We are not enlightened beings, unfortunately. We form a notion of difference, the other, at times, we glimpse ourselves struggling in our hesitations, our difficulties, our mistakes. I’ll come find you at the university, we’ll walk by the Tower of the Mad, our tower, you’ll inveigh against the building’s state of dilapidation and abandon and about the “museum of horrors” it contains; you’ll say “it’s absolutely inadmissible! The university should be ashamed of itself!” and your rantings will make me laugh; then we’ll walk down the Strudlhofstiege to deposit my suitcase at your place and you’ll be a little embarrassed, you’ll avoid looking at me. You know, there’s something I never told you: the last time I went to Vienna, I agreed to stay in that luxury hotel they had offered me, remember? Instead of sleeping at your place? That had made you terribly angry. I think it was in the secret, slightly childlike hope that you’d accompany me there, that we’d resume, in a beautiful unknown room, what we had begun in Tehran.
All of a sudden, I pine for you,
How beautiful Vienna is,
How far away Vienna is,
S.
She’s got some nerve. Guindé, “stilted,” according to my French dictionary, means “lacking naturalness, trying to appear dignified,” how shameful. She’s going too far. She really knows how to make herself detestable, sometimes. If only she knew my state, my terrifying state, if she knew the throes I’m struggling in, she wouldn’t make fun of me in that way. It’s dawn; it’s at daybreak that people die, says Victor Hugo. Sarah. Isolde. No, not Isolde. Let’s avert our eyes from death. Like Goethe. Goethe who refused to see corpses, to come close to illness. He refused death. He averted his eyes. He thought he owed his longevity to flight. Let’s look elsewhere. I’m afraid, I’m afraid. I’m afraid of dying and afraid of replying to Sarah.
How beautiful Vienna is, how far away Vienna is, that’s a quotation, but from what, by whom, an Austrian? Grillparzer? Or Balzac? Even translated into German it says nothing to me. Good Lord good Lord what to say, what to say, let’s summon the Google djinn like the genie of the lamp, Genie are you there, ah, far from literature, it’s an extract from a horrible French song, a horrible French song, there’s the complete text, found in 0.009 of a second — good Lord, these words are long. Life is long, life is very long sometimes, especially listening to this Barbara, “If I write to you tonight from Vienna,” what an idea, really, Sarah what came over you, with all the texts you know by heart, Rimbaud, Rumi, Hafez — this Barbara has an unsettling face, impish or demonic, good Lord I hate French songs, Édith Piaf with her rasping voice, Barbara sad enough to uproot an oak, I’ve come up with a response, I’ll copy out another passage from a song, Schubert and winter, there, half-blinded by the dawn that’s pointing to the Danube, the atonal light of hope, you have to see everything through the spectacles of hope, cherish the other in the self, recognize it, love this song that is all songs, ever since the Songs of Dawn by the troubadours, by Schumann and all the ghazals of creation, you’re always surprised by what always comes, the answer of time, suffering, compassion, and death; the sun, which keeps rising; the Orient of the enlightened, the East, the direction of the compass and the Purple Archangel, you’re surprised by the marble of the World veined with suffering and love, at daybreak, go on, there is no shame, there hasn’t been any shame in a long time, it is not shameful to copy out this winter song, not shameful to let yourself give in to your feelings
I close my eyes,
My heart still beats fervently.
When will the leaves at the window turn green again?
When will I hold my love in my arms?
and to the warm sunlight of hope.
ENVOI
To Peter Metcalf and his “Wine of the Corpse, Endocannibalism and the Great Feast of the Dead in Borneo,” published in Representations in 1987, which inspired the article on “The Wine of the Dead of Sarawak” — a much more profound and scholarly contribution in reality than what Franz and Sarah say about it.
To the Berliner Künstlerprogramm of the DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst), which welcomed me to Berlin and allowed me to immerse myself in German Orientalism.
To all the researchers whose work has nourished me, Orientalists from long ago and modern scholars — historians, musicologists, literary specialists; when their names are mentioned, I have tried as much as possible not to betray their points of view.
To my old teachers, Christophe Balay and Ricardo Zipoli; to the Circle of Melancholy Orientalists; to my friends in Paris, Damascus, and Tehran.
To the Syrian People.
Copyright © 2015 by Mathias Énard
Translation copyright © 2017 by Charlotte Mandell
All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.
Originally published in French as Boussole by Actes Sud in 2015
Published by arrangement with The French Publishers’ Agency
The photograph on p. 267 is © Service historique de la Défense, CHA/CAEN, 2747 x 4294, and the photograph on page 272 is © BPK Bildagentur/Museum Europäischer Kulturen, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin/Art Resource, NY.
The other photographs are courtesy of the author.
Manufactured in the United States of America
New Directions Books are printed on acid-free paper
First published clothbound by New Directions in 2017
eISBN: 9780811226639
New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin
by New Directions Publishing Corporation
80 Eighth Avenue, New York 10011
new directions presents
A Simple Story
by Leila Guerriero
translated by Frances Riddle
Obsession and mastery in their purest states: the story of one dancer's attempt to win the biggest contest of his life.
Compass Page 43
