Well time to stop for a while with the heaviness of my ethnographic experiments, probably in nature... I'm much heavier. I guess Ofer was right... I'm heavy by definition. Nothing to do with maturity or bad character, it's just me... in the end of the day I'm a philologist, ain't I? An almost religious one.
I owe this space to myself I think... and surprisingly I can always find the space at the same hour in the same state of mind. It's almost Calvinist and Methodic. 2 am is my spot, my peak.
The day just slept away as usual... very slow but very concise I think. A harmless day, except for my neighbours and their pathetic intentions to convince me I should fix the garden or what once was a garden. I won't fix anything, let the world fall apart... as long as I have a functional modem and my pallmall filter I couldn't really care less.
I won't write this note to my friend "Kitty" for there's no such a friend and I couldn't say I have that kind of imaginary friend to whom I enthrust everything in my troubled mind. I rather enthrust it to myself as I know the wife of the journalist better than I know anyone else, unfortunately I don't know her emotions that well... that's still an unreadable navigation map, like the human genoma sort of. There're several clear facts about the wife of the journalist and her sad beauty. Sadness is always some very sexy kind of beauty... a blank face in the uncertainties, strength and weakness, masculinity and sensitivity, selective silence and a British speech. The wife of the journalist and George Elliot seem to be walking on the same wire. Last night I started doing a re-read of the Lifted Veil, and well there I found myself again.. like in the tragedy and like in the lyrical Sappho. But special in George Elliot, it's probably too personal. Those kind of things only an educated woman could write about, and it's certainly not Barbara Sher or my last therapist.
I remember how George Elliot and me found each other, in a Kunderian plot... as a poor university student wandering down the bookshops trying to pick a few titles I could afford. I stumbled upon that small and thick black cover bearing the title "Middlemarch", one of those books you would only find in musty libraries for outrageous prices and it wouldn't cost me more than a few cups of coffee and I foresaw the advantageous investment, then thoughtlessly picked the least scratched edition (it looked just like new) and ran to the cashier.
Back to my room (I remember the smelly wooden desk, reliquies from grandma only occupying physical space, the black wardrobe, the never empty ashtreys and my little collection of books... also a little radio, eternal companion in those white nights of Cretan glamour, Sophoclean grandeur, Heidegger, Heraclitus and even Jung) I placed the book among my little collection that summed a few hundreds of volumes in the course of the years to come. Hardly ever stared at it but I enjoyed its pleasurable company; I always enjoyed the companion of musty books even if unread, for they gave me the entourage that an intellectual requires even if all his time was spent among cigarettes and love letters.
The Middlemarch laid just next to Euripides' Bachants in its Greek-Spanish edition... another musty book, even mustier... and hence never read, just contemplated... some books dont have to be read, they're just a must-have but they're not meant to be read. That luxurious edition of the Bachants stolen from some shelf of the lyceum was one of those books.
George Elliot's fate was just next to Euripides, because in anycase he never really interested me... for I used to spend my learning hours reading and re-reading Antigone in all possible versions, in all possible languages, the Sophoclean triada, in translation, in original, in papyrus, in critical edition, in textual critic... went to see the Opera and even the philarmonic. Read the Germans, how much I loved the Germans... how much I admired their spirit. So Romantic but disciplined... Never stopped praising them as the greatest civilization of all times, as the continuation of the Greek raison d'etre. If I only would have stopped by to read the Bible...
But George Elliot found her way and surprised me in the tiresome boredom of the Middlemarch, George Elliot and me wed on that day, when I bought an old cheap edition of the musty Middlemarch. We wed back then and our marriage is still on the go, despite the religious differences and the conventions. The wife of the journalist and George Elliot still gather in secret, just like Anna Frank, Stella Mullej-Madej and the wife of the journalist met late at night while mom slept the night away. But back then the wife of the journalist wasn't a wife and there was no journalist either. The gods did their job with excellent accuracy, sequel-free. Afrodite always loyal... loyal to Sappho and loyal to Ari.
Later on in my life the Middlemarch continued unfinished (and is still unfinished) but we did meet again. The school certificate brought me to Silas Marner and the Victorian sadness, for couldn't you die of love? No you really couldn't but George Elliot, like a timeless dramatist proved it wrong, for it was possible to die of love... like in the movies, like in the musicals... like in Shakespeare.
Once again George Elliot and the wife of the journalist met by coincidence, by chance... but thrill-free, they just drank some coffee, died and continued their paths... all by themselves. But there's a somewhere when ends meet ends, it's a spiderweb, just like mythology, just like maths.
Patricia Simmonson, the lecturer and the wife of the journalist met once again, in the aftermath you see? A British Council librarian and an English literature teacher, then a phone call and bouquette of flowers. Then a lousy lecturer and a brilliant student, a brilliant student that never completed an assignment. Patricia and the wife of the journalist met on George Elliot again.
This time "Scenes of Clerical Life" made ends meet ends... One day in the library.. Kafkian conversations and cups of coffee, Kafkian conversations with the lawyer and nicotine. Overlooking the hills with the chapel on the top and nearby the Classics seminar, where I'd lose my nerves on Friday's afternoons and carelessly let Shabbat come down upon us among Greek gods and purified nationalisms.
Among the Kafkian days of Scenes of Clerical Life I stumbled upon the Lifted Veil, that little tiny book that would wed Elliot and me for everafter. That tiny book that would make Elliot and the wife of the journalist accomplices forever. Elliot... another Isobel, married to herself... just like the wife of the journalist... alone and beautifully sad... married to herself. Living on letters, living on presents, living on phone calls... on letters that were never received, on presents that were never given and on phone calls that were never made. Dellusory and deceiving. Just like my nurse, do you remember her? I hardly do. I probably see the connection, it's almost religious.
The Lifted Veil would be our wedding ring, and that symbolic confirmation that only death would separate. Now I still read the Lifted Veil over and over and over again. In my 19th century edition of old smelly cover... you can't even dare to fold a page fearing it would tear apart... in my 19th century edition I still read The Lifted Veil, and hope... by all means to finish one day the Middlemarch.
I can't say life is turned upside down once again, it's just.... ends that make ends meet. It's clearer than ever... Hesiodus explained to me when I was a little kid that stared at the sun, now we're people of the sun... we wear sunglasses. I'm not married to myself but probably more inside the world than I ever was, full of insight. Through the marvellous discovery of the hidden treasures of my mind, my diseased condition... my nature... Tonight, again at 3 am I'm the wife of a journalist, with no journalist but with George Elliot... in the night we still meet... more often than Sophocles and me do. Elliot and me wait for the same train I think, from Geneva to Vienna and then to Prague, the imaginary city... in Kunderian fragments of nothingness, elucidated.
When the journalist is not home, still Elliot and me have some intimacy, the kind of intellectual intimacy that only a beautifully sad person can understand.
Ari
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