chris at 12:40 AM |

Monday, October 27, 2003

 

Cortazar, Hopscotch on Dichotomous Ways or Colors?

From Julio Cortazar's Hopscotch : **
(translated by Gregory Rabassa)

" 'Occidental dichotomies,' Oliveira said. 'Life and death, this side, and that side. ... In any case, it must be something more fluid, less categorized.'

" 'Look,' said Etienne, who was feeling remarkably well, even though the news that Oliveira had passed on to him was crawling around his insides like a crab and none of this seemed contradictory. 'Look, my ball-beloved Argentine, the Orient is not so different as the Orientalists make it out to be. As soon as you start to give some serious thought to what is written there you begin to feel what you have always felt, the inexplicable attraction of intellectual suicide by means of the intellect itself. The scorpion stabbing itself in the neck, tired of being a scorpion but having to have recourse to its own scorpionness in order to do away with itself as a scorpion. In Madras or in Heidelberg its basically the same question: there is some sort of indescribable mistake at the very beginning of things, out of which comes this phenomenon which is addressing itself to you at this moment and which you are all listening to. Every attempt at explanation comes to grief for reasons that anyone can understand, and the fact is that in order to define and understand something one would have to be outside of what is being defined and understood. Ergo, Madras and Heidelberg console themselves manufacturing positions, some with a rational base, others intuitive, even though the differences between reason and intuition can be far from clear, as anyone who's been to school knows. And for that reason, man only feels secure when he is on grounds that do not touch his deepest part: when he plays, when he conquers, when he puts on his various suits of armor that are the product of an ethos, when he hands over the central mystery to some revelation. And on all sides the curious notion that our principal tool, the Logos that madly pulls us up the zoological ladder, is a perfect fraud. And the inevitable corollary, refuge in inspiration and babble, dark night of the soul, aesthetic and metaphysical visions. Madras and Heidelberg are different dosages of the same prescription, sometimes the Yin is in the ascendancy, sometimes the Yang, but at the two points up and down there remain two examples of Homo sapiens, equally undefined, kicking about madly on the ground as one tries to rise at the expense of the other.'

" 'It's strange,' Ronald said. 'In any case it would be stupid to deny a reality even though we might not know what it is. Let's take the up-down axis. How is it that this axis still hasn't been of any use in finding out what goes on at its two extremes? Since Neanderthal man... '

" 'You're just using words,' Oliveira said, leaning a little more on Etienne.
'We like to take them out of the closet and parade them around the room. Reality, Neanderthal man, see how they play, see how they get into our ears and pull each other along on toboggans.'

" 'That's right,' Etienne said harshly. 'That's why I prefer my colors: I feel sure.'

" 'Sure of what?'

" 'Of their effect.'

" 'Of their effect on you, in any case, but not on Ronald's concierge. Your colors are no more certain than my words, old man.'

" 'At least my colors don't try to explain anything.'

" 'And do you accept the idea that there is no explanation?'

" 'No,' said Etienne, 'but at the same time I do things that to a small degree take away the bad taste of emptiness. And that basically is the best definition of Homo sapiens.'

" 'It's not a definition, it's a consolation,' Gregorovius said, sighing. 'Actually we're like a play we come in on during the second act. Everything is very pretty but we don't understand a thing. ... and all that Horacio has done is to raise the question in its dialectical form... . Like Wittgenstein... '

" 'Come on let's leave poetry out of this. Agreed that we can't trust words, but actually words come after this other thing, the fact that a bunch of us is here tonight seated around a lamp.' ...

" 'Without any words I feel, I know, that I am here,' Ronald insisted. 'That's what I call reality. Even if that's all it is.'

" 'Perfect,' said Oliveira. 'Except that this reality is no guarentee for you or for anybody else unless you transform it into a concept, and then into a convention, a useful scheme. The simple fact that your are on my left and I am on your right makes at least two realities out of this one reality, and realize that I don't want to get abstruse and point out that you and I are two entities that are absolutely out of touch with one another except by means of feelings and words, things that one must mistrust if he is to be serious about it all.' ...

" 'Don't turn it into a question of schools,' Oliveira said. 'Let's keep it on the level of a conversation between amateurs, which is what we are. ...The only thing that matters is the business of each understanding it in his own way... . You think that there is a definable reality... . All of this gives you a great ontological security, I think...'

" 'We're very different,' Ronald said. 'I'm very much aware of that. But we find ourselves in certain places outside of ourselves. You and I are looking at that lamp, maybe we don't see the same thing...' "

(158-159, 160, 161)


** Julio Cortazar, Hopscotch. transl. Gregory Rabassa. New York: Pantheon, 1966.