Art’s False Note

PART One.

“The human being is the only creature that is naked.” So wrote the Spanish philosopher María Zambrano, in a phrase that has obsessed me for years. She finds our bodies to be deficient, incomplete, like the two dispossessed who were expelled from Eden.

What Zambrano calls “nakedness” depicts us as lacking an outer layer. We have no covering, no shell, no fleece. Our bodies are missing something. Because of this nakedness we are unprotected, vulnerable to threats like the north wind, and the Sun, as Aesop recounts in a fable:  

The North Wind and the Sun had a quarrel about which of them was the stronger. While they were
disputing with much heat and bluster, a Traveler passed along the road wrapped in a cloak.

"Let us agree," said the Sun, "that he is the stronger who can strip that Traveler of his cloak."

"Very well," growled the North Wind, and at once sent a cold, howling blast against the Traveler.

"... At last he became so heated that he pulled off his cloak...

If we read Aesop´s fable literally, both elements, sun and wind, decide to show their might at the clothing that a man uses to protect his nudity. A winner is declared, and a moral is implied (Gentleness and kind persuasion win where force and bluster fail), but since the fable is a literary text, it’s polysemic, it points to further meanings. What interests me is what it says about the “necessary” garment of the naked human: both of the elements, wind and sun, recognize the traveler’s clothing is his Achilles heel. Shell or shield, covering or protection, what the traveler wears is also his vulnerability, the sun and wind target.

Obviously, his clothing clothes him, but, says the fable, clothes leave the human twice exposed.

(A poem by Terence Hayes, “Continuity”, addresses this subject with humor, suggesting a paradox: She says to him, “You are nude, / but you must be naked to win.”)

This Zambranian nakedness also points to a human strength. Our sense of touch, our contact with the World, happens through our skin. We can respond and relate because we have skin. Our skin, the skin of the only naked mammal, is all seeing, is touch, is intimacy. A human being can affirm, “Naked, I feel with my skin; I am human because I am naked.”

Far from acting as a shield, hairless and unfeeling, nakedness connects humans to the world in a different way, because our touch (the touch of a nude) activates rational consciousness and memory, feels what piques our interest and what we can’t understand. It perceives; simultaneously it explores and it introjects; it tries to comprehend, it doubts, it returns to touch what has burned it, and it awakens.

According to another Spanish Philosopher, Ortega y Gasset, the skin is “private” and is “public” – it is our relation to the outside world, and our relationship to our intimate self; it is the outside world, and our intimate self.

With its reactions, the skin is language. With language we relate to the world, we become the world, and we take distance from it. In a sense, in language we are no longer naked.

( I addressed this in a poem in my earliest book, 1978´s “El hilo olvida”:

“(the slow wind blows) every speck of dust, every drop of water that comes in the wind,

one moment before entering me, each one stops.  

Nothing distinguishes me from the world, that’s true, but nothing passes through me.  

Everything, just at the moment before penetrating me, signals me, sustains me, establishes my limits.

I quote from Catherine Hammond’s translation.)

Is Zambranian nakedness present since we’re born, or not? Is the newly birthed (exited, ejected, unclothed) born verbal?

Is Language imprinted upon the newborn, though speech remains unspoken, unformulated? Does Language exist in the anatomical nakedness of human beings? Moreover, language is what made these creatures (us) naked, turning us into humans?

What is a fact is that is Language touch, eyes, smell, interpretation and formulation: language is skin.

The Grammatical Mammal -us- is two times nude.

PART 2.

Who was the seamstress that created the nakedness of Language for us? The “Grandmother Hypothesis”, which the evolutionary biologists George Williams and Peter Medawar proposed in 1966, and which gained credence in the 80s thanks to research led by the anthropologist Kirsten Hawkes—{is a theory that has recently been re-read with a link to community longevity (which neither concerns us here nor stands up well under scrutiny). It affirms that the grandmother figure traces the arc of our development as human beings. Because no other female mammals live past reproductive age, humans are the only ones to undergo menopause; in all other species the females die when they can no longer reproduce. The Grandmother Hypothesis postulates that the prolongation of infancy and the slow development of the brain are due to the grandmother lengthening the bond as well as the development of grammar and language. 

A quote from the Uruguayan poet Marosa di Giorgio:

“Meanwhile, the lizard continued hunting for hen’s eggs, warm tid-bits; snakes blue as fire crossed the
path, curly, delicately crafted carnations, looking like bowls of fruit and rice, shot up.

The world, all of it, welcoming, magical.

And one face, separated, the only one painted, walked among the leaves, eyes downcast, red mouth
open.)

