There are three men indifferent to politics: the sculptor, the flautist and the man in the embrace of a woman. We can name this old-fashioned triad as: the laborer, the gentleman and the saint.
William Butler Yeats, 1936

…or: the gentleman, the laborer, the saint and the fool.
Djurdja Otrzan, 1988

Diaries

THE FOUR MOST STILL…

Djurdja Otrzan
508-9.

THE RIGHT ANGLE

‘Clocks are the most preposterous. Every time you raise your head they look different… There is no falsehood in numbers. Look to numbers’… he said, autos epha.

The school arranged itself. Before us the Teacher.

‘He condemned himself.’ And immediately afterward. ‘He worked in such a way that he lacerated his own countenance’… autos epha, he said.

The school re-arranged itself. It placed itself in yet another sequence. And moved toward the garden. The myrtle smelled bitter like the soul of the dead. It was night. As always when we buried or studied, HE walked first in line. After him walked all the others at sacred, regular intervals, as prescribed by virtues 9 and 4. We prayed the whole way. The wind tried to blow in our faces.

‘He was no ordinary emperor…’ he said, autos epha. ‘He was a remarkable emperor…’

In ourselves we weighed every word and held the burial. It was night. As always when burying was done or when we studied.
We looked to the Teacher.

‘How will he live, in death?’
‘Death-like…’

He prayed long and softly. As if afraid. Holy is the fear of power… he said, autos epha… one should not crave it.

We were the youngest. Long years of studying lay before us. It was difficult for us to set a square in the morning. For those from the older class it was easier. They lived without an emperor and quaked before the Teacher. For them it was easier. We had lost our emperor. Afterward, each for himself, we mourned his death to the soft noise of lapping sea waves, as befits those bereft of their mortal support… softly, so that he who walks upright, alone, would not reprimand us. We conferred among ourselves: ‘This is either the unraveling of the atom or some sort of dispersal of immutable and indestructible particles. Only reasonable beings were created unto themselves alone. We said to one another: ‘The rest of your life you must live in harmony with your nature as if you had already died or as if you have lived only to now. For what could be more right than that?’ We weren’t disturbed by he who walks upright, alone, for he knew what mercy is and how swiftly passes the joy of grief. He had been the spring of all goodness.
‘What dies does not depart this world’… autos epha, he said.

