Ensiao na Morte [1] (mmj)

Garbatella [2]. Bereavement.  And what is the language using us for [3]. For something, A letter of condolence, which of course I have never sent you, No, I don't think so, But definitely for something, I was writing after a visit to Rome, four days in which we had walked through parts of the centre of the city, its suburbs, and even beyond (and some walking is also a mistake) [4].

 

It is dark, and in the silence,

And I have said before that metaphors are dangerous,

An axe-head is falling out of a clear blue sky.

 

Shattering glass, the sound,

That-is and that-is-not, Near to madness, as Aristotle said,

Of a vase which is already broken.

 

Kindness, kindness, blink and you might miss it,

There is the scorching heat when opposites are brought close,

Bathing in fire, and drinking together at an oasis of horror.

 

Chloë, In Memoriam. Garbatella, February 2009.

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FOOTNOTES

[1]  Ensiao na Morte (Portuguese) might be translated into English as Deathness or Dying. That would be on the basis that Ensiao Sobre a Ceguira (the novel by José Saramaga, published 1995) is called Blindness in its English translation, and Ensiao sobre Lucidez (published 2007, in which the story of the first book is continued), is called Seeing. Ensiao for Saramago means a story in which people don't have names, only roles such as the minister of justice, the doctor's wife, the policeman, and so on. The punctuation is also stripped to the bare minimum, commas and full stops only. So the possibility exists for forms to interweave, essay and work of fiction, poem and piece of research.

[2]  The construction of La Garbatella district in Rome began in the 1920s on a hill close to the Via Ortense in the south of the city. Built for the migrant workers coming into the city, it was planned in blocks (lotto) along similar lines to the idea of the English garden city. Garbato means graceful or amiable with the ending suggestive of the feminine, and the buildings are beautiful, but the district has certainly not gone the way of Hampstead. Garbatella has kept its ‘outsider’ character, and sense of migrant worker roughness. Spray-can graffiti and anti-fascist slogans cover walls, football flags (AC Roma) hang from windows, gardens are overgrown, and many of the buildings are neglected, stucco falling off the walls and thick tufts of green grass filling the gutters so that the rain water floods down the walls to spoil the fine architectural features below.

[3]  W S Graham wrote a poem with this title (published in his Implements In Their Places collection, 1977). In fact, he wrote six poems in a series all beginning with the same line, ‘What is the language using us for?’. The title reminds us that even in our worst moments, in situations in which we have been completely abandoned, and all our attempts at communications have failed, lost for words, our poetic memory is intact and actively engaged using us for something.

[4]  In the beginning, and we don't have a clear methodology for walkingtalkingwriting or often know where we are heading, each district of the city we visit presents us with a series of overlapping perspectives. Perhaps we could be working inductively to join up the dots, creating Categories in what might be called ‘a hierarchy among equals’. An important class of Category are those which are a mistake, as when ‘and some walking is also a mistake’ (and talking, and writing). For instance, one day in Rome my enthusiasm got the better of me and we went badly wrong as I attempted to lead a walk … to the Etruscan necropolis at Cerveteri … that ended in a Total Garage in the countryside off the Via Aurelia looking into the disbelieving eyes of the petrol attendant.

mmj

Comments

[Alan Kirby]

Two books by Jose Saramago – Blindness and Seeing. Both deceptively simply morality tales for our times. And that simplicity is devastating. By taking our sense of vision and twisting it, firstly in Blindness, by taking it away, and in the second, Seeing, by seeing too much. What happens is acted out by Saramago's two casts of nameless characters. Surely both should be required reading. Wonderful!