LAS ÚLTIMAS NOTICIAS
Santiago de Chile
July 31, 1977
Los Despojos del Sol (The Remains of the Sun)
David Rosenmann-Taub
by Alberto Rubio
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Before addressing his readers, the poet not only endeavors
to say something to himself but also, if we may so put it,
to construct himself for himself by means of the word; that
is why in him language strays far from its usual meanings.
Genuine poetry frequently offers resistance to the reader.
It even sprouts new terms: such as First Ananda, the
name given to the first of the basic units of Los Despojos
del Sol, by David Rosenmann-Taub, a book recently published
under the hallmark of esteoeste (Argentina). The term will
eventually reveal its organizing sense with the publication
of the Second Ananda.
Do
nature, activity, events on the one hand, or mere consciousness
on the other, create the reality of the person in all its
singularity? In the incidents of life, in our acts, in the
events that affect us, in the exterior world, do we recognize
ourselves, or do they actually exist in order for us "to
be"? Or do we perhaps achieve that singularity only
through the intimate, deep perception of ourselves?
It
seems to me that it is among such questions that the experiences
in "Diary of A Pebble" and other poems in
the book ripen--the expression of a dramatic split in man
between his existence and his consciousness of himself.
Without
doubt, one is a person as soon as there is consciousness
of oneself; but the surrender of oneself to existing – that
is, the giving of oneself over to habitual acts and reactions
– is like losing this consciousness. The paradoxical
result: one is not a person as soon as one exists. If one
perceives oneself in a pure act of consciousness, one apprehends
oneself as made almost of emptiness. What is this emptiness?
Where is the reality of oneself? From another point of view,
the full knowledge of oneself is not possible: one lives
unavoidably imprisoned in existence or in consciousness,
worlds that do not communicate.
I
left, out of fidelity. To whom? says
Poem I. One leaves in order to exist and to demonstrate to
oneself one's own existence – if we may say so – in
order to encounter oneself; but one does not encounter oneself,
since one ceases to perceive oneself, to recognize oneself,
in ordinary acts. On the other hand, this amounts to not
having left, to not having existed fully, since full existence
requires consciousness:
To
touch myself, to open myself, now, to close myself, with
limpid stealth (if not, what would happen?), clasping the
sheaf that has purified me ever since I have known that
I do not exist.
This
means, in turn, to deny movement or to demonstrate its ineffectiveness: Motionless,
I captured the corner where the Emporium of Everything revolves. [Poem
I.]
Nor
does nature nourish the reality of the person. I
summoned the tree-lined avenues in order to help myself
to them. [Poem III.] But
those three-lined avenues "doze
parched." They are not enjoyed. We
are not reflected in the mirror, but the mirror is reflected
in us. The empty mirror does not reflect anything; at most,
it almost reflects, barely,
the form of the formless. If
we want to help ourselves to nature, it helps itself to us;
if we want to assimilate it, it is the one that devours us.
Thus, the dinner guest says of the endives, in the poem Manjar ("Delicacy"): |
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they begin
the voracity: they enjoy the way
they take on my saliva. |
Our
bodies – "shoulders,
eyelids, hands"
– do not belong to us; nor
do our portraits represent us; they are horizons impossible
to grasp, "torrential," "greedy" for
us, which absorb us and remove us from our own identity
[Poem VIII]. Divinity is not outside of the enclosure in
which we struggle. God is not beyond, but here, between
the wardrobe and the bed
[Poem VII]. We are identical with
him rather than similar. God imposes silence and is the
silence. He does not help us to know ourselves. To know
ourselves proves to be more difficult than to know God.
The
vision of the universe in Rito ("Rite") is extremely daring. The cosmos wanders about "dilapidated,"
but as if in diapers – in fact at the stage of its first,
newborn's defecation – without even becoming aware
of its own orphanhood and fragility, in the dark, and searching
for more darkness, as if its highest degree of evolution
were to look dizzily for the consciousness of man, intuiting
that only in this, the sole light, will its journey be
able to achieve meaning. Thanks to the contact with that "I" of
the poem, beauty will emerge triumphant. A ritual act, with
the rhythm of the cosmos in pursuit of its maturity of "dung," but
maturity at last: |
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Fragile,
hopeful,
on its bosporus of wilted stumbles,
still baby's first defecation, dilapidated,
not even hearing gethsemane,
blind in search of more blindness,
the sluggish, clattering cart,
of the constellations,
will ask, at the next house,
confused, for me:
mature dung, forever beautiful!
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We reread a page of Jean Rostand, the biologist. It may be
that life has appeared only on this planet, and consciousness
only in man. Pure chance. Human consciousness, sole light
of the universe: the very idea of it puts our feeling of orphanhood
and isolation into horrifying relief. "It would not seem
to me at all impossible that our world might have the tragic
privilege of the human brain and that it might be the only
place in the universe where the blind play of the molecules
has ended up in reflection and torment."
With
the passage of years, seeing consciousness as a true refuge
in life takes on more importance – in spite of that sensation
of isolation that this can cause – an attitude that must
have originated with Jesus of Galilee. The final stanzas of
"Dark Evening," a poem by Luis Cernuda, say:
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Through these sordid
suburbs, with no north,
you go, like the useless
destiny of man. And
in your thought,
for light or faith
you now search, while outside
darkness conquers. |
We believe that David Rosenmann-Taub, with his hallucinatory
vision, and a lot of strange humor, exalts consciousness and
creative will in the poem quoted above and in others in the
book. He leaves us in some way cosmically desolated, but at
the same time he comforts us with that calm which comes about
after the witnessing or experiencing of a drama that is followed
by the attainment of a truth.
It
would be worth dwelling longer on these poems. Perhaps Ecclesiastes,
Pascal, and existentialist thought would offer points of reference
and comparison. And Le Cimetière Marin.
Somehow
we feel that Zeno's arrow, which wounded Valéry, also
wounds Rosenmann-Taub.
Let
us hope that this short account of a reaction to the very
first reading of a demanding book does not do too much violence
to its readers or to the author himself. In these lines we
may have interpreted or digressed more than we have given
the work its proper value; but let this reaction before a
remarkable text of poetry be duly recorded.
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