The Aleph by Jorge Luis Borges read by A Poetry Channel

The Aleph by Jorge Luis Borges O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell, And count myself a king of infinite space. Hamlet, Act II, Scene II But they will teach us that eternity is The standing still of the present time, A nunc stands, as the schools call it, Which neither they nor any else understand, No more than they would understand a hick's stance For an infinite greatness of place. Leviathan, 446 That same sweltering morning that Beatriz Viterbo died After an imperious confrontation with her illness In which she had never for an instant Stooped to either sentimentality or fear, I noticed that a new advertisement for some cigarettes or other Blondes, I believe they were, Had been posted on the iron billboards Of the Plaza Constitución. The fact deeply grieved me, For I realized that the vast, unceasing universe Was already growing away from her, And that this change was but the first In an infinite series. The universe may change, but I shall not, Thought I, with melancholy vanity. I knew that more than once My futile devotion had exasperated her. Now that she was dead, I could consecrate myself to her memory Without hope, But also without humiliation. I reflected that April 30th was her birthday. Stopping by her house on Calle Garay that day To pay my respects to her father and her first cousin, Carlos Argentino Daneri, Was an irreproachable, perhaps essential, Act of courtesy. Once again I would wait in the half-light of the little parlor Crowded with furniture and draperies and bric-a-brac. Once again I would study the details of the many photographs And portraits of her, Beatriz Viterbo, In profile, in color. Beatriz in a mask at the Carnival of 1921, Beatriz's first communion, Beatriz on the day of her wedding to Roberto Alessandri, Beatriz shortly after the divorce, Lunching at the Jockey Club, Beatriz in Quilmes with Delia San Marco Porcel And Carlos Argentino, Beatriz with the Pekingese that had been a gift From Villegas Haidu, Beatriz in full front and in three-quarters view, Smiling, Her hand on her chin. I would not be obliged, As I had been on occasions before, To justify my presence with modest offerings of books, Books whose pages I learned at last to cut, So as not to find months later that they were still intact. Beatriz Viterbo died in 1929. Since then, I have not allowed an April 30th to pass Without returning to her house. That first time, I arrived at 7.15 And stayed for about 25 minutes. Each year, I would turn up a little later And stay a little longer. In 1933, a downpour came to my aid. They were forced to ask me to dinner. Naturally, I did not let that fine precedent go to waste. In 1934, I turned up a few minutes after 8 With a lovely confection from Santa Fe. It was perfectly natural that I should stay for dinner. And so it was That on those melancholy and vainly erotic anniversaries I came to receive the gradual confidences Of Carlos Argentino Daneri. Beatriz was tall, fragile, very slightly stooped. In her walk there was, if I may be pardoned the oxymoron, Something of a graceful clumsiness, A soupçon of hesitancy or of palsy. Carlos Argentino is a pink, substantial, grey-haired man Of refined features. He holds some sort of subordinate position In an illegible library in the outskirts Toward the south of the city. He is authoritarian, though also ineffectual. Until very recently, he took advantage of nights and holidays To remain at home. At two generations removed, The Italian ace and the liberal Italian gesticulation Still survive in him. His mental activity is constant, passionate, versatile And utterly insignificant. He is full of pointless analogies and idle scruples. He has, as Beatriz did, Large, beautiful, slender hands. For some months he laboured under an obsession for Paul Fort, Less for Fort's ballads than the idea of a glory That could not be tarnished. He is the prince of the poets of La Belle France, He would fatuously say. You assail him in vain. You shall never touch him. Not even the most venomous of your darts shall ever touch him. On April 30th, 1941, I took the liberty of enriching my sweet offering With a bottle of domestic brandy. Carlos Argentino tasted it, pronounced it interesting, And after a few snifters, Launched into an apologia for modern man. I picture him, he said with an animation That was rather unaccountable. In his study, as though in the watchtower of a great city, Surrounded by telephones, telegraphs, phonographs, The latest in radio, telephone, and motion picture, And magic lantern equipment, And glossaries, and calendars, and timetables, and bulletins, He observed that for a man so equipped, The act of travelling was supererogatory. This twentieth century of ours Had upended the fable of Muhammad and the mountain. Mountains nowadays did, in fact, come to the modern Muhammad. So witless did these ideas strike me as being, So sweeping and pompous, The way they were expressed That I associated them immediately with literature. Why, I asked him, didn't