How I go to sleep
In memory of Severo Sarduy
I could never choose just one book. That’s unless all books were not just one book which has been heralded, recreated, corrected and extended, erased, interpreted, burnt and rewritten, throughout the course of history.
Photo of Severo Sarduy
If I had to decide on a book, it would, without doubt, be that which contains all others, although admittedly in the most complete disorder: the Dictionary.
By day I wander the surface of that concave mirror on which words provide a faithful, albeit miniaturized, idea of the universe. I consult it, I browse through its pages, I add to it, perhaps in excess, that which the Spanish call Cubanisms, although I don’t know why because for me they are nothing more than pure, normal language. I also—as is common in cases of excessive loves—ignore it, thwart it, and systematically write against what it tells me, in an Impertinence which incites and hones it year upon year, for no reason other than to wind it up.
Many people suppose that bilingualism is something that is perfect, that in its sane equilibrium, that double belonging eliminates and encompasses two opposing realities to the complete happiness of its possessor; perhaps something like bisexuality. There is a grain of truth in the supposition, although it is not without its counterpart: bilingualism is that wildcat trajectory in which the day is spent to-and-froing from one language to another, or rather, from one part to another of the well-thumbed dictionary. Because there are some words which, without any apparent motive, rear up in the other language, clinging to it like cats with sharpened claws. I’m sure that they also do this for no reason other than to wind me up—the buggers.
A few years ago, when writing Cobra and Colibí, I made use of the dictionary a great deal more. At that time, I had a thesaurus of synonyms and antonyms; this gave my prose a sheen, an exuberance, a slightly showy sense of luxury which recalled the inferior palaces of the nouveau riche, the dream of a butler come true. In Buenos Aires they called me “the millionaire of language”. But every coin is minted in the dictionary.
Alejo Carpentier used them even more than me. His books abound in pertinences and exactitudes in which the Voix de son Maître can be heard free from ambages. In the opportune parody Guillermo Cabrera Infante proposes of his prose, although not out of hatred, the meticulous diction of the Maître is transformed into an addiction.
Now though, I’m not sure if it’s just because I’m getting older, but I take refuge in the comforts of synonymy much less often. I’m not bothered if the same word is repeated; something which has endowed my writing with a certain severity; the terseness of an elected poverty.
Yet don’t think that my compulsion for lists stops at the dictionary. Not at all; I’m impassioned by all taxonomies, repertoires, indexes, albums, guides, catalogues and all sorts of lists. It’s as if those orderings revolved around something which sustains them, something which at once provides structure, whilst remaining concealed, forever erased, something that would be like a definition or image of God.
Let me then establish a catalogue of catalogues. Let me summarize three of these passions: as a child, I would diligently collect the tiny cards of the Álbum de Oro Zoológico in which beings as improbable as the Yeti would appear: the hummingbird, flying whilst stationary, the anteater, or the lyrebird. These bright, four-colour images, accompanied by the fresh, sickly smell of candy, were my first contact with fiction. With something which I continue to overwork to this very day: that which appears as an “effect” of the real.
Later, when I came to Europe, I took pleasure in reading the Guía Azul: the churches, museums, castles and cheeses which made up the vast museum that is the continent were not enough for me: I wanted more; I wanted their accompanying replicas, their analogue in sounds, their other truth.
Now though, night delivers me, punctual and indifferent, the bodies denied to me by day. Her messenger is a Dutch guide, Spartacus, where all that the planet tells of gayness is entrusted and described in a refined, internationalist style. To enter into those pages is already a “journey” in the sense of the word in the sixties: dream, take-off, flight, to be another. I submerge myself amongst those adolescent bodies then, both strapping and fragile, dancing naked amongst drugs and fresh flowers, in some “houseboat” in the suburbs of Hong Kong. Or amongst themselves—for the guide is summary to the description of the bodies—but converted into the full-body masseurs of some Art-Nouveau bathhouse in the suburbs of Manila; or still amongst themselves, but now they are the obese sumo wrestlers of a ritual gymnasium in Tokyo. Or they are the broad-shouldered blondes of Amsterdam, or Mexico, or Jakarta. Or Havana.
This is how I go to sleep.
[Severo Sarduy / Translated by J.C. Kelly]
[1990/2010]
