Buenos Aires 1932

The two ways of seeing the mimosa reminded me of the question intriguing Batu, the protagonist of the daily comic strip Tute in the newspaper La Nación.

“Are you like you see yourself or like others see you?” … … … “I’ll ask my mom and I’ll tell you.”

This Metro Goldwyn Mayer short film about Buenos Aires in 1932 that I have just received from my mother is a further illustration of this essential question. Beyond the images that testify how the city looked at that time, the presentation is colored by the rather romantic and vague preconceptions of the filmmakers. Just like in the famous movie scene where Rodolfo Valentino is dancing tango dressed up as a gaucho and wearing a Spanish hat, here too the imageries of various people of Hispanic origin are intermixed, especially in the music. One could also object that the film shows only the nice aspects of the city and its people, while nothing is seen of the other, much more miserable and less pleasant reality of Argentina of the thirties, although it might seem exaggerated to demand so much social realism from a touristic and commercial film such as this.



Recently I had to act as a tourist guide in my own city, although I have to say I didn’t get to shine that much in this role (I don’t think I will be hired again). It served, however, to oblige me to look at Buenos Aires with different eyes. And of course this look has also included several places shown here in the video, really typical places of Buenos Aires now as then:

The Costanera Sur – Southern Riverside – at the start of the tour, which in the thirties was still a bathing place and where already there stood the impressive fountain sculpted by Lola Mora (in the last twenty years or so, after several years of neglect, nature took claim of the place and it has become an ecological reserve only some minutes away from the commercial district of the town).

The monument of the Spaniards where Libertador and Sarmiento Avenues cross, in the midst of Palermo Woods, my favourite image of the city.

“El Tigre,” a recreation spot that was very fashionable around the thirties and which has recently recovered part of its old splendour.

Maybe the most curious thing for me was to see the Palermo Hippodrome as it is shown here. In one of its buildings, remodeled years ago with its bleachers now encased in glass, we had our wedding party. I must say, however, that I had never heard anything about that prohibition of being out on the street without a jacket.

And then the other curiosities that have been lost, like the milk vendors leading their cows and the scarcely hygienic “pleasure” of drinking milk directly from the cow… Or the policemen acting as light signals and Calle Florida when it was not yet converted into a pedestrian street as we know it now.

And what to say about that man, Benito, who colored the pigeons of Buenos Aires to make them merrier? Again the question whether for themselves or for the others? because I doubt if the pigeons felt merrier after the artistic intervention, even if perhaps they cheered those who looked at their new colors.

By the end of the film we are absolutely convinced that Buenos Aires has always been a theater of all imaginable kind of madness.

Buenos Aires 1932

Las dos maneras de ver al aromo me hicieron acordar al interrogante en que está inmerso Batu, el personaje de la tira diaria de Tute en La Nación


Es curioso que en momento tan oportuno mi madre me haya reenviado este corto de la Metro Goldwyn Mayer sobre Buenos Aires en 1932. Más allá de las imágenes que testimonian cómo era la ciudad en ese entonces, sin duda la presentación está teñida por los presupuestos bastante románticos y poco precisos de los realizadores. Como la famosa escena de Rodolfo Valentino bailando un tango vestido de gaucho y con sombrero español, aquí también se mezclan representaciones de varios pueblos de origen hispano; especialmente en la música. También podría decirse que las imágenes sólo muestran la parte brillante de la ciudad y su gente, mientras nada vemos de la otra realidad mucho más sufrida y menos agradable de la Argentina del '30. Aunque parece algo extemporáneo reclamarle tanta realidad social a un corto turístico y publicitario como éste.



Hace poco tuve que hacer guía turística en mi ciudad, aunque la verdad sea dicha, no llegué a lucirme mucho en mi labor... (no creo que vuelvan a contratarme), pero me sirvió para obligarme a mirar Buenos Aires con otros ojos. Y por supuesto, esa mirada se fijaba en muchos de los lugares que aquí se presentan. Bien típicos de Buenos Aires tanto ahora como entonces:

La Costanera Sur, comienzo del recorrido, que en el 30 todavía era un balneario y donde ya estaba emplazada la impresionante fuente hecha por Lola Mora (desde hace unos veinte años, tras muchos más de abandono, la naturaleza tomó el lugar y se ha convertido en una reserva ecológica a minutos del centro de la ciudad).

