Giotto’s fresco at Cappella Scrovegni, Padova, Italy
"We may say that the sole one who performs a change here in this setting is Agilulfo, I do not say his horse, I do not say his armor, but that something solitaire, worried, looking forward, who is traveling on horseback within that armor. Around him the pinecones fall from the branches, the tiny canals scroll through the pebbles, fish swim in the canals, the caterpillars gnaw the leaves, turtles walk over their hard belly on the ground, but all that is only a movement illusion in a perpetual turn back-and-forth such as that of water waves. And is in those undulation turns that again and again Gurdulù, a prisoner of the carpet of things, is he, himself, also scattered in the same pasta with pinecones, fish, caterpillars, pebbles, leaves, mere outgrowth on the crust of the world”. The Non-Existent Knight, (Il Cavaliere Inesistente) di Italo Calvin.][Agilulfo is the nonexistent knight, the main protagonist whose condition gives title to this novel, and about whom it might be said he actually is there, meaning he undisputably has an essence. Despite not possessing any material body, at all. In opposition to his squire, Gurdulù, who is there as a concrete human body, but to whom nobody might ever be able to link any kind of essence]
When your eyes fled away from my reachable present time, then going to that other way of your being, quite distant from me; I glanced around, deciding right away to recollect all those scattered memories to rebuild our seemingly lost Universe. Those German verses, I once composed for you, inspired my rebellion:
Wenn du nur ein Traum bist,
wie arm die Realität!
[If you are but a dream
how poor is reality!]
Immediately, that gaze of crossing paths with me in college's inner garden, shining and becoming eternal within my core being, was powerful enough to make me an insurgent recreator of reality itself. The concrete world had suddenly ‘rebelled against my wishes’, as said by ‘Zé Bebelo’, a character in “Grande Sertão Veredas”, a novel by Guimarães Rosa, when aware that his gang was decimated on the battlefield, and the only survivor, himself, became imprisoned by their enemies.
Yes, I began to redo all that humans call ‘reality’" (What a naive and boring word!) For that, I started off rebuilding each small portion of the world around us, right away putting an end to the perpetual time flow towards a single, monotonous direction. How silly are human beings for self-imposing such a heavy shackle, based on nothing but the stupid low belief according to which their lives irreversibly flow from birth till death, never pausing time nor looping. How heavy the fetters of such self-scourging!
Wenn du nur ein Traum bist,
wie arm die Realität!
[If you are but a dream
how poor is reality!]
Immediately, that gaze of crossing paths with me in college's inner garden, shining and becoming eternal within my core being, was powerful enough to make me an insurgent recreator of reality itself. The concrete world had suddenly ‘rebelled against my wishes’, as said by ‘Zé Bebelo’, a character in “Grande Sertão Veredas”, a novel by Guimarães Rosa, when aware that his gang was decimated on the battlefield, and the only survivor, himself, became imprisoned by their enemies.
Yes, I began to redo all that humans call ‘reality’" (What a naive and boring word!) For that, I started off rebuilding each small portion of the world around us, right away putting an end to the perpetual time flow towards a single, monotonous direction. How silly are human beings for self-imposing such a heavy shackle, based on nothing but the stupid low belief according to which their lives irreversibly flow from birth till death, never pausing time nor looping. How heavy the fetters of such self-scourging!
That way, I became able to go through all the past moments in which your glance met my eyes. From then on, we were able to relive concretely all those emotions again, being enough for that, nothing more than a plain wish. But as you, Beatrice, were easily able to intuit, I was avoiding reaching too soon that one, the so special, wonder 23rd September glance, because of being sure my libertarian upheaval would right there arrive at a paralyzing climax. How would my deep self-recover have still some kind of control under such a strong spell coming from your eyes? I had to keep myself away from that moment like someone who is taking care of a most precious jewel. For that, I had to wander around you, around your eyes glancing at mine, like someone who is contemplating divine unreachable beings.
That way, I became able to go through all the moments of our past in which your glance met my eyes. From then on, we were able to relive concretely all those emotions again, being enough for that, nothing more than wishing. But as you, Beatrice, easily inferred, I was avoiding reaching soon that very special, wonderful, glance on 23rd September glance, because of being sure my libertarian upheaval would right there reach a paralyzing climax.
How would it be possible to recover control over myself under that strongest spell? I had to keep away from that moment like someone who is taking care of the most precious gem. For such, I was obliged to wander around you, around your glancing, shining eyes, like someone who contemplates divine unreachable beings. Despite that caring, I remained quite aware that such a jewel kept staying there always within reach of my insurgent hands.
Playing like a naughty boy, I scoured the space-time continuum for each of those rare days in which you and I had been side by side. I touched your wonderful golden hair, getting enraptured again at each past instant on which I had seen you, and every tiny scene details could then be slowly repeated.
Since inverting the flow of events, I could multiply our silent tender glances. Weird and sinuous misfortunes had kept us apart many times. Invading your dreams as so often your glances did with mine nights, I decided not to present myself as a character staging a defined role. Instead, pretentiously I tried to imitate my preferred movie makers, directing my plots.