Therefore, according to the Grandmother Hypothesis, while the young men and women hunted or gathered, the elderly women took care of the children. I imagine {that} THEY HAD other domestic duties, such as cooking (the grandmothers must have been those that used fire to prepare food). They were also the ceramists, the healers, the sorcerers -- and the couturiers of our clothing.

I imagine also that those prehistoric handprints and other images found in the caves – like women wearing skirts - were painted by the elders, together with the children. I imagine that they longed for motion – hence their representation of animals in flight by depicting multiple hooves. They did not do the hunting: they painted the scene, and they cooked their prey. The grandmothers who dressed for us, cooked for us, and placed a plate at our tables also created tales, stories, and poems. Theirs were the hands that rocked the cradle of Literature.

PART 3.

Nakedness. Skin. Language. Clothing. Literature.

The umbilical cord “human-skin-language” inevitably includes Literature. For the nude mammal – whose skin feels, desires, manipulates- also imagines.  

Questions arise:

Are literary texts, as is the cloak in the Aesopian fable, both our protection and our vulnerable spot?

Are they, like clothing, our completion? 

Are stories and poems another form of skin, this one made out of words?

Reading or listening to a story that has a beginning, when one thing happens, as a result OF which another happens, and then another, like domino tiles falling down, one after the other, till they all fall down.

DOES SUCH STORY TELLING shield us from the complexities and the darkness and the storms of life?

And what about poems? Don´t they also start and finish, desiring to contain out of Time, in its form a century, a second, or an eternity?

Do these narratives and poems blind us? Or do they, BROUGHT UP by our nakedness, are all eyes, a bay window overlooking our “private realm” and our “public realm”, and also the territory of our indomitable dreams?

-THE END

I must leave these questions unanswered. Time runs. We haven´t fallen into Hamlet´s crack (that crack where time stops for him and he can listen to his father´s ghost speak and speak, though Horatio and his guards are at his heels, UNHEARING). NOR HAVE WE FOLLOWED ALICE in FALLING, WITH the White Rabbit, into the hole where Time is kept at bay.

So, I must finish here these words, they might have been more shadows than light, for I didn´t turn up the lamp of storytelling, the illumination that a story, a narration, a tale bring to our lives. …

Muchas gracias,

From Lepanto’s Other Hand by Carmen Boullosa

Translated from the Spanish by Samantha Schnee

BOOK ONE: MARIA LA BAILAORA

Ch. 12: Yusuf’s Lessons

No sooner had Yusuf the Redhead entered, with no explanation whatsoever to the craftsmen, than he picked up his bundle again, that piece of cloth with a human soul—Maria, tangled and shrouded in a long sheet, escaped from the convent as the bells clanged, mixing in with a passing herd of bulls, touched by the heart that had been touched by the sword. “My heart is my master! My heart!”),—and left the abode of Geninataubín the Swordsman, running up the street with his bundled cargo. He quickly passed four or five houses and arrived at his own. He put Maria down on the floor of a patio identical to that of the blacksmith’s and repeated: “Don’t move!” Maria obeyed again, this time even more carefully; she didn’t move her body, she even stopped feeling and thinking. She continued to dream, imagining she was on the high seas, though she didn’t really believe it. Yusuf the Redhead gathered all the women in the house. The first one to answer his call was Zaida, his daughter, who didn’t even stop to fix her hair, jumping straight out of bed to see her father. Zaida is a redhead like Yusuf, small and slight like her mother. Her face combines the dignity of her enormous father and the charm of her mother. She’s extremely beautiful, the whole world knows this; her huge eyes, her thick lashes, her full lips, the lovely proportions of her face, eyelids just a shade darker, her glowing cheeks… Her grandmother followed her, the elderly Zelda. Zelda’s hair is white – in her youth it was black – her face scored with wrinkles, she’s also small and slight, but she has the character of a general’s wife. The three girls who now live in the house were next to arrive: Susana’s father who was away on travel; the other two, Leylha and Marisol, have been given into Yusuf’s care (alternating with that of other friends) by their parents, because life outside Granada has become dangerous, if not impossible. The last to appear was Yusuf’s lovely wife, Yasmina, meticulously dressed, impeccable and radiant as always. Once everyone had gathered, before removing Maria from her wrapping, Yusuf asked the servants to leave, so he could speak with the women alone, and began: “this girl you see here…” (no one interrupted to ask him “which girl?” because all they saw, or what they thought they saw, was a bolt of cloth) “…must be treated as one of our own. Farag has entrusted her to me,” he gestured toward the bolt of cloth, answering the unasked question, “we rescued her the night before last because the Christians had enslaved her in a convent.” “How terrible!” Zaida and Susana exclaimed in unison, “A convent!” Yusuf paused, savoring the effect he knew the word “convent” would have. He continued, saying that since Farag had asked, they ought to treat the gypsy like a jewel, a member of the family. Then Yusuf changed his tone: against his wishes, he was going to teach her how to use a sword, because the good Farag had asked this of him, and that he ought to begin as soon as they had got the girl dressed and ready. No sooner had he said this than, like a soul possessed by the devil, he departed in great haste. Telling his women what he had been asked to do had made his blood boil once more. He was furious. And he said so to himself as he left: “No good can come of this, giving a sword to a woman. If Farag asks, it will be done, but to my mind this is sheer madness…” The redhead continued speaking to himself in the street, like a madman.

