sábado, octubre 15, 2022

Jorge Luis Borges visits Machu Picchu. Escritores en Machu Picchu

Jorge Luis Borges visits Machu Picchu

12 feb 202012 feb 2020CULTURE/ENGLISH. OPULENS

LIFE. On Sunday, 25 April 1965, Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, a 66-year-old, got off a plane at Lima’s international airport. He was accompanied by his student, the educated, young and beautiful María Esther Vázquez, 27. They stayed at Hotel Bolivar, Plaza San Martín, in the historic centre of Lima.

On Monday Borges gave a press conference. He admitted that he knew little about Peruvian literature. In the traditional Café de Los Huérfanos, which still exists and where the speciality is sweet anise bread, Borges had a coffee with numerous writers. Then he visited the ‘Gold of Peru’ exhibition at the Museum of Art on the Paseo Colón.

The following morning Borges spoke at the National University about ‘The Metaphor’, one of his favourite subjects. On Wednesday, 28 April, Borges and María Esther Vásquez travelled by plane to Cusco. In Cusco, he was taken to see the Stone of the Twelve Angles on Calle Hatunrumiyoq. The stone is a cultural heritage of Peru – the base previously held the palace of Inca Roca and now supports the Archbishop’s Palace.

From Cusco, they travelled on the small train to Aguas Calientes and then by bus to the terraces of Machu Picchu. Borges, erect, almost blind but active, swaying like a wild boar and leaning on his bamboo stick, approached the terraces as María Esther was telling him what she saw. They took the classic photo with the citadel behind them.

Jorge Luis Borges was dressed in a khaki suit. María Kodama wore a two-piece suit. At the airport, he was received by a group of students as if he were a Beatle. They settled in Cesar’s hotel in Miraflores. Borges gave numerous interviews at honorary dinners with writers and finally at critical academic events, such as the reception of the Honoris Causa Doctorate from the rector of the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, José Tola Pasquel.

Maybe at that moment, Borges understood that Machu Picchu had nothing to do with him. Alternatively, perhaps he imagined it as a maze of stones, a large circular space where a lion and his hunter were hopelessly dead. María Esther Vásquez explained later:

‘Borges could be moved by the sound of a verse or the poetic cadence of a phrase, but the feeling of the terraces of the pre-Columbian past, so close to the sky, did not stir his aesthetic passion. I never saw him more politely bored.’

The ruins of Machu Picchu did not dazzle him. On Friday, 30 April 1965, Borges left Peru. He would not remember those five days, but he went back. On 21 November 1978, the Argentine writer landed in Lima again. By now he was 79 years old and accompanied by his friend and personal assistant, María Kodama. She was 41 years old but had the face of a teenager.

Jorge Luis Borges was dressed in a khaki suit. María Kodama wore a two-piece suit. At the airport, he was received by a group of students as if he were a Beatle. They settled in Cesar’s hotel in Miraflores. Borges gave numerous interviews at honorary dinners with writers and finally at critical academic events, such as the reception of the Honoris Causa Doctorate from the rector of the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, José Tola Pasquel.

On Friday, 24 November, they flew to Cusco. If Borges did not like Machu Picchu, why would he return? Well, he liked paradoxes. In Lima, Peruvian writer and journalist Alfredo Barnechea asked Borges a precise question:

‘Why do you go to Machu Picchu?’

Borges responded politely:

‘There are two reasons. First, I want to see Cusco again, I know how much it impressed me, and I know that now, although I cannot see it, I will believe to see it. And then I want María Kodama to see Machu Picchu.’

Borges arrived in the town of Aguas Calientes affected by altitude sickness, which is not unusual for a 79-year-old man. The lack of air affected him. He got on the bus that climbed the hill to the sanctuary. The entrance to the ruins was full of tourists waiting for their turn to enter Machu Picchu.

In 1946 the first hotel was created there. In the hotel lobby, the pale Borges sat silently and motionless in an armchair, drinking coca tea under the supervision of María Kodama. Borges was not impressed. Back in Cusco, he got excited about the history of an old house, a relic. He visited Casa Cabrera, a pre-Columbian art museum, near the Plaza de Armas. Borges mentioned that Cabrera was one of his ancestors. The Spanish conqueror Jerónimo de Cabrera (1528-1574) had lived in Cusco, and his house is a museum today. Cabrera left Cusco and founded the city of Córdoba in Argentina.

