Robinson Tales And Imaginings

1. Auflage 2002
ISBN: 978-1-84351-286-8
Verlag: The Lilliput Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 192 Seiten

From the two volumes of Stones of Aran to the essays collected in Setting Foot on the Shores of Connemara and My Time in Space, Tim Robinson has established himself as one of the great non-fiction writers at work in the English language. In light of this, Tales and Imaginings, a collection of imaginative writings from five decades, might seem a profound departure, but to read it is to encounter anew the integrity and connectedness of Robinson's body of work. In the earliest stories gathered here, we recognize their author as the young Robinson, doing National Service in Malaya, whom we encountered in two searching autobiographical essays from My Time in Space; reading the most recent piece, 'Three Notes on the Elgin Marbles', we are reminded of Robinson's essay on his work as a visual artist and its examination of the role of the museum. In between are stories and imaginative essays that engage in unexpected ways with the West of Ireland landscapes Robinson has described so memorably in his previous books. Most of these pieces straddle recognizable genres; for example 'Orion the Hunter', which can easily be read as fiction, was selected for The Best American Essays 1998. Tim Robinson's non-fiction writings brilliantly transcend established disciplines and styles, and he has always shown himself to be an imaginative writer of the calibre of Borges and of Sebald. Tales and Imaginings confirms that achievement.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Robinson, Tim

Leseproben

So and Springrice

Late in one of the thousand autumns of the Autumn Empire, the family So, lacking in both wealth and learning, entrusted what they had of either to the youngest son and sent him off to find the world and bring it home. How huge that world was, they didn’t know. Between the City of the Emperors and the provincial capital, the highway touched the sky three times and wintered in a desert; to the provincial capital from the little town So had heard named but had never visited was half the length of a river; the way from So’s village to that town which even an Emperor might forget, was choked with many years of leaves. And yet such a distance was a mere step in thought to the grown child with hopeful eyes who was scattering those leaves in his eager striding. Among the leaves, deeply nested, lay a skull. It didn’t sleep; it ached with emptiness where memories used to be. ‘Who was I?’ it wailed, as it did whenever anyone passed by, but its dried-up voice was lost in the rustling leaves. Then So’s foot jolted it from its resting-place. ‘Don’t follow me!’ cried So, seeing it roll and bounce after his heels; but the bubble of bone jumped on a thin wind to his shoulder, and gripped his ear in its teeth. ‘Who was I?’ it hissed. ‘Who am I? If I had my memories I could lull myself to sleep. You must swear to help me, or I shall never let go.’

‘I know nothing; how can I help you?’ wept So.

‘Swear!’

So faced each of the corners of the Empire in turn. To each corner he said, ‘May I die upon this spot if I fail to answer this skull’s questions.’ The skull then loosed its hold on his ear and fell back among the leaves.

‘There are a few withered scraps of learning still remaining inside me‚’ it said. ‘Take them, study them – they may be of use to you – find out where I could have gathered such unheard-of stuff, come back and tell me what you discover.’

So bent down, crooked his finger into an eyesocket, and pulled out a muddle of spiderweb. He squeezed it into a pellet before the wind could tear at it, and stuck it into the middle of his topknot. Then he kicked a few leaves to cover the skull, and marched on.

He marched, with a stride he felt already becoming legendary, through a land in which legends lay as thick as autumn leaves, until a long time later he came to the Imperial City, or at least to the Examination Halls which ring it about and hide its splendid mysteries from those who have not yet shown themselves worthy. After a hungry night in the forest fringe he presented himself, one of a vast number, before a door which was flung open at sunrise to admit all comers to the day’s examination. After being stripped, searched, and scrubbed, So, like the others, was led to his cell and locked in. There awaited him a bowl of drinking-water, an oil-lamp, the writing implements, and the Question, sealed in a hollow bamboo rod. Without pausing even to pray, he pulled the wisp of silk from the rod, and read on it the words, ‘What day of the week is it in your dreams?’