he write those ideas down? Predictably, he replied that he already had. They, and others no less novel, Figured large in the agoral canto, Prolugrial canto, or simply prologue canto, Of a poem on which he had been working With no deafening hurly-burly, And sans reclamé for many years, Leaning always on those twin staffs, work, and solitude. First, he would open the floodgates of the imagination, Then repair to the polishing wheel. The poem was entitled The Earth. It centered on a description of our own Terracuous orb, and was graced, of course, With picturesque digression and elegant apostrophe. I begged him to read me a passage, Even if only a brief one. He opened a desk drawer, Took out a tall stack of tablet paper, Stamped with the letterhead of Juan Christotomo, La Finur Library, And read, with ringing self-satisfaction, I have seen, as did the Greek, Man's cities and his fame, The works, the days of various light, The hunger, I prettify no fact, I falsify no name, For the voyage I narrate is Autour de ma chambre. A stanza interesting from every point of view, he said. The first line wins the kudos of the learned, The academician, the Hellenist, Though perhaps not that of those would-be scholars That make up such a substantial portion of popular opinion. The second moves from Homer to Hesiod, Implicit homage at the very threshold Of the dazzling new edifice To the father of didactic poetry, Not without revitalizing a technique Whose lineage may be traced to Scripture, That is, enumeration, conjuries, or conglomeration. The third, baroque, decadent, The purified and fantastical cult of form, Consists of twinned hemi-stitches. The fourth, unabashedly bilingual, Assures me the unconditional support of every spirit Able to feel the ample attractions of playfulness. I shall say nothing of the unusual rhyme, Nor of the erudition that allows me, Without pedantry or boorishness, To include within the space of four lines Three erudite allusions spanning Thirty centuries of dense literature. First, the Odyssey, Second, the works and days, Third, that immortal bagatelle That regales us with the diversions of Savoyard's plume. Once again, I show my awareness that Truly modern art demands the balm Of laughter, of scherzo. There's no doubt about it. Goldoni was right. Carlos Argentino read me many other stanza, All of which earned the same profuse praise And comment from him. There was nothing memorable about them. I could not even judge them to be Much worse than the first one. Application, resignation, and chance Had conspired in their composition. The virtues that Daenerys attributed to them Were afterthoughts. I realize that the poet's work had lain Not in the poetry, But in the invention of reasons For accounting the poetry admirable. Naturally, that later work modified the poem For Daenerys, but not for anyone else. His oral expression was extravagant. His metrical clumsiness prevented him, Except on a very few occasions, From transmitting that extravagance to the poem. Note. I do, however, recall these lines from a satire In which he lashed out vehemently Against bad poets. This one fits the poem with a coat of mail Of erudition. That one with gallopomps and circumstance. Both flail their absurd penance to no avail, Neglecting poor wretches the factor sublime, Its loveliness. It was only out of concern that he might create An army of implacable and powerful enemies, He told me, That he did not fearlessly publish the poem. Only once in my lifetime have I had the occasion To examine the fifteen thousand Dodeca-syllables of the Polyalbion, The topographical epic in which Michael Drayton Recorded the fauna, flora, Hydrography, orography, Military and monastic history of England. But I am certain that Drayton's massive yet limited oeuvre Is less tedious than the vast enterprise Conceived and given birth by Carlos Argentino. He proposed to versify the entire planet. By 1941, he had already dispatched Several hectares of the state of Queensland, More than a kilometre of the course of the Obe, A gasworks north of Veracruz, The leading commercial establishments in the parish of Concepción, Mariana Cambaceres de Alvear's Villa On calle once de septiembre in Belgrano, And a Turkish bath not far from the famed Brighton Aquarium. He read me certain laborious passages From the Australian region of his poem In his long, formless Alexandrines, Lacking the relative agitation of the prologue. Here is one stanza. Hear this! To the right hand of the routine signpost, Coming, what need is there to say, From north-north-west? Yawns a bored skeleton, Color sky-pearly, Outside the sheepfold that suggests an archery. Two audacious risks, he exclaimed in exultation, Snatched from the jaws of disaster, I can hear you mutter by success. I admit it, I admit it, One, the epithet routine, While making an adjective of a synonym for highway, Nods en passant, To the inevitable tedium inherent To those chores of pastoral and rustic nature That neither Georgics, Nor our own belurled Don Segundo, Ever dared acknowledge in such