What is it doing in the Cosmos? How long can it last?
Domadieeh

DEAD POET TO DEAD POETESS

How shall I call this…
Dead poet to dead poetess?
Yes.
my fine and ever so cherished friend
Your poem written on the event of my death grieved and moved me. You must not wax maudlin over the two of us, or rather over yourself. Poems are to be sung, not shouted. I know, I know, this is your last poem and you had the right to all kinds of shouts, but a shout has much too long an echo, and someone else, someone for whom the poem was not intended, might hear you or think no one stands behind you, though you know this is not true. In other words a poet must keep firmly in mind the reverberation of a poem and the amount of emptiness that wells from it, or that it assumes. You certainly know all there is to know about emptiness so no point in dwelling on that further. Ah yes. Emptiness. You, too, have felt it, have you not? Though the word is empty we still fancy it as a word, as the word ’emptiness’, and as such it is something quite different from what we have experienced, you and I, and your poem.
I, or what I was, could no longer see how I became what I am, but I can see this rather clearly through your poem. Hence the value of the poem to me. And all your other verse as well. You were my finest reader and I, yours, judging by this poem, your last lamentation before you moved to prose. May I say that prose has only gained by the transaction?
For what can a poet gain from prose but the lilt of a sentence, and this, in all honesty, can only keep us from the true essence of a poem. Prose, however, has much to learn from poetry. I do not doubt that you have enhanced it, with, if nothing else, at least a poetic fumble that always so aptly ripples the safe seas of drowsy prose. Have you ever noticed that prose always slumbers if a poet with his noise and commotion does not prod it and rouse it from its lethargy?
Dear friend, what I tell you now cannot remain between the two of us for there never was anything between the two of us to begin to remain. This is the most that one poet can give another poet, but that it will remain, alive, or sailing (a frivolous word), or even traveling with us, of this much I am certain:
you were my opponent, though in a rather different way than you imagine – in your love for life. You so needed it to rise honorably to your vocation. I did not, nor did I need you or any of my friends and you knew and respected that, meaning that all in all you understood, which says again that all the while you wanted to be like this yourself yet you could not or did not know how. Such is a woman’s fate, my dear. If it hadn’t been for me you would never have known such a thing was possible, that one could live as I do. You needed me to understand how incomplete you are and how that incompleteness seeks its antipode. That this is your most remarkable quality is proven by your stunning opus. I could not vie with you in love, and you cannot vie with me in coldness.
Emptiness has swallowed us both.
your devoted so-and-so Other Land such-and-such
There. That’s the sort of letter I should write to her, but how can I when I died in the winter of 1926, and she killed herself in the summer of 1941 so that nothing of mine can reach her nor can anything of hers reach me? Poets and suicides share the same fate: no one cares about them until their death. Their paths, however, then diverge: the former into a chasm, the latter into an abyss of seering light. The former is blind to shape, the latter deaf to summons. That is why we shall never meet. Her corpse lies here before me in the poem, but only I die in her, or perhaps I had already died by then, it is tough to recall. I’d rather not remember when I see what memory has done to her, my sole true friend and most devoted, true listener. It killed her.
I do recall one of her poems while she was still quite a young poet at the beginning. She sent it to me and I told her: Come, we should talk. You have a gift and you say well what you have to say, but you are still not clear as to whom you speak. I will teach you how to know to whom you speak. She came and together we went through the poem several times. Listening to me raptly she started in again earnestly for the nth time and then, glancing quickly at me, suddenly shifted her tone – and I knew then that this was she, the true poetess, and that I, a true poet of my age (as they were calling me at the time) had triumphed in my work with her.
The poem was called ‘Semi Veronica’ and it went like this:
In storage I keep a frozen painting. The painting has an author. Not I.
When the painting speaks, it speaks through me. The painting has no mercy.
The painting is pagan. It knows the way. We do not.
How did it freeze? They wept, and it was cold. It froze.
I did not force it to. So it was from the first.
It feeds on spleen. I hunt spleen on a city map.
The frozen painting has no name. Just Triptych.
It calmly cries and sleeps.
So has it always been. From the start when it was not yet mine.
They gave it to me quite by chance. Though I expected.
Whenever I think of it alone there falling in the empty storage place, I feel
impotence.
A leap.
It could shatter if it leapt out the window, so frozen.
I hunt for spleen on a city map. There is less and less of it. The painting does
not know this.
It will die of hunger, without even knowing.
The painting is my companion. It is a male painting. The painter was a man.
It is gone. It left. It leapt out the window. So they said.
The painting is mine. So it must be. On it nothing is left. But ice.
And so it must be. Most paintings end like this. As ice.
Ice is good for paintings. It best preserves the warmth. And betrayal.
In order to save it I must remove it from storage. And melt it.
That way it will be mine forever. And it will have no more worries. Nor will I.

To describe it:
In the background is a girl, still. In the foreground is the face of a man, calm.
Second part: In the background is a girl, still. In the foreground is the face of a man, convulsed.
Third part: In the background is a girl, still. In the foreground is the face of a man, charred. It is called Triptych.

The poem was later published in a progressive journal that had on its front page Veronese’s ‘Dialectic’, utterly irrelevant to its purpose, but those were times in which every perversion and irrelevance met with approval. That is why she, my dear friend, decided to save her ear for harmony no matter how ominous it might be and I admired her with all my heart and I always will, for unlike me she walked straight by God, deliberate and steady.
I am unused to writing. I’m tired.