Borges’s genius was a little petulant. In Cusco, Borges’s rancid soul appeared as a ghost, to vindicate supposed old kinships with Jerónimo de Cabrera. This is what Borges said:

‘Jerónimo de Cabrera was one of the thousands of my ancestors. The Peruvians took me to their house in Cusco. It was strange for me to think that from that house, Jerome had left Cusco, never to return.’

On the morning of Sunday, 26 November, he flew to Buenos Aires. In 1986 Borges married María Kodama in Geneva and died two months later.

Allen Ginsberg visits Machu Picchu. Escritores en Machu Picchu

Allen Ginsberg visits Machu Picchu

29 jan 202029 jan 2020CULTURE/ENGLISH. OPULENS

EXPERIENCE. On January 20th 1960, Allen Ginsberg flew from New York and landed at the Los Cerrillo’s airfield in Santiago. The poet was bearded and short-sighted, had dark eyes with optical lenses and carried a backpack. Ginsberg told reporters ‘I’m here to have fun’, but the next day a newspaper would write, perhaps maliciously: ‘I’m here to fuck one’.

Allen Ginsberg published his book Howl in 1957. Its impact on the literary world was like that of a cluster bomb. Chilean poet Gonzalo Rojas sent him an invitation to participate in a meeting organised by the Universidad de Concepción in 1960.
He stayed at the Pan-American hotel on Teatinos Street, next to the presidential palace La Moneda. He went to Café Il Bosco, the bustling bohemian centre in Alameda. Il Bosco was full of journalists, writers, night owls, cabaret performers, comedians and nightclubs dancers.

The following day a skinny man, only 25 years old, appeared at the entrance of the hotel. It was the poet Jorge Tellier. He did an interview which he published in Ultramar magazine. Ginsberg travelled in a van to Los Cerrillos where a plane took him to Concepción. The ‘First meeting of American writers’ was held between January 20th and 25th.

On April 21st Allen Ginsberg arrived in Cusco. He spent five days in the city. Then he went to the Machu Picchu area where a guard offered him accommodation in his hut. From there he wrote to his boyfriend, Peter, describing the cliffs and snow-capped mountains of the Andes. Ginsberg did not find what he was looking for: the sacred plant of the Incas – Ayahuasca, the rope of the dead.

Ginsberg stayed at the City Hotel, famous for its parties, boîte and elegant rooms. On January 21st he reads Howl in the auditorium of the University. In a letter he sent to his lover Peter Orlovsky he writes that the central discussion was about the relationship between art and politics. ‘Everyone expects the revolution.’ He wrote about the poet Luis Oyarzún, whom he described as a ‘roly-poly philosopher’, member of a semi-secret queer society. The writer Luis Oyarzún was then 40 years old. In 1954 he had been president of the Society of Writers. He also meets the Peruvian writer, Sebastián Salazar Bondy, director of the Institute of Contemporary Art of Lima. He invited him to Lima.

In the early morning of January 26th, Ginsberg and his backpack got on the train that would take him further south. He wandered the wet streets of the cities of southern Chile; Temuco and Puerto Montt. Then he returned to Santiago and met the famous poets, Nicanor Parra, Jorge Teillier and Pablo de Rokha. He spent three months in Chile. In April he went to La Paz, the capital of Bolivia, writing:

”How real is Bolivia? With its snowy Andes rising above the modern city, now that one is in La Paz, which means The Peace in Spanish.”

On April 21st Allen Ginsberg arrived in Cusco. He spent five days in the city. Then he went to the Machu Picchu area where a guard offered him accommodation in his hut. From there he wrote to his boyfriend, Peter, describing the cliffs and snow-capped mountains of the Andes. Ginsberg did not find what he was looking for: the sacred plant of the Incas – Ayahuasca, the rope of the dead.