a forthright way, With no beating about the bush. And the second, delicately referring to the first, The forcefully prosaic phrase, Yawns a bored skeleton, Which the finicky will want to excommunicate Without benefit of clergy, But that the critic of more manly tastes Will embrace as he does his very life. The entire line, in fact, is a good twenty-four carats. The second half-line sets up The most animated sort of conversation with the reader. It anticipates his lively curiosity, Puts a question in the mouth, And then, voila, answers it on the instant. And what do you think of that coup, sky-pearly? The picturesque neologism just hints at the sky, Which is such an important feature of the Australian landscape. Without that allusion, The hues of the sketch would be altogether too gloomy, And the reader would be compelled to close the book, His soul deeply wounded by black and incurable melancholy. About midnight, I took my leave. Two Sundays later, Denarius telephoned me For what I believe was the first time in his or my life. He suggested that we meet at four, Quote, to imbibe the milk of the gods together In the nearby salon bar that my estimable landlords, Messieurs Zunino and Zungri, Have had the rare commercial foresight to open on the corner. It is a café you will do well to acquaint yourself with, end quote. I agreed with more resignation than enthusiasm to meet him. It was hard for us to find a table. The relentlessly modern salon bar Was only slightly less horrendous than I had expected. At neighboring tables, the excited clientele Discussed the sums invested by Zunino and Zungri Without a second's haggling. Carlos Argentino pretended to be amazed At some innovation in the establishment's lighting, An innovation he'd no doubt been apprised of beforehand, And then said to me somewhat severely, Much against your inclinations. It must be that you recognize that this place Is on par with the most elevated heights of Flores. Then he re-read four or five pages of his poem to me. Verbal ostentation was the perverse principle That had guided his revisions. Where he had formerly written blue, He had now azure, cerulean, and even bluish. The word milky was not sufficiently hideous for him, In his impetuous description of a place where wool was washed, He had replaced it with lactine, Lactescent, lactorious, lacteal. He railed bitterly against his critics. Then, in a more benign tone, He compared them to those personas who possess Neither precious metals nor even the steam presses, Laminators, and sulfuric acids needed for minting treasures, But who can point out to other the precise location of a treasure. Then he was off on another tack, Inveying against the obsession for forewords What he called prologue mania. An attitude that, and I quote, Had already been spoofed in the elegant preface to the Quixote By the Prince of Wits himself, end quote. He would, however, admit that an attention-getting recommendation Might be a good idea at the portals of his new work. Quote, an accolade pained by A writer of stature, of real import, end quote. He added that he was planning to publish the first cantos of his poem. It was at that point that I understood The unprecedented telephone call and the invitation. The man was about to ask me to write the preface To that pedantic farrago of his. But my fear turned out to be unfounded. Carlos Argentino remarked with grudging admiration That he believed he did not go too far in saying That the prestige achieved in every sphere By the man of letters, Alvaro Melian Lafinor, was solid. And that if I could be persuaded to persuade him, Alvaro, quote, might be enchanted to write the cold for A foreword, end quote. In order to forestall the most unpardonable failure on my part, I was to speak on behalf of the poems To incontrovertible virtues, Its formal perfection and its scientific rigor. Quote, because that broad garden of Rhetorical devices, figures, charms and graces Will not tolerate a single detail That does not accord with its severe truthfulness. End quote. He added that Beatriz had always enjoyed Alvaro's company. I agreed. I agreed most profusely. I did, however, for the sake of adding plausibility, Make it clear that I wouldn't be speaking with Alvaro On Monday, but rather on Thursday at the little supper That crowned each meeting of the Writer's Circle. There are no such suppers, although it is quite true That the meetings are held on Thursday. A fact that Carlos Argentino might verify in the newspapers, And that lent a certain credence to my contention. I told him, half prophetically, half farsightedly, That before broaching the subject of the prologue, I would describe the curious design of the poem. We said our goodbyes as I turned down Calle Bernardo de Irigoyen. I contemplated as impartially as I could The futures that were left to me. A. Speak with Alvaro and tell him That first cousin of Beatriz, Whose circumlocution would allow me to speak her name, Had written a poem that seemed to draw out to infinity The possibilities of cacophony and chaos. B. Not