To the memory of bygone dreamers - exiles of space and stepsons of time.
To the memory of Giordano Bruno, from the century he did not divine.

A Dream Caused by the Splash of Oars in the Adriatic Sea

The most terrible cemetery is not where dead people are
buried but where the dream that lived and died in the
dephts of our hearts lies.
Jorge Livraga.

- Che cosa fai qui, a Nola?
- Vorrei conoscere la città di Giordano Bruno
- Giordano Bruno? Era giornalista?

From the conversation with an inhabitant of Nola, Naples. 2000.

The dauntless and meaningless imprudence of the Nolan's decision to
accept Giovanni Mocenigo's offer seemed self-evident to all those who came
to wish him good luck and a pleasant journey but said it as if they were
pronouncing farewell to a smiling carbonized corpse. And he, too, seemed to
be stoically aware of the secret blackness hidden in his future. He was
floating through the queerest night, and his body was melting, astray
amongst the alluring web of the constellations, and phantasmagoric odors
were permeating into the air; there were scents of sand-glasses. and ashes,
and blood of the wounded Sagittarius, and the Vesuvian wine, saturated by
the land which Bacchus loved more than his own. And his sight multiplied,
and he could simultaneously contemplate himself in an indifferent serene
monument thawing in the haze of ages and a mortally tired restless
Dominican who had lost both his habit and faith, possessed by the heat of
an inward engine which had been forcing him to totter toward unknown
twilights of infinity. And he saw two different statues, but he could recognize
neither a motionless austere giant whose features were hidden under a stone
hood nor a cloaked adolescent with a flushing marble face and burning
anxious eyes ..And he also knew that the decision to accept Mocenigo's offer
had been made by those implacable outbursts of Black Anguish, a daughter
of Nostalgia, who had converted into an unspeakable bloodache - the
dazzling visions of vineyards and mountains of the most blessed province in
Italy and in the entire world had been buried alive in the throbbing veins.
And his intuition had been whispering that those images were
irrecoverable, that he bad been doomed forever to bear that bleeding and
weeping cadaver in his vessels. And yet, he could not resist the fatal call of
Nostalgia, who was inviting him to Venice, to the city of mute beauty, serene
horror and frozen eternity, where:

Lights are gone. Eyeless masks are asleep.
Streets are narrow. Water s deep.
Beware of the shadows: they are in the air.
Don't run, don't move and don't be scared.
`Tis time to die. 'Tis time to weep.

and whence he fled many years ago in the middle of the carnival of
pestilence, for his blood had been frozen by the infinite rows of silent birds
and tender splashes of motionless waters. But those images had already
faded away from his congested memory and the anxious anticipation of
Odysseus filled him - the anticipation of the new encounter with the
incredible city wherein even children in the streets spoke Italian.
-I cant find an adequate definition for what you are doing, I think your folly
is beyond all limits, and listen, I'd rather call it folly than courage... You
must wish to incarnate your brilliant metaphor of moth and fire from Heroic
Frenzies…
- As well as your definition of what poesy should be - a divinely inspired
prophecy…
- You are not capable of separating life and philosophy or, perhaps, you
simply don't differentiate between a beautiful idea and… should I say this? a
basic understanding of what personal safety means, do you?
- My dearest Sir Philip Sidney, this is precisely what features my Enthusiast,
for, if you would recall my lines, dedicated to your infinite virtues and
merits, the lines that interpret the poem to which you are alluding, you
should agree that the Enthusiast must not separate between what he says
and what he does, that he is governed by the most sensitive and prophetic
passion that forces him to love this fire more than any other freshness, and
love this torment more than any other joy and love these fetters more than
any other freedom... And weren't you, too, singing the pleasure of your pain,
the renunciation of your liberty, the joy of your sorrow, the delights of not
attaining your cruel arid invisible Venus Urania, the torture that inspired
your peerless faculties and your divine poetic creation?
- And my honorable Enthusiast wishes to convert his metaphorical flame
into a real fire set by his Catholic admirers, doesn't he?
Oh, I know that my honorable Astrophil would never really die for Stella.
- I'm not surprised that your careless tongue has called upon you so many
enemies and miseries! You know very well how I perished.
Then tell me, amy Agamemnon, what shall be mine destiny?
- Vates sum, non Oedipus. I shall not persuade you any longer. Be careful
my insane friend, just held your tongue. Seek not for premature death.
-You know that the Nolan is immortal, the Nolan is Antheus, missing his
Great Mother's caress...
The Nolan is immortal, he repeated several times, after Sidney's
shadow had thawed in the soft darkness of the Adriatic night. Even if he
were to die, he would live for eternity in the sparkling infinity of the
inscrutable sky, in the vibrant heart of nature, in the grateful memory of the
true philosopher, liberated by the harmony of the shattered sphere., in the
historv lessons of the remote epoch when philosophers would be glorified
and adored by all... Of the epoch della Bestia Spacciata.
The bloodache of Nostalgia was being replaced by euphoric sparks of
the overwhelming energy, until at length the monotonous sound of paddles
and fatigue of the long journey closed his eves.