El monumento de los españoles donde se cruzan las avenidas del Libertador y Sarmiento, en medio de los Bosques de Palermo, mi imagen preferida de la ciudad.

El Tigre, lugar de recreo muy de moda por el 30 y que en los últimos tiempos ha recuperado parte de su esplendor.

Quizás lo que más curioso me resulte sea ver el Hipódromo de Palermo tal como lo muestran aquí. En uno de sus edificios, hace años remodelados y con sus gradas cerradas con vidrios, hicimos nuestra fiesta de casamiento. Eso sí, nunca había oído nada de aquella prohibición de salir sin saco a la calle.

Y luego otras curiosidades que se han perdido en todas partes como los vendedores de leche con vaca a cuestas y el “placer” tan poco higiénico de tomar la leche directamente de la vaca... O los policías que hacían de semáforos y la calle Florida cuando todavía no era peatonal en toda su traza, como la conocemos.

¿Y qué decir de aquel hombre, Benito, que coloreaba las palomas para hacerlas más alegres? De nuevo la pregunta ¿se es para el otro o para uno? porque dudo que las palomas se sintieran más alegres con la intervención artística, pero alegrarían a los que las miraban con sus nuevos colores.

En fin, nos quedamos con su imagen y con la certeza de que Buenos Aires parece haber dado siempre lugar a todo tipo de locuras.

Equivalents

On 6 March Zsolt Balogh, the former head manager of BKV ZRT, the Public Transport Company of Budapest, confessed to the press that in terms of the “slush fund rule” that had become a law within the company he had to regularly hand over huge sums to Socialist Deputy Mayor Miklós Hagyó: “Since then I know that in a Nokia box there is room for 15 million forints [about 57 thousand euro or 76 thousand USD] because once I had to hand over this sum in it”.

Image by Csela, from here

The term “Nokia box” has immediately become a meme of Hungarian web language and everyday communication. Its definition, given by Szlengblog is: Several dozens of millions of forints, illegally misappropriated by influential politicians from funds dedicated to public procurements by circumventing the law through the application of various tricks. The “N” has been proposed as a unit of measure for corruption. Photo blogs are dedicated to illustrate for what is there room in a Nokia box, also asking for the contributions of their readers. The video blog “indavideo” broadcasts a pseudo-BKV educational film on the correct (i.e. illegal) use of Nokia boxes, and pseudo news are being published announcing that due to the extensive corruption 47 times more Nokia boxes were bought in Hungary in the last year than Nokia mobiles. Even the Finnish news site of Nokia has reported about the phenomenon (here you can read its machine translation), and their readers urge Nokia to turn this unexpected popularity to advertisement purposes.

Image by Udo, from here and here

As a philologist I love such memes that condense a whole story, especially when their creators and spreaders try to overcome a miserable situation by way of good humor. As a translator, however, they are always torturing, for I either have to circumscribe them or explain them in footnote, and none of both has the same effect. But the Nokia box is an unexpected exception. This meme has its equivalent both in Spanish and Catalan. It translates as “Cola Cao”.


In Mallorca the corruption involving – similarly to Hungary – the whole political elite in power has been investigated for three years with remarkable success. Antònia Ordinas, the former director of the economic development council of the Balearic Island is also among those concerned, and she, in hope of a milder sentence, opted for collaborating with the authorities. Among others, she showed where she had hidden part of a slush-money, some 240 thousand euros – that is, about “4 N” –: buried in her garden in a box of Cola Cao cacao.

The Cola Cao box has immediately become a meme in Mallorca just like the Nokia box in Hungary. Jokes, cartoons, blog posts and even exhibitions have been dedicated to it in a row. The price of empty Cola Cao boxes has supposedly risen to three times as large as that of full ones. And the whole corruption scandal – during which those concerned hurry to bear witness against each other just like at us – has received the popular name “Cola Chaos”. A characteristic example of this meme is this short video entitled “Mallorkistan”, whose character speaks in the archaic Mallorcan dialect that is not even fully understood by continental Catalans, so we have to give a transcription as well.



Avui he vist als diaris que els interessos han tornat a devallar … tots els bancs són iguals … Amb els collons d’un fan pagar a l’altre … ¿Qué faig? Ara he copiat a na Ordinas … mira-ho, hombre … Fa vint anys … tots el governs tenen la pella pel mànec … fan anar s’oli cap on ells volen … són tots iguals … – I has tret tot els doblers? – Tot! Hombre! Ara veuràs qué faré, Tot. Tot en bitllets de cinquanta … Perquè no n’hi ha molts, però si els hagués tret més petits no haguessin cabut. No és cap doi el que ha fet na Ordinas. Governs i putes governs. Au! Ja està!