On May 5th Ginsberg went to Lima by bus. He stayed at the legendary Hotel Comercio, in front of the Desamparados Railway Station. The hotel has a famous bar on the ground floor, the Cordano bar. As in Il Bosco de Santiago, pisco sours were famous in the Cordano bar. Ginsberg reads Howl in a tiny room of the Institute of Contemporary Art, steps away from San Martin Square, on May 12th, 1960.
Ginsberg hiked in the Peruvian Amazon jungle through Huánuco to Pucallpa. Pucallpa reminded him in some city of Tibet. There he drank the hallucinogenic ayahuasca. In a letter sent to Burroughs Allen Ginsberg described his experience in these terms:

‘Drank a cup -slightly old stuff, several old and slightly fermented also- lay back and after an hour (in a bamboo hut outside his shack, where the shaman cooks) began seeing or feeling what I thought was a Great Being or a lake that approaching my mind like a great wet vagina was.’

On July 8th, 1960, Ginsberg departed from Lima airport back to New York.

Pablo Neruda visit Machu Picchu. Escritores en Machu Picchu

Pablo Neruda visit Machu Pichu

22 feb 202023 feb 2020CULTURE/ENGLISH.OPULENS

LIFE. “Like hundreds of visitors, I look out over the mighty ruin city of Machu Picchu in Peru. Below is the winding river Urubamba or Willcamayu, which in Quechua means ”the sun’s river”. I sigh with amazement, as do hundreds of hundreds of tourists every day, at the sight of these high mountains and the most famous creation of Inca culture.

Although it is not so easy to get here, the number of tourists increases every year. In an hour and a half, a bus takes us early in the morning from Cusco to Ollantaytambo, where a train awaits to take us to Aguas Calientes, a tourist town among green mountains. From there, a bus takes us along a winding mountain road 700 meters up to the Machu Pichu entrance.”

In October 1943, poet Pablo Neruda was said to have visited Machu Picchu. According to him, the visit came to be a magical revelation that transformed him as a human and as a poet. In 1945, he published one of his best-known poems, Alturas de Macchu Picchu (”Machu Picchu’s Heights”).

How could Pablo Neruda get to the city of Machu Picchu, is a question that is asked spontaneously? Luis Nieto Degregori, one of the more critical writers in Cusco, has researched the story Pablo Neruda’s visit to Machu Picchu. His father, Luis Nieto Miranda, met Neruda in Cusco in 1943.

In a 2004 chronicle entitled ”Neruda in Machu Picchu,” Luis Nieto Degregori claims that Neruda arrived in Cusco by train on the afternoon of October 26. With him was his wife Delia del Carril, the Peruvian writer Esteban Pavletich, as well as Uriel Garcia, writer and senator for Cusco.

Cusco, situated at 3,500 meters above sea level, was not the tourist Mecca of today. The city had only about 45,000 inhabitants, most of whom spoke Quechua that came to the Plaza de Armas chewing on coca leaves with their hats, colourful ponchos and llamas to sell agricultural products and handicrafts.

Cusco’s mayor appointed Neruda, the guest of honour in the city. During the visit, Neruda was hailed during a ceremony in Cusco’s theatre in the presence of representatives of cultural organisations, artists and workers from the area. Luis Nieto Miranda provided the welcome speech.

The Inca trail was an access road. Everyone who has passed it certifies that it is one of the most challenging paths on earth. The four-mile trail runs along steep mountain paths. The precolonial trail with high stone steps is maintained today by the guides. There are several archaeological centres and tunnels in the mountain. It takes four days and three nights to arrive, and you pass an altitude of 4,200 meters above sea level in cold air.

Neruda reads some of the poems. On All Saints’ Day, November 1, Neruda and his wife boarded the train to continue their journey to Chile. At the station, delegations from cultural organisations and trade unions dismissed them. Nieto Digregori claims that the local press did not inform about the poet’s visit to Machu Picchu. That trip must have taken place between Wednesday, October 27 and Saturday, October 30, 1943.