******

Are you a Buddhist or something?
- I'm afraid I don't quite understand you.
These clothes of yours, you know..
-Ah, I wear this contemptible cloak even though I abandoned my brothers
Dominicans a long time ago... You see, I.
-So, you are a Catholic?
- Not at all, though,..
- A Protestant then?
- Regarding the hospitality, with which Calvin hosted me during my stay in
Geneva, I would...
-So, you are a Calvinist.
- I was saying exactly the opposite and, generally speaking, as far as true
philosophy is concerned, one's understanding of the divine should not be
limited to...
- An atheist?
- No, I am...
- Listen, Mr...
- Bruno
- Yes. I need to feel in this form about your background, education and
previous academic experience, since you didn't even bother to bring your CV,
not to mention recommendations and references. But I'm still here listening
to you 'cause the Philosophy Department is growing empty and right now we
really need someone to lecture. So, I would deeply appreciate if you were
concise, brief and comprehensible while answering my questions. When were
you born and where?
- I was born (so my people told me) in 1548, in Nola.
- Where is it?
- Near Naples.
- You can speak English to me, not Spanish. Your English is more
comprehensible, at least, for me.
- My dear Sir, I was speaking Latin, not Spanish.
- Now you've confused me completely. I thought you were interested in the
Department of Philosophy. That's what you said when you entered this
room. Do you intend to join the Department of Ancient Languages?
- Ancient Languages?
- You said you knew Latin. You even spoke latin to me. Again. Mr...
- Bruno.
- Terrific. So, what are we talking about here?
The conversation was as absurd as the Asking Man's behavior. During
their illegible dialogue the Asking Man would perform an infinite number of
strange and apparently meaningless acts, which however did not prevent
him from talking to the Nolan with some coherence, like Julius Caesar, the
Nolan thought, though his small eyes of the dim color of frightened mice
were dispersing in different directions. The Asking Man would rearrange a
heap of white paper on his table resembling a pile of enormous playing
cards, and touch a white rectangular machine in a certain sequence, which
without being touched at all, and then the Asking Man would grab one of its
adjuncts, and start saying words to this adjunct, and sometimes the white
machine would ring differently, and a white paper would crawl out of its
entrails, and the Asking Man would add this paper to the pile of enormous
playing cards, and sometimes the ringing would reverberate from the
neighboring room, and the female voice would start saying words, and
sometimes a woman resembling an ageing lizard would appear and bring
additional papers.
-I think you should talk to Professor Trasnochado(1), - said the Asking Man,
his fingers touching again the white machine and his eyes running away, -
I'm afraid I can't help you, - he paused and then said: Signore.
- Shouldn't you make an appointment first? - the ageing lizard appeared at
the door of the neighboring room. A feeble imitation of the female form, It
was so far from his unattainable dream of the voluptuous Diana, the sensual
guardian of the Supreme Wisdom, the implacable murderess of curious
hunters, the guide of philosophers, and the mother of lost children, and the
passionate consolation of the thirsty flesh… He loved both women and what
they ought to represent, but whenever he encountered those noisy, vain,
tasteless, repulsive, superficial creatures in reality, he would become filled
with an unspeakable irritation, disappointment and tiredness.
And then the Nolan was sitting in a large room full of light and strange
noises, and a gray-haired man with sorrowful eyes was speaking to him in
an Incredibly awkward Latin The Nolan was sipping a queer drink - hot
milky foam with the color of terracotta and the unknown taste of bitter
sweetness An Italian drink, said the gray-haired man.
- I know who you are, but I won't ask you any questions. We've been
studying your discourse your mind, your ideology - can you believe that
there are still some academic people who are interested in learning about
your way of constructing reality? - I suppose you can't add anything we
haven't analyzed or published as an article. You must be more eager to ask
than myself, as far as I remember, you've always been a future-oriented guy.
For example just to begin with, we are not speaking Latin any longer. I
graduated from one fairly old-fashioned school where they still used to teach
Latin seriously, but, as you might have noticed, it's been a long time since I
last constructed a Latin phrase.
- But how can a scholar acquaint himself with classical writings if they are
