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Authors: Antonio Tabucchi
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remembering how you were in 1956 and then adding the last image you were to leave me, almost thirty years later.
I appreciate one shouldnât write to the dead, but you know perfectly well that sometimes writing to the dead is an excuse, itâs an elementary Freudian truth, because itâs the quickest way of writing to oneself, and so forgive me, I am writing to myself, even though perhaps I am writing to the memory of you I keep inside me, the mark you left inside me, and hence in a certain sense I really am writing to you â but no, perhaps this too is an excuse, the truth is I am writing to no one but myself: even my memory of you, that mark you left inside me, is exclusively my business, you are nowhere and in nothing, thereâs just me, sitting here in this jumbo heading for Hong Kong and imagining Iâm riding on a scooter, I thought I was on a scooter, I knew perfectly well I was flying on a plane that was taking me to Hong Kong from where Iâll then take a boat to Macao, except that I was riding on a scooter, it was my thirteenth birthday, you were driving with your scarf around your neck and I was going to Macao by scooter. And without turning round, the fringe of your scarf in the wind tickling me, you shouted: To Macao? What on earth are you going to Macao for? And I said:Iâm going to look for some documents in the archives there, thereâs a municipal archive, and then the archive of an old school too, Iâm going to look for some papers, some letters maybe, Iâm not sure, basically some manuscripts of a symbolist poet, a strange man who lived in Macao for thirty-five years, he was an opium addict, he died in 1926, a Portuguese, called Camilo Pessanha, the family was originally from Genoa, his ancestor, a certain Pezagno, was in the service of the Portuguese king in 1300. He was a poet, he wrote only one little book of poems, Clepsydra , listen to this line: âThe wild roses have bloomed by mistake.â And you asked me: âYou think that makes any sense?â
Last Invitation
For the solitary traveller, admittedly rare but perhaps not implausible, who cannot resign himself to the lukewarm, standardised forms of hospitalised death which the modern statae guarantees and who, whatâs more, is terrorised at the thought of the hurried and impersonal treatment to which his unique body will be subjected during the obsequies, Lisbon still offers an admirable range of options for a noble suicide, together with the most decorous, solemn, zealous, polite and above all cheap organisations for dealing with what a successful suicide inevitably leaves behind it: the corpse.
Choosing a place suitable for a voluntary exit, and deciding on the manner of that exit, has become analmost hopeless undertaking these days, so much so that even the most eager are resigning themselves to natural forms of death, aided perhaps by the idea, now widespread in peopleâs consciousness, that the atomic destruction of the planet, the Total Suicide, is just a question of time, and hence whatâs the point of taking so much trouble? This last idea is very much open to question, and if nothing else misleading in its cunning syllogism: first because it creates a connivance with Death and hence a sort of resignation to the so-called âInevitableâ (a feeling necessarily alien to the exquisitely private act of suicide which can in no way be subjected to collectivist notions without its very essence being perverted); and second, even in the event of the Great Explosion, why on earth should this be considered a suicide, rather than a homicide inspired by destructive impulses towards others and the self carried out on a large scale and similar to those which inspired the wretched Nazis? And coercive in nature too, and hence in contrast with the inalienable nature of the act of suicide, which consists, as we know, in freedom of choice.
Furthermore, it has to be said that while waiting for
I appreciate one shouldnât write to the dead, but you know perfectly well that sometimes writing to the dead is an excuse, itâs an elementary Freudian truth, because itâs the quickest way of writing to oneself, and so forgive me, I am writing to myself, even though perhaps I am writing to the memory of you I keep inside me, the mark you left inside me, and hence in a certain sense I really am writing to you â but no, perhaps this too is an excuse, the truth is I am writing to no one but myself: even my memory of you, that mark you left inside me, is exclusively my business, you are nowhere and in nothing, thereâs just me, sitting here in this jumbo heading for Hong Kong and imagining Iâm riding on a scooter, I thought I was on a scooter, I knew perfectly well I was flying on a plane that was taking me to Hong Kong from where Iâll then take a boat to Macao, except that I was riding on a scooter, it was my thirteenth birthday, you were driving with your scarf around your neck and I was going to Macao by scooter. And without turning round, the fringe of your scarf in the wind tickling me, you shouted: To Macao? What on earth are you going to Macao for? And I said:Iâm going to look for some documents in the archives there, thereâs a municipal archive, and then the archive of an old school too, Iâm going to look for some papers, some letters maybe, Iâm not sure, basically some manuscripts of a symbolist poet, a strange man who lived in Macao for thirty-five years, he was an opium addict, he died in 1926, a Portuguese, called Camilo Pessanha, the family was originally from Genoa, his ancestor, a certain Pezagno, was in the service of the Portuguese king in 1300. He was a poet, he wrote only one little book of poems, Clepsydra , listen to this line: âThe wild roses have bloomed by mistake.â And you asked me: âYou think that makes any sense?â
Last Invitation
For the solitary traveller, admittedly rare but perhaps not implausible, who cannot resign himself to the lukewarm, standardised forms of hospitalised death which the modern statae guarantees and who, whatâs more, is terrorised at the thought of the hurried and impersonal treatment to which his unique body will be subjected during the obsequies, Lisbon still offers an admirable range of options for a noble suicide, together with the most decorous, solemn, zealous, polite and above all cheap organisations for dealing with what a successful suicide inevitably leaves behind it: the corpse.
Choosing a place suitable for a voluntary exit, and deciding on the manner of that exit, has become analmost hopeless undertaking these days, so much so that even the most eager are resigning themselves to natural forms of death, aided perhaps by the idea, now widespread in peopleâs consciousness, that the atomic destruction of the planet, the Total Suicide, is just a question of time, and hence whatâs the point of taking so much trouble? This last idea is very much open to question, and if nothing else misleading in its cunning syllogism: first because it creates a connivance with Death and hence a sort of resignation to the so-called âInevitableâ (a feeling necessarily alien to the exquisitely private act of suicide which can in no way be subjected to collectivist notions without its very essence being perverted); and second, even in the event of the Great Explosion, why on earth should this be considered a suicide, rather than a homicide inspired by destructive impulses towards others and the self carried out on a large scale and similar to those which inspired the wretched Nazis? And coercive in nature too, and hence in contrast with the inalienable nature of the act of suicide, which consists, as we know, in freedom of choice.
Furthermore, it has to be said that while waiting for
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