed returned from exile to inaugurate a new world. At night I chat on the passer of the Second Empire before an audience of young enthusiasts who study the heart Baudelaire the Continent. I did not mention "The Swan". In Maringá, it was not necessary.
STREET Caulaincourt
Sunday morning. I went down in Batignolles for something to eat at the bar for Jacky, but it is Sunday and is closed. Keep walking to the place Clichy, you may find some open space, then go up the street Caulaincourt to the home of Jean-Francis. The apartment of Jean-Francis is sad and beautiful, dead in an alley near the subway Lamarck-Caulaincourt. The problem is Caulaincourt up the street, which is curved, steep and seems to take forever, as in nightmares.
is clear that everything would be closed in the square, I should have expected, considering my luck. I sit on the sidewalk a moment, because this square has no seats, just an urban corridor, deserted at this time. Look to the Boulevard Clichy, the closed doors of the bookstore where Jean-Francis worked many years in good times and stayed open until late at night. Nearby is La Turquoise jewelry, where the Brazilian transvestites take checks. Many customers pay by check and they are undocumented, can not open a bank account to make deposits. The owner of La Turquoise, Madame Bordelais, out of pure kindness, and while this does not compromise their statement income tax, deposit the checks into his own account and gives them money. It is a very Uruguayan please, if I may say so, sitting in front of the Place Clichy, thinking about the difficulties of Brazilian transvestites. Uruguay is a favor I need now, someone to take me to the home of Jean-Francis. I'm still young, it's true, I'm thirtysomething. But today I slept little, feel cold, I have an empty stomach and a little luck.
In the middle of the square rises the monument to Marshal Moncey, who defended Paris at the end of the Napoleonic empire, against the Russian invasion. I think transvestites are here to save money, and also dream of aristocrats Russians (but may be English) who fall for them. Sometimes the first can and return to Brazil with enough money to buy at least one apartment. I have no such project. But since 1978 come about every two years. This average will last until the mid 80s. I come because I belong to another tribe wandering the exiles. I come to find my friends Uruguayans, to learn news of them, myself. Along
my strength and get up from the sidewalk in front of the deserted square. The Place Clichy in a gray Sunday morning in winter: a good summary of disaffection. This is my feeling for Paris this season. The girls who work in hurry Pigalle, Blanche in the street, or in Rochechouart, is already known. The other bystanders are tourists going to the Basilica of Sacre Coeur, the church uglier than the place Clichy, or go buy souvenirs in series with the painters of the square du Tertre. The Place Clichy on Sunday mornings does not exist or is confused in gray permanent exile.
begin to climb the slope of the street Caulaincourt. I look nothing, or rather, I look at the sidewalk and into the trees, huge. These, the French call them Sophora. I think of the broken pavement of Montevideo and in the trees there that we call paradise, I climbed them as a child. I come to Paris also to hear from Montevideo. I live in, I am a professor of French Alliance site, I come to Paris because I'm Jean's house where I install it as it lurks in my in Sao Paulo. The news of my impossible Montevideo are the air, sometimes thin, I breathe for many years.
So I need my friends, especially my Trinity Non Sancta, Juan, Jean, Adalbert. Juan Introini, my friend since childhood. He teaches Latin at the Faculty of Humanities. So many years of study, so much talent, he and George Cuinat, and a day were released from the University. Were unreliable. The category A teacher should have them replaced. Because there are citizens A, B and citizens citizens C. When I got kicked out of this division into categories Uruguay did not exist, or did not have a name, these three letters. I went to Sao Paulo in silence, no one knew it, my exile was no category. Of my many crimes I believe that the worst was to be a friend of a political prisoner, Nelson Marra poor. In going up the chain of Punta Carretas every Saturday infallible. Fidelity does not forgive. Being an honest man, practicing friendship, solidarity, it does not forgive a dictatorship. There is always an implicit consensus in dictatorships, the idea of \u200b\u200ba lesser evil, a place where no values \u200b\u200bare opportunists thrive. Also the dictatorship is so terrible, not only for being a regime of "strength." I think the demolition of the Institute of Teachers, the IPA can not avoid.