”On inaccessible paths and on ridge ridges, we came up to the lost city: Machu Picchu.” (Neruda, Condé Sur Iton, January 1972). “We got there on horseback. At that time, there was no road. From above, I could see the old stone buildings, surrounded by the high, green mountains of the Andes ”(Neruda, I confess I lived: memories, 1975).
Esteban Pavletich (1906-1981), a Peruvian writer, organised Neruda’s trip to Machu Picchu. Pavletich was 37 years old at this time and had the experience of climbing mountains after joining César Sandinos and Farabundo Martí’s guerrillas in Nicaragua in the late 1920s.

The mystery remains. How did Pablo Neruda come up to Machu Picchu? One way to get to Machu Picchu was via Aguas Calientes, where the train has been going since 1934. From there, the trip went up on foot or on horseback. That was probably the road Neruda took. But it was not until 1948 that the winding road from Aguas Calientes was opened up to Machu Picchu, the so-called Hiram Bingham’s road. And it was not until 1950 that Machu Picchu was opened to tourists.

The Inca trail was an access road. Everyone who has passed it certifies that it is one of the most challenging paths on earth. The four-mile trail runs along steep mountain paths. The precolonial trail with high stone steps is maintained today by the guides. There are several archaeological centres and tunnels in the mountain. It takes four days and three nights to arrive, and you pass an altitude of 4,200 meters above sea level in cold air.

This is heaven. Altitude sickness can cause headaches, dizziness, lack of appetite and difficulty sleeping and can have complicated consequences. You have to prepare physically, and it is important to drink a lot of tea of coca leaves. It is an adventurous route. The day we visited Machu Picchu it started to rain.

We took the bus down to Aguas Calientes, and before we drank a Pisco Sour, it started raining with lightning and thunderous thunder. From the terrace of the restaurant, we saw how American, German, Italian, French and Spanish tourists continued to pour into Machu Picchu. No one goes astray anymore; everyone is well informed with the help of map and GPS in their iPhones. All are equipped with rain cover, hat and boots.

The journey to Macchu Picchu is still an unpredictable adventure to this day, also for well-trained tourists who travel a safer route than the Inca Trail. Pablo Neruda was not an Indiana Jones. Neruda was an urban bohemian dandy. He wasn´t a rock climber.
Could Neruda really have made it to Machu Picchu during a four-day ride? I haven’t been able to confirm that.

martes, octubre 11, 2022

LA VIDA ES SUEÑO, COMO GOBERNAR EN EL FIN DE LOS TIEMPOS BARROCOS.

LA VIDA ES SUEÑO. COMO GOBERNAR EN EL FIN DE LOS TIEMPOS BARROCOS.

El gobernante sabio reconoce que todo es apariencia en su reino. 
(Lo aprendió del cineasta Robert Bresson: la historia se narra con fragmentos, sin deseos totalizantes).  
Hoy, en los tiempos barrocos de una realidad de apariencia nerviosa, se necesita una imagen vaporosa para gobernar. 
Un gobernante sólo merece el nombre de líder, cuando inventa un imaginario emotivo. 
Por ejemplo, ¿Cómo expresarse de un modo puramente visual?
El gobernante sabe que la gente es mirona. 

En cambio, el crítico, con rostro grave como una roca volcánica, va con un cuchillo entre sus ropas. Usa su inteligencia en buscar errores con un malestar abusivo, sin humor. Desconcertado critica al gobernante porque, aparentemente, gobierna mal sobre la supuesta y aparente realidad. 
Al crítico matón le gusta el frenesí del suspense de Hitchcock:
“Dios mío, es espantoso, el gobernante no va a llegar a cumplir su periodo.”

Mas el gobernante sabio va tranquilo, pues sabe que hay dos formas de gobierno:
1.La forma invisible. No ser patético y construir un imaginario. La política, el arte y la moda están cerca y hay que saber manejarlas juntas. Es cualitativo.
2. Y la mala forma, la del crítico abusivo- es gobernar  con grandilocuencia, pompa y teatralidad grave.  Es cuantitativo. Hace encuestas todos los días.

El gobernante lo sabe pues ha leído el cuento de Borges, "Guayaquil". Unas pocas páginas, pero que son un tratado de ciencia política. Que el crítico no ha leído y que muy pocos han leído.