Today I saw in the newspaper that interests decrease again … all the banks are the same … they pay to one with the other’s nuts … What should I do? I copy Ordinas … look, hombre … for twenty years … all the governments have kept the fryer by the handle … they pour the oil wherever they want … they are all the same … – And have you taken out all the money? – All! Hombre! Now you will see what I do. All. All, in notes of fifty … for I do not have much, but had I taken it out in smaller notes, there would have been no room for it in the box. It is absolutely no stupidity what Ordinas did. Governments, son of a bitch governments. Well, that’s it. Ready!

“The corruption scandals following each other have already merged into each other in the minds of the people” – writes Matías Vallés in his article The fetishes of corruption – “but fortunately their protagonists have far-sightedly provided for the mnemotechnic tools preserving their memory. The astronomic bill of Casa Alfredo, the lobster dinner of the Matas government, the pony of Papa Hidalgo, the Cola Cao box of Ordinas make easily intelligible the meshes of these muddled affairs and firmly anchor them in the historical memory.”

Actually, it is comforting to know that today’s protagonists will be long off the theater, but the collective memory and language will still preserve the Nokia and Cola Cao boxes, the “silver ships”, “viaducts”, “Chile cherries”, “digital tablets” and “hedgehogs”, just to name some more of the memes for the corruption of our governments in the last twenty years. Nothing is eternal, except for dishonesty, as Yerofeev said. Even if he did not really mean it like this.

If there is no home

In the last week, on the first warm day of the spring a peculiar service took place in Moscow’s Church of Saint Cosmas and Damian in Shubino. Homeless people from the railway stations and from the streets gathered together to commemorate about their companions who had frozen to death during this winter.


There are no official statistics about how many people died of cold in Moscow in this season. The participants of the service commemorated about fifty companions by name. But according to Svetlana Fayn, leader of the group of volunteers “Friends on the street” or “Friends of the Sant’ Egidio Community” there were probably several hundreds of deaths.


The group which for several years has organized this early spring memorial service got their name from the Sant’ Egidio Community in Rome. This latter was founded in 1968 by Roman university students going out to the slums of the city to hold afternoon schools and later to take care of the poor and the sick. In 1973 they obtained the empty convent of Sant’ Egidio in the Trastevere, and since then they maintain an organized network of provision for the poor, handicapped, homeless and immigrants, now in more than seventy countries of the world, with the collaboration of fifty thousand volunteers. The community actively promotes the collaboration of cultures and religions, and thus they also have several Orthodox Christian groups all over Russia and Ukraine, including the “Friends on the street” taking care of the homeless in Moscow.


The volunteers of the group regularly visit the railway stations, distributing food, clothes and medicines to the homeless. But they do not consider this as their most important task. “Several homeless people come to us not for food or clothes, but to be listened to, to be considered as a human person and to be taken seriously even in these conditions. They feel very lonely, this is their most frequent complain to us and to the doctors. For us, therefore, the most important task is to develop a personal relationship with them. To know their names and what they need. And that they also know that at a given hour, in a given place they always find one of us who is there only for listening to them.” At Christmas they prepare personalized gifts for them, and organize a common dinner for the homeless and the volunteers in a Moscow restaurant.

Svetlana Fayn, chief organizer of the group “Friends on the street”

The “Friends on the street” is not the only group that cares about the homeless in Moscow. The members of the group “Poor people – Kursk Railway Station” come every day from the nearby church of Confessor Saint Martin to distribute food and clothes, “in normal day to three hundred, on cold day to five hundred people”. The volunteers help to replace the lost or stolen documents – a huge value in Russia – and buy a train ticket for those who, in lack of money, cannot go home to the countryside.


Deacon Oleg Vyshinsky who, accompanied by a doctor, drives his bus all over the town after eight o’clock in cold days, collects ten to thirty people every night who have no shelter from frost, fell ill, got drunken, were robbed or narcotized. The autobus called Милосердие, “Compassion” can be called all night at number 76-44-911. “In fact, most people do not freeze to death in the coldest nights, but rather when temperature just sinks to minus five or ten, and the exhausted and weakened people sleeping on the streets do not yet feel the danger.”