all created in this most expressive and sonorous language?
- They have all been translated, should the necessity to read them emerge,
which happens rarely. There is no need torturing your mind by cases,
declensions and syntactic inversions. Your mother tongue will do. Well, you
might learn some basics of one more language either out of circumstances or
as a mandatory part of your curriculum.
- But this means that a man deliberately and willingly empties, shrinks,
humiliates destroys his own memory, his own potential!
- First, you can see it as freeing ones memory from unnecessary efforts and,
second, it's extremely impolite to talk in male gender You should either add
"herself" when saving "himself", or, to avoid this stylistic redundancy, just
say "herself". You must not exclude the female sex from the domain of
action, you know.
- Cosa?! - This seemed even more absurd than calling him Calvinist earlier.
- This is one of the manifestations of what is called "political correctness".
Well, actually. I don't know what to begin with. A-ha, women. So, they've
reached the conclusion that even language has always been an instrument
of patriarchal domination and oppression. Some female philosophers have
called this "phallocentrism".
But, my dear Sir, this is ridiculous. Female philosophers?! There indeed
exist some women blessed by miscellaneous virtues, peerless merits, great
intellectual capacities, divine goodness, superior nobility. But you must
admit that, by and large, women should not engage themselves in
comments, or meditations or interpretations but rather entrust men with
the enterprise of elucidation and explanation.
- This is precisely what the woman objects to - to being considered inferior
to men in terms of intellectual capacities...
- This is precisely why I object to this "phallocentrism" - when a woman
assumes the privilege of interpretation, the only result is your meaningless
end ridiculous "political correctness" - raping and disfiguring language. How
can a sensible mind conclude that language participates in the matters of
inferiority or domination? Ascend your eyes toward the Tree of Knowledge
and notice that all vices, crimes and flaws belong to the male gender
whereas all virtues, merits and graces are female!
- Not in all languages. In English, for example...
- A wonderful way to dispute - people who willingly deprive themselves of
learning more than their mother tongue... Nihil sub sole novum. I guess the
disdainful kin of academic idiots will persist for eternity. I'm afraid it only
has multiplied and acquired even more power Ha trionfato La Bestia. Am I
being politically correct? For a true semantic essence of the word `correct'
would be "corresponding of the name to the thing it pretends to denote", id
est if I see in front of my eyes a dull, self-sufficient, repugnant pedant whose
doctoral gown is nothing but Midas's turban, I can denote his essence and
that would be correct.
- It's all too complicated altogether- I feel such compassion to what you're
saying On the one hand. We are not heroic enthusiasts any longer and, by
the way, we've never been heroic. Those who attempted heroism paid too
high a price, and, I'm afraid, in vain. An educated person, an educated man,
if you wish, should indeed master more than five languages, Latin being one
of them, and be both poet and knight And he should be courteous but not
hypocritical prudent but not fraudulently euphemistic, eager for discovering
truth rather than for obtaining tenure... But you know, the words today even
do not refer to themselves. This list of juxtapositions just doesn't mean
anything beyond itself each adjective exists only in the context of its own
difference while its ultimate meaning - its referent is constantly deferred.
The real "correct", the idea of the correct might never have existed at the first
place. What does matter though is this infinite chain of signification and the
instantaneous meaning die word acquires at each particular point of this
endless deferral…
The Nolan felt incredibly, dreadfully alone. He had always been alone,
the delight of tranquil solitude being replaced by the agony of suffocating
loneliness, He was an inseparable vessel of the mysterious universe, but he
was at the same time an alien body, banished, persecuted, misunderstood,
insulted, an admired and caressed expatriate, a homeless citizen of the
world, a parentless son of Father Sun and Mother Earth, who for his
greatest love of humanity had to receive its hatred, curses, persecution and
exile, committed to something that had just turned out to be absent,
indefinable, lost forever, not referring to itself. Sometimes the Heroic
Enthusiast saw how his efforts were betrayed by obstacles when, sick and