PHIDIAS PREPARES FOR THE OLYMPICS

We finished Venus’s hands today. It’s a marvel to watch how life takes shape at the Master’s touch. When I see him massage a crease on the left palm to form the lay of the veins, I wait breathless for him to be done: he’d move his fingers away and blood could pulse through the hand. I am still at the awestruck stage and this irks the Master. He says that it means I am incapable of judging whether or not I will be able to do the same someday. I am admiring the work, not him; in my mind they are not one and the same. I’m still young, he tells me, and I know that he expects me to come up with new techniques; this is why he took me on. He says that he has never had a student from my part of the country before and that my different background may guide my approach to his technique. I have no technique, I can imagine no technique finer than the Master’s.
* * *
Last night at the Carnival a young hand tweaked me from behind, and afterwards I heard her chuckle: ‘Where did you learn to dance so well…’ I saw her in the crowd, if it was she, with eyebrows darkly arched under the curls on her forehead like Perox’s Hermes. I was sorry I hadn’t gotten a closer look;… it would be worth checking to see whether the arch is truly that dark, or merely seemed so in the oblique lighting. Pity that the vixen fled, yet she did pinch me hard, twice. I liked it, though she was young, perhaps a bit too young for me to return in kind.
* * *
Today we went to see Praxiteles’s Dorotheus. A remarkable work. The Master was seething. He says that I haven’t understood a thing. Praxiteles is a dignified and courteous man, and I also liked his son Praxiteles, very much. He was silent all the while and didn’t look at his father or at us but, as far as I could tell, kept glancing at Dorotheus’s sandals with a sort of scowl that could easily turn to a smile at someone’s urging. I also noticed that the position of the right foot was slightly more angled than customary, without disturbing the fall of the chiton which hung as it usually does.
* * *
Today we worked on casting in the yard. It was hot and the Master asked me to sing him verses from the Book which I didn’t mind, I’ve always liked singing. He forbade me to help because, he said, the only way to protect me from drudgery is to keep me from learning how. When my time comes, if it does, I should leave that sort of work to my apprentices and the laborers from the outskirts of town. I obeyed and sang slowly, handing him grapes and wine as he grew tired, but by watching him on the sly I still learned enough to repeat the procedure myself, should I ever need to. The Master might die tomorrow and if my time hadn’t come yet, how would I manage to learn everything I’d need?
* * *
The girl betrothed to the Master’s son came in today to visit. She is charming. The others wanted us to draw her but I was against it. I think it would bother the Master. Her name is Pausina.
* * *
Pausina came in again, today.
* * *
For three days now we have not been working at all. It is raining and we have stopped altogether. The Master says that if this persists for another seven days we will not have enough time to submit our pieces and arrange for transportation to the city to display them. And if we do not win one of the first awards, it will be a disgrace to the school.
* * *
My Artemides with Robe was awarded first prize and my joy was boundless, but a glance at the Master spoiled it al…l; he had recognized Pausina’s countenance when I painted the eyes. He was angry and worried. Pausina and I have parted ways, sad, perhaps, but nonetheless satisfied in the end;… she liked my Artemides and I was pleased that she was finally getting married. What had I to offer but a passion for stone? No house, no estate, no lovely clothes. I am sorry she won’t be coming by any more. We may remain lovers if circumstances permit. I would be glad. She moves with lightning speed and I love to stop her short when she least expects it. Then her eyes have an almost divine expression and it helps me, thinking of that, while I work. Surely the Master had that in mind when he told us that the gods are first human and only then all else, and that we must always think of this when we begin working.
* * *
I was at court today, as expected, but did not speak in my own defense.
* * *
I talked with Praxiteles on the Square. He thinks we should work together. I asked him why and he said the two of us think alike. The two of us may think alike but our techniques are different and there can be no reconciliation. I’ll copy his Thermodore to prove my point. I begged the Master not to let him into the yard anymore, because I’d rather he didn’t stand there and watch me as I work. The Master thinks I am overreacting, but he is glad to have a job of some kind now that he’s lame. He’s done nothing all day long ever since the hog bit off his foot but doze under the mulberry tree by the courtyard gate, slumping on his cane and hissing curses at the passersby. He has lost his strength and this enrages him most of all; he can’t even hold a wedge any more without it slipping out of his hand when he wants to demonstrate something to the novices.
* * *
Pausina had a baby boy, and the Master and I made her a gift of a little Dionysius with a god. When Pausina broke the gift it didn’t bother me. Actually, she tried to smash it but she couldn’t. All she did was snap off the god’s hand holding the grape cluster, enticing little Dionysius. It is already clear that the child will look nothing like his mother.
* * *
The boy is completely free and romps or naps all day long on a pillow next to the Master, who looks after him. Pausina comes to fetch the boy and says nothing. She picks him up at nightfall and leaves. It angers me when the child starts to cry and the Master grumbles at him, ‘Why call for me…? I’m not your father…’ He may not be the father but he is the grandfather, and besides he has nothing better to do.
* * *
I am ready for a serious talk with the Master. I’ve wanted to start several times, but my thoughts on what it is I wanted from him were not clearly set. Now I think I know. I’ll ask for some answers, I’ll make him answer my questions: I have the right. I’ve won first prize three times now, but since the last contest I can see that I’m no longer making progress. I need his help. The jealous goat, he hasn’t entrusted me with a single secret, though he knows that only I could keep them. I’ll get him drunk at twilight after Pausina takes the child away, and I’ll extract what I need from him, of this much I’m certain.
* * *
Since the Master died I have no news of Praxiteles. I have plenty of money to bribe spies, but what could those poor creatures find out that would be of interest to men; Pausina stood in the middle of the yard, today, facing me. She looked first at the sun, then at me, and said, ‘I am leaving, and I won’t be back.’ I suddenly knew that I’d make Athene the Victorious for the coming contest. I am grateful to Pausina. I’ve sought her so long. And there will be nothing to prop her up: I cannot abide Praxiteles’ contrivances. She will stand straight, upright, alone, as befitting the daughter of Zeus. I will start working as soon as dawn breaks, not to waste a single moment; it will be a huge job. I’ll feed my students well so that they can keep up with my pace. And when I finish the piece and receive the prize I will move to the northern slope above town where it is cooler and more genteel. Why stay here where every blade of grass rustles at dawn, noon and dusk as if they: the Master, Pausina, the child are passing through the yard?

