Exiles
Roberto
Bolaño
To be exiled
is not to disappear but to shrink, to slowly or quickly get smaller and
smaller
until we reach our real height, the true height of the self. Swift,
master of
exile, knew this. For him exile was the secret word for journey. Many
of the
exiled, freighted with more suffering than reasons to leave, would
reject this
statement.
All
literature carries exile within it, whether the writer has had to pick
up and
go at the age of twenty or has never left home.
Probably the
first exiles on record were Adam and Eve. This is indisputable and it
raises a
few questions: can it be that we’re all exiles? Is it possible that all
of us
are wandering strange lands?
The concept
of “strange lands” (like that of “home ground”) has some holes in it,
presents
new questions. Are “strange lands” an objective geographic reality, or
a mental
construct in constant flux?
Let’s recall
Alonso de Ercilla.
After a few
trips through Europe, Ercilla, soldier and nobleman, travels to Chile
and
fights the Araucanians under Alderete. In 1561, when he’s not yet
thirty, he
returns and settles in Madrid. Twenty years later he publishes La
Araucana, the
best epic poem of his age, in which he relates the clash between
Araucanians
and Spaniards, with clear sympathy for the former. Was Ercilla in exile
during
his American ramblings through the lands of Chile and Peru? Or did he
feel
exiled when he returned to court, and is La Araucana the fruit of that
morbus
melancholicus, of his keen awareness of a kingdom lost? And if this is
so,
which I can’t say for sure, what has Ercilla lost in 1589, just five
years
before his death, but youth? And with his youth, the arduous journeys,
the
human experience of being exposed to the elements of an enormous and
unknown
continent, the long rides on horseback, the skirmishes with the
Indians, the
battles, the shadows of Lautaro and Caupolicán that, as time passes,
loom large
and speak to him, to Ercilla, the only poet and the only survivor of
something
that, when set down on paper, will be a poem, but that in the memory of
the old
poet is just a life or many lives, which amounts to the same thing.
And what is
Ercilla left with before he writes La Araucana and dies? Ercilla is
left with
something—if in its most extreme and bizarre form—that all great poets
possess.
He’s left with courage. A courage worth nothing in old age, just as,
incidentally, it’s worth nothing in youth, but that keeps poets from
throwing
themselves off a cliff or shooting themselves in the head, and that, in
the
presence of a blank page, serves the humble purpose of writing.
Exile is
courage. True exile is the true measure of each writer.
At this
point I should say that at least where literature is concerned, I don’t
believe
in exile. Exile is a question of tastes, personalities, likes,
dislikes. For
some writers exile means leaving the family home; for others, leaving
the
childhood town or city; for others, more radically, growing up. There
are
exiles that last a lifetime and others that last a weekend. Bartleby,
who
prefers not to, is an absolute exile, an alien on planet Earth.
Melville, who
was always leaving, didn’t experience—or wasn’t adversely affected
by—the
chilliness of the word exile. Philip K. Dick knew better than anyone
how to
recognize the disturbances of exile. William Burroughs was the
incarnation of
every one of those disturbances.
Probably all
of us, writers and readers alike, set out into exile, or at least a
certain
kind of exile, when we leave childhood behind. Which would lead to the
conclusion that the exiled person or the category of exile doesn’t
exist,
especially in regards to literature. The immigrant, the nomad, the
traveler,
the sleepwalker all exist, but not the exile, since every writer
becomes an
exile simply by venturing into literature, and every reader becomes an
exile
simply by opening a book.
Almost all
Chilean writers, at some point in their lives, have gone into exile.
Many have
been followed doggedly by the ghost of Chile, have been caught and
returned to
the fold. Others have managed to shake the ghost and gone into hiding;
still
others have changed their names and their ways and Chile has luckily
forgotten
them.
When I was
fifteen, in 1968, I left Chile for Mexico. For me, back then, Mexico
City was
like the Border, that vast nonexistent territory where freedom and
metamorphosis are common currency.
