Baudelaire says, in one of the prose poems he published under the title Paris Spleen, that the Chinese can tell the exact time of day simply by looking steadily into a cat’s eyes.
From these few lines two questions arise, and it is perhaps best to answer them at once. The first is obvious: what, after all, is spleen? Since this is meant to be a literary column — or at least has the modest vanity of aspiring to be one — let us answer with a literary example.
Those who remember Eça de Queirós’s great novel The Maias — and those who do not should consider this a recommendation — will recall a scene in which Carlos da Maia, the central figure of the book, a young doctor, cultivated, elegant, and yet somewhat passive and disenchanted, lies stretched out in an armchair in his Lisbon palace, the Ramalhete, waiting for his bohemian, intellectual friend João da Ega. Carlos is suffering from spleen: that is to say, he is melancholy, weary, oppressed by a reality which he, privileged though he is, finds vulgar, repetitive, sordid, spiritually meagre.
Only the provocations and mockery of his friend, in a dubious and rather perilous tavern in Chiado, can draw him out of this painful inner confinement.
Could one explain any better one of the central terms of nineteenth-century French sensibility?
Do any of you suffer from spleen? It would not be altogether surprising. Once our principal needs have been satisfied, the spiritual question begins. But I shall not speak here of Kierkegaard’s interpretation of boredom as one of the central axes of human life. I should rather like to speak of the ways in which one may deal with — or at least soften — a problem that appears, by every reasonable measure, insoluble.
To begin with, I would recommend going to book launches. They take place almost every day, they are free, and at the end one is often offered a glass of wine. As with everything in this world, one must know how to choose. That, too, is part of the excitement.
Two weeks ago, almost by chance, I found myself at the Balqís bookshop, at the launch of The Innocents, by Burhan Sönmez, presented by the author himself — who, for those unfamiliar with the name, is the president of PEN International. To my surprise, there were no more than eight of us in attendance. A failure of organisation? Not at all. A treasure for those of us who had come, since we were granted the privilege, in an intimate atmosphere, of speaking with this Kurdish writer whom certain international literary circles have, for years, placed within reach of the highest honours.
Naturally, I took the book home with me, and read it in two days. Anyone wishing to plunge into the memory of deep Anatolia, with its crimes, its magic and its forced exiles, and to contemplate a vision of life very different from our present Western one — yet somehow linked to our own historical memory — should read it.
My next stop, a few days later, was the Festival of Italian Poetry in Madrid. I might have remained in that familiar Friday afternoon languor, lingering on a terrace in Chueca, glass in hand; but I made an effort, ordered a double espresso and walked up Calle Mayor towards the Istituto Italiano di Cultura.
From time to time, acts of will are rewarded, and mine was rewarded that very evening. Shortly after I arrived, the director of the Palace, Elena Fontanella, drew me aside.
‘There is a gala dinner afterwards. Are you coming?’
I looked at her, unable to conceal my astonishment.
‘Hai la cravatta e la giacca: è più che sufficiente. Andiamo, si comincia alle nove!’
What we were served for dinner was exquisite, but that was the least of it. The best part was the chance to meet, in an unhurried way, the other guests: the poets who had recited their finest verses during the evening, and at whose table I had been placed. I shall try to write about them in these articles, and I hope that many of them will publish in El Movi_Miento.
By the end of the dinner I was carrying several books of poetry, given to me by the authors themselves, and another, very special one, which I had bought from the improvised stall set up by the entrance: I fioretti di san Francesco.
Let us begin with the worldly; that is, with Ornitografía, a collection of poems by the scholar Miguel Ángel Feria. Those of us who devote ourselves to prose sometimes struggle to find the exact words with which to judge poetry. But one need not be a sommelier with academic pretensions to know, from the first sip, whether a wine is good or bad. And this one is good.
Although I am well aware of Miguel Ángel’s deep knowledge of French poetry, in this collection I do not find echoes of the severe metre with which Bordeaux or Burgundy wines are made. What I find instead is the freedom, the light, the casual and joyful rhyme with which the wines of Sanlúcar are raised. Sips of memory: not of kings or empires, but of the labourers who harvested the grapes and the waiters who poured the wine with that grace which seems to exist only in the south of Spain.
And from the memory of Burhan and Miguel Ángel we rise to the Franciscan world, to the Little Flowers of Saint Francis. This is a collection of fifty-three stories from the saint’s life, by an anonymous author. We are not, by any means, before a weighty theological treatise, but rather a fourteenth-century anthology of tales that presents us with a Saint Francis of the street: close, gentle, almost childlike; a Saint Francis capable of awakening the curiosity and piety of children, and also of poets.
It is the Saint Francis who speaks to the wolf of Gubbio and persuades it to change its life; the gentle Saint Francis who preaches to the birds; the saint who turns poverty into joy, nature into a temple, and the whole of creation into a direct conversation with God.
A sweet way of entering Franciscan spiritualism and naturalism, with its renunciation of worldly pleasures and its immense spiritual satisfactions. A world in which there is no room for spleen. Nor is it expected.
And so, leaving that splendid mystical embrace of creation and nature upon my sofa, halfway through the reading — for exquisite drinks should never be hurried — I take into my arms the gluttonous cat who has been meowing for some time, reminding me that the hour has come to serve him dinner. I lift him up, bring him close to my eyes, look steadily at him and say:
‘Well then, you tell me what time it is.’
To my surprise, in the depths of his eyes I think I glimpse eternity.
Eire.
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