Long after noon So was still pacing his cell wondering why in all his many remembered dreams he had never looked at a calendar; he cursed himself for neglecting such a simple preparation for the days of greatness that had dawned in so many of those dreams. He beat his forehead against the wall in despair; a little object fell at his feet. The skull’s wisdom! He blew upon the close knot, and under his breath it unfolded into leaves and scarves and wings as delicate as the smell of dew, covering every surface in the cell with a clinging web of words. ‘… No silk supports the ink of the dream, no stone bears its chisel-marks, nor can one cast bronze from its mould; unlike life, and even unlike memory, the dream is nothing but what is attended to, for it is the creation of that attention. Even a painting of a dream cannot dream of a dream, as a simple question and its answer show: does one dream in colours? Only if one dreams of colours. In the contrary case the question does not arise. Similarly the dream day is not necessarily one in a sequence of days; only by dreaming of hope or memory can one be sure that that day is not alone in all the endless darkness of time. But here again either alternative can only be awakened by a question, and if the dream does not ask, the alternatives sleep together in peace

So transcribed as fast as he could. The footsteps of the guard who would collect the answers could be heard in the distance; the trumpets of sunset sounded from the highest towers. He flung down his pen and lit a taper at the oil-lamp to seal his answer into the bamboo tube. In his haste – the cell door was being unlocked – he splashed a drop of molten wax onto the network of script lapped about him, which disappeared in a flick of flame as the door swung open.

*

Pillowed upon his unease at having destroyed his clue to the history of the restless bone, So lay peering at the stars from under a broad leaf in the thicket that had been his bedroom the night before. At midnight his eyes still showed, anxious as candleflames among the restless branches; then the bells of a procession were heard, torches could be seen flaring in the arched corridors of the forest, a wide path was being beaten across the bushes, a handsome litter arrived and its aged occupant was handed to the carpet hastily flung to receive his feet. It was the venerable Examiner, come to find So according to the directions the youth had penned where an address was to be written on his bamboo cylinder. ‘My son‚’ he began, signalling a servant to pour out soup for the round-eyed starveling summoned from the bushes, ‘by chance yours was the first paper to be read. Your mode of enquiry strays from the prescribed ways of our ancient culture, but it must be conceded that, just as a wind fresh from the hills finds shortcuts about the city we old inhabitants never happened upon, so your outlandish speculations bring to a close an era of thought. The other answers have been burned unopened, and the appointment is yours. It is one for which your alien learning well equips you, as will be explained to you by the Governor of a certain town on the furthest frontier of the Empire. That town is now your home. The journey takes a year; you start immediately.’

Leaving his troubled conscience lying in the impression of his body on the fallen leaves, So ran towards the star pointed out to him by the Examiners servants; before the flares and clamour of the retreating procession had faded from the woods his run had been choked to a walk by the brambles; at daybreak he read the scroll of directions he had been given and turned towards the distant snowpeaks; through every stage of tears and aches and cold and scratches he held towards his prize, and in another spring found himself tumbling down a mountain brook into a valley which hung above the endless grey plains of the Barbarians. Not far below him was the little frontier-town, a swallow’s nest in a crook of the great wall that circumscribed the Empire. Where the stream paused and rounded itself into a slowly turning pool, So rested, watching the water’s anxious memories of snow yield to the sunlight and the silence. He slept; he stripped off his weariness and threw it away. And then he jumped up to see his future home. He soon found he was being warmed by the admiration in the eyes of a young girl half hidden among the trees; these eyes told him he was newly strengthened and brown from the mountains, and that the sun was curling in his young beard. Then the eyes vanished, and although So ran forward quickly he found nothing but shadows.

The forest through which So now had to descend was strangely transected here and there by curving rides that tapered away to nothing or swelled into clearings of geometrical shapes he could not name. He became bewildered, and had to ask his way of gangs of workmen burning out thickets and uprooting trees in the perfecting of some great design; they scarcely understood his dialect, nor he theirs, but they pointed him on to where, finally, a wide hook-shaped clearance brought him down to the forest’s abrupt edge and a road through fields to the town and the Governor’s house.

When So had presented himself to the Governor, and even before he had been instructed in his duties, his questions were of the bright-eyed shadow he had seen in the ornamental forests above the town. The Governor smiled understandingly; his understanding, So immediately knew, like his serene mellowed white-bearded dignity, was that of the Empire itself, upon the unswerving prow of which he was here the figurehead, clear-eyed over the unruffled seas of Time.

‘She is a member of my household,’ he said, ‘and it would be entirely natural for you to fall in love with her, and she with you. No doubt it is already done. She is a delightful child, and the match may well be suitable as we know nothing of her parentage. You are interested in such details? It seems, then, that she and her brother, as very young children, were cast out of the Empire and carried by a servant into exile among the herdsmen of the plains. The brother, mentally enfeebled by what passes for schooling in those regions, was beguiled by dreams of return into stealing a horse one night and attempting the journey. Doubtless he perished; certainly he was never heard of again. The retainer betrayed his trust by dying in some nameless little battle out there, and the girl, still hardly more than a baby, came into the hands of...