I take a minute to regain strength, I'm on the bridge of Caulaincourt street on Montmartre cemetery. Like this cemetery. But I like all of Paris. In the 70's and early 80 cemeteries are the only thing that I love this city. I promise myself one of these days come visit the graves of my dead loved ones of Montmartre: Alfred de Vigny, Stendhal, Berlioz, Theophile Gautier, the Goncourt brothers, Vaslav Nijinsky, and why not, Emile Zola. The tour will not be small. E Montmartre cemetery is necessary to take care of cats, at least give them to eat, or give them warmth, to cast bad luck.
I come to Paris with stubbornness to spend three months of my school holidays in Brazil, that is, where the European winter, to find the warmth of friends, conversations, hope. Whenever I walk my tour of the "Political Refugees"-like figure in their writings. Come see my Uruguayan Grigny-La Grande Borne. But they are also those of the Porte des Lilas, who study and live near the Rue des Ecoles. There are so many. I need everyone.
Just this morning I'm coming of Grigny. It is a periphery, away. Laugh: might as well be called The Lost Post. He had a dinner last night at the home of Jean Stern, a French gay militant. There were two guests, a militant Dutch and me. But I want to stay in Grigny, I turn to Stern, I can not go, would never reach the streets of Turenne, I'm stuck in a traffic jam in Grigny. Stern has got it all. I can not and do not want to leave my friends, he knows it. Then I'll know the Dutch, he and I will write some notes for the magazine Gai Pied. But now my urgency are the Uruguayans.
I ended up sleeping in La Grande Borne, woke early, took a stale mate and returned by train to the Gare de Lyon this morning. What do they do when they gather in Uruguayan Grigny, poor, or the Rue des Ecoles, richer, or at least more intellectual? They drink wine, remember. Some do projects. I recompose the dead body that unites us. Uruguay is called, is immense. Giant's what happened to us, is a giant loss. Years ago we met again and we always return to this perplexity, we come together to look at it, measuring it, no one is spoken. We count ourselves stories.
not know the story of Gustavo M.? They knew we went back to tell ourselves. Cuba out to make guerrilla training. Had a few nervous breakdowns, the interned. In the end the direction of the guerrillas withdrew it. They sent him to Warsaw to do what he wanted. From there he came by train to Paris. I see him again. We are young, very young. In 1978, he calls me is in Asnières, a suburb, wants to die. While the entire month of January with him in Asnières. Years later he'll tell me. Not because my presence was killed back to life some meaning. "And that's good?" I asked. Not acknowledging receipt of my grace, says yes. I know that I live for my Uruguayans, lest we pass the limit, to remind you: we're ahead of the abyss.
Street Caulaincourt, after the greater curve, there is a square. It is called the Place Constantin Pecqueur, is near the home of Jean. Do not know who Constantin Pecqueur may have been, but who has had pity on the square foot, filled it with Sophora. Paris also has its oasis.
I think the daily life of Uruguayan exiles. The children have to Grigny. The children speak English poorly, have difficulty. They live in big buildings, blocks with no identity. Live there Uruguayans, Argentines, Chileans, Brazilians, Vietnamese, many Africans as much of equatorial Africa and the Maghreb.
I'm almost there. Across the block with the studios of Pathé, the film company that created worlds cosmopolitan phony legends. Today these studios are disabled, should host only ghosts. Jean-Francis is his neighbor.
He sleeps when I arrive. I prepare my coffee and souvenirs. Juan and I think of it, my "two Juanes." Jean-Francis Aymonier is my support, my safe haven for so many years, since March 1977, he would say, because it is very accurate with dates. He had gone to St. Paul to get married, I see the two grooms arriving by taxi to get me in the library of the Alliance Française. The doorman calls me, I need to run down, ordered to climb into the cab. I can enter between the bouquet of flowers, the tail of the bride dress, Jean radiant in the warrant to suit for the occasion. The marriage may not last long, but others will love, in Sao Paulo and in Paris, will travel life together, indifferent to changes in the hemisphere. Jean, who speaks no English, Uruguayan most of the French will go to Montevideo will be the home of Juan and Graciela Míguez Introini, bring news, be a friend of my friends.