speak with Alvaro. Knowing myself pretty well, I foresaw that my indolence would opt for B. From early Friday morning on, The telephone was a constant source of anxiety. I was indignant that this instrument Whose irrevocable voice had once emerged Might now be reduced to transmitting the futile And perhaps angry complaints Of that self-deluding Carlos Argentino Daneri. Fortunately, nothing came of it, Save the inevitable irritation inspired by a man Who had charged me with a delicate mission And then forgotten all about me. Eventually, the telephone lost its terrors, But in late October, Carlos Argentino did call me. He was very upset. At first, I didn't recognize his voice. Dejectedly and angrily, he stammered out That now unstoppable pair Zunino and Zungri, Under the pretext of expanding their already enormous café, Were going to tear down his house. The home of my parents! The home where I was born! The deeply rooted house, Anca Llegaray, he repeated, Perhaps drowning his grief In the melodiousness of the phrase. It was not difficult for me to share his grief. After forty, every change Becomes a hateful symbol of time's passing. In addition, this was a house That I saw as alluding infinitely to Beatriz. I tried to make that extremely delicate point clear. My interlocutor cut me off. He said that if Zunino and Zungri Persisted in their absurd plans, Then Zuni, his attorney, would sue them ipso facto for damages And force them to part with a good hundred thousand For his trouble. Zuni's name impressed me. His law firm, on the corner of Caceros and Taquari, Is one of proverbial sobriety. Zuni had already taken the case. Daneri said he'd be speaking with him that afternoon. Then he hesitated. And in that flat, impersonal voice We drop into when we wish to confide something very private, He said he had to have the house So he could finish the poem. Because in one corner of the cellar, there was an aleph. He explained that an aleph Contains points in space that contain all poems. It's right under the dining room, in the cellar, He explained, in his distress. His words fairly tumbled out. It's mine! It's mine! I discovered it in my childhood, before I ever attended school. The cellar stairway is steep, and my aunt and uncle Had forbidden me to go down it, but somebody said You could go around the world with that thing down there in the basement. This was referring, I later learned, to a steamer trunk. But I thought there was some magical contraption down there. I tried to sneak down the stairs. Fell head over heels. And when I opened my eyes, I saw the aleph. The aleph? I repeated. Yes, the place where without admixture or confusion All the places of the world Seemed from every angle, coexist. I revealed my discovery to no one. I did return. The child could not understand that he was given that privilege So that the man might carve out a poem. Zunino and Zungri shall never take it from me. Never! Never! Law book in hand, Zuni will prove that my aleph is inalienable. I tried to think. But isn't the cellar quite dark? Truth will not penetrate a recalcitrant understanding. If all the places of the world are within the aleph There too will be all stars, all lamps All sources of light. I'll be right over. I want to see it. I hung up before he could tell me not to come. Sometimes learning a fact is enough to make an entire series of Corroborating details previously unrecognized Fall into place. I was amazed that I hadn't realized until that moment That Carlos Argentino was a madman. All the Viterbos, in fact Beatriz, I myself have said this many times Was a woman A girl of implacable clear-sidedness But there were things about her Oversights, distractions, moments of contempt Downright cruelty All this could have done with a pathological explanation Carlos Argentino's madness filled me with malign happiness Deep down We had always detested each other And Calle Garay The maid asked me to be so kind as to wait Señor Daneri was in the cellar As he always was, developing photographs Beside the flowerless vase And behind the useless piano Smiled the great, faded photograph of Beatriz Not so much anachronistic As outside time No one could see us In a desperation of tenderness I approached the portrait Beatriz, Beatriz Elena Beatriz Elena Viterbo, I said Beatriz lost forever It's me, it's me, Borges Carlos came in shortly afterward His words were laconic, his tone indifferent I realized that he was unable to think of anything But the loss of the aleph A glass of surocognac, he said And we'll dunk right into the cellar I must warn you, dorsal decubitus is essential And a certain ocular accommodation You'll lie on the tile floor And fix your eyes on the 19th step Of the pertinent stairway I'll reascend the stairs, let down the trap door And you'll be alone Some rodent will frighten you, easy enough to do Within a few minutes, you will see the aleph The microcosm of the alchemists and cabalists Ultim in parvo, made flesh Of course, he added in the dining room If you don't see it That doesn't invalidate anything