Smaller wonder, then, that a body of Latin poetry—of its Golden Age—became the target of my relentless afl'ection last night. Well, regard it perhaps as a last gasp of your joint Pythagorean quota. And yours was the last part to submerge: because it was less burdened with hexameters. And attribute the agility with which that body strove to escape the banality of bed to its flight from my reading you in translation. For I am accustomed to rhyme, and hexameters won't have it. And you, who came closest to it in your logaoedics, you too gravitated to hexameters: you groped for that radiator, you wanted to submerge. And for all the relentlessness of my pursuit, which stood—no pun intended—for a lifetime of reading you, the dream never turned wet, not because I am fifty-four, but precisely because all of you were rhymeless. Hence the terra-cotta sheen ofthat Golden Age body; hence, too, the absence of your beloved mirror, not to mention its gilded frame.
And do you know why it wasn't there? Because, as I said, I am accustomed to rhyme. And rhyme, my dear Flac- cus, is itself a metamorphosis, and metamorphosis is not a mirror. Rhyme is when one thing turns into another without changing its substance, which is sound. As far as language is concerned, to say the least. It is a condensation of Naso's approach, if you will—a distillation, perhaps. Naturally he comes frightfully close to it himself in that scene with Narcissus and Echo. Frankly, closer even than you, to whom he is metrically inferior. I say "frightfully" because, had he done so, for the next two thousand years we all would have been out of business. Thank God, then, for the hexametric inertia that kept him off, in that scene in particular; thank
God for that myth's own insistence on keeping eyesight and hearing apart. For that's what we've been at for the past two thousand years: grafting one onto another, fusing his vision with your meters. It is a gold mine, Flaccus, a full-time occupation, and no mirror can reflect a lifetime of reading.
At any rate, this should account for at least half of the body in question and its efforts to escape me. Perhaps, had my Latin stunk less, this dream would never have occurred in the first place. Well, at a certain age, it appears, one has reasons to be grateful for one's ignorance. For meters are still meters, Flaccus, and anatomy is still anatomy. One may claim to possess the whole body, even though its upper part is submerged somewhere between the mattress and the radiator: as long as this part belongs to Virgil or Propertius. It is still tanned, it is still terra-cotta, because it is still hexa- metric and pentametric. One may even conclude it is not a dream, since a brain can't dream about itself: most likely, it is reality—because it is a tautology.
Just because there is a word, "dream," it doesn't follow that reality has an alternative. A dream, Flaccus, is at best a momentary metamorphosis: far less lasting than that of rhyme. That's why I haven't been rhyming here—not because you wouldn't appreciate the effort. The netherworld, I presume, is a polyglot kingdom. And if I've resorted to writing at all, it is because the interpretation of a dream— of an erotic one especially—is, strictly speaking, a reading. As such, it is profoundly anti-metamorphic, for it is the undoing of a fabric: thread by thread, line by line. And its repetitive nature is its ultimate giveaway: it asks for an equation mark betveen the reading and the erotic endeavor itself. Which is erotic because it is repetitive. Turning pages: that's what it is; and that's what you are or should be doing now,
Flaccus. Well, this is one way of conjuring you up, isn't it? Because repetition, you see, is the primary trait of reality.
Someday, when I end up in your part of the netherworld, my gaseous entity will ask your gaseous entity whether you've read this letter. And if your gaseous entity should reply, No, mine won't feel offended. On the contrary, it will rejoice at this proof of reality's extension into the domain of shadows. For you've never read me to begin with. In this sense, you'll be like many people above who never read either one of us. To say the least, that's one thing that constitutes reality.
But should your gaseous entity reply, Yes, my gaseous entity will not be much worried either about having offended you with my letter, especially its smutty bits. Being a Latin author, you would be the first to appreciate an approach triggered in one by a language in which "poetry" is feminine. And as for "body," what else can one expect from a man in general, and a Hyperborean at that, not to mention the cold February night. I wouldn't even have to remind you that it was just a dream. To say the least, next to death, dream is reality.
So we may get along famously. As for the language, the realm, as I said, is most likely poli- or supra-glot. Besides, being just back from filling up your Pythagorean quota as Auden, you may still retain some English. That's perhaps how I would recognize you. Though he was a far greater poet than you, ofcourse. But that's why you sought to assume his shape last time you were around, in reality.
Worse comes to worse, we can communicate through meters. I can tap the First Asclepiadic stanza easily, for all its dactyls. The second one also, not to mention the Sapphics. That might work; you know, like inmates in an institution.
After all, meters are meters even in the netherworld, since they are time units. For this reason, they are perhaps better known now in Elysium than in the asinine world above. That's why using them feels more like communicating with the likes of you than with reality.
And naturally I would like you to introduce me to Naso. For I wouldn't know him by sight, since he never assumed anyone else's shape. I guess it's his elegiacs and hexameters that conspired against this. For the past two thousand years, fewer and fewer people have tried them. Auden again? But even he rendered hexameter as two trimeters. So I wouldn't aspire to a chat with Naso. All I would ask is to take a look at him. Even among souls he should be a rarity.
I shall not bother you with the rest of the crowd. Not even with Virgiclass="underline" he's been back to reality, I should say, in so many guises. Nor with Tibullus, Gallus, Varus, and the others: your Golden Age was quite populous, but Elysium is no place for affinities, and I won't be there as a tourist. As for Propertius, I think I'll look him up myself. I believe it should be relatively easy to spot him: he must feel comfortable among the manes in whose existence he believed so much in reality.
No, the two of you will be enough for me. One's taste sustained in the netherworld amounts to an extension of reality into the domain of shadows. I should hope I'll be able to do this, at least initially. Ah, Flaccus! Reality, like the Pax Romana, wants to expand. That's why it dreams; that's why it sticks to its guns as it dies.
In Memory of Stephen Spender
I
Twenty-three years later, the exchange with the Immigration Officer at Heathrow is brisk. "Business or pleasure?" "What do you call a funeral?" He waves me through.
I I
Twenty-three years ago, it took me nearly two hours to pass his predecessors. The fault, as it were, was mine. I had just left Russia and was heading for the States via London, where I had been invited to take part in the Poetry International festival. I had no proper passport, just a U.S. transit visa in a huge manila envelope issued to me at the American Consulate in Vienna.
Apart from the natural anxiety, the wait was extremely uncomfortable for me because ofWystan Auden, with whom I had come on the same plane from Vienna. As the customs officials grappled with that manila envelope, I saw him pacing frantically behind the barrier, in a state of growing irritation. Now and then he'd try to talk to one or another of them, only to be told off. He knew that I knew nobody in London and he couldn't leave me there alone. I felt terrible, if only because he was twice my age.