A PARTISAN GOES TO BED

Michigan, October 20 –
Ohio, November 15, 1989

Michael is absolutely right. I must stop writing pornography. I must quit once and for all. One day word will get out, and then they’ll never consider me for ‘Partisan Review’. It is good to have a brother who sees things in practical terms and is not ashamed of having a dumb sister. He meant Maureen. He told me, ‘Melaney, we have one dumb sister, and don’t you know it.’ I think I do know it. Is he saying the same thing to her when they are alone, out there in Oregon, in the hay, under the open sky staring at Mona’s white rabbits? Maureen, we have one dumb sister, and don’t you know it! – Yes, Michael, I do, we sure do have a dumb sister: Melaney.
It must be rough on Michael, stuck between two dumb sisters. Does that mean that it is tough to be a man? He doesn’t know how fucking hard it can be sometimes to write a new porno piece nice and ‘quick, seductive and juicy’, as Wilsham my editor puts it. Well, Michael? Can you imagine how writing can suddenly become a Laocoon wrestling match where no one knows who has got a grip on whose member, the son with the brother, or the father with the snake, or the snake with himself…? All that matters is that Wilsham tests it out under the desk when I bring him in the stuff for reading and I go out to make a ‘phone call’. That’s how we play it.
Sure, sure. Michael is right. I must stop. For good. But how can I when I’m used to seeing the world like that now? Pornography. I’ll have to first get used to seeing things differently, and then I’ll be able to stop. How do I begin, Michael? How does the world look when you’re stuck between two dumb sisters? ‘First of all, you’ve got to get smart… ‘ Ah, that Michael. So practical.