            The daughter of Yusuf the Giant, Zaida, and Susana, her friend who was in the temporary care of the household, immediately seized the bundle, itching with curiosity. The grandmother, mother and other friends helped them unwind the cloth around the head and shoulders of the “goods”. She was so entangled in the long cloth, wrapped like a cocoon, that it was enough just to expose her face and shoulders. Maria regarded them all, afraid. Now she was really confused. She wanted to rub her eyes, but her arms were wrapped tightly beneath the cloth. “Only women, again,” Maria thought to herself, disappointed. Maria was used to living among men. Ever since her mother had died when she was five years old, she had always been surrounded by men. Then she ended up in the convent, and now that she believed she had been abducted into an army at war on the high seas, she thought she must be in a Moorish harem.

            The women approached her, curious to appraise and celebrate her beauty. They touched her eyebrows, stroked her hair, felt her skin, lifting Maria’s spirits. They asked her what she knew how to do:

            “The nuns said that I’m a good-for-nothing,” the women all erupted in laughter, “and that like all gypsies I’m incorrigibly lazy, that ‘I’m not worth my weight in salt’”— the Moorish women laughed again to hear that expression the Christians used to defame the good gypsy spirit. “I like to dance, sing and to draw a lot and if someone would only teach me to read and to write I’m certain I’d like that, too. Oh! Another thing! I learned how to make almond rosquillas from the nuns, and they’re not bad, the ones I make; I paint a little spiral on each one to gypsify them.”

            While she was speaking the women had helped her push the canvas down past her waist, revealing her whole torso, and when they set eyes on the rags she was wearing they removed them, too. Maria glowed, gorgeous, her long, loose, dark hair, her olive skin.

            “First you need to bathe, the whole house already smells like you, you stink like a Christian! Take off those rags the nuns gave you—those shameful tatters speak volumes—tidy yourself up and make yourself pretty and then you can dance for us. As for the rosquillas, as long as they don’t stink like Christians, we’ll happily accept your making them for us any day,” said Zaida, daughter of Yusuf the Redhead, charmed by Maria’s loveliness.

            “Tell me something, what’s your name?”

            “My name is Maria.”

            “Your name is Maria? Then you’re Maria la Bailaora, because you love to dance!” Thus the elderly Zelda baptized her, touching the girl’s tangled, none-too-clean hair. “I’ll teach you to read and write myself. I’ll do so with pleasure.”

            “And painting?” Maria asked. “Is there anyone who can teach me how to paint portraits?”

BOOK TWO: NAPLES

Ch. 29: Which tells the story of Maria la Bailaora’s first voyage on the Mediterranean aboard Ozmin-Baltazar’s galley

On account of the wine, their progress was slowed by a senseless indolence. According to Maria, they hadn’t moved “an inch.” They proceeded with a languor that both astonished and exasperated her. Eventually she wanted to take an oar herself, to hurry things along a bit. In the absence of the boatswain – even in such small crews there’s always someone wielding the whip and setting the rowers’ pace, that’s what a boatswain does – the oarsmen had become absolutely unmanageable, had lapsed into immobility. Freed from the lash and protected by the caprices of Ozmin-Baltazar and his men, who spent their nights drinking and their days recovering, they barely moved the oars, inactive, indolent. The breeze did not blow, the boat did not advance. Maria wanted to row, to get that floating stone in motion. She sought aid from Carlos and Andres, she wanted them to sit next to her and shield her from that motley crew, but they both ignored her. Row? What for? What was the rush? What’s come over you Maria? Have you lost your mind? It’s nice here, look.... And they sang songs to her, they composed poetry, they recited poems, once in a while they cajoled her into singing too, or even dancing, not that she much wanted to; dancing before all those ravenous sailors, their lazy, hungry eyes sliding all over her body, made her very nervous.

