How to Travel With a Salmon and Other Essays (16 page)

The chronicler of this critical adventure would like, if he might, to stop at this point, for chronicle is not tautology of the factual, but interrogation and drift; the supreme condition (interrogative arrest) remains that of going forward, and proceeding to return to the origin, and saying not to say, and not saying to be and to remain in the identity of the different. To the point where (the owls have spoken for us, or we for them, and/or the language for all, or silence for the word) no voice will be able to remain silent in the full ef-fability of its own void.

This, and only this, is what Poetry demands of us.

1982

These days, especially in the United States, implacable copy editors demand of authors not only stylistic revisions but even changes in plot, new endings, whatever commercial necessity dictates. But when we Italians recall—for example—the summary way the novelist-editor Elio Vittorini dealt with young writers some decades ago, can we honestly say that they ordered things so differently in the past?

Take the usually overlooked fact that the first version of a well-known poem by Philip Larkin originally went: "They do you harm, your father and mother." It was only the insistence of Larkin's editor that inspired the now-famous variant. And the first draft of Eliot's
Waste Land
opened: "April is the cruellest month. And March isn't all that great, either." Weakened in its impact by this peevish insistence on climatic details, the earlier text denied April any implied link with the rites of vegetation. As everyone knows, Ariosto at first submitted to his publisher a very brief poem that went: "Of women and knights, arms, loves, courtly rituals, and bold ventures I have nothing to say." And that was that. "How about developing it a bit?" the editor suggested. And Messer Ludovico, who was having enough trouble as civil governor of a remote Tuscan province, said, "What's the use? There are dozens of epics of chivalry already. Leave it. I want to urge poets to try new genres." And the editor replied, "Yes, of course, I understand, and, personally, I agree with you. But why not try approaching the form from another angle? With irony, for instance. Anyway, we can't sell a one-page book, particularly one with only two verses on the page. It looks like imitation Mal-larmé. It would have to be a limited, numbered edition. So unless we can get Philip Morris to sponsor it, we're screwed."

The Manzoni case is important. He began the first version of his novel with "That stretch of Lake Garda." It seems simple enough, but if he had stuck to that lake, he might have written the whole history of the Venetian Republic and never got beyond Riva. You can imagine how long it would have taken Renzo to get to Milan. He'd never have made it in time for the bread riot. And afterwards nothing significant would have happened to the poor youth. Lucia would have sought protection from the Nun of Rovereto, an abbess of impeccable behavior; the whole novel would have ended after a few trivial mishaps before the happy wedding.... Even Brother Cadfael has more exciting adventures.

The Leopardi story is still more serious. The wandering shepherd of Asia, in the first draft, cried: "What are you doing, Jupiter, in heaven? Tell me, what are you doing, silent Jupiter." Nothing wrong with that excellent planet, of course, but it is visible only during certain seasons and has hardly any emotional or metaphysical connotations. In fact, Leopardi's composition consisted of just a few verses, at the end of which the shepherd concluded that, as far as he was concerned, Jupiter didn't amount to much. Luckily, the editor's intervention saved the day: "Professor Leopardi, give me a break! Use the old imagination. Why not try one of Jupiter's satellites?" "Oh, please!...that would only make things worse. What would a wandering shepherd of Asia know about satellites? Maybe the moon ... at most. You want me to have him cry out to the moon? Really! I do have some self-respect." "Well, you never know. Run it through the machine."

The Proust story, finally, is tragic. In the first version he had written: "Longtemps je me suis couché après minuit." You know what happens to a growing boy who stays up till all hours. The Narrator succumbed to a cerebral inflammation that virtually destroyed his memory. He saw the Duchesse de Guermantes the next day and asked, "Who are you, Madame?" He was banished from all the salons of Paris, because certain faux pas are beyond forgiveness in that world. In this Ur-version, the Narrator was even incapable of expressing himself in the first person, and
La Recherche
boiled down to a brief case history à la Charcot.