Many years later, on May 17, 2000, he'd remember, will have to go through your were in exile, the accident on the street. Jean, a newspaper broker in Paris, is coming to bike to work, bad luck, with helmet and all, hit in the back against the curb. Jean quadriplegic. Jean strong. For a time he is tempted by death or dying, asks me. He says: "Kill me." Me infects dismay, I get seriously consider this final request. But the spirit back, the will to live after all. Thirty years later, Jean and I kept talking, sometimes silent, hanging or the internet with this phone which calls for hours on weekends.
Friends of the Uruguayans were "uruguaízam" too, and we all tell stories to survive. We need them. For years, Esther Roque Seixas, my friends gauchos, returned to Brazil after decades in Montevideo, I am bound by the Rio Grande. We speak of the prisoners. It is hard to speak of the disappeared. Margarita is missing, was in Buenos Aires. The three know it. But we need the account savior. Someone in Montevideo Margarita said she was married to a Bulgarian cellist of the symphony of Buenos Aires. Had children. We repeat this story for ourselves, we hold it, do not say that she is probably dead. I arrive in Paris and tale: Margarita is married, lives, have children in Buenos Aires.
Yes, says Daniel, the Uruguayan Porte des Lilas, he knew. Esther wrote Brazil's Roberto Grigny. Daniel married Beatriz Argentina. The police were looking for, was in 1977. They found her sister at the exit of a subway. Killed her because confused with Beatrice. Can anyone tell Beatriz. That would leave it where I could. A commissioner of the UN to get in early, it can embark Paris. Will bear the blame for a dead sister in her place. Esther calls me from Rio Grande, Daniel knew that he married an Argentine, is a refugee, have a son. Saved the lives repeats Esther.
Adalbert, my friend, Ribeirão Preto, which one day will live in Maringá, prepares the Masters in Paris. Before leaving in 1980, Adalberto de Souza Oliveira goes to Asuncion, Paraguay. Take my books for Josefina Plá, back with pictures and memories of Josephine, including his latest books of poetry. These are pictures of Josefina few images of her that will be saved, is a document, Josefina between their cats. I'll publish those years later, in 2003, in a Ledger tribute dedicated to his memory that the city of his native place, La Oliva, Fuerteventura, Canary Islands. Asuncion Adalberto down to Buenos Aires by train. Buenos Aires also return with news of the parents of G., who had left the religious life, the things young boys, and had gone to live in Brazil without explanation, in Sao Paulo first, then in Recife. Adalberto goes to Montevideo, with Juan Introini will be, will be informed on the situation. He repeated this information in Paris. Adalbert, a friend of Alfred, as Jean, built in hopes of Uruguayan exiles.
Even Ivo, Czech my friend, will move the orbit of the Uruguayans and exile. Ivo was the necessary counterpoint of Uruguayan exiles, was the man arrested in another of the nightmares of the twentieth century. Catholic and nuclear physicist, Ivo was twenty at the Prague spring, he supported Alexander Dubcek, threw stones at Russian tanks, mourned the defeat, he lived it as a rape.
We are friends since 1978, when I go to Rome in January with Juan Introini, the pension of students in Trastevere. Fired University, Juan receives a scholarship from the Italian government to improve their classical studies. Ivo is one of the students, a Czech who does research in nuclear physics. I'm new in Europe, I know the world, Juan sick during my Roman days-Juan allergies, liver. Ivo tells me in his best Italian, I'll take you to walk around Rome.
took me, literally. Because for Ivo cross over Rome was making "a passegiata piccola". We had the same age-both nascêramos in August 1948, but the forces of Ivo were from another world to me at least. In the early days we talk much of Uruguay's dictatorship, which he had news for Juan. Moreover, he had discovered that his knowledge of Italian enabled him to understand many complete sentences in English. Gradually, however, the focus of our conversations will be moving. Ive never keep silent, says the events of 1968 in Czechoslovakia, the dictatorship. Do you think that desperate people left in the West can not understand the crime that is occurring in your country, throughout the socialist bloc.