That third night, upon starting to drink, Ozmin-Baltazar felt free, for an instant, of the tension he’d felt mounting since he’d first seen Maria dance. Watching her the first time had infected him, the second time it had been unbearable, but this third night somehow it was easier. Taking a small breath of air into his suffering lungs he spoke, before his men had a chance to start playing their instruments, and before Maria’s beauty returned to haunt him. He told his men the following story: [Ch. 30 follows]

BOOK FOUR: THE NEW WORLD

Ch. 68: In which the events of the eighth of October of the year 1571 at the port of Patras, entrance to the Gulf of Patras, which will also come to be known as Lepanto for the fame it gained in the battle of the same name. It tells of what is there seen, and continues with the tale of Maria la Bailaora

Today the world begins. The might of the infidels has been vanquished. Commencing a new era for Christianity. It’s the first day, similar to The First Day in appearance, just as man is made in God’s likeness, an imitation of the beginning, when the Creator undertook his great Works and all was confusion and Chaos.

            After a prolonged night storm, dawn breaks forth amidst trifling squalls and violent gales that disappear as unexpectedly as they arrive. The timid, stammering sun barely illuminates the small and dumpy port of Patras with its unmatched piers.

            Patras is equidistant between the port of Lepanto and the Escochulaza Islands. More than a score of galleys throngs around its long, semi-ruined pier, put there by who knows what army in who knows what long-forgotten campaign, which perhaps did not culminate in military action, petering out with some half-hearted shots in pursuit of unarmed enemies on the run.  Hot on the tails of these 24 galleys come one hundred more, all crowded together, their arrogance gone, no sails, guidons, standards, pennants or other decoration, bunched so closely together that they seem to be one monstrous, colossal vessel, or, better yet, a mass of dumb, poorly armed wooden planks, dropped there without rhyme or reason, weak and defenseless against the tempestuous caprices of the miserable weather. The other pier is as insignificant as the port of Patras itself, it’s the fisherman’s pier, much smaller but in much better repair. There’s not a single galley at its side for two reasons: because the vessels with more than two oars would founder in the shallow waters and also because two or three rows of sharp, pointed lances surround it, a great quantity of them extending from every side, forming a forest of pikes.

            The sea water blushes malignantly—bloodied—running right up to the shore, more crowded than the galleys, but to say “running” is an exaggeration and “crowded” isn’t right. Brought to a standstill by the sudden cessation of action, the water is shattered, torn to shreds by the multitude of things and cadavers washed towards shore. It’s reddened and stinks of blood, flesh and ashes from the fire. Water, fire, air and earth, the four primordial elements are all mixed together. The air is water, the water is earth, the earth is fire, the fire is air. As it was said in the opening of these pages: we are in the land of primordial Chaos.

            The light of dawn shines forth: life and death are also all mixed up together.

            As soon as it ceases to rain, a sudden, dead calm shrouds the soldiers in sticky humidity. They have only just arisen, wandering sluggishly about. The gravely wounded have no strength to moan, the medics are losing hope and heave sighs before redoubling their efforts with those who still merit care. On the Christian galleys utter disorder reigns. The chains of the galley slaves are lax and empty, the benches are beds for the wounded; their bandages hang in the excrement, along with shields, breastplates, damaged helmets, an unlucky and now-silent drum, a bugle ruined by the bullet from an arquebus, broken lances, human heads and hornpipes. The fruits of their pillaging are piled on the midship gangways: caftans, boxes of all sizes, weapons, hats, shoes, silk dresses, brocades and other fine textiles, golden armor, beautifully wrought helmets, Persian carpets, turbans, the plumes of herons, sculptures of gold and marble, gilded carvings, jewels of every imaginable sort, bags full of coins. Such an abundance that from time to time the mounds slide down into the hull—the accumulated piss and shit of the galley slaves covers those decks, if that’s what you can call the hellish depths of the galleys, making them slippery, but no one bats an eyelash. So much to be found here in Patras! What a rich variety lies before our eyes! The fabrics, the colors, the materials! And there are all manner of comestibles, beverages and fruits! The most well-travelled merchant could not offer a finer cornucopia!

            The innumerable water bugs that live in the galleys—that's what they call the cockroaches here, they’re long and fat—along with a multitude of rats, scurry in and around the new cargo, excited, as if they were intelligent enough to enjoy this new feast. Next the bed bugs will come, so numerous here that some people race them, placing bets to while away the hours and the boredom of long periods of inaction at sea!

            An insidious, thick, grayish fog shrouds the living, sticking fast to each body in motion. Thus adorned, they attempt a semblance of routine. But it is the first day, and each task seems to have nothing to do with the next. Order does not exist here. For weeks beforehand they had prepared diligently for the attack. Now that the Great Turk has been vanquished, routed, reduced to primordial chaos, there’s nothing left to do—slaving away, in the idiom of the sailor—and so, relaxed, confused, disorganized, they find themselves neither at work nor at play. 

            The living all appear fit to cross the River Lethe, because on mornings such as this, Death does not rest. Cadavers float around the galleys and the two piers, or wash up on the beach, looking for any vessel to take them across to the other world, for pity’s sake!