THE CANON, OR THE METAPHYSICS OF STYLE

“COME FROM LEBANON, my spouse, come from Lebanon, come . . . The mandrakes give their smell. At our doors we have every breed of dove . . .

“I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if ye find my beloved, that ye tell him I am sick of love . . .”

And so it was, to the melody of that ancient drama of Judah, that a noun and an adjective searched for each other inside the head of Canon Matias. Do not interrupt me, hasty reader; I know you won’t believe anything I’m about to say. I will, however, say it, despite your little faith, because the day of public conversion will come.

On that day—sometime around 2222, I imagine—the paradox will take off its wings and put on the thick coat of common truth. At that point, this page will merit not just favor, but apotheosis. It will be translated into every tongue. Academies and institutes will make a little book out of it, to be used throughout the centuries, with bronze pages, gilt edges, letters of inlaid opal, and a cover of unpolished silver. Governments will decree that it be taught in schools and colleges. Philosophers will burn all previous doctrines, even the most definitive, and will embrace this, the one true psychology, and everything will be complete. Until then, I will pass for a fool, as you will see.

Matias, honorary canon and a preacher by trade, was composing a sermon when this psychic idyll began. He is forty years of age and lives in the Gamboa District surrounded by books. Someone came to ask him to give a sermon at a forthcoming festival; at the time, he was enjoying reading a weighty spiritual tome that had arrived on the last steamer and so he refused their request; but they were so insistent that he gave in.

“Your Reverence will rattle it off in no time at all,” said the principal organizer of the festival.

Matias smiled meekly and discreetly, as should all clerics and diplomats. Bowing low, the organizers took their leave and went to announce the festival in the newspapers, with the declaration that Canon Matias, “one of the ornaments of the Brazilian clergy,” would preach the Gospel. The phrase “ornaments of the clergy” quite put the canon off his breakfast when he read the morning papers, and it was only because he had given his word that he sat down to write the sermon.

He began unwillingly, but after only a few minutes he was already working with passion. Inspiration, its eyes turned toward heaven, and meditation, its eyes turned to the floor, stand on either side of his chair, whispering a thousand grave and mystical things in his ear. Matias carries on writing, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly. The sheets of paper fly from his hands, vibrant and polished. Some have a few corrections, others have none at all. Suddenly, on the point of writing an adjective, he stops; he writes another and scores it out, then another, which meets the same fate. Here lies the nub of the idyll. Let us climb inside the canon’s head.

Ouf! Here we are. Not that easy, was it, dear reader? So don’t go believing those people who troop up to the top of Corcovado and claim that from that great height man seems utterly insignificant. A false and hasty conclusion; as false as Judas and other such diamonds. Do not believe it, beloved reader. No Corcovados or Himalayas are worth much when set beside the head that measures them. Here we are. Notice that it is indeed the canon’s head. We have the choice of one or other cerebral hemisphere, but let’s go into this one, which is where nouns are born. Adjectives are born in the other one, on the left-hand side. This is one of my own discoveries, possibly the principal one, but it is a starting point, as we will see. Yes, sir, adjectives are born on one side and nouns on the other, and the entire destiny of words is based on sexual difference—

“Sexual difference?”

Yes, ma’am. Words have a gender. Indeed, I am currently in the process of finishing my great psycho-lexico-logical dissertation, in which I expound and demonstrate this discovery. Words are of different sexes . . . 

“But do they then love each other?”

They do indeed. And they get married. Their marriage is what we call style. You must confess, ma’am, that you have understood nothing.

“I confess I haven’t.”

Well, then, join me inside the canon’s head. Just now there is some whispering going on over there. Do you know who is whispering? It is the noun from just a few minutes ago, the one the canon wrote down on the piece of paper just before his pen hesitated. The noun is summoning a certain adjective, which fails to appear: “Come from Lebanon, come . . .” That is how it speaks, for it is inside the head of a priest; if it were in a layman’s head, the language would be Romeo’s: “Juliet is the sun . . . Arise, fair sun.” But in an ecclesiastical brain, the language is that of Scripture. At the end of the day, though, what do such formulations matter? Lovers in Verona or in Judah all speak the same language, just as the thaler or the dollar, the florin or the pound, are all the same money.

So let us carry on through these circumvolutions of the ecclesiastical brain, on the trail of the noun seeking an adjective. Sílvio calls to Sílvia. Listen: in the distance it sounds like someone else is whispering; lo, it is Sílvia calling to Sílvio.

Now they can hear each other and they begin to seek each other out. What a difficult and intricate path this is, in a brain so chock-full of things old and new! There is such a hubbub of ideas in here that it almost drowns out their voices; let us not lose sight of ardent Sílvio over there, going up and down, slipping and jumping; when he stumbles, he grabs hold of some Latin roots over there, he leans against a psalm, yonder he climbs aboard a pentameter, and on he goes, carried along by an irresistible inner force.