– So I become a stripper?
– Why not, you’ve got the bod – said Michael.
– I refuse to shave my legs… – I shouted. The waitress stared at me.
– You’ll get used to it – said Michael. The waitress was wearing pants so I couldn’t tell whether she was for or against shaving legs.
– And besides… – Michael went on and wiped the cocoa from his lapel with his sleeve – …they like them that way: clean, smooth shiny legs that spin around like loaves of bread at the baker’s. I know they do. I do.
I had no way out. I would have go buy a razor.
– Why do you want to be a stripper anyway? – Michael asked, chewing a roll dunked in egg.
– Can’t you see.. it’s my stories… Living the part…!
– How much are they paying you to live the part? – he asked.
– Ninety nine dollars… – I said.
– Then live the part cheaper – he replied.
– You mean without shaving? – I asked.
– No, without stripping, hon – Michael licked his lips, brushed the crumbs off his chin and got up to pay. Muttering, he said: Wait till I tell this to Monica. She won’t believe it.
I spit out my pizza. There, that’s why I can’t trust Michael. He tells Monica everything, the dumb one with the rabbits in Oregon. Or Maureen. If they were worth a dime they wouldn’t be out there now, drying hay and counting stars while they feed those idiotic white rabbits.
I said:
– Look Michael, we really do have one dumb sister.
– Sure, doll… – Michael said, flipping a coin down the waitress’s cleavage that pinged as it clinked against the heavy cross on a long, thin chain, warming on her ample breasts. Wilsham always likes that. He said that nothing thrills him like a sense for detail in a good, juicy little tale.
– But Michael, I’m a writer…
– Sure you are, sugar, sure you’re a writer.
– … I am a writer Michael, and I can’t go around shaving my legs when someone says so.
– So don’t shave your legs. Writers shouldn’t have to shave their legs, is that what you mean?
– No, well, oh, I don’t know… – Outdoors it was so cold I’d forgotten what it was I’d meant.
Michael hugged me and said:
– Look, Melaney, hon, don’t get so worked up about this, everything will be fine. Writers don’t have to shave their legs just because they can’t grow a beard, do they! Sure thing, I’m behind you on that one… – and he kissed me on both cheeks and vanished into the crowd with that new swagger of his that I’ve noticed the guys from the south part of town are picking up again, most of them black. It bothers me. Michael shouldn’t be walking like that, it makes his age show and he still looks young when he doesn’t bounce on his toes.
I guess I’ll quit keeping this diary. I never can get to sleep afterward, and a writer needs his, or rather her, sleep. Without rest you can’t do your best, like Wilsham is always saying. I don’t get paid for this diary stuff, so if I stop writing it maybe I’ll have the time to start looking at things different and then maybe I’ll quit the porno. I’ll have to write to Michael and see what he thinks about whether a writer should keep a diary or not, but if he goes and rats to those dumb bunnies out in Oregon… No, I won’t write him anything. I’ll ask Wilsham. He knows what’s best for writers. He’s sacked enough of them.