I try to give voice to the protest in his poems, a few, too few, about the invasion. I'll talk to all my friends, I will take the theme of Refugee Paris, the same way that'll take you then to Montevideo. I will of my exiled Uruguayans to my "stranded" in Czech Slovak Carpathians, where he gives his lectures. I learned that hearing aid to survive, healing the wounds of history.
At the end of their period of specialization Ivo tries to prolong his studies in Rome, but the commitment is denied by the government of their country and return to Slovakia, where it can no longer exit. The only way we will be to see if I go, it's easy for me to get the visa from the Czech authorities. With a detail: I have to introduce myself "before the police authorities during the first 48 hours of stay in Bohemia", warn French visas granted. The "piccole passsegiate" huge, are now in Prague, in the Carpathians, in Bratislava. And we'll keep telling ourselves stories of resistance to dictatorships in the plural. I know that Ivo brings me to the medieval or baroque churches to pray and enjoy. Without me there possible. If it did not excuse a tourist could be dismissed from the university. "But at least here you will not starve, as in the West," I remember him. No, but will be humbled, will be sent for example as a janitor in a building, and he wants to study. From Paris will
twice Czechoslovakia in 1982 and 1985. The "real socialism" will cease to exist a few years later, but the 80 did not suspect this purpose. Ivo faithfully waiting for me at the other end of the nineteen hours by train from Prague. Jean and Juan leave me at the Gare de l'Est, Ivo gets me in Prague Centre the following day. In the middle is a frontier with barbed wire and soldiers, was called "Iron curtain". In the 80 borders would also unaware that worse.
Bratislava, last night was in January 1985, Ivo has not. An elegant restaurant, frequented by local nomenclature and I can afford because cambier FF on the black market, is a futuristic tower on the Danube, and the site seems to spin-Ivo cries. I do not know how to react, I do not know how to console someone so energetic and full of faith as Ivo. We are two crazy indignant cry dictatorships, not born to accept them. From Bratislava
back to Prague by night train to Paris to follow. It is the first time I'm in Prague without Ivo. Step into the house of Pavel Klara and two of his friends that I learned to want. In Europe coffee on Wenceslas Square, where the regime tolerates a minimum life gay, write a postcard to Ivo, who command to open it arrives. But he will written in Italian. My card does not make it. Ivo knows who wrote it.
But that January 1985 is the most joyous weekend with the Uruguayans, even the daily lunches in restaurants with Adalberto Street Cîteaux university, or Jean Calvin. We celebrate the return of democracy. I still have some concerns, but feel the happiness in the air. Weighs less than the rise of street Caulaincourt. Juan Introini spends months in Paris. He has written most of the stories that will comprise his book El intruder. I knew some of them, now read the whole, is stupendous.
Cuinat George is living in Paris, has a purse of Venezuelan university where he works. Cicero studied. Die in August the following year, on his birthday. Heart problems, the exile to complicate these problems. But during the month of January we are all together in Paris, Juan Introini, Adalberto, Jean-Francis, ie, the Trinity Non Sancta, and Jorge Cuinat, and all Uruguayans. Almost everyone is ready to return. One night George
come get me on the street Caulaincourt, whether we spend the night at his house, near the Piazza d'Italie, already bought the whiskey. It will be our farewell. Juan has returned to Montevideo, I would return to St. Paul two days later and no longer see Jorge. A part of him knows it, hence this parting, fueled by alcohol, and duly authorized by the physician. We reviewed our adolescence in the neighborhood of the Redoubt, the street Marsella, where both had lived near-Introini lived in Marcelino Sosa-companions of the IPA, the IPA always so loved, the humanities, each and every year before and after the exile. George speaks, I know I need this, that we need to remember and to talk because then no longer will be time. Do not come back alive to Montevideo. Expected an operation for him in the hospital Pitie-Salpetriere, and a few months of life outside the country.
