Sometimes it seems that I don’t view the world in the same fashion as everyone else. I keep seeing omens and portents where other people just see stuff. I feel like a peculiar sort of one-man audience, where all the people in the world are unwitting magicians, constantly performing astounding acts of magic that only I can see. In Spanish there is a word, duende, that means ‘enchanting or magical’. I live in a duende world, at least when I can.
In an afterword to Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov describes something similar:
For me a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss, that is a sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected with other states of being where art (curiosity, tenderness, kindness, ecstasy) is the norm.
Those other states of being are what I’m talking about. I like those states of being. I frankly prefer them to the literal, dreary old mundane world. Here is more on the duende world, from T. S. Eliot’s Preludes:
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.
I’ve liked this ever since I first read it in college. This poem speaks to something primordial within me. It feels almost like a religious description of the perception of the magic in the world. In passing, I note that this is why there is no room in my life for someone with the soul of a clerk, not that there have been many applicants these days.
All of this leads up to the following poem by Lewis Carroll, from Sylvie and Bruno. I have always viewed this as being my own personal biography. I present it in its entirety; I hope you enjoy it.
The Mad Gardener's Song
He thought he saw an Elephant,
That practised on a fife:
He looked again, and found it was
A letter from his wife.
'At length I realise,' he said,
The bitterness of Life!'
He thought he saw a
Upon the chimney-piece:
He looked again, and found it was
His Sister's Husband's Niece.
'Unless you leave this house,' he said,
'I'll send for the Police!'
He thought he saw a Rattlesnake
That questioned him in Greek:
He looked again, and found it was
The Middle of Next Week.
'The one thing I regret,' he said,
'Is that it cannot speak!'
He thought he saw a Banker's Clerk
Descending from the bus:
He looked again, and found it was
A Hippopotamus.
'If this should stay to dine,' he said,
'There won't be much for us!'
He thought he saw a Kangaroo
That worked a coffee-mill:
He looked again, and found it was
A Vegetable-Pill.
'Were I to swallow this,' he said,
'I should be very ill!'
He thought he saw a Coach-and-Four
That stood beside his bed:
He looked again, and found it was
A Bear without a Head.
'Poor thing,' he said, 'poor silly thing!
It's waiting to be fed!'
He thought he saw an Albatross
That fluttered round the lamp:
He looked again, and found it was
A Penny-Postage Stamp.
'You'd best be getting home,' he said:
'The nights are very damp!'
He thought he saw a Garden-Door
That opened with a key:
He looked again, and found it was
A Double Rule of Three:
'And all its mystery,' he said,
'Is clear as day to me!'
He thought he saw an Argument
That proved he was the Pope:
He looked again, and found it was
A Bar of Mottled Soap.
'A fact so dread,' he faintly said,
'Extinguishes all hope!'
This mordant poem is, to me, evocative of the other magical worlds that I occasionally inhabit. And I often bitterly resent being forced to live in the real world, where the elephant is really a letter from my wife. Call me the Mad Gardener.
- Hulles
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