Despite it
all, the shadow of my native land wasn’t erased and in the depths of my
stupid
heart the certainty persisted that it was there that my destiny lay.
I returned
to Chile when I was twenty to take part in the Revolution, with such
bad luck
that a few days after I got to Santiago the coup came and the army
seized power.
My trip to Chile was long, and sometimes I’ve thought that if I’d spent
more
time in Honduras, for example, or waited a little before shipping out
from
Panama, the coup would’ve come before I got to Chile and my fate would
have
been different.
In any case,
and despite the collective misfortunes and my small personal
misfortunes, I
remember the days after the coup as full days, crammed with energy,
crammed
with eroticism, days and nights in which anything could happen. There’s
no way
I’d wish a twentieth year like that on my son, but I should also
acknowledge
that it was an unforgettable year. The experience of love, black humor,
friendship, prison, and the threat of death were condensed into no more
than
five interminable months that I lived in a state of amazement and
urgency.
During that time, I wrote one poem, which wasn’t just bad like the
other poems
I wrote back then, but excruciatingly bad. When those five months were
up I
left Chile again and I haven’t been back since.
That was the
beginning of my exile, or what is commonly known as exile, although the
truth
is I didn’t see it that way.
Sometimes
exile simply means that Chileans tell me I talk like a Spaniard,
Mexicans tell
me I talk like a Chilean, and Spaniards tell me I talk like an
Argentinean:
it’s a question of accents.
The fates
chosen by those who go into exile are often strange. After the Chilean
coup in
1973, I remember that few political refugees made their way to the
embassies of
Bulgaria or Romania, for example, with France or Italy preferred by
many,
although as I recall, top honors went to Mexico, and also Sweden, two
very
different countries that in the Chilean collective unconscious must
have stood
for two opposite manifestations of desire, although it’s true that in
time the
balance tilted toward the Mexican side and many of those who went into
exile in
Sweden began to turn up in Mexico. Many others, however, remained in
Stockholm
or Göteborg, and when I was living in Spain I ran into them every
summer on
vacation, speaking a Spanish that to me, at least, was startling,
because it
was the Spanish that was spoken in Chile in 1973, and that now is
spoken
nowhere but in Sweden.
Exile, in
most cases, is a voluntary decision. No one forced Thomas Mann to go
into
exile. No one forced James Joyce to go into exile. Back in Joyce’s day,
the
Irish probably couldn’t have cared less whether he stayed in Dublin or
left,
whether he became a priest or killed himself. In the best of cases,
exile is a
literary option, similar to the option of writing. No one forces you to
write.
The writer enters the labyrinth voluntarily—for many reasons, of
course:
because he doesn’t want to die, because he wants to be loved, etc.—but
he isn’t
forced into it. In the final instance he’s no more forced than a
politician is
forced into politics or a lawyer is forced into law school. With the
great
advantage for the writer that the lawyer or politician, outside his
country of
origin, tends to flounder like a fish out of water, at least for a
while.
Whereas a writer outside his native country seems to grow wings. The
same thing
applies to other situations. What does a politician do in prison? What
does a
lawyer do in the hospital? Anything but work. What, on the other hand,
does a
writer do in prison or in the hospital? He works. Sometimes he even
works a
lot. And that’s not even to mention poets. Of course the claim can be
made that
in prison the libraries are no good and that in hospitals there are
often are
no libraries. It can be argued that in most cases exile means the loss
of the
writer’s books, among other material losses, and in some cases even the
loss of
his papers, unfinished manuscripts, projects, letters. It doesn’t
matter.