The group led by the Orthodox pastor Valery Stepanov visits the homeless in the daytime, by providing them with basic medicines, disinfectants, eye-drops, painkillers. Until last year they were supported by a pharmacy network, but since the economic crisis this has ceased. Now they can only help with private donations, for example with some liters of goose fat which, divided into small portions, is used to treat frost bites.


The various organizations caring about homeless people in 2009 created a common network “Если дома нет” – “If there is no home” to jointly take steps in the interest of those living on the streets. “Society knows almost nothing about the situation of the homeless. We need to raise public awareness of the greatness of the problem and to awake the feeling of shame of the authorities. In Moscow there is almost no shelter and social and medical provision for them. Their re-socialization also requires centers of rehabilitation.”

“Dima, having finished the lunch, asks me: «Do you also sometimes have – you know…
depression?… And what do you do at those times?… I am basically
a good man, but somehow I got lost in life…»”

“In the 90s, with the privatization of the hitherto state-owned flats and the massive abuses accompanying it, people got to the streets in large numbers”, gives an outline of the origins of homelessness Andrei Pentyukhov on the first, awareness-raising conference of the “If there is no home” network in March 2009. The number of those living on the streets were further increased by the poor fleeing the province who did not find a subsistence in the capital, but have no means to go home either. The number of homeless people in Moscow is estimated at several thousands – but no official statistics has been made of this.


“The volunteers caring for the homeless say that it is much more difficult to collect money for them than for the sick, elderly or orphans. The majority of people is willing to help at most to them who did not get in trouble from their own fault and who display spectacular effects of the help received. Let us be honest: a great part of those falling to the streets did not get there accidentally – even if not by their own choice, but in several cases for lack of will. Most of them drink, and if they lived for a long time without a roof then they do not easily reintegrate into society. But on the brink of life and death it is not important who is to blame.”

“I know it might sound hypocritical, but it is so: the Lord loves you anyway. He knows
what it means to be homeless. His Son was also born in a stable, and was given
no shelter. The main thing is not to have any malice in your heart
and not to be angry with people.”

“We provide all Europe with gas, and on the streets of our own capital people die of cold
in hundreds. There must be provision and shelter for them. If we do not
speak about it, everything will remain as it has been.”

Aleksandr Borisov, pastor of the Church of Saint Cosmas and Damian

Photos by Yuliya Makoveichuk.
This post was written on the basis of the articles [1] [2] [3] of the Russian Orthodox
students’ magazine Татьянин День.

The Mimosa Tree

Recently we talked about the exemplum of a flower. Some days later, in a spirit still attentive to the teachings of the natural world, I found a beautiful version of “El aromo”, “The Mimosa Tree” on an album by Soledad Villamil (an actress I like very much who, besides acting, also sings). This milonga is a collaboration between the Argentine singer Atahualpa Yupanqui and the Uruguayan poet Romildo Risso, also the composers of “Los ejes de mi carreta”, “The axles of my cart” – see below –, whose similarity to this song was immediately discovered by the attentive ear of Tamás.


“Soledad Villamil Canta” (Sony Music 2007)

El Aromo (milonga) Romildo Risso - Atahualpa Yupanqui. Hay un aromo nacido en la grieta de una piedra. Parece que la rompió pa’ salir de adentro de ella. Está en un alto pela’o, no tiene ni un yuyo cerca, Viéndolo solo y florido Tuito el monte lo envidea. Lo miran a la distancia árboles y enredaderas, diciéndose con rencor: “¡Pa uno solo, cuánta tierra!” En oro le ofrece al sol pagar la luz que le presta. Y como tiene de más, puña’os por el suelo siembra. Salud, plata y alegría, tuito al aromo, la suebra Asegún ven los demás dende el lugar que lo observan. Pero hay que dir y fijarse como lo estruja la piedra. Fijarse que es un martirio la vida que le envidean. Que en ese rajón, el árbol nació por su mala estrella. y en vez de morirse triste se hace flores de sus penas… Como no tiene reparo, todos los vientos le pegan. Las heladas lo castigan L’agua pasa y no se queda. Ansina vive el aromo sin que ninguno lo sepa. Con su poquito de orgullo porque es justo que lo tenga. Pero con l’alma tan linda que no le brota una queja. Que en vez de morirse triste se hace flores de sus penas. ¡Eso habrían de envidiarle los otros, si lo supieran!