THE ANGEL

When the angel speaks, I remember what time it is. When the angel is quiet, I have to think much faster. When he laughs, I’m scared. It must be great to be an angel who can run people so easily. How many angels are there I know only one. And that one is dumb, dumb as an angel. Which is why people say: ‘Dumb as an angel’. They mean an angel can’t know anything without our bodies which is why it prods us to do all those things to give it satisfaction and pain; so it can learn how the body works, because he doesn’t have one and how else would he know. Nota bene, ‘it’ doesn’t have one, for since it hasn’t a body it was never given gender. When ‘It’, i.e. the noun ‘angel’, laughs, only then can I see how big that noun is. Which why they say ‘big as an angel’, which, together, make: ‘Big and dumb as an angel’.
‘It’ is perfect, but always only perfect in one way. ‘It’ is born when the soul can no longer grow because it has grown to perfection. Such a limited perfection cannot communicate with some other angel which is only perfect in the limits of some other way. Which is why they need the archangels. I don’t know any archangels but Michael, but when I ask him about angels, he shrugs a wing: ‘Ah, forget those stick-in-the-muds, we need to figure out what makes us tick.’
Michael is pretty realistic; how else could he keep track of all those angels?
You can’t get to the angels without passing by the guard of the threshold. And every single time the guard pesters me about all I’ve done and how I’ve treated my angel since I last saw him. ‘Take last night, for instance,’ says the guard at the threshold, ‘he said he’d make you spaghetti… and you?… what did you say?’ I will keep what I said to myself since it is hardly worth repeating. But when I want to apologize straight to the angel’s face the guard won’t let me. ‘No, not to him. Apologize to me… especially for the TV set’… he is such a malicious creep that I lose all taste for apologies. Anyway, since my wish to see the angel is stronger than he is, I always shut up the parasite, gloating there over my failures, and slip by him. When I reach the angel it always seems that the guard was lying or overdramatizing or, heaven forbid, fabricating, because nothing about my angel suggests that I hurt him with that thing about the spaghetti, or that I filched his lighter, nothing… he seems just as befuddled and cheery as ever, gravely benevolent, bubbling with spirits and optimism, in a word, an enthusiast. As if nothing existed before he came along. But then he speaks, or rather ‘it’ speaks, and I remember what time it is, i.e. everything starts again from the beginning and I relax and make plenty of mistakes to give the guard at the threshold material for next time so he can rub it in before he lets me over to the other side. When I complain to Michael about the guard he says, ‘Oh, no, let him be, that’s good. He gets smarter that way.’ Who? The guard or the angel?
I do have my problems with the angel. You see, he sees everything contrary, and he’s overjoyed with anything to do with the body. So when I’d like to talk to him about something simple, like, for instance, the role of men in our society, he tweaks up my skirt with his wing and shrieks: ‘Woo hoo, will you look at those panties’, even though there is no one near us at the time. See, that’s how contrary he is. My other problems with him I won’t go into because they’re too personal. The angel is otherwise as good as gold and would do anything for me, so aside from his contrariness I have no further comments on the angel.

THREE POEMS

A poem moves
upward from below
in regular
concentric
circles.
Then
bumps
into the celestial
sea.
The sea
gulps it
without hurting
anyone.
The sea drains,
the poem remains.
So surface is formed.

My mother is plagued
by soft voices

my mother,
former actress,
needs this explained

A voice goes around
and it cannot be followed long.
But some voices never cease.

So I meditate on
the circles around my mama
for they are everlasting.

I best like the green circle
loud Schiller’s song
while the light-blue-violet call
I do not recognize
rather I hear
it is in Spanish.

If there had been
a tone camera
in the years of
her youth
my mama would have
been
a star

She wouldn’t have been my mama
with the voice of a butterfly
and the repertoire
of fifties theater.

Like a pharmacist
I weigh words,
as if I weigh,
life and death.

The scales are of gold,
but they’re not mine.

They were lent to me
and I promised
I’d quickly
return them.

But I never seem to balance
the amount
on the left, and the amount on the right
side of the poem
to still the scales.

Like a pharmacist
I reek of camphor
and I weigh.

Perhaps I mean to
delay
for if the scales balance,
they’ll come and take them
and I’ll no longer be able
to write poems
without the scales and the camphor.

Like a pharmacist
I am getting slightly
near-sighted.

Like a pharmacist
I give out penny candy
when I’m low on change.

English translation:
Ellen Elias-Bursac