In January, the lightest of my winters in Paris, going to shows with George and the people on my Trinity. Visit Rodin museum, George is so fond of that, spend an afternoon at Versailles, to attend a Wagner's Tristan and Isolde at the Opera, and because Jean had bought the ticket months before, and I enter with your ID. Come to the theater, Chekhov by a Comédie-Française in Saint-Denis, took champagne offered by Jacky at his bistro Avenue de Clichy because this year I took the flags of Brazil's soccer teams in Sao Paulo and Rio that it exposes with pride at the cafe. It is the year we spent an unforgettable week at the home of Jennifer Field, the English mother Jean in Normandy. Travel along the beaches of Cabourg Honfleur up, relearn happiness. Jean will make a getaway a few days in Italy, where I would not since the days of Juan Introini in Rome.
I become aware that I had never walked by the rue de Rivoli, Place Vendome or the like in Paris and I just passed in a hurry. I went long the man who climbed the street Caulaincourt as if carrying a world on my back, I go around suburban neighborhoods, it takes me to know or appreciate the places awarded, at least with such joy that no rules or commitments also is a right. Montevideo was the same thing. Long time I only knew about the street where I was born and Mines Marsella street where I lived so many years. Will it take to know the center. All it takes in my life. For this study literature fascinates me, because I find the world that was hidden for me. Am and will always be the boy raised in a neighborhood haunted coffee in Sorocaba, someone needs to listen and learn.
In January or February of 1985 have coffee with George on the street Soufflot, and one afternoon we decided to look two tourists. Adalberto joins us speaks English a strange but not want to be identified by real Brazilian tourists who fill the coffee in front of the garden of Luxembourg. We laughed. The phrase in English Adalbert: "We felices hoy", highlighting the "hoy", will our Parisian folklore, with Juan Introini to repeat today. For caution, certainly.
write these memories in the 2000s, especially when you're not on my horizon travel to Paris, Jean no longer lives on Rue Caulaincourt, Czechoslovakia itself does not even exist anymore, Brazilian transvestites appear to have traded Paris for Milan or Barcelona and exiles are all back in Uruguay, or at least back to Uruguay with the frequency they desire. I still do not know who was Constantin Pecqueur, but I confess that I sit in the square one last time after the big curve Street Caulaincourt, under Sophora, and look relieved the sidewalks that go down to the cemetery, Clichy and the statue of distant Moncey.
CHRONICLE OF BUENOS AIRES:
JOURNEY TO THE CITY'S UNDERWEAR
In the winter of 1944 Cecilia Meireles (1901-1964) took a trip for two neighboring capitals of Rio de la Plata: Buenos Aires and Montevideo. This season the platinum poet left a series of chronicles that were published in newspapers of Rio de Janeiro and The Morning Sheet Carioca. Those texts (reissued in 1998 by New Frontier Publishing under the title of Rio Trip Chronicles, Volume 1) it is clear that Cecilia loved Montevideo: she says it explicitly describes the city with a deep affection, and when leaving to go to Montevideo to Buenos Aires, dismisses it this way: "I want to tell you goodbye, and I can not, Montevideo - because even the look of your horses is holding me to you. But if I stay, she might never see them, because the craft is sad man, and easily addictive: the eyes fail to see what they are seeing ever, and the heart gets used-and forget what you do ..- constant wonder ... Thus, to love, you better leave you. "
On the other side of the river, Cecilia compares Argentines and Uruguayans. Daring enterprise: it is the general opinion as fact-Montevideo, I share it, only we ourselves know our differences, that would say not very visible to the River Plate. For surely there is a unit called "River Plate". Cecilia was a poet, that is, the world could read in their lines, and provides this comparison: "I will say soon occurs to me that one difference between Argentina and Uruguay: the first, seems to the English blood, in seconds, Portuguese. The Portuguese blood is lyrical, the English drama. We Brazilians do not feel any awkwardness between us Uruguayan, among Argentines feel a difference in kind. The Argentine can be extremely courteous; can not be tender. This roughness is surprising that, even when they're admiring other qualities, which undoubtedly possess. The Argentine is easily anecdotal, ironic, very prone to laughter, despite their appearance, at first glance, stately, solemn, austere. "(...) He continues:" Meeting a painting studio. I think that, in Uruguay probably would not be so dressed, would talk of art, some would recall this episode affectionate, happened some time ago, with a friend now dead, who would have been good and sad. We would be moved, we would feel our kinship of spirit, we would a moment in silence, like a dream, the night would lead us all together for air seats - and would call it being friends and being happy. "