The Mimosa Tree (milonga) Romildo Risso – Atahualpa Yupanqui A mimosa tree was born In the crevice of a rock It is thought that he once cracked it To escape from its insides. Upright on a barren cliff Not a weed is close at hand, Seeing him so lone and blossomed He’s the envy of the land. Gazing at it from afar Grudgingly, the trees and vines All will murmur to each other ‘All that soil for only one.’ Gold he offers to the sun As a payment for its light And because of his abundance Scatters handfuls to the ground. Health and riches and contentment The mimosa owns in plenty In the eyes of all the others Who are watching from their crannies. But one must get quite close to notice How the rock is pressing on him. And discover what a martyr’s Is the life that they all envy. For the tree began his being In that crack through his misfortune But instead of sadly dying Turns his sorrows into flowers. As he lacks the slightest shelter All the winds keep striking on him And the frost is harsh upon him, Water passes and won’t tarry. The mimosa goes on living No one knows these things about him. He has his pride, but just a little, What he’s justified in having. So, with such a lovely spirit, You will find him not complaining And instead of sadly dying Turns his sorrows into flowers. This is really what the others, If they knew it, should all envy.

As it unfortunately happens to me with so many works of Yupanqui, I had not known this milonga. But let us not complain, it is a luck to have found it. Perhaps it is true that some treasures come when we can really appreciate them, and this song is surely one of them.

The eloquent image of the mimosa tree standing proudly and all alone and struggling to find its place in the cleft of the rock reminded me an araucaria tree I had just seen in Neuquén.


But I was especially touched by the conflicting points of view and interests so poetically and precisely presented in the song. The envy of others seeing the mimosa tree as triumphant and glorious – as it happens so often to us when observing from outside the lives of others – and the truth of the tree which sacrifices itself and struggles to do its best in the place where destiny has brought it.

This song immediately recalls the ode by Machado, indissolubly linked with the melody by Serrat, to an old elm of the Duero.


As Julia has mentioned above “Los ejes de mi carreta”, let us also include it here. It has been my all-favorite from Atahualpa Yupanqui since Wang Wei showed it to me several years ago. Each time I listen to it, I always see the old Indian who gradually lost everything that had been dear in his life until he was left but one last companion, the creaking of the wheel.

Porque no engraso los ejes me llaman abandonao por que no engraso los ejes me llaman abandonao… Si a mí gusta que suenen ¿Pa’ qué los quiero engrasar? Si a mí me gusta que suenen ¿Pa’ qué los quiero engrasar? Es demasiado aburrido seguir y seguir la huella. Es demasiado aburrido seguir y seguir la huella, demasiado largo el camino sin nada que me entretenga No necesito silencio. Yo no tengo en qué pensar. No necesito silencio. Yo no tengo en qué pensar. Tenía, pero hace tiempo, ahura ya no pienso mas. Tenía, pero hace tiempo ahura ya no pienso mas Los ejes de mi carreta nunca los voy a engrasar

Because I do not grease the axles I am called a fool because I do not grease the axles I am called a fool but if I love that sound why should I grease them but if I love that sound why should I grease them It is far too boring to follow, to follow the track it is far too boring to follow, to follow the track the way is far too long with nothing to entertain me I do not need silence I have nothing to think about I do not need silence I have nothing to think about I had, but long ago now I do not think any more I had, but long ago now I do not think any more and the axles of my cart I will never grease

Atahualpa Yupanqui, 1908-2008

El aromo

Hablábamos hace poco de la ejemplaridad de una flor. Días después, con el espíritu atento a las enseñanzas del mundo natural, descubrí una preciosa versión de “El aromo” en un disco de Soledad Villamil (una actriz que me gusta mucho y que además de actuar, canta). Esta milonga es una colaboración entre Atahualpa Yupanqui y el poeta uruguayo Romildo Risso, con quien compuso también “Los ejes de mi carreta” (que el oído atento de Tamás inmediatamente descubrió semejantes).

“Soledad Villamil Canta” (Sony Music 2007)

El Aromo
(milonga)
Romildo Risso - Atahualpa Yupanqui.

Hay un aromo nacido
en la grieta de una piedra.
Parece que la rompió
pa’ salir de adentro de ella.

