Dead Reckoning , livre ebook

DEAD RECKONING
DEAD RECKONING

Transatlantic Passages on Europe and America

Andrei Guruianu and Anthony Di Renzo
Published by
S TATE U NIVERSITY OF N EW Y ORK P RESS , A LBANY
© 2016 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Guruianu, Andrei.
Dead reckoning : transatlantic passages on Europe and America / Andrei Guruianu and Anthony Di Renzo.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-4384-6112-0 (pbk. : alk. paper) —
ISBN 978-1-4384-6114-4 (e-book)
I. Di Renzo, Anthony, 1960– II. Title.
PS3607.U567D43 2016
814'.6—dc23
2015027724
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
for
MILAN KUNDERA,
who made beauty and laughter out of exile
APHORISM 124
In the Horizon of the Infinite
We have left the land and have embarked. We have burned our bridges behind us—indeed, we have gone farther and destroyed the land behind us. Now, little ship, look out! Beside you is the ocean: to be sure, it does not always roar, and at times it lies spread out like silk and gold and reveries of graciousness. But hours will come when you will realize that it is infinite and that there is nothing more awesome than infinity. Oh, the poor bird that felt free and now strikes the walls of this cage! Woe, when you feel homesick for the land as if it had offered more freedom—and there is no longer any “land.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science
Contents
TO THE READER
I. MEMORY, YOU SAVAGE TRIUMPH
Andrei
A Blueprint for Memory
Return through a Gap in Time
Propaganda of the Self
From All Points East
Antonio
Laughing in the Ruins (Pt. 1)
Andrei
Echoes of a Remembered Sentiment
Truth and Tangents (or What Becomes Art)
Lipscani
Antonio
Laughing in the Ruins (Pt. 2)
II. THE ART OF EXILE
Andrei
Yes, I Am. Maybe.
Some Call It a Performance
Of Marionettes
The Faces We Wear
Antonio
A Hole in the Sky (Pt. 1)
Andrei
Because We Are Meant to Be Forgotten
Zero-Sum
Not-Light
Antonio
A Hole in the Sky (Pt. 2)
III. HISTORY, OPEN FOR BUSINESS
Andrei
Communism, the After-Christmas Sale
One Kiss, for the Revolution
Open for Business
Imperial Song
Antonio
The Last Mirage (Pt. 1)
Andrei
Bad Habits of Old Women
First Sign of Promise
Vicious Cycle
Antonio
The Last Mirage (Pt. 2)
IV. AN AUTOPSY OF BELIEF
Andrei
Pray Daily: Use Words If You Must
When the Oil Burns Low
The City of Logical Conclusions
A Rough Angelology
Antonio
Duino Elegies (Pt. 1)
Andrei
Between Gods
The Candle Is Out; No Matches
Arrival of the Invitation; Inconclusive Directions
Antonio
Duino Elegies (Pt. 2)
V. THE CUNNING OF REASON
Andrei
Peddling Myth
On a Day between Seasons
Waiting Our Turn
Legends and Other Ordinary Things
Antonio
Bread and Circuses (Pt. 1)
Andrei
Parallel Vista
Exit Strategy
The Future Is Best Eaten with a Wooden Spoon
Antonio
Bread and Circuses (Pt. 2)
VI. ETERNAL RECURRENCES
Andrei
A Blueprint for Memory (Redux)
Insert Inspirational Slogan Here
Talking Old Country Blues
It Could Have Been a Dream
Antonio
Nietzsche in Turin (Pt. 1)
Andrei
Always the Small Things
On the Outside Looking In
How It Was and How It Should Be ( When Death Happens at a Distance )
Antonio
Nietzsche in Turin (Pt. 2)
VII. AFTER BABEL
Andrei
Nonwords
Instructions for Learning a New Language
Anatomy of Dreams
Encoded
Antonio
Dreams of a Common Language (Pt. 1)
Andrei
Palimpsest
Under Our Fingernails
Wordless
Antonio
Dreams of a Common Language (Pt. 2)
VIII. WHAT’S SO REAL ABOUT SURREALISM?
Andrei
Funny When You Think about It
Even Though Everyone Knows Better
Without a Hero
It Ends Differently
Antonio
The Disquieting Muses (Pt. 1)
Andrei
Fraţii Mei (My Brothers)
Arrangement for Stills
A Common Thing
Antonio
The Disquieting Muses (Pt. 2)
IX. CHILDHOOD AND ITS DERIVATIVES
Andrei
The Eternal Children
One Continuous
What You Leave Behind
The Other Side Of
Antonio
Giovinezza (Pt. 1)
Andrei
Psalm for the Children of the Rain
The Plot Against
Vignette
Antonio
Giovinezza (Pt. 2)
X. HERE AND NOW
Andrei
Make Beautiful, Again
Building Blocks
When Turning Toward
Make Beautiful
Antonio
Apollo Atones (Pt. 1)
Andrei
Approaching Stalemate
The Exact Reasons
Otherwise a Life
Antonio
Apollo Atones (Pt. 2)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
To the Reader
T HIS EXCHANGE —“writes” of passage, if you will—began during the summer of 2013. Consider it a log from two immigrant writers, a poet and an essayist, marooned in the doldrums between the Old and New Worlds. For years, we sailed under the flag of phantom allegiances, pretending that our home ports (Romania and Italy) still existed. Without the illusion of safe harbor, mariners go mad at sea. Even Odysseus, the wiliest of wanderers, needed the fiction of Ithaca.
Hope filled our sails. We traveled ever westward to the New Atlantis of America. One day, however, like the crew in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner :
We stuck, nor breath or motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
Forced to abandon ship, we found shelter and supplies on a nearby deserted island. Ever since, we have been studying out-of-date maps to chart a new course to God knows where. No luck, so far, but perhaps our notes will become a survival manual for fellow castaways like you.
Please pardon our accents. English is not our first language, but it is the language that we are compelled to write in. It baffles us, but as Sicilian American scholar and writer Edvige Giunta observes, “Living in another culture and writing in another language sometimes offer an intellectual and creative freedom that living in your own culture and writing in your own language do not.” Perhaps we need to maintain our foreignness to access and jot these thoughts.