Quotations are long, yes, but also interesting. The intuition of nostalgic happiness Montevideo should result if we recall the correct date of the visit of Cecilia. It is quite likely that Montevidean of 1944 were so nostalgic and happy, and prosperous. On the other hand, the Buenos Aires Cecilia also must have changed a lot because those who are decidedly not for decades and I knew that I came to see in July 2004. Hers is perhaps the narcissistic Buenos Aires the stereotype. Or does the poet had loved them too Montevidean and, dazzled by the affection given and received, was not able to assess fairly the Buenos Aires?
#
thirty years I have a friend in Buenos Aires. G. The call will be better to use only its initial. We met in Sao Paulo, where G. lived several years in '70, in times and circumstances favorable to our friendship was deep and lasting. G. appeared a few months after founding the almost mythical first gay advocacy group in Brazil, a group that I also attended. By coincidence we were also neighbors. We lived in the center comes close to the Bladder I Center old. I lived alone, he too militant with a gay friend.
I am proud of those times, or nostalgia, do not know, or does not matter. But I'd be hours to talk to those young men more or less close to the advocacy group "hard." Dictatorship was heavy and they were smuggled. Among them were poets and essayists, widely known today, and even an American who is an important Brazilianist no time in the gym of the U.S.. One young man was a doctor and a few years later would be coordinating the campaign against AIDS, becoming a world authority in the United Nations in the fight against the disease. And it was my friend G., son of a tango singer (it was fate), Order an important monk of the Catholic Church. I believe he had not succeeded in making final vows. Its long revolved surroundings confessions of sex, this theme impossible for the Church. "Father, I'm gay, I must fulfill my desire, what do I do? -Reza, my son, pray. The father confessor should know what he said. As for G. I do not know if he stopped to pray (I believe not), although more in compensation was the Order. So simple: G. wanted to live. In Argentina those years, being homosexual was not only a sin, as practice, was a legally punishable offense. Just like his friend the poet Néstor Perlongher, who would also live in San Paulo a few years later, G. had, say, a problem with the customs police, providentially resolved by a member friend. E G. was up, started the adventure of freedom under the sign of exile.
#
night time I was fully indoctrinated in the Retiro station during the trip because my neighbor's couch, thin woman, thin fingers like a parka, so I never take a taxi that season: "They're all thieves . One of them pulled out all I wore. Now just take remise when I go back to Montevideo where my son lives. " Obeyed the Partnership Board. I like to hear about the Buenos Aires city. If there is an art that almost all multiple-master and master-this is the art of conversation. I asked the driver of such remise-cab-more sophisticated that I did not take the fact that I was a stranger to me needlessly walk around town just to charge more than my savings were few. "There are integrated and there are desperate," he replied, enigmatically, as he guided a hurry. "The apocalyptic?" I asked to see what happened. "Yes, or you join or not is none." "Well, I am nobody. "Me too," he said, think in sympathy. The trip resulted in too short for the reflections that the driver struck up and will certainly develop, and thus there are only drivers in Buenos Aires, at least I never had such luck in Montevideo or Sao Paulo, or anywhere else. Finally let me in the hotel, combined Corrientes Avenue, the street of cinemas and theaters, "the boulevard". And when the noise started.
