Monday, May 17, 2004
Baldwhat????
All I ever wanted was to have a big family and spend quality time with my kids, while keeping passionate about my wife and, of course, making loads of money at work. I also wanted to become a famous writer and a nobel laureate for physics after which I would roam the world lonely going to places beyond the reach of tourists. I wanted to be a school teacher in a small town, I wanted to live four years with Yanomami indians in the Amazon forest and I wanted to be the owner and manager of a small hotel in Provence. In the meantime I would be satisfied if I could find the cure for cancer.
Too much to ask?
Not if I were Baldanders, a creature in time, who could be one thing in a given moment and something completely different in the next. Here is how Borges describes Baldanders:
Baldanders (whose name we may translate as Soon-another or At-any-moment-something-else) was suggested to the master shoemaker Hans Sachs (1494-1576) of Nuremberg by that passage in the Odyssey in which Menelaus pursues the Egyptian god Proteus, who changes himself into a lion, a serpent, a panther, a huge wild boar, a tree, and flowing water. Baldanders takes the forms of a man, of an oak tree, of a sow, of a fat sausage, of a field of clover, of dung, of a flower, of a blossoming branch, of a mulberry bush, of a silk tapestry, of many other things and beings, and then, once more, of a man; he also makes himself into a secretary and writes these words from the Revelation of St. John: "I am the first and the last." Baldanders is a successive monster, a monster in time. In his belt he carries a sword and in his hands an open book showing pictures of a crown, a sailing boat, a goblet, a tower, a child, a pair of dice, a foolscap with bells, and a piece of ordnance.*
Too much to ask?
Not if I were Baldanders, a creature in time, who could be one thing in a given moment and something completely different in the next. Here is how Borges describes Baldanders:
Baldanders (whose name we may translate as Soon-another or At-any-moment-something-else) was suggested to the master shoemaker Hans Sachs (1494-1576) of Nuremberg by that passage in the Odyssey in which Menelaus pursues the Egyptian god Proteus, who changes himself into a lion, a serpent, a panther, a huge wild boar, a tree, and flowing water. Baldanders takes the forms of a man, of an oak tree, of a sow, of a fat sausage, of a field of clover, of dung, of a flower, of a blossoming branch, of a mulberry bush, of a silk tapestry, of many other things and beings, and then, once more, of a man; he also makes himself into a secretary and writes these words from the Revelation of St. John: "I am the first and the last." Baldanders is a successive monster, a monster in time. In his belt he carries a sword and in his hands an open book showing pictures of a crown, a sailing boat, a goblet, a tower, a child, a pair of dice, a foolscap with bells, and a piece of ordnance.*
# posted by Rico @ 2:31 PM 