You dreamed of being face to face with your own self, right in the garden’s middle. Just there, where on that flowering sunset too, your gaze had become the only driver of everything else in my world.
Dreaming, Beatrice, you met my dreamed Beatrice.
You could not know which phase of your life these images were coming from. In front of one another, both Beatrices immediately agreed to my praises of your blue eyes’ magic powers.
By no means would this screenwriter let even a tiny drop of compassion be shown on that scene, falling to me exclusively the role of eternally in love, repudiating any kind of passion with prefixes!
Since, paradoxically, you started to be mine on the exact instant when, within a certain, extremely poor kind of reality, which soon was eradicated by me from any possible world — you abandoned me.
That way, I became able to go through all the moments of our past in which your glance met my eyes. From then on, we were able to relive concretely all those emotions again, being enough for that, nothing more than wishing. But as you, Beatrice, easily inferred, I was avoiding reaching soon that very special, wonderful, glance on 23rd September glance, because of being sure my libertarian upheaval would right there reach a paralyzing climax.
How would it be possible to recover control over myself under that strongest spell? I had to keep away from that moment like someone who is taking care of the most precious gem. For such, I was obliged to wander around you, around your glancing, shining eyes, like someone who contemplates divine unreachable beings. Despite that caring, I remained quite aware that such a jewel kept staying there always within reach of my insurgent hands.
Playing like a naughty boy, I scoured the space-time continuum for each of those rare days in which you and I had been side by side. I touched your wonderful golden hair, getting enraptured again at each past instant on which I had seen you, and every tiny scene details could then be slowly repeated.
Since inverting the flow of events, I could multiply our silent tender glances. Weird and sinuous misfortunes had kept us apart many times. Invading your dreams as so often your glances did with mine nights, I decided not to present myself as a character staging a defined role. Instead, pretentiously I tried to imitate my preferred movie makers, directing my plots.
You dreamed of being face to face with your own self, right in the garden’s middle. Just there, where on that flowering sunset too, your gaze had become the only driver of everything else in my world.
Dreaming, Beatrice, you met my dreamed Beatrice.
You could not know which phase of your life these images were coming from. In front of one another, both Beatrices immediately agreed to my praises of your blue eyes’ magic powers.
By no means would this screenwriter let even a tiny drop of compassion be shown on that scene, falling to me exclusively the role of eternally in love, repudiating any kind of passion with prefixes!
Since, paradoxically, you started to be mine on the exact instant when, within a certain, extremely poor kind of reality, which soon was eradicated by me from any possible world — you abandoned me.
At the first meeting, face to face with yourself, it would not be possible for you to avoid such an intense narcissistic ecstasy, not by any intrusion of my powers, nor do I think any kind of force, worldly or from beyond this Universe, could be able to interfere with it. Your own beauty consumed every desire of yourself, just like fire does with very dry branches.
Naked and surrounded by those golden flowers, you got enchanted to see the gorgeous color of your maiden hair, then kissing your excited nipples, face, and red wet lips. You scented your hair and felt its delicious fragrance. That unavoidable, and full of horny, prolonged idyll with yourself had to culminate in loud screams and groans in unison. Yes, despite you were now two, your orgasm yells could be heard as a unison. During those cries of pleasure and ecstasy, ceaselessly you were looking deep into your own sparkling blue eyes.
The following night, both of you were sitting face to face: the Beatrice who remained within the banal, mediocre human world, in front of mine, the girl who could have existed in the inexorable flow of time, but who has searched refuge from it, having chosen to walk along a catwalk from this world towards a , better existence within my dreamy world, in which we live on rebuilding everything.
Starting to talk to my girl, soon you knew she hadn’t married the guy who plays the role of your husband in the concrete life.
Naked and surrounded by those golden flowers, you got enchanted to see the gorgeous color of your maiden hair, then kissing your excited nipples, face, and red wet lips. You scented your hair and felt its delicious fragrance. That unavoidable, and full of horny, prolonged idyll with yourself had to culminate in loud screams and groans in unison. Yes, despite you were now two, your orgasm yells could be heard as a unison. During those cries of pleasure and ecstasy, ceaselessly you were looking deep into your own sparkling blue eyes.
The following night, both of you were sitting face to face: the Beatrice who remained within the banal, mediocre human world, in front of mine, the girl who could have existed in the inexorable flow of time, but who has searched refuge from it, having chosen to walk along a catwalk from this world towards a , better existence within my dreamy world, in which we live on rebuilding everything.
Starting to talk to my girl, soon you knew she hadn’t married the guy who plays the role of your husband in the concrete life.
“No, I refused him after reading some letters of a guy who was desperately in love with me."
Because of still remember those letters, you then were very surprised to ask her about the sequence of those pre-marriage events.
“Have you stayed with Enrico, the guy who wrote those German verses, with a so impulsive passional love, able to make you suspect he could perhaps break out into the synagogue during the wedding?”
You have had, however, no answer. We know how to keep our secrets, besides why so many truths in a single dream?