We have to put it: every major Latin American cities are noisy. Sao Paulo is noisy. Mexico is also. Even Montevideo, a city that does not seem huge (but big, yes), it is noisy. The silence, or perhaps the impression of silence is over in Europe. Several times I came out of Rio de Janeiro to land in Paris, and always had the impression of a smuggling Hells and Heavens. Sometimes he left the tropical paradise and arrived in hell cold. Or the order arrived in Paradise, urban history, recognizable and left the Green Hell, or your version gray, the stone jungle. Even when my heart was in Brazil, and Europe was hell, clung to me in the poor consolation of silence, a hope that Paris is only possible for those coming from any of the Latin American urban life, beautiful and booming.
course, the ugliness of Corrientes is not so much on the facades of neon, which stun because it is intended, nor in the visible and general deterioration urban, or the impoverishment of the middle classes who attend, and tourists, and thieves, and the inevitable prostitution. (I saw the National Theatre presented a comedy with actress Claudia Lapaccó, I have not heard of since the time I had to go to Montevideo. My God, I thought, it still exists? But what about me? Should I not also existed thirty years ago? Why such confusion? Unsurprisingly, distance, time is another). What really is ugly and distressing on Corrientes Avenue is the lack of hope. I knew in the fifth floor of the hotel where they sent me, what the hell's that clatter Concrete jungle not cease, and the sunrise, like nightmares, it would also continue intolerable.
The solution, obviously, was to change hotel the next morning and returning to quiet already on my second night in Buenos Aires, which reigns on in the rest of the "micro-center". Because with few exceptions, the rest of the center seems to get back to exacerbated Corrientes. I ended up in a hotel in Avenida de Mayo avenue of empty nights as the center of all-couples drinking beer sitting on the curb, classes (heavy bar perhaps) smoking marijuana, shift workers, or rather, people coming to work at dawn. It was quiet, modest Paradise.
#
G. parish priest is a poor poorer southern outskirts of Buenos Aires. After returning to his hometown he sends me some e.mails few, it is true, with news, many. He resumed active religious life, struggled to be accepted, at his age and with his past, he says. G. explained, but does not say anything. Write a paper for community-mailed me about four years, but he is silent about his sexuality. The call took him back into the fold. The economic distress as well, he has a nonagenarian father and that depends on it. He returned to Buenos Aires when his mother died, and then discovered that a carrier of hepatitis C. After his years in São Paulo, G. lived a decade in Recife. He says it was the happiest years of his life, and it is true, at least in some carnivals I have witnessed that happiness. Returned. Also to escape the sensuality of Pernambuco, he insists. His destination was Buenos Aires, and the Church. From Montevideo, I've been carefully keeping the paper where I wrote down the passwords anywhere. I call him and give him a surprise. G. I do not expect. I turn on the evening of my arrival. I am a man rejoicing in the parlor of Avenida Nueve de Julio.
#
Cecilia dear me porteños were not ironic or even incapable of tenderness and harsh aspect of them was not impressive or solemn not entirely austere. Perhaps because some of them knew my poetry and I was just reading poetry and talking to her. But it is also true that thou wast to read your poetry and poetry speaking. Should be the time. You were in happier days, dear Cecilia, and I do not know if the opulence in anesthesia, but know it can be a bad counselor. Or maybe you felt that coming out of Montevideo were leaving behind a province, a beautiful place and peripheral, and when the ship touched the quay Buenos Aires guessed that you'd walk into a hegemonic center for real, there was what was its value. And we always sympathize with the little ones. You remember: the Earl of Lautréamont Montévidéen-so-knew what was the "Silver Queen"-a second nickname that would tango in Buenos Aires. He says there near the end of Canto I of Les Chants de Maldoror: "Buenos Aires, la reine du Sud, et Montevideo, la coquette, whether aimed une main amie, travers les eaux the argentine Estuaire du grand". The Montevideo be matched "coquette," remember?
