Korridorium

♫ The Brazen Branches of Remem­brance ♫

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I enter the cor­ri­dor, and, yes, I will also take the next step and enter the lec­ture hall. But, folks, do not be too quick to rejoice. Even though I stand here today—breaking the long, long silence to a cer­tain extent unexpectedly—rest assured that sur­re­al­ism is not my sub­ject, nor is this about love or death. David Gas­coyne once wrote—if mem­ory serves me right—“The full breasts,” well, not exactly, it reads just “The breasts of eter­nity await my ten­der hands.” But eter­nity won’t be my sub­ject either, just as the youth the beauty the mill or the secret word won’t be.

Yes, the gazettes write it again and again and hardly leave me any room to doubt: that I was once called “the tiger”. “Ocean of silence” I would have liked almost better—my attacks were explo­sions, but incon­se­quen­tial as they were meant to remain unique. At least, love is also not my theme, and there’s a good rea­son for that.

I believe I should regret my deci­sion to speak to you, for it seems to me the attempt alone is des­tined to fail. I won’t deny that the lunar caus­tic likely cor­rodes as its name sug­gests, but it does­n’t heal.

I often have to think of Gas­coyne’s phrase, “the breasts of eter­nity”, a fleshy image, but per­haps mis­guided. He seeks to make two hits with one shot, but by my own reck­on­ing, he does­n’t account for the fact that the essence of dura­tion ulti­mately ends in silent rev­er­ence. The volup­tuous blonde up there with “Nir­vana” on her T‑shirt might grasp it if you will, but for those who’ve writ­ten “1984” on the board—insofar as I am aware—they might as well have scrib­bled “Kil­roy was here” or just his long nose. As I recall, with some reser­va­tion, for mem­o­ries are treach­er­ous, which in turn dis­tracts from the fact that the idea we make of the present is also as decep­tive as a fairy tale we tell our­selves … But I digress.

Did­n’t I firmly resolve not to err? Now it seems this lec­ture is turn­ing into a sort of con­fes­sion. But except for mono­logues deliv­ered by vil­lains at the end of crime sto­ries, to explain what they did and why, such a con­fes­sion is undoubt­edly not just super­flu­ous but thor­oughly ago­niz­ing. I want to say—but what do I want to say, not just prat­tle on but, one might say, call down, con­jure up, what is my theme? That such a theme can only be a frag­ment, and as they say, no frag­ment of real­ity does it jus­tice?

Don’t worry, I won’t speak much longer; speak­ing tires me, and see­ing some of you tak­ing notes depresses me. So many mis­takes are made, and mul­ti­ply­ing them in this way seems to me—why should­n’t I admit it?—like an unin­ten­tional grotesque par­ody of some­thing that is absurd in itself. Or, as I’d like to call it, it’s a sec­ond-order absur­dity.

Can the night, if I’m not mis­taken about the times, give the day’s agenda a wipe? I remem­ber now. The bold interjection—wasn’t it Braulio Are­nas, whom I just saw some­where in the fourth row?—leads down a wrong path. “The Farewell,” it should be called! That’s the theme, that’s the induce­ment, that, if there’s any moral approx­i­ma­tion, is the crux.

It’s been twenty-four years. I rec­ol­lect. It comes back to me: the attempt back then to start all over again. “I enter the cor­ri­dor to visit the ladies of the past,” I wrote. You may find it sur­real or her­metic or sim­ply mis­guided, but at that moment, it appeared to be a truly life-defin­ing step, and I put three dots after it. As I’m told, every­thing left unsaid stim­u­lates the human mind to vividly imag­ine the omis­sion, and let it not be thought that this does­n’t apply to the one respon­si­ble for the omis­sion. Per­haps for this rea­son, three dots seemed insuf­fi­cient to me, and I added more of them almost fre­net­i­cally, at increas­ingly greater inter­vals. When I reached eigh­teen dots at the end of the page, it became clear, as one might eas­ily imag­ine, not only the futil­ity of all this but also that I would never speak again, let alone pro­claim any­thing from the pul­pit.

I had, to use this admit­tedly old and, grant this to me, beloved metaphor, crossed the mir­ror. And that’s the mir­ror, which I, for­give me, would hold up to all of you if I were capa­ble. I had com­pleted the cross­ing of the mir­ror, leav­ing all themes and dra­mas, all futile words and incan­ta­tions behind me. And now, to be hon­est and straight­for­ward, I looked calmly at what lay—tangible but lit­er­ally defy­ing any description—before me.

And so, I fell silent, in an instant, unawares, had become, to call a child by its name, speech­less. I fell silent, as I will do now—after these use­less and (despite all the, par­don the coarse expres­sion, drudgery on my part) prob­a­bly more than erro­neous and incom­pre­hen­si­ble expla­na­tions — for good and for­ever.

(Restrained applause, occa­sional bravos)

Lunar caus­tic:

David Gas­coyne:

Braulio Are­nas (engl.):

Goethe’s list of idioms to avoid (Ger­man):