From Julio Cortázar’s The Winners "...the problems is Argus, of course, always Argus." "Argus?" asked Claudia. “Yes, the poly faceted. the ten-thousand-eyed. the simultaneity. Yes, the simultaneity!” Persio exclaimed enthusiastically. “When I pretend to add Jorge’s vision to mine, am I not denouncing the most awful nostalgia of the race? To see through the other eyes, to be both my eyes and yours too, Claudia, whose eyes are so beautiful, and those of this gentleman, which are so expressive. All eyes together, that kills time, liquidates the whole thing. Goodbye, out it goes. Beat it!” He made a gesture as if to scare off a fly. “Do you know, if I simultaneously saw everything that the eyes of the race, the four billion eyes of the human race saw, reality would no longer be successive, it would petrify in an absolute vision in which the I would disappear, completely annihilated. But what an annihilation, what a triumphal blaze, what a Response! It’s impossible to conceive of space as beginning at one special moment, and even more impossible to conceive of time, which is the same thing in a consecutive form.” “But what if you should survive such a glimpse,” said Medrano, “you would begin to feel time once more. It would be dizzily multiplied by the number of partial visions, but always time.” “Oh, they wouldn’t be partial,” said Persio, raising his eye-brows. “The idea is to encompass the whole cosmic system in a total synthesis, which is only possible by making an equally total analysis. You understand, human history is the sad result of each one looking out for himself. Time is born in the eyes, everybody knows that.” He took a pamphlet from his pocket and consulted it anxiously. Medrano, who was lighting a cigarette, saw Don Galo’s chauffeur look in through the door, observe the scebne for a moment, and approach the bartender. “WIth a bit of imagination you can get a vague idea of Argus,” said Persio, turning the pages of the pamphlet. “I, for one, exercise my imagination on things like this. It’s not good for anything except to rouse my imagination, but it excites me to a cosmic feeling and get me out of my sublunar torpor.”
Posted on: Sun, 09 Jun 2013 21:16:49 +0000
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