For this Shakespeare Day, the turn has finally come to Gonzalo to give a little speech; I have endeavoured this by translating the good chancellor's afterthoughts (after leaving the isle of the wreck) into his mother tongue, that also happens to be my own.
I have see and abso-fricking-lutely adore a female Gonzalo, with the telling name Dolores:, a seductive, Gurdjieff-quoting flower child of a Californian intellectual, a true apostle of the New Age (played by Lucianne Buchanan), from a 1982 postmodern AU/retelling. S
lightly improbably, Gonzalo is transformed into a dizzy blonde called Dolores (Lucianne Buchanan)
who, with obvious Gonzalo correspondences, chatters senselessly and
daydreams about everything turning out well for the good of humanity.
Be this character a he or a she; queer, straight, or ace; Californian, Australian, or from the Crown of Aragon (as Shakespeare's original was)... Sweet summer child for whom it takes decades to grow... surely reimagined sipping at a bar in the middle of a hot wasteland with the counterparts of Alonso Quijano and Mikel Tellagorri (ie; Dolores the Californian flower child sharing drinks with a fiftyish single LARPer and an eccentric, libertine former etarra). Where Quixote would be Enjolras and Tellagorri would combine Grantaire and Courfeyrac, Gonzalo/Dolores is definitely Combeferre. I claim the part of Marius, as the admiring newcomer, for myself. The drinks are on the house.
(Insert pinwheel here)
And where does this pinwheel come in? Is it a stylised reference to the Ingenious Hidalgo's feats of derring-do, a simple anemometre, or something far more metaphysical?
The pinwheel is a banner, an ideal, a sign; these mentors' counterpart to the tricolore at the backroom of the Café Musain.
You can take the girl out of the province, but you will never take the province out of the girl. The pinwheel is an ensign from Castellonian mythology, which stands for ideals such as modesty, kindness, and doing one's best. The tale, as narrated by our own regional Bard, Josep Pasqual i Tirado, tells of a humble, stunted-growing reed cane; it was at first used to make a kite, but the kite crash landed and was left by the children who flew it; yet the single mother of an ailing child found the broken kite and plumed its cane skeleton with its papers of bright colours to make a pinwheel, the only toy the little family could afford in their squalour. For the few years the child had left to live, the pinwheel brightened up and enlivened that short life. Not only that, but, after the mother was left alone, she kept the pinwheel as a keepsake, as a treasure to remember her lost beloved one.
»-Quan la meua ama morirà, seré canyeta; hui per hui sóc un record
estimat i volgudíssim, sóc lo voladoret del fill de la mareta. . .»
"When my lady dies, I will be a little reed cane; nowadays, I am a beloved and most adored keepsake, I am the pinwheel of Mum's little one..."
This parable is also the reason why I would like pinwheels on my grave (if I chance to be buried in the cold, dark soil), or where my ashes shall be scattered, instead of flowers that only last for a short while, aside from being a tad too cliché.
Anyway, without further ado, let us return to the point, for the original Gonzalo, the good privado from the Crown of Aragón, has been waiting in the wings long enough; and, though I do not consider myself as worthy of rendering tribute to such a noble soul, let me nevertheless try by translating the good chancellor's afterthoughts (after leaving the
isle of the wreck) into his mother tongue, that also happens to be my
own:
ASÍ HABLÓ GONZALO
Sandra Dermark, 30 enero MMXVIII
La tarde solemne, inmensa y clara,
se cierne sobre nuestra nave,
cuya estela persiste, sin distorsionarse,
sobre el mar y el silencio. Miro
hacia atrás por última vez
mientras el Sol se pone tras la isla
donde se alteraron todos nuestros afectos: sí,
mi predicción se cumplió,
mas no estoy justificado,
sin soberbia estoy llorando.
No es mío el crédito por
las palabras que dije años ha,
cuya alegría traicioné:
las verdades de hoy no deben
nada a aquel consejero
cuya rimbombante elocuencia
trocó la honradez en falsedad.
¿No soy yo Gonzalo, el cual
con reflexión en torno a su ser
hizo del consuelo una ofensa?
No hay nada por explicar:
si en el Absurdo confiara
y, nota a nota, exactamente,
lo que había oído cantara...
aquella instantánea euforia
habría tomado, allí mismo,
al universo por sorpresa.
Todos bailarían la jota
de la autorredención ignota.
Fui yo quien lo había previsto,
celoso de mi antiguo oído,
mío el arte que hacía que el canto
sonara ridículo, de espanto.
Yo, cuya interferencia rompía
el galope en prosa más lenta,
y, especulando, las quimeras
cristalizaba en ideas vacías;
en bromas, las ironías;
hasta ser condenado reo
de duda y de falta de afecto.
Adiós, querida isla de naufragar:
todos hemos recuperado la salud,
todos hemos visto el Bien Común,
y no hay nada que perdonar.
Ya que la decisión de la tempestad
la pasión sujetiva devolvió
a uno inclinado a meditar,
hasta el recuerdo podrá
refugiar de un hostil ambiente,
cual torre en ruinas junto al mar
donde asustados adolescentes
aprendan la fórmula necesaria
para afrontar su mortalidad.
Hasta la carne marchita será
una campana, un cascabel
sobre el que pueda poner el Ya Está
las manos si, en cualquier ocasión,
se sienta inspirado a comunicar:
a quien solo está... "Aquí estoy",
a quien tenso está... "Todo va bien".
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Gonzalo”
— from W. H. Auden’s “The Sea and the Mirror”
Evening, grave, immense, and clear,
Overlooks our ship whose wake
Lingers undistorted on
Sea and silence; I look back
For the last time as the sun
Sets behind that island where
All our loves were altered: yes,
My prediction came to pass,
Yet I am not justified,
And I weep but not with pride.
Not in me the credit for
Words I uttered long ago
Whose glad meaning I betrayed;
Truths to-day admitted, owe
Nothing to the councilor
In whose booming eloquence
Honesty became untrue.
Am I not Gonzalo who
By his self-reflection made
Consolation an offence?
There was nothing to explain:
Had I trusted the Absurd
And straightforward note by note
Sung exactly what I heard,
Such immediate delight
Would have taken there and then
Our common welkin by surprise,
All would have begun to dance
Jigs of self-deliverance.
It was I prevented this,
Jealous of my native ear,
Mine the art which made the song
Sound ridiculous and wrong,
I whose interference broke
The gallop into jog-trot prose
And by speculation froze
Vision into an idea,
Irony into a joke,
Till I stood convicted of
Doubt and insufficient love.
Farewell, dear island of our wreck:
All have been restored to health,
All have seen the Commonwealth,
There is nothing to forgive.
Since a storm’s decision gave
His subjective passion back
To a meditative man,
Even reminiscence can
Comfort ambient troubles like
Some ruined tower by the sea
Whence boyhoods growing and afraid
Learn a formula they need
In solving their mortality,
Even rusting flesh can be
A simple locus now, a bell
The Already There can lay
Hands on if at any time
It should feel inclined to say
To the lonely – “Here I am,”
To the anxious – “All is well.”