You woke up a bit confused, now aware my Beatrice would no longer be so same as you these were your thoughts:
— How was my alter-ego able to break out engagement so steeply, only a couple of days before the wedding, led by the verses and visionary fantasies of a guy who looked more like an impulsive wolf? Verses, well verses!’
You drove then to your parents’ home, trying to find those letters amidst old papers. Half-way, a small of those poems of mine was heard by you, as a strong hallucination:
Mein kleines, hübsches Mädchen,
meine kleine, hübsche Frau;
die ich haben will,
die ich haben werde!
[My pretty little girl
my little pretty woman,
whom I want
whom I will have!]
Those letters were in a bedroom drawer which had belonged to you since childhood. Keeping on kidding, I made you read then some sentences never really written. In one of them, I would have warned you:
“If you leave me forever, mankind will forget the meaning of ‘forever’, and even time will cease to be perceived.”
Next dream, my Beatrice made you see the enigmatic powers possessed by me. Such extraordinary abilities of mine were evidenced when time’s flow was reversed according to our wishes, enabling us to revive together our best moments from those college years, whether had they taken place along campus’s hallways and gardens, or walking through São Paulo streets before dawn. She was showing you this way how I made my Beatrice truly understand how intense, overwhelming my passion is.
Then, suddenly you asked her to also bring myself back into that dream.
You, too, wanted to live the past again. Right away, I entered this same dream, inviting you to rebuild the most intense scene from my memories: while reading a newspaper, or pretending to do so, I see you come walking in my direction. It is springtime’s first afternoon. You walk slowly through the garden flowers.
While passing right in front of me, I put aside the newspaper. We look at each other’s eyes; my glance meets yours, and your eyes meet mine.
I am struck by your lacerating shining gaze, exactly the one; the same glance, the same sparkle. Staging it all again, your eyes’ magic spell penetrates me as if concretely. I do feel it coming into my optic nerve, lodging within my innermost self, within a place certainly beyond my own awareness.
We must have already foreseen what would come next, Beatrice: your eyes’ enchantment revolutionized my whole perception of the world. There is, from that 23rd September, between all images arriving at my retina and their perception by inner self, the mighty shining of your eyes.
I became capable of making you mine and so never more letting you leave out towards the parking lot, when I, bewitched and unable even to know which eyes were mine or yours, followed your image till its fading among those countless cars.
I keep on visiting your dreams, despite the fact that we are now unable to stage any other scenes than those same:
Holding each other hands, we make up a new Giotto’s painting. Yes, I have found in the paintings of this renaissance Tuscan artist so many eyes identical to yours! We repeat our mise-en-scène: your slow walk, our face to face, your eyes taking hold of me.
We are going to dream this for all nights in our lives, Beatrice, until the moment when, after all concrete hindering is gone, we will be able to be together again.
Next dream, my Beatrice made you see the enigmatic powers possessed by me. Such extraordinary abilities of mine were evidenced when time’s flow was reversed according to our wishes, enabling us to revive together our best moments from those college years, whether had they taken place along campus’s hallways and gardens, or walking through São Paulo streets before dawn. She was showing you this way how I made my Beatrice truly understand how intense, overwhelming my passion is.
Then, suddenly you asked her to also bring myself back into that dream.
You, too, wanted to live the past again. Right away, I entered this same dream, inviting you to rebuild the most intense scene from my memories: while reading a newspaper, or pretending to do so, I see you come walking in my direction. It is springtime’s first afternoon. You walk slowly through the garden flowers.
While passing right in front of me, I put aside the newspaper. We look at each other’s eyes; my glance meets yours, and your eyes meet mine.
I am struck by your lacerating shining gaze, exactly the one; the same glance, the same sparkle. Staging it all again, your eyes’ magic spell penetrates me as if concretely. I do feel it coming into my optic nerve, lodging within my innermost self, within a place certainly beyond my own awareness.
We must have already foreseen what would come next, Beatrice: your eyes’ enchantment revolutionized my whole perception of the world. There is, from that 23rd September, between all images arriving at my retina and their perception by inner self, the mighty shining of your eyes.
I became capable of making you mine and so never more letting you leave out towards the parking lot, when I, bewitched and unable even to know which eyes were mine or yours, followed your image till its fading among those countless cars.
I keep on visiting your dreams, despite the fact that we are now unable to stage any other scenes than those same:
Holding each other hands, we make up a new Giotto’s painting. Yes, I have found in the paintings of this renaissance Tuscan artist so many eyes identical to yours! We repeat our mise-en-scène: your slow walk, our face to face, your eyes taking hold of me.
We are going to dream this for all nights in our lives, Beatrice, until the moment when, after all concrete hindering is gone, we will be able to be together again.
Face to face.
Eyes in eyes.
Together as we have always been.
Just one I-Thou essence through all eternity.
אאאאאאאאאאאאאאאאאאאאאאאאאאאאאאאא
This tale-poem may be read on the novel 'The Last Owl', a sample of which is available just through a CLICK HERE.
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