I've told you Go on down, within a very short while You will be able to begin a dialogue With all the images of Beatriz I descended quickly, sick of his vapid chatter The cellar, barely wider than the stairway In vain, my eyes sought the trunk That Carlos Argentino had mentioned A few burlap bags and some crates full of bottles Cluttered one corner Carlos picked up one of the bags, folded it And laid it out very precisely The couch is a humble one, he explained But if I raise it one inch higher You'll not see a thing And count up nineteen steps I followed his ridiculous instructions He finally left He carefully let down the trap door In spite of a chink of light that I began to make out later The darkness seemed total Suddenly, I realized the danger I was in I had allowed myself to be locked underground by a madman After first drinking down a snifter of poison But I wouldn't see his miracle In order to protect his delirium, in order to hide his madness from himself He had to kill me I felt a vague discomfort, which I tried to attribute to my rigidity Not to the operation of a narcotic I closed my eyes, then opened them It was then that I saw the Aleph I come now to the ineffable center of my tale It is here that a writer's hopelessness begins Every language is an alphabet of symbols The employment of which assumes a past shared by its interlocutors How can one transmit to others the infinite Aleph Which my timorous memory can scarcely contain In a similar situation, mystics have employed a wealth of emblems To signify the deity, a Persian mystic speaks of a bird That somehow is all birds Alain Delis speaks of a sphere Whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere Ezekiel, of an angel with four faces Facing east and west, north and south at once It is not for nothing that I call to mind these inconceivable analogies They bear a relation to the Aleph Perhaps the gods would not deny me the discovery of an equivalent image But then this report would be polluted with literature With falseness And besides, the central problem The enumeration, even partial enumeration Of infinity is irresolvable In that unbounded moment I saw millions of delightful and horrible acts None amazed me so much as the fact That all occupied the same point Without superposition and without transparency What I saw was simultaneous What I shall write is successive Because language is successive Something of it, though, I will capture Under the step, toward the right I saw a small iridescent sphere of almost unbearable brightness At first I thought it was spinning Then I realized that the movement was an illusion Produced by the dizzying spectacles inside it It was three centimeters in diameter But universal space was contained inside it With no diminution in size Each thing, the glass surface of a mirror, let us say Was infinite things Because I could clearly see it from every point in the cosmos I saw the populous sea Saw dawn and dusk Saw the multitudes of the Americas Saw the center of a black pyramid Saw a broken labyrinth, it was London Saw endless eyes, all very close Studying themselves in me, as though in a mirror Saw all the mirrors on the planet And none of them reflecting me Saw in a rear courtyard, on Calle Soler The same tiles I'd seen twenty years before In the entryway of a house, in Fraventos Saw clusters of grapes, snow, tobacco Veins of metal, water vapor Saw convex equatorial deserts And their every grain of sand Saw a woman in Inverness, whom I shall never forget Saw her violent hair, her haughty body Saw a cancer in her breast Saw a circle of dry soil within a sidewalk Where there had once been a tree Saw a country house in Adroge Saw a copy of the first English translation of Pliny Philemon Hollens Saw every letter of every page at once As a boy, I would be astounded that the letters in a closed book Didn't get all scrambled up together overnight Saw simultaneous night and day Saw a sunset in Querétaro That seemed to reflect the color of a rose in Bengal Saw my bedroom with no one in it Saw in a study in El Camar A globe of terraqueous world Placed between two mirrors that multiplied it endlessly Saw horses and wind-whipped manes On a beach in the Caspian Sea at dawn Saw the delicate bones of a hand Saw the survivors of a battle sending postcards Saw a tarot card in a shop window Saw the embers appear Saw the oblique shadows of ferns on the floor of a greenhouse Saw tigers' pistons, bisons, tides, and armies Saw all the ants on earth Saw a Persian astrolabe Saw in a desk drawer And the handwriting made me tremble Obscene, incredible, detailed letters That Beatriz had sent Carlos Argentino Saw the horrendous remains of what had once deliciously been Beatriz Piterbo Saw the circulation of my dark blood Saw the coils and springs of love And the alterations of death Saw the aleph from everywhere at once Saw the earth in the aleph And the aleph once more in the earth Saw my face and my viscera, saw your face And I felt dizzy, and I wept Because my eyes had seen that secret, hypothetical object