Está en un alto pela’o,
no tiene ni un yuyo cerca,
Viéndolo solo y florido
Tuito el monte lo envidea.

Lo miran a la distancia
árboles y enredaderas,
diciéndose con rencor:
“¡Pa uno solo, cuánta tierra!”

En oro le ofrece al sol
pagar la luz que le presta.
Y como tiene de más,
puña’os por el suelo siembra.

Salud, plata y alegría,
tuito al aromo, la suebra
Asegún ven los demás
dende el lugar que lo observan.

Pero hay que dir y fijarse
como lo estruja la piedra.
Fijarse que es un martirio
la vida que le envidean.

Que en ese rajón, el árbol nació
por su mala estrella.
y en vez de morirse triste
se hace flores de sus penas…

Como no tiene reparo,
todos los vientos le pegan.
Las heladas lo castigan
L’agua pasa y no se queda.

Ansina vive el aromo
sin que ninguno lo sepa.
Con su poquito de orgullo
porque es justo que lo tenga.

Pero con l’alma tan linda
que no le brota una queja.
Que en vez de morirse triste
se hace flores de sus penas.

¡Eso habrían de envidiarle
los otros, si lo supieran!

Como lamentablemente me sucede con tantas obras de Yupanqui, no conocía esta milonga. Pero no nos lamentemos, la suerte es haberlo hallado, más tarde o más temprano. Tal vez es cierto que algunos tesoros se encuentran cuando podemos verdaderamente apreciarlos y esta canción debe ser uno de ellos.

La elocuente imagen de este aromo, hierático y solitario, que lucha por hacerse un lugar en la hendidura de la piedra me hizo recordar alguna araucaria que había visto hacía poco en Neuquén.


Pero especialmente me conmovió el conflicto de miradas e intereses que se juegan en la canción de manera tan poética y precisa. La envidia de los demás que ven al aromo triunfante y glorioso –como muchas veces nos sucede observando las vidas ajenas desde afuera– y la verdad del árbol que se sacrifica y lucha para hacer lo mejor posible en el lugar que le ha tocado en suerte.

De inmediato esta canción trae a la memoria la oda de Machado (ligada indisolublemente al canto de Serrat) a un olmo viejo del Duero.


Ya que Julia mencionó “Los ejes de mi carreta”, permítasenos incluirla aquí. Ha sido mi canción favorita de Atahualpa Yupanqui desde que Wang Wei me la mostró hace varios años. Cada vez que la escucho, veo al indio viejo que fue perdiendo todo lo que amaba en su vida hasta quedarse con una sola compañía, el chirrido de las ruedas.

Porque no engraso los ejes me llaman abandonao por que no engraso los ejes me llaman abandonao… Si a mí gusta que suenen ¿Pa’ qué los quiero engrasar? Si a mí me gusta que suenen ¿Pa’ qué los quiero engrasar? Es demasiado aburrido seguir y seguir la huella. Es demasiado aburrido seguir y seguir la huella, demasiado largo el camino sin nada que me entretenga No necesito silencio. Yo no tengo en qué pensar. No necesito silencio. Yo no tengo en qué pensar. Tenía, pero hace tiempo, ahura ya no pienso mas. Tenía, pero hace tiempo ahura ya no pienso mas Los ejes de mi carreta nunca los voy a engrasar

Atahualpa Yupanqui, 1908-2008

Writ in water

Verba volant, scripta manent, said the ancients. But as they knew well how little scripta are worth if they are not backed by the gold cover of the intentions striving to realize them, therefore what we call “word cried in the wilderness” they linked, with an elegant oxymoron, to the very writing: in aqua scribere, “to write on water”.

Erasmus also knew this when he included the proverb In aqua scribis (1.4.56) among the ancient adagia on useless things – Aethiopem lavas, whitewashing the black man, Ferrum natare doces, teaching the iron to swim, Cribro aquam haurire, drawing water with a sieve, Parieti loqueris, speaking to the wall, and so on – which fill out more than half of Centuria 1.4 of his Adagia, and were translated with one collective phrase in the Hungarian Adagia of 1598 by János Baranyai Decsi: Haszontalan dolgot czeleködni – Doing idle things.