exasperated. he threw to the abyss his love to what he could not grasp and,
perplexed by inexhaustibility of the Divine, raised the white flag... And what
could be sillier than torture you because of the absent future, whose
presence was not even perceptible? And he saw the ambiguity of this phrase,
initially conceived of while meditating upon the fear of death, and
understood in horror how unstable the meaning was. The future was but
confusion, despair and degeneration.
- So, I see what the future is - awareness of your own limitations,
acceptance of inability, renunciation of intellectual search, acknowledging
your helplessness, depriving words of their power... I thought the process of
learning would be infinite…
- It is infinite. It is, however, the infinity of the blind alley, of the snake biting
its own tail. A different infinity, you see. Every child today knows about the
infinite universe and galaxies. You can't imagine the amount of people
claiming to have been kidnapped by your friends from the infinite worlds.
Sometimes, with the help of modem medicine, they are cured. The pattern
has remained unchanged though - once people used to be kidnapped by
demons. You know, with the feather pen in your hand, the universe must
have seemed much more hopeful and interesting...
They grew silent. The foam of the terracotta color was cold and
disgusting.
- Stars, infinite worlds... Yes, - suddenly said Professor Trasnochado.
Look at your friend and brother(2) at night, fox example and you'll be amazed
to learn that you just cant see it any longer The artificial lights (we call
them "electricity") have replaced the astral luminescence. They cast light
upon your dwellings and enable you to find your way in the dark. You're no
longer confined to the shrunk space of candles, nor beguiled by the
treacherous whims of the moon…
- But they shade the celestial panorama instead and thus prevent you from
seeing.
- Exactly.
- So what kind of illumination is this, if it darkens your sight?
- Remember, words do not refer to anything beyond themselves.
Illumination, for example, engenders darkness or vice versa.
Only blind fools cannot notice that contrarieties coincide to rejoin in the
unity of the omnipresent matter, the entirety of the divine, the wholeness of
the universal harmony. This relativity of words and what they depict only
manifests the oneness of the infinitude...
- Universal harmony? You can't imagine the chaos when the artificial lights
are interrupted even for a few minutes: you're disconnected, detached, more
helpless than your ancestors used to feel in front of the thunderstorm…
- Detached? Disconnected? From what?
Professor Trasnochado didn't answer- He was busy shaping rows out of
whitish dust powdered over a tiny rectangular mirror in which the dull
electricity was twinkling. And a glittering tube appeared in his fingers, and
he approached his wrinkled face of a disconsolate alchemist to the mirror,
and it reflected his trembling hairy nostril that devoured one of the rows.
- These are smithereens of your oneness, see? This mirror is now the
macrocosm Want some? Before you fail asleep.
The Nolan grasped the tube and repeated Professor's movements with the
dust on the mirror- And sweet snowy wormwood poured over his throat, and
the wounded Sagittarius raised his bow, and stars beamed in his mind, and
the overwhelming clarity, crystalline and fresh like the Campanian air,
kindled his eyes.
- People in your mood must rest a lot, said Professor Trasnochado,
watching the sparkling face of the Nolan. - I should send you to some place
where you can rest and meditate upon the infinity of learning. When you
enter, just tell them who you are and they'll take good care of you and, the
most important, you will be safe. Sorry, if I could, I would find a better place
for you, Giordano Bruno from Nola…
Professor Trasnochado was telling the truth. Immediately after the
Nolan had introduced himself at the entrance to the enormous white
Building, he was attended by calm people dressed in queer white cloaks.
They asked him a lot in questions and seemed sympathetic and
understanding
- Do you have another name? How do your parents call you?
- I have no family, but I did have another name before I joined the
Dominican order.
- You must feel terrible having two names, mustn't you?
They asked him about his feelings and sensations, which was something the
Nolan had never been asked before. The interrogation made him frightfully
aware of the inability to determine has own identity. He seemed to have
strayed from his selfhood, having forgotten the last time he was called
"Filippo", responding to the strange name associated but with
disillusionment and miseries of San Domenico Maggiore in Naples, clinging