Whose name has been usurped by men But which no man has ever truly looked upon The inconceivable universe I had a sense of infinite veneration Infinite pity Serves you right, having your mind boggled And you may rack your brains But you'll never repay me for this revelation Not in a hundred years Carlos Argentino's shoes occupied the highest step In the sudden half-light I managed to get to my feet Magnificent, yes, quite magnificent I stammered The difference in my voice surprised me You did see it, Carlos Argentino insisted anxiously See it clearly, in color and everything Instantly I conceived my revenge In the most kindly sort of way Manifestly pitying Nervous, evasive I thanked Carlos Argentino Daneri For the hospitality of his cellar To remove himself from the pernicious influences Of the metropolis, which no one, believe me, no one Can be immune to I refused with gentle firmness to discuss the Aleph I clasped him by both shoulders as I took my leave And told him again that the country Peace and quiet, you know Was the very best medicine one could take Out in the street, on the steps of the Constitution Station In the subway, all the faces seemed familiar I feared there was nothing that had the power To surprise or astonish me anymore I feared that I would never again be without a sense of déjà vu Fortunately, after a few unsleeping nights Forgetfulness began to work in me again Postscript, March 1st, 1943 Six months after the demolition of the building On Calle Garay Pocrustos publishers, undaunted by the length Of Carlos Argentino Daneri's substantial poem Published the first in its series of Argentine pieces It goes without saying what happened Carlos Argentino won second place In the National Prize for Literature The first prize went to Dr. Aita Third to Dr. Mario Bonfanti Incredibly, my own work, The Sharper's Cards Did not earn a single vote Once more, incomprehension and envy triumphed I have not managed to see Daneri for quite a long time The newspapers say he'll soon be giving us another volume His happy pen, belabored no longer by the Aleph Has been consecrated to setting the compendia Of Dr. Acevedo Diaz to verse There are two observations that I wish to add One, with regard to the nature of the Aleph The other, with respect to its name Let me begin with the letter Aleph, as well all know Is the name of the first letter of the alphabet Of the sacred language Its application to the disc of my tale In the Kabbalah, the letter signifies the Ansof The pure and unlimited Godhead It has been said that its shape is that Of a man pointing to the sky and the earth To indicate that the lower world is the map And mirror of the higher For the Mengen Lair, the Aleph is the symbol Of the transfinite numbers In which the whole is not greater than any of its parts I would like to know Did Carlos Argentino choose that name Or did he read it Applied to another point at which all points converge In one of the innumerable texts Revealed to him by the Aleph in his house Incredible as it may seem I believe that there is or was another Aleph I believe that the Aleph of Cayegaray Was a false Aleph Note I received your mournful congratulations, he wrote me You scoff, my lamentable friend, in envy But you shall confess, though the words stick in your throat That this time I have crowned my cap With the most scarlet of plumes My turban with the most colorful of rubies Let me state my reasons For believing it's a false Aleph In 1867, Captain Burton Was the British Consul in Brazil In July of 1942 Pedro Henriquez Ureña Discovered a manuscript by Burton In a library in Santos And in this manuscript, Burton discussed the mirror To Escandar Dural Carnine Or Alexander the Great of Macedonia In this glass, Burton said The entire universe was reflected Burton mentions other similar artifices The sevenfold goblet of Caicosru The mirror that Tariq ibn Ziyad Found in a tower 1001 Nights 272 The mirror that Lucian of Samosata Examined on the moon True History 126 The specular spear attributed by the first book Of Capella's Satyricon to Jupiter Merlin's universal mirror Round and hollow and that seemed a world of glass Fairy Queen 3219 And then adds these curious words But all the foregoing besides sharing the defect of not existing Are mere optical instruments The faithful who have come to the Amir Mosque in Cairo Know very well that the universe Lies inside one of the stone columns That surround the central courtyard No one of course can see it But those who put their ear to the surface Claim to hear within a short time The mosque dates to the 7th century The columns were taken from another pre-Islamic Temples were as Ibn Khaldun has written In the republics founded by nomads The attendance of foreigners is essential For all those things that bear upon masonry Does that aleph exist within the heart of a stone? Did I see it when I saw all things and then forget it? Our minds are permeable to forgetfulness I myself am distorting and losing To the tragic erosion of the years The features of Beatrice For se la canto