Dead Reckoning , the title of our book, is a nautical term. When instruments fail or when astronomical observation is impossible, navigators calculate a ship’s position using the distance and direction traveled. This computation is based on compass readings, known speed, and figures culled from charts, logs, and almanacs. What seems an exact science is actually desperate guesswork. Navigators must make allowances for drift from the wind and currents, but these factors remain unpredictable and ultimately unknowable. In this sense, dead reckoning can function as an analogy for postmodernism, Europe’s and America’s collective groping in the dark because the West has lost or destroyed its bearings.
For those still recovering from the atrocities of the twentieth century, however, whether under Fascism or Communism, dead reckoning has an even grimmer meaning: toting up the butcher’s bill of war and genocide. This is another, less frequently discussed side of postmodernism. The dead always have exacted guilt from the living, just as the living always have denied their complicity in past evil. Our generation, however, is the first to deny the meaning or even the possibility of history. This is foolish and arrogant. Despite the distractions of technology and commerce, nothing will spare us from a day of reckoning. The Furies always settle their accounts, whether or not they use Microsoft spreadsheets.

These concerns inspired the following poems and essays. It has been a harrowing odyssey—less a circumnavigation of the globe than a salvage expedition in a naval graveyard. Significantly, our collaboration fell between the centennials of two maritime disasters: the wreck of the Titanic (April 14, 1912) and the sinking of the Lusitania (May 7, 1915). Both foreshadowed the greater shipwreck of Western civilization, from which Europe and America, we believe, are still floundering in shark-infested waters.
Thank you for allowing two amateur navigators the leeway to chart these tangents. We recognize, however, that in the wide Sargasso Sea of Internet culture, any book must be a message in a bottle. But this is the writer’s perennial dilemma. “We work in the dark,” said Henry James. “We do what we can. We give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.”