* “The Shady Shandy,” a Spanish version of which appeared in the Ocnos anthology (Barcelona, 1967), translated by Jaime Gil de Biedma.
THE ART OF INSOLENCE
I don’t know why they disembarked from the Bahnhof Zoo. Most likely it was fatigue that forced them up to the surface again. Fatigue and also a certain anguish, which is what we can gather from a document found in a false-bottom trunk stored in a loft in the house Crowley would later own; the document was discovered by the house’s subsequent owner, the Singer sewing-machine magnate, Edward Clark (also an ardent student of the history of the portable conspiracy), who died in strange circumstances a few days after finding the document and writing a brief text, A Shandy Draws the Map of His Life. This text, it seems, was inspired by some images from his dream about the years that Walter Benjamin toyed with the idea of making a map of his life.
Benjamin imagined this map to be gray and portable; he even designed a system of colored signs clearly marking the homes of his Shandy friends, the cafés and bookshops where they met, the single-night hotels, the underwater light of European libraries, the paths leading to different schools, and the graves they saw filling up.
“To lose one’s way in a city,” wrote Walter Benjamin, “as one loses one’s way in a forest, requires some schooling. . This art I acquired rather late in life; it fulfilled a dream, of which the first traces were labyrinths on the blotting papers in my school notebooks. No, not the first traces, for there was one earlier that outlasted the others: the way into this labyrinth.”
The Shandy conspirators’ way into the labyrinth, it seems to me, is the central theme in Edward Clark’s document, the ideal complement to that document Clark found in the false-bottom trunk in the loft of the house that once belonged to Crowley. This document was a lecture on the anguish of the portable writer, and had originally been written by Bruno Schulz, who intended to read it out loud on the Bahnhof Zoo. But all evidence points to the fact that it fell into the hands of Crowley, who subtly altered it and, passing himself off as the poetess Elsa Tirana (a pseudonym for Cléo de Mérode, mistress to King Leopold of Belgium), read it in consummate cross-dress at Seville’s Ateneo, during the Góngora tribute that was set up by the Spanish Generation of ’27 poets.
The lecture considered anguish — as I said, the original text was by Schulz — but Crowley injected some sentences disclosing to the world the existence of the secret Shandy society. A comprehensive betrayal. To that end, Crowley backed up his reading by showing a crude imitation of Benjamin’s dream map. Among those in attendance, mingled with a sizeable delegation of professors from Madrid, a large number of Shandies could be seen listening cheerfully to the revelation of their secret, even though this meant the certain dismantling of all that was portable. Each had on their persons a thermometer and was accompanied by a black man or woman from Port Actif.
It should surprise no one that the Shandies were extremely cheerful. As previously eluded to, they had understood early on that if they wanted the conspiracy to work better, it first had to vanish from the map: that is, the conspiracy needed to appear in the eyes of the world like the stunning celebration of something appearing and disappearing with the arrogant velocity of the lightning bolt of insolence. And we must be mindful that insolence, when it becomes manifest, does so always in relation to others, as part of a movement that is mindful — intensely mindful — of the other. It is the expression of a rebellious, scandalous, immortal ego imposing itself as a way of exposing itself.
Grasping all of this led the conspirators to a pact of solidarity entailing a series of essential obligations, such as, for example, not visibly extending the existence of the conspiracy and, in brief, showing themselves swift and masterly in the art of abbreviation. This led them to close ranks against Crowley the traitor, which, in turn, gave him license to expose them to the world.
What follows are certain interesting paragraphs the false Tirana read in Seville: “I’m here to say I don’t like you at all, mainly because there are twenty-seven of you, which is unacceptable, given that this number belongs exclusively to us. . As you can see, Shandy writers have a touch of the exorbitant, of the unacceptable about them. It’s both laughable and pathetic that to become manifest, anguish requires the work of a portable, sitting at a desk, writing letters on a piece of paper. Shocking it may seem, but only in the way that a prerequisite for a madman in his solitude is the presence of a sane witness. . Anguish means I no longer have anything to say about anything, but it would haunt me no less if I tried to give this lecture a justifying aim. . This aim could consist of me standing in front of you and saying a few words to try to forget, momentarily, my anguish. Clearly, I haven’t managed that. This lecture could have me acting like a traitor and unmasking the presence of the many Shandies among the respectable public. Clearly, I have managed that. . And I am pleased, to tell the truth, because all that is portable will never rear its head again. Having come this far, I’m off, and I’ll take my Portuguese hat and my intimate hydra with me. I believe I’ve written these words as the day draws its images, whispering over them, never to return.”
When the lecture finished, it was roundly applauded by the professors from Madrid, seeing that — as Elsa Tirana was one of Marinetti’s foremost disciples — they thought the lecture must be avant-garde. But their applause only infuriated the portables, who decided to go around spreading all manner of malicious lies about the professors: a breakneck procession of gossip that sowed panic in the Ateneo.
Emilio Prados, in an attempt to quell that orgy of calumny and gossip, went over to the person he thought was the leader of that insolent group, García Lorca, and took issue with the lowliness of gossip in literary terms. Glaring at Prados and leaning on the shoulder of the beautiful black woman he had with him, Lorca explained that Marcel Proust wrote novels comprised solely of gossip and the same went for Henry James.
Along came Duchamp, a refreshing glass of shandy in hand, explaining to Prados that they only told stories so someone would repeat them, and that they would stop telling them when they were no longer fresh. If the stories ceased to be fresh, that was because, upon being heard, they no longer spun and wove. Then Luis Cernuda, grinning ear to ear, joined his Shandy colleagues, adding: “Let me tell you: gossip is part and parcel of this transitory state; a link in a chain whose other links are only partial reiterations. Gossip — narrative as pure transitoriness — also presents the impossibility of identical repetition, the inevitability of endless transformation.”
Prados was stunned by these words and cast around for help; several professors came over and surrounded García Lorca. Someone took advantage of this moment to take a photograph, in which the Granadian poet can be seen, looking like a detainee, between Alberti and Chavás.
But then all the black men and women broke into song. It was quite the scandal, the triumph of insolence as fine art. For a few minutes the gossip reached a crescendo, between songs and fireworks that were set off all around the room. Only then did Dámaso Alonso sense that Shandyism could literally be true. He went over to Rita Malú to ask if she was also part of the portable conspiracy.
“Impossible,” said Rita Malú, “because the Shandies are all angels, and I am not.” He then inquired as to where those angels lived. In Letters from Mogadishu, Rita Malú says that she gave the following answer, putting him on the right track: “Men, you men, your testicles are brimming with angels.”