El crítico es disociador. Sin alma y sin calor. No tiene objetivo. Ni es distinguido. Es mal educado. No es respetable. Cada vez que habla cree que lanza un réquiem. La neutralidad del gobernante lo agria. Desea que el gobernante, como una oruga, se queme rápido en la luz y chille de dolor. 
¡Actúe!, ¡Actúe!
¡Cómo quisiera, el miserable, apuñalar al gobernante! 
Acecha. 
Mas no se atreve a sacar la daga que lleva entre sus ropas. 
Entonces grita: 
¡Suicídate!  

El buen gobernante sabio no sigue su consejo.
El gobernante sabio no es patético. Guarda un secreto, un misterio, una gracia, un encanto personal que lo hace mágicamente gobernar. 
Evita la dramaticidad del crítico matón. 
Se mueve como un personaje de las películas de la Nouvelle Vague, sin corbata. Con encanto, con innovación. 
Mantiene la distancia y evita declaraciones rotundas. 
Sabe que hay que dejar que ciertos eventos ocurran o se disuelvan. 
Para eso hay ministros. Que trabajen sus ministros. Asesores. O los senadores. O los diputados. O los alcaldes.

El gobernador sabio renueva sin solemnidad. 
Con aparente espontaneidad mantiene la integridad en una era de pasiones aparentes, pasiones muy volátiles. Volubles o veletas a los vientos. Pasiones confusas que generan vértigos y desengaños.

El gobernante sabio mantiene la distancia. 
Un buen pintor no se come la fruta que está pintando. 

Es el modelo Da Vinci. En la vibrante ciudad de MIlán, Leonardo da Vinci  pintó su obra "La Ültima Cena", quizá su obra más ingeniosa. La pintó lentamente, se demoró más de 3 años. Aunque la muralla estaba en el comedor de los frailes dominicos, Da Vinci no se comía el pan de la mesa que estaba pintando. No pues. Distancia cool.

La mayoría de la gente es mimosa y mirona. 
Mira su teléfono móvil y con sus antenas giratorias hacen enlaces inesperados a ideas o motivos. 
La mayoría de la gente no se paraliza. Ni moraliza tanto. Sigue adelante. A la gente le gusta vivir.
La gente está preocupada también de su propio viaje, de su perro, de su gato, de la luz del atardecer, de tener un cuerpo armonioso o de escuchar una canción de Mon Laferte. 
Es la dislocación irónica y mundana del fin de los tiempos barrocos. 
Online mirando fragmentos, trozos. (cineasta Bresson).


La vida no es un documental. Un documental que nadie ve. 
La vida no es un "paper" que nadie lee.

La vida es sueño.
(Pedro Calderón de la Barca)
La idea de la vida como sueño, es, por lo demás, una vieja, muy vieja idea hindú, persa, budista, judeocristiana, griega. 

Aunque también la idea de la vida como sueño es quizá sólo una idea aparente, vaporosa.
La vida es una novela.
Es mirar en una pantalla el rostro charmoso, espontáneo y lleno de luz de un actriz  francesa como Fanny Ardant y su sensual y entrañable voz oscura. 

(Recuerden que la señorita Fanny Ardant se enamoró del cineasta Francois Truffaut. 
Se enamoró y él murió. 
Ella tenía 33, y él, 52. 
Qué bello y qué triste. 
Todo era un sueño.)

Hay quienes creen que esto es evasión. O que a mí me gusta ser un escritor evasivo.
Sostenía Marcello Mastroianni  que solo los pesados de sangre creían que el cine era solo evasión y no una fábrica de sueños. Mastroianni nunca se olvidó de la primera vez que vio entrar elefantes a la Cinecittà de Roma, donde se rodaron más 3 mil películas. 
El silencio y el sentimiento.

El gobernante sabio lo sabe y traspasa  la atención online de la gente, al espacio eventualmente real. 
Los abraza y los guarda en su corazón: 
“Yo estoy aquí.” 
Así gobernará más. 
Los que más tiempo han reinado en la historia, son los que inventaron un imaginario. 
Y aprendieron a manejar las apariencias.

Esta es la fábula del gobernante sabio en el reino de las apariencias.
Donde gobernar es ser aparente y tradicionalista.

Imagen: El mito de  la caverna de Platón

sábado, octubre 15, 2022