Still, books, as you know, are almost always bigger than ourselves. To speak of the person who wrote that book, I am obliged, in spite of myself, to descend to the anecdotal (I wouldn’t dare to say biographical), which in my case is banal and low caste. The evening we made each other’s acquaintance in the Theosophical Society, I had just survived a curious adventure. Many things had happened to me in Madras: I had had the good fortune to meet a number of people and to meditate on various strange stories. But what happened to me had to do with me alone. Thanks to the complicity of a temple guard, I had managed to get inside the compound of the temple of Shiva the Destroyer, which, as you know, is strictly forbidden to non-Hindus, my precise intention being to photograph the altars. Since you appreciate the meaning I attribute to photography, you will realise that this amounted to a double sacrilege, perhaps even a challenge, since Shiva the Destroyer is indentified with Death and with Time, is the Bhoirava, the Terror, and manifests himself in sixty-four forms, which the temple of Madras illustrates and which I wanted to photograph for myself. It was two in the afternoon, when the temple shuts its gates for siesta, so that the place was entirely deserted with the exception of a few lepers who sleep there and who paid not the slightest attention. I know this will arouse a profound sense of disapproval on your part, but I do not want to lie. The heat was oppressive, the big monsoon had only just finished and the compound was full of stagnant puddles. Swarms of flies and insects wandered about in the air, and the stench of excrement from the cows was unbearable. Opposite the altars to Shiva the traitor, beyond the troughs for the ablutions, is a small wall for votive offerings. I climbed upon it and began to take my photos. At that moment a piece of the wall I was standing on, being old and sodden with rain, collapsed. Of course I am giving you a ‘pragmatic’ explanation of what happened, since considered from another point of view the affair could have another explanation. In any event, when the wall crumbled I fell, skinning my right leg. A few hours later, when I’d got back to my hotel, the scratches had developed into an incredible swelling. It was only the following morning, though, that I decided to go to the doctor, partly because I hadn’t had myself vaccinated at all before coming to India and I was afraid I might have got infected by tetanus — certainly my leg showed every sign that that was what it was. To my considerable amazement, the doctor refused to give me an anti-tetanus shot. He said it was superfluous since, as he said, tetanus runs its course much faster in India than in Europe, and ‘if it were tetanus you would already be dead.’ It was just ‘a simple infection,’ he said, and all I needed was some streptomycin. He seemed quite surprised that I hadn’t been infected by tetanus, but evidently, he concluded, one occasionally came across Europeans who had a natural resistance.
I’m sure you will find my story ridiculous, but it’s the story I have to tell. As far as your gnostic interpretation of my Nocturne, or rather of its conclusion, is concerned, allow me to insist in all sincerity that I am not familiar with the Mandala and that my knowledge of Hindu philosophy is vague and very approximate, consisting as it does in the summary found in a tourist guide and in a pocket paperback I picked up at the airport called L’Induisme (part of the ‘Que sais-je?’ series). As regards the question of the mirror, I started doing some hurried research only after getting your letter. For help I went to the books of a serious scholar, Professor Grazia Machianò, and am finding it hard work to grasp the basics of a philosophy of which I am woefully ignorant.
Finally I must say my own feeling is that on the most immediate level my Nocturne reflects a spiritual state which is far less profound than you so generously suppose. Private problems, of which I will spare you the tedious details, and then of course the business of finding myself in a continent so remote from my own world, had provoked an extremely strong sense of alienation towards everything: so much so that I no longer knew why I was there, what the point of my journey was, what sense there was in what I was doing or in what I myself might be. It was out of this alienation, perhaps, that my book sprang. In short, a misunderstanding. Evidently misunderstandings suit me. In confirmation of which allow me to send you this most recent book of mine, published a few days ago. You know Italian very well and may wish to take a look at it.
I am, believe me, your
ANTONIO TABUCCHI
Madras, 13 June 1985
Dear Mr Tabucchi,
My thanks for your letter and gift. I have just finished Little Misunderstandings of No Importance and your other book of short stories, Reverse Side, which you were generous enough to enclose. You did well, since the two complement each other and this made reading them more pleasant.
I am perfectly well aware that my letter caused you some embarrassment, just as I am also aware that you, for reasons of your own, wish to elude the gnostic interpretations that I have of your books and which you, as I said, deny. As I mentioned in my first letter, Europeans visiting India can usually be divided into two categories: those who believe they have discovered transcendence and those who profess the most radical secularism. I fear that despite your search for a third way, you do fall into these categories.
Forgive me my insistence. Even the philosophical position (may I so define it?) which you call ‘Misunderstanding’ corresponds, albeit dressed up in Western culture (the Baroque), to the ancient Hindu precept that the misunderstanding (the error of life) is equivalent to an initiatory journey around the illusion of the real, that is, around human life on earth. Everything is identical, as we say; and it seems to me that you affirm the same thing, even if you do so from a position of scepticism (are you by any chance considered a pessimist?). But I would like to abandon my culture for a moment and draw on yours instead. Perhaps you will remember Epimenides’ paradox which goes more or less like this: ‘The phrase that follows this is false: the phrase that precedes this is true.’ As you will have noticed, the two halves of the saying are mirrors of each other. Dusting off this paradox, an American mathematician, Richard Hoffstadter, author of a paper on Gödel’s theorem, has recently called into question the whole Aristotelian-Cartesian logical dichotomy on which your culture is based and according to which every statement must be either true or false. This statement in fact can be simultaneously both true and false; and this because it refers to itself in the negative: it is a snake biting its own tail, or, to quote Hoffstadter’s definition, ‘a strange loop.’
Life too is a strange loop. We are back to Hinduism again. Do you at least agree on this much, Mr Tabucchi?
I am, believe me, your
XAVIER JANATA MONROY
Vecchiano, 10 July 1985
Dear Mr Janata Monroy,
As usual your letter has obliged me to make a rapid and I fear superficial attempt to assimilate some culture. I only managed to track down something about the American mathematician you mention in one Italian periodical, a column written from the USA by journalist Sandro Stille. The article was very interesting and I have promised myself to look into the matter more deeply. I do not, however, know much about mathematical logic, nor perhaps about any kind of logic; indeed I believe I am the most illogical person I know, and hence I don’t imagine I will make much progress in studies of this variety. Perhaps, as you say, life really is ‘a strange loop.’ It seems fair that each of us should understand this expression in the cultural context that best suits him.