#
I was greeted with generosity by many poets. Horacio Fiebelkorn, the poet of the city of La Plata (and who insists on being "provincial", though more in Buenos Aires)-I met him years ago for a few poetry readings in the Palace of Santos-Montevideo was an infinite generosity. He offered me his company almost full time, and the company Fiebelkorn is a privilege. We walked by the center showed me (part of) "all places that should be known by those visiting Buenos Aires, I saw the phrase written on the window of a travel agency Cordova Street. And there was a dinner sponsored by Soledad, his wife, the beautiful apartment in the Recoleta neighborhood where they lived until a few months after I leave. In those days it was leaving a book, Zona muerta, with cover written by me. We expect the birth of the book together (in vain, was born a few days after I leave). Together, Fiebelkorn and I read in the Casa de la Poesía, the municipal institution headed by the poet Daniel García Helder, serious man and good as his poetry. Casa de la Poesía is located in the former residence of the popular poet Evaristo Carriego (1883-1912), "allá por el barrio el gris singing Carriego poor," as he said Borges, who both admired the poet of this suburb. The courageous but melancholy Carriego lived in a house petty bourgeois relatively modest Palermo, elegant neighborhood today. Save themselves objects of the poet, are Frenchified of conventional taste, questionable. Among the audience was
Samoilovich Daniel, a poet known to be brilliant, but at least-I-did not know he is also an enthusiastic man never knew that look so sweet and pungent. All the intelligence world took refuge in his eyes, this "brand Samoilo" ID (and then he was creating a comic opera called El awakening Samoilo). I sensed in compensation Samoilovich's scholarship, I checked in a bar after the reading (an amazing knowledge of Brazilian literature, for example), these coffee chats that were once also a tradition Montevideo, Montevideo but disappeared because the public places if degraded before the perfect indifference of City Hall. Fiebelkorn
also accompanied me to the Centro Cultural Quinta Trabucco, in Vicente López. where I had to give a lecture. The place is a palace in Neo-Renaissance style that belonged to a family called Trabucco and comes in the midst of a stately garden, in fact almost a "fifth" with trees native plants, proud of its director, another poet, Rodolfo Alonso . Undoubtedly, Buenos Aires is a city of psychoanalysts, and several of them were present in my readings (which are the most raise their hands to ask pertinently, it is said, and they are: "I am a psychoanalyst). In Buenos Aires seems to be most analysts who reviewed, it is true. But there are many poets. And I've met are excellent. Alonso is also a translator of Portuguese and other languages. It was the first translator into English of the four most famous heterônimos Fernando Pessoa, in 1960, when Octavio Paz have not (s) was published in Mexico. Alonso has been creating an original poetry, short poems and bright. And, as might be expected, once again ended the day chatting in a cafe, this one in the trendy suburb of Vicente López.
#
G. is happy and bewildered by my presence in Buenos Aires. Unfortunately you can not he meet me. Coming to town is impossible, if I knew the community's problems, poverty, no longer knows how to keep the parish. How is hepatitis? Is leading, but refuses to take drugs of multinational drug companies, he opted for alternative medicine. I? I continue with my breathing problems, even after the operation. "We were lucky after all," says G. But there's no time for me to answer, "I have a history of hedonism," he adds, in his person. Ok, G., my dear G. I heard of poetry? No, not even have time to read. By the way, also have no sex life, she says, so many problems, and moreover he does not want is a vote. This afternoon he had a wedding, think who gave good advice to the newlyweds. News Recife? Yes, by e.mail, at times. I will call back to you. Call me, Alfredo, I hear you. We see no, no, it is very difficult.
#
I'm in the Retiro station, and returned to Montevideo and then later to St. Paul. My life is not strange, Cecilia? And that life is not it? I say farewell to you as Buenos Aires from Montevideo. And I also say: "I want to tell you goodbye and I can not, the letter is sad man, the heart gets used to and forget what you do constantly wonder." Hell and Heaven live so many times, do not you, Cecilia? For me, Buenos Aires also was intimate, Feit destinations as o meu, embroidery das Fates. Quase coquette.
0 comments:
Post a Comment