From time to time, a lady—another adjective—appears to him and offers him her graces ancient or modern; but, alas, she is not the right one, not the one and only, the one destined ab eterno for this union. And so Sílvio carries on, looking for that special one. Pass by, ye eyes of every hue, ye shapes of every caste, ye hairstyles fit for Day or Night; die without an echo, sweet ballads yearningly played upon the eternal violin; Sílvio is not asking for any old love, casual or anonymous; he is asking for one specific love, named and predestined.

Don’t be frightened, reader; it’s nothing to worry about, it’s just the canon standing up, going over to the window, and taking a break from all his labors. While he’s there he forgets about the sermon and about everything else. The parrot on its perch beside the window repeats its usual words to him and, out in the courtyard, the peacock puffs himself up in the morning sun. The sun, for its part, recognizing the canon, sends him one of its faithful rays as a greeting. The ray arrives and stops in front of the window: “Illustrious canon, I bring you the compliments of the sun, my lord and father.” Thus all of nature seems to applaud the return of that galley-slave of the mind. He himself rejoices, gazes up at the pure air and feasts his eyes on greenery and freshness, all to the sound of a little bird and a piano. Then he speaks to the parrot, calls to the gardener, blows his nose, rubs his hands, and leans forward. He has forgotten all about Sílvio and Sílvia.

But Sílvio and Sílvia have not forgotten each other. While the canon concerns himself with other things, they continue to search for each other, without him suspecting a thing. Now, however, the path is dark. We pass from the conscious to the unconscious, where the confused elaboration of ideas takes place, where reminiscences sleep or doze. Here swarms formless life, the germs and the detritus, the rudiments and the sediments; it is the immense attic of the mind. Here they slip and slide, searching for each other, calling and whispering. Give me your hand, madam reader; you, too, sir, hold tight, and let us slip and slide with them.

Vast and alien, terra incognita. Sílvio and Sílvia rush onward past embryos and ruins. Groups of ideas, deducing themselves in the manner of syllogisms, lose themselves in the tumult of memories of childhood and the seminary. Other ideas, pregnant with more ideas, drag themselves still more heavily along, assisted by other, virgin ideas. Things and men merge; Plato brings the spectacles of a scribe from the ecclesiastical court; mandarins of all classes distribute Etruscan and Chilean coins, English books, and pale roses; so pale that they do not seem the same as the ones the canon’s mother planted when he was a child. Pious memories and family memories cross paths and commingle. Here are the distant voices of his first mass; here are the country rhymes he heard the black women sing at home; the tattered remnants of faded sensations, a fear here, a pleasure there, over there a distaste for things that arrived singly, but now lie in an obscure, impalpable heap.

“Come from Lebanon, my bride . . .”

“I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem . . .”

They could hear each other growing ever closer. Here they reach the deep strata of theology, philosophy, liturgy, geography, and history, of ancient lessons and modern notions, all mixed together, dogma and syntax. Here the secret, pantheistic hand of Spinoza; there the scratch mark left by the Angelic Doctor’s fingernail; but none of this is Sílvio or Sílvia. They plow on, carried along by an inner force, a secret affinity, through all the obstacles and over all the abysses. But sorrows will also come. Here are dark sorrows that did not linger in the canon’s heart, like moral stains, surrounded by the yellow or purple tints of universal pain, the pain of others, if such pain has a color. They slice through all of this with the speed of love and desire.

Do you sway and stumble, gentle reader? Fear not, the world is not collapsing; it is the canon sitting down again. Having cleared his head, he returns to his desk and rereads what he wrote; now he takes up his pen, dips it in the ink, and lowers it to the paper, to see which adjective he will attach to the noun.

Now is precisely the moment when the two lovesick lovers will draw closest. Their voices rise, as does their enthusiasm, the entire Song of Songs passes their lips, tinged with fever. Joyous phrases, sacristy anecdotes, caricatures, witticisms, nonsense, mere foolishness, nothing holds their attention, or even makes them smile. On and on they go, while the space between them narrows. Stay where you are, blurred outlines of dunderheads who made the canon laugh and whom he has long since forgotten; stay, vanished wrinkles, old riddles, the rules of card games, and you, too, the germs of new ideas, outlines of conceits, the dust of what must once have been a pyramid; stay, jostle, hope, and then despair, for to them you are nothing. They have eyes only for each other.

They seek and they find. Sílvio has finally found his Sílvia. They see each other and fall into each other’s arms, panting with exhaustion, but satisfied with their reward. They join together, arms about each other, and return, pulsating, from unconscious to conscious. “Who is this that cometh up from the wilderness, leaning upon her beloved?” asks Sílvio, as in the Song; and she, with the same erudite turn of phrase, replies that it is “the seal upon thine heart” and that “love is as strong as death itself.”

At this the canon trembles. His face lights up. His pen, filled with emotion and respect, joins the adjective to its noun. Sílvia will now walk side by side with Sílvio in the sermon that the canon will one day preach, and hand in hand they will go to the printer’s, if, that is, he ever gets around to putting together a collection of his sermons, which remains to be seen.