to the name of his natal city - the Nolan, the last possibility to establish his
uniqueness, which turned out to denote the uniqueness of a wandering
nameless outlaw, an infidel agnostic wearing a Dominican cloak, a nomadic
philosopher of Italian origins speaking French, German, English or Latin
without any accent …
He was invited to stay with them for a while until he felt better and less
agitated, and he was also promised assistance and support in anything he
might need.
There were three men in his room, they were motionlessly sitting on
their beds, dusty and untended statues, and their faces were distorted by
melancholic and bewildered deliberation. They glanced at him when he
entered but didn't say anything, be greeted them and they didn't answer. At
night he was waked by weeping, muttering, monotonous moans and sounds
of cracking bones. One of the men sat up on his bed. The Nolan could see
his misshapen contours.
- What's your name, comrade? - he whispered.
- I'm Giordano Bruno from Nola.
- Sure, of course, the moment you entered I knew I must have seen you
somewhere. Now I remember. I saw your portraits in the school textbooks, it
must have been either astronomy or physics... You were there beside this old
guy, Galileo.. It's been something like the Earth revolves around the Sun.
- I wasn't the only sensible person to notice this fact. Copernicus, for
example...
- That's it! Now I remember it was in the fourth grade, the subject of Natural
Sciences! God, what happened to my memory! Thanks to their pills my
memory is now full of dead rats and tears!
- May I ask your name?
- No, you may not! - exclaimed the man angrily. I cannot afford the
privilege of revealing my name to anyone Not anymore. - He sobbed. - Do
you know how long I have been keeping my name in secret? Since I managed
to escape from their control, But it's been no use hiding - they are right
here. Can't you hear those voices? And you're still being so thoughtless and
asking what my name is!
- But if they already know where you are, why do you keep hiding your
name? - there seemed to be some hideous logic in what the Nameless Man
was saying, and secret coherence, and heartbreaking hopelessness.
- Cause I still hope they'll forget about me. Unfortunately, it's impossible. I
know too much- You know, I'm the victim of the most inhuman and powerful
regime in the world. They have sentenced me to death for my love of freedom
and human rights. I can't even pronounce that name, the name of their
institution that is after me…
- You're not the only victim here, - said the irritated voice from the other bed.
- You are a coward, Look how I tell my name to everyone: I'm Juan Antonio
Roman from Càceres, the illegitimate son of Dolores Ibarruri. Hiding here
from the Franquist generals and Jesuits, mourning over the sad destiny of
my beloved country. Nice to meet you, comrade.
- I'm a victim too - of human ignorance, illiteracy, folly, pedants, imprudence
and many other different vices, - said the Nolan.
- And who is after you? asked Juan Antonio Roman from Càceres.
- I've been chased and persecuted by my own destiny, my prophetic passion
that has been burning my soul and animating my motions. I've been doomed
to illumine and being burnt afterwards by the same torch, the same flame,
the same sparks that are designed to cure blindness of the eternal night of
ignorance... In a sense, I've been persecuted by my future...
- What a coincidence! - said the third voice. - Urn also hated and persecuted
because of my future.
- Who are you?
- The green color. They all hate me because of the green color. You know, I
didn't understand at first, all those hints, this hatred. But later it occurred
to me. It's all because of the green color of my future.
- And what is jour future?
- You know very well what my future is! - the voice yelled, full of anxious
exasperation - Don't you think I'm that stupid? I might be smiling but
there is a volcano in my soul! The green color is the color of Islam, the
red color is the color of Communism. All my enemies wear the blue color,
they know I'm an Islamic ruler who will bring destruction to the United
States! - The voice grew silent and only the fingers were nervously
cracking in the gray darkness
- What do you think about all this, Giordano Bruno from Nola? - said the
Nameless Man. - Is it just, is it right when honest people are oppressed
and mistreated because of their love of freedom, because of something
they're not responsible for?
- Isn't it inhuman to hate someone because of his future? - whispered the
Islamic ruler.
The Nolan didn't respond. He realized he was in the Home of Sorrow,
surrounded by insane men, who were demented by the same fear, the same
anguish, the same despair as himself: hut the source and the language of