Erasmus illustrated this adage mostly from Greek sources. In Lucian’s Tyrant (21) Hermes warns Charon, the ferryman of the underworld: You are kidding or, as they say, writing on water if you hope any obulus from Micyllus, and Plato in Phaidros (276c) says about “the expert of truth, beauty and goodness” that he will not write with his pen on black water. What is more, Erasmus quotes a verse from the commentary of Aristophanes’ comedy The Wasps as a separate proverb: Ἀνδρῶν δὲ φαύλων ὄρκον εἰς ὕδωρ γράφε - The oath of an evil man should be written on water. He also quotes Latin authors, primarily Catullus (70,2-3):

…Mulier cupido quod dicit amanti In vento et rapida scribere oportet aqua. …Whatever a woman says to her yearning lover it shall be written in the wind and on rapid water.

We have already seen that condemnatory ancient proverbs often got a positive tone precisely in Erasmus’ century. This happened to the metaphor of “writing on water” as well. Erasmus himself had no small part in this, as he stressed that our Lord Christ was mentioned to write only one single time, and even then – in the dust. In John 8:3-11, the story of the adulterous woman – read in the Mass exactly today – the Pharisees ask Jesus whether they should stone the woman as Moses had commanded.

“Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them: If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her. Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground. At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her: Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you? No one, sir, she said. Then neither do I condemn you, Jesus declared. Go now and leave your life of sin.”

Photis Kontoglou: Christ writing in the dust, 1924

Renaissance humanists filled whole volumes with their conjectures about what Jesus wrote there in the dust. Several exegets pointed out that this scene contains a reference to Jeremiah 17:13: “Those who turn away from you will be written in the dust, because they have forsaken the LORD, the spring of living water.” But all of them agreed that whatever Jesus wrote, it was certainly no idle thing. On the contrary, it is also included in the statement in Mt 24:25: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”

The metaphor of the word written on transient material but lasting forever thus became a favorite image in literature. Rudolf Wittkower describes in detail in his Born under Saturn how the idea of the “divinely inspired” artist, the artifex and poeta divus developed since the beginning of the 16th century, also incorporating several elements of sacrality which earlier had been reserved to God only. These included the above motif as well, which was used by the new poets – oh, vanity! – to symbolize the eternity of their own works. The new metaphor can be found expanded in Sonnet 75 by Edmund Spenser (1552-1599):

One day I wrote her name upon the strand, But came the waves and washed it away: Agayne I wrote it with a second hand, But came the tyde, and made my paynes his pray. “Vayne man,” sayd she, “that doest in vaine assay. A mortall thing so to immortalize, For I my selve shall lyke to this decay, and eek my name bee wyped out lykewize.” “Not so,” quod I, “let baser things devize, To dy in dust, but you shall live by fame: My verse your vertues rare shall eternize, And in the heavens wryte your glorious name. Where whenas death shall all the world subdew, Our love shall live, and later life renew.”

With the spreading of the metaphor – and especially in and after Romanticism – it was already enough to quote the first half of the full image, the text written on a transient or unfathomable material, and this already evoked the idea of eternity just as naturally as it had evoked that of vanity for the ancients. “Write on the sky if everything is broken!”, wrote in the lager Radnóti, concentrating in one single phrase both elements of the motif.


However, the best example of the adage’s new interpretation is Keats’ epitaph in the Protestant cemetery in Rome. This bitter epitaph announces that the young poet, embittered by his evil enemies, only wanted to have written on his tomb: Here lies one whose name was writ in water.

“This Grave contains all that was Mortal, of a Young English Poet, Who, on his Death Bed, in the Bitterness of his Heart, at the Malicious Power of his Enemies, Desired these Words to be engraven on his Tomb Stone: Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water.”

English history of literature holds that this saying can be reduced to a verse in Beaumont and Fletcher’s Philaster (1611) – All your better deeds Shall be in water writ – and alludes to the vanity of all noble efforts. However, if we also take into account the complete history of the adage from classical times through Erasmus to Spenser, then the inscription suggests just the contrary: the eternity of the poet’s oeuvre, triumphing over everything transitory and evil in this world.

Fox tale

Taberna Mylaensis: Barbablu. Switch it on and the tale begins.













When I was a child I had a picture book where the holes of the animals living under the earth were depicted like this. For a long time I kept drawing such holes, connecting through intricate tunnels and provided with full granaries as well as with warm central caverns where I was sleeping or reading in the persona of a hamster or an aardvark.













Taberna Mylaensis: Chianciunu l’occhi mei. From the album Allah Muntagna (1996).