On the other hand, after I ended a novel of mine with the verse of Bernard de Morlay beginning, "Stat rosa pristina nomine," I was informed by some philologists that certain other extant manuscripts read, on the contrary, "Stat Roma," which, for that matter, would make more sense because the preceding verses refer to the disappearance of Babylon. What would have happened if I had in consequence entitled my novel
The Name of Rome?
I would have had a preface by John Paul II, who no doubt would have made me a Papal Count. Or someone would have made a movie with Sean Connery in a toga.

1990

In 1991 the Italian novelist Laura Grimaldi wrote a
Monsieur Bovary,
recounting what happened to Charles after Emma's death; and at about the same time, a Ms. Ripley (probably a character invented by Patricia Highsmith) made a killing with her
Scarlett,
a continuation of
Gone with the Wind.
For that matter, from
Oedipus at Colonus
to
Twenty Years After,
the tradition of the sequel has earned a certain nobility.

Giampaolo Proni, with his
The Case of the Asia Computer,
showed that he knows how to invent narrating machines; and he suggested that I offer some other possible continuations of famous novels.

Marcel Who?

Proust's Narrator, having concluded his work with the seal of Time, exhausted by asthma, decides to visit a celebrated allergy specialist on the French Riviera and travels there by motorcar. An inexperienced driver, he is involved in a frightful accident: severe concussion, almost total loss of memory. He is treated by Aleksandr Luria, who advises him to develop the technique of the interior monologue. Since the Narrator no longer has a store of memories to monologue about and can barely assimilate his present perceptions, Luria suggests he extend the interior monologues in Joyce's
Ulysses.

The Narrator struggles through the unbearable novel, and reconstructs a fictitious ego for himself, beginning with the memory of his grandmother's visits to him in boarding school at Clongowes Wood. He regains a fine synesthetic ability, and the slightest whiff of mutton fat from a shepherd's pie brings to his mind the trees of Phoenix Park and the spire of the church at Chapelizod. He dies, a Guinness addict, in a doorway on Eccles Street.

Molly

Waking from a troubled sleep on the morning of June 17, 1904, Molly Bloom goes down to the kitchen and finds Stephen Dedalus there, making himself some coffee. Leopold has gone out on one of his vague business errands; perhaps he has deliberately left the two alone. Molly's face is puffy from sleep, but Stephen is immediately fascinated, seeing her as a kind of wondrous whale-woman. He recites some cheap poems to her and Molly falls into his arms. They run away together to Pula, on the Istrian coast, and then to Trieste, with Bloom pursuing them the whole time, disguised as the man in the mackintosh.

In Trieste, Italo Svevo advises Stephen to write down his story, and Molly, who is very ambitious, chimes in. Over the years, Stephen writes a monumental novel,
Telemachus.
When he has completed the last page, he abandons the manuscript on his desk and elopes with Sylvia Beach. Molly discovers the manuscript, reads it, and becomes completely engrossed in it, finding herself back at the exact point where everything started, stirring restlessly in her bed in Dublin, on the night between June 16 and 17, 1904.

Crazed with rage, she follows Stephen to Paris. At the door of Shakespeare & Co., rue de l'Odèon, she offs him with three pistol shots, shouting "Yes, yes, yes!" She then takes flight, accidentally entering a comic strip by Daniele Panebarco, where she discovers Bloom in her bed making love with—simultaneously—Anna Livia Plurabelle, Lenin, Sam Spade, and Barbara Walters. Distraught, she kills herself.

Sam Again

Vienna, 1950. Twenty years have passed, but Sam Spade is still determined to get hold of the Maltese falcon. His current connection is Harry Lime, and the two of them are confabulating at the top of the Prater's Ferris wheel. "I've found a clue," Lime says. Descending, they head for the Café Mozart, where, in one corner, a black musician is playing
As Time Goes By
on a zither. At the little table in the rear, a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, which is wearing a bitter smile, there is Rick. Among the documents Ugarte showed him, he has found a clue; he shows Sam Spade a photograph of Ugarte. "Cairo!" the private eye murmurs. "When I knew him he went by the name of Peter Lorre," Lime says with a sneer.