Better to lose manuscripts than to lose your life. In any case, the
point is
that the writer works wherever he is, even while he sleeps, which isn’t
true of
those in other professions. Actors, it can be said, are always working,
but it
isn’t the same: the writer writes and is conscious of writing, whereas
the
actor, under great duress, only howls. Policemen are always policemen,
but that
isn’t the same either, because it’s one thing to be and another to
work. The
writer is and works in any situation. The policeman only is. The same
is true
of the professional assassin, the soldier, the banker. Whores, perhaps,
come
closest in the exercise of their profession to the practice of
literature.
Archilochus,
Greek poet of the seventh century BC, is a perfect example of this
phenomenon.
Born on the island of Paros, he was a mercenary, and, according to
legend, he
died in combat. We can imagine his life spent wandering the cities of
Greece.
In one
fragment, Archilochus doesn’t hesitate to admit that in the midst of
battle,
probably a skirmish, he drops his arms and goes running, which for the
Greeks
was undoubtedly the greatest mark of shame, let alone for a soldier who
has to
earn his daily bread by his courage in combat. Archilochus says:
Some Saian
mountaineer
Struts today
with my shield.
I threw it
down behind a bush and ran
When the
fighting got hot.
Life seemed
somehow more precious.
It was a
beautiful shield.
I know where
I can buy another
Exactly like
it, just as round.
And classical
scholar Carlos García Gual on Archilochus: he had to leave the island
where he
was born to earn a living with his lance, as a soldier of fortune. He
knew war
only as a toilsome chore, not as a field of heroic deeds. He won renown
for his
cynicism in a few lines of verse that tell how he flees the battlefield
after
he throws away his shield. His openness in confessing such a shameful
act is
striking. (In hoplite tactics, the shield is the weapon that protects
the flank
of the next soldier, symbol of courage, something never to be lost.
“Return
with the shield or on the shield,” it was said in Sparta.) All the
pragmatic
poet cared about was saving his own life. He cared nothing for glory or
the
code of honor.
Another
fragment: “Hang iambics. / This is no time / for poetry.” And: “Father
Zeus, /
I’ve had / No wedding feast.” And: “His mane the infantry / cropped
down to
stubble” And: “Balanced on the keen edge / Now of the wind’s sword, /
Now of
the wave’s blade.” And this, which could only have been written by
someone
buffeted by fate:
Attribute
all to the gods.
They pick a
man up,
Stretched on
the black loam,
And set him
on his two feet,
Firm, and
then again
Shake solid
men until
They fall
backward
Into the
worst of luck,
Wandering
hungry,
Wild of
mind.
And this,
spotlessly cruel and clear:
Seven of the
enemy
were
cut down in that encounter
And a
thousand of us,
mark
you,
Ran them
through.
And:
Soul, soul,
Torn by
perplexity,
On your feet
now!
Throw
forward your chest
To the
enemy;
Keep close
in the attack;
Move back
not an inch.
But never
crow in victory,
Nor mope
hangdog in loss.
Overdo
neither sorrow nor joy:
A measured
motion governs man.
And this,
sad and pragmatic:
The heart of
mortal man,
Glaukos, son
of Leptines,
Is what Zeus
makes it,
Day after
day,
And what the
world makes it,
That passes
before our eyes.
And this, in
which the human condition shines:
Hear me
here,
Hugging your
knees,
Hephaistos
Lord.
My battle
mate,
My good luck
be;
That famous
grace
Be my grace
too.
And this, in
which Archilochus gives us a portrait of himself and then vanishes into
immortality, an immortality in which he didn’t happen to believe: “My
ash spear
is my barley bread, / My ash spear is my Ismarian wine. / I lean on my
spear
and drink.”
This essay
is drawn from Between Parentheses: Essays, Articles and Speeches
(1998–2003) by
Roberto Bolaño, translated by Natasha Wimmer, forthcoming from New
Directions
on May 30. All translations from Archilochus are by Guy Davenport, from
Archilochus, Sappho, Alkman: Three Lyric Poets of the Late Greek Bronze
Age
(University of California Press, 1980).
April 13,
2011 2 p.m.