their insanity remained a secret for him and he could not understand the
tragic meaning of being an illegitimate son of Dolores Ibarruri. Nor did he
follow the horrifying logic hidden in the green color and its connection to
destruction.
- If my mother had been courageous enough to recognize me, I could have
gone to the Soviet Union, I could have found a shelter there... But she never
admitted... .Jesuits, of course, are to blame - the majority of Spanish women
are frigid because of the church; their mothers bring them up this way...
- You cannot accuse your mother because of the Jesuits... - said the
Nameless Man.
- Ts-s! hysterically sighed Juan Antonio Roman from Càceres. - Don't you
know that the Lopus people are everywhere? Don't you know how they
manipulate people's consciousness? They broadcast a football match or a
bullfight to distract people from what's really going on. And then, instead of
going to a manifestation against Franco's regime, they watch those primitive
spectacles!
- Franco died. twenty five years ago, - said the Nameless Man.
- You never know. Besides, they are all again in the government. And look
who's talking; there is no KGB in your country any longer.
- Officially, you know.
- That's what I'm saying.
Both dissidents started muttering incomprehensible words in their
complicated languages. The Islamic Ruler was anxiously breaking his fingers
and the cracking sounds were making blood run cold.
- Tell us about yourself - offered the Islamic Ruler.
- I can tell you who he is, said the Nameless Man. - He is a medieval
astronomer, an inventor of telescopes.
- I've never invented anything, - said the Nolan angrily. - You cannot
misrepresent my philosophy in such a ridiculous manner.
- I'm just saying what every child knows about you. You're an atheist a
revolutionary, a materialist, you attacked the Catholic church.
- I've never attacked the Catholic Church. I wasn't an atheist... I can't
believe that human stupidity can go that far'!
- Of course you haven't, you are the religious man, like Thomas Aquinas
and all those repressed and frigid hypocrites, Jesuits, look at him, he's
just a friar, a frustrated virgin!
- Why are you insulting me, you poor lunatic? - asked the Nolan, and
helpless aversion was filling him with weariness, and he had no desire to
respond any longer.
- `Cause I enjoy watching you pissed off, cono! - hissed Juan Antonio
Roman from Càceres and raised his head in the dull morning light. The
Nolan could see his distressed glittering eyes and long slim fingers, which
were incessantly tousling the smudged beard of indefinite color.
- You were burnt alive by the inquisition, - said the Nameless Man.
- How do you know that he was burnt alive? - said the Islamic Ruler. - You
mean he will be burnt?
The Nameless Man got confused.
- That's what I know. We studied about him at school.
- You cannot say that something happened if it hasn't happened yet.. - said
the Nolan, nervously smiling. Though he had always been aware of that
possibility,it seemed too unreal, too remote.
- Yes, I can. I know you were burnt! I studied about you at school! -
exclaimed the Nameless Man.
- I advise we burn you right now, - said Juan Antonio Roman from Càceres.
-You are to be burnt one day anyway, we'll just make it easier for you, and if
you were burnt once, you are a ghost, just like Franco and you shouldn't be
here and disturb our poor and tormented minds.
- Just like Freddie Kruger, - suddenly said the Islamic Ruler. His dull, fairly
meaningless dark-skinned face became cramped in horror.
- You are the demon of night that slaughters children in their dreams!
- You don't know how it feels - sitting here and waiting helplessly for them to
come while they destroy your alertness by making you swallow these pills! -
cried the Nameless Man.
- Let's make the future come true, - solemnly pronounced the Islamic Ruler and threw
a tiny burning peg at the Nolan. The flame lit his unclean dark skinned hand with
fingernails gnawed to the bones, The Nolan tried to move but he couldn't.
I prefer the dignified and heroic death to the contemptible and base
triumph, he was thinking, defeated by horrible doubts as to dignity and
heroism, watching pale fearful faces of the tired lunatics and the gray skies
behind the cracked glass.

******

What a strange dream, he thought, as the Venetian tower was growing
visible in the chilling dawn, It must have been one of those dreams - half
absurd, half nightmare, which are vividly remembered during first few
minutes alter awakening and then swallowed up by oblivion as insignificant
and queer caprices of the resting human brain.

Victoria Clebanov   1591-2000

1. Trasnochado: antiquated, archaic, outdated. outmoded (Spanish)

2.  Vesuvio

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