Rick continues: in Paris, which he entered in triumph with de Gaulle and his forces, he learned of the existence of an American spy, whom the OSS had released from San Quentin in order to set him on the trail of the falcon. The word then was that he had killed Victor Laszlo in Lisbon. He should be arriving any minute. The door opens and a woman appears. "Ilsa!" cries Rick. "Brigid!" cries Sam Spade. "Anna Schmidt!" cries Lime. "Miz Scarlett!" the black man cries, turning that gray color that blacks turn when they blanch, "You're back! Don't hurt Massa!" The woman has an enigmatic smile. "I am as you desire me.... And as for the falcon..."

"Yes?" the others all cry, in one voice.

"As for the falcon," the fascinating adventuress replies, "it wasn't a falcon. It was a hawk."

"Screwed!" Spade murmurs, "and for the second time!" He clenches his jaw, making his profile all the more sharp.

"Give me back that hundred dollars," Harry Lime says. "You never get anything right."

"A cognac," Rick orders, ashen.

From the end of the bar the form of the man in the mackintosh emerges, a sarcastic smile playing about his lips. It is Captain Renault. "Come, Molly," he says to the woman. "The Deuxième Bureau men are waiting for us at Combray."

1982

In "How to Recognize a Porn Movie" we will see that to distinguish a pornographic film from a film that merely depicts erotic events, it is sufficient to discover whether, to go from one place to another by car, the characters take more time than the spectator would like or the story would require. A similar scientific criterion can be applied to distinguish the professional writer from the Sunday, or non-writer (who can still be famous). This is the use of suspension points in the middle of a sentence.

Writers use suspension points only at the end of a sentence, to indicate that more could be written on the subject ("and this point could be further elaborated, but..."), or, in the middle of a sentence or between two sentences, to underline the fragmentary nature of a quotation ("Friends ... I come to bury Caesar..."). Non-writers use these dots to crave indulgence for a rhetorical figure that they consider perhaps too bold: "He was raging like a ... bull."

A writer is someone determined to extend language beyond its boundaries, and he therefore assumes full responsibility for a metaphor, even a daring one: "The moving waters at their priestlike task / Of pure ablution round earth's human shores." Everyone agrees that Keats has allowed his fancy to soar, but at least he makes no apology for that. The non-writer, on the other hand, would have written: "The moving waters at their ... priestlike ... task/ Of pure ... ablution." As if to say: don't mind me, I'm only joking.

A writer writes for writers, a non-writer writes for his next-door neighbor or for the manager of the local bank branch, and he fears (often mistakenly) that they would not understand or, in any case, would not forgive his boldness. He uses the dots as a visa: he wants to make a revolution, but with police permission.

The following little list of variations may serve to indicate the ghastliness of these dots, suggesting what might have happened to literature if our writers had lacked self-confidence:

"A ... rose by any other name"

"Never send to know ... for whom the bell ... tolls."

"A man's a ... man for a' that."

"Call me ... Ishmael."

"The widow Douglas she took me for her ... son, and allowed she would sivilize me."

"Who's afraid of ... Virginia Woolf?"

"April is the cruellest ... month"

"I am a camera with its ... shutter open"

And so, down to: "riverrun, past Eve and ... Adam's"

Not that it matters if the Great would have looked foolish. But, as you see, these dots, suggesting the writer's fear of using bold, figured speech, can also be used to suggest his suspicion that the rhetorical figure, by itself, will seem literal and flat. An example. The
Communist Manifesto
of 1848 begins, as everyone knows, with the words "A specter is haunting Europe," and you must admit this is a great incipit. It would still be pretty good if Marx and Engels had written "A ... specter is haunting Europe"; they would merely have suggested, perhaps, that communism might not be such a terrible and elusive thing, and the Russian revolution might have taken place fifty years earlier, maybe with the Czar's consent, and Mazzini would have taken part in it, too.

But what if they had written "A specter is ... haunting Europe"? Is there some doubt about its haunting? Is it stable? Or do specters, per se, appear and disappear in a flash, suddenly, with no real time for haunting? But that isn't all. What if they had written "A specter is haunting ... Europe"? Would they have implied that they were really exaggerating, that the specter at most might be haunting Trier, and people everywhere else needn't worry? Or would they be suggesting that the specter of communism was already haunting also the Americas and—who could say?—maybe even Australia?