Richard Serra - Literal

S
cualquiera, recae en la insignifi cancia. Buscábamos las
cinco mesas de trabajo que Stevenson había previsto
para su casa ideal, pero encontramos sólo un islote
desierto, si acaso con algunos grabados de Piranesi y
objetos polinesios cuidadosamente desempolvados, es
decir, desecados e inhumanos, sin pulso. La habitación
relumbra y si en algún rincón se insinúa un descuido,
esa anomalía parece premeditada. En un lugar así
—pensamos—, sólo se podría trabajar con uniforme
o grillete.
Es natural que en circunstancias como ésa nadie
acepte la insatisfacción, porque ya es bastante privilegio
el hecho de internarnos en los recovecos de una
vida con la que guardábamos enormes afi nidades, pero
de la que nos considerábamos materialmente distantes.
Las reglas estrictas del museo, sin embargo, nos
impiden tocar los objetos y despojarlos de sus límites
tercamente estáticos, y así, nos sitúa siempre en este
lado de la frontera, como extranjeros o intrusos, del
mismo modo que la geometría inalterada de los jardines
franceses invita más a la admiración pasiva que al
paseo. Después de un rato llegamos a comprender que
la desproporción entre lo que esperábamos descubrir y
el escenario que se nos impone radica en algo simplemente
irremediable: la ausencia del escritor. Para encontrarlo,
habría que animar el recorrido por la casa vacía
con la lectura de sus diarios y cuadernos de apuntes.
En esas páginas, el cuarto de trabajo se va dibujando a
sí mismo, inestable y fragmentario, sin proporciones ni
pulimentos ostensibles, más bien lleno de conjeturas,
entusiasmos efímeros, gemidos de desaliento, excesos.
Al interior de una habitación, la vida es tan inconstante
e imprevista como los estados de ánimo; por eso,
ningún museógrafo, por más acucioso y fi el que sea,
podrá preservar la intimidad de un cuarto abandonado,
como lo haría el propio Stevenson al toser sobre un
puñado de servilletas sucias.
Es un hecho: habitamos las cosas y las cosas nos
habitan. No las adquirimos sólo por necesidad, sino
también por capricho, por gusto, por pulsiones más
secretas. Son puntos de referencia, gavetas de nuestra
personalidad. A veces su procedencia señala una alianza
con otra persona; por eso, cuando esa alianza se
rompe, las guardamos en cajas o las regresamos a sus
dueños. Otras, sintetizan los pormenores de un viaje o
una desventura. Las cosas están en la trama de nuestra
26 4 L ITERAL. LATIN AMERICAN VOICES • FALL, 2007
for the fi ve worktables with which Stevenson furnished
his ideal house, but we found only a desert island, with
at most a few engravings by Piranesi and some Polynesian
objects that had been carefully dusted, leaving
them dry, bloodless, and inhuman. The room positively
gleamed, and if in an odd corner some sign of negligence
had crept in, it seemed a premeditated anomaly.
In such a place—we thought—one could only work in
prison garb or fetters.
It is natural in such circumstances to reject dissatisfaction,
since it is already a privilege to penetrate into
the nooks and crannies of a life with which we feel
great affi nities, but from which we consider ourselves
materially distant. The strict rules of the museum,
however, forbid us to touch the objects and so strip
them of their stubbornly static limits. We are forced
therefore to remain on this side of the barrier, just as
the unaltered geometry of an English garden invites us
rather to contemplate it than to stroll through it. After
a while we come to understand with resignation that
the disproportion between what we were expecting to
fi nd and the setting imposed on us resides in something
simply irremediable: the absence of the writer.
In order to fi nd him, we would have to animate the
tour of his empty house with the reading of his diaries
and notebooks. In those pages, the workroom traces
an outline of itself, unstable and fragmentary, without
polish or visible proportions, but rather full of conjectures,
ephemeral enthusiasms, rough drafts, groans of
discouragement, self-rebuke, excesses.
Inside a room, life is as inconstant and unpredictable
as one’s moods; so no museum curator, however
meticulous and faithful, will be able to preserve the
intimacy of an abandoned room, as Stevenson himself
would have done simply by coughing into a dirty
handkerchief.
It is a fact: we inhabit things and things inhabit us.
We do not acquire them only in accordance with our
needs, but also with our whims, our tastes, our most
secret longings. They are points of reference, the pigeonholes
of our personality. At times they point to an
alliance with another person, and when that alliance
is dissolved, we put them away in a drawer or return
them to their owners. At other times they synthesize
the details of a journey or a sorrow. Things, therefore,
form the texture of our existence and are covered with
our dust. But they are not only the agents of our past.
There are things that place us under an obligation, such
as the empty notebooks in which we are to write something,
even if it be nonsense. The fact is that we maintain
a relationship with them which will only end when
they are lost forever, because we throw them away or
we die. And the relationship between things and human
beings is—like any other—sinuous and imperfect.
The main problem is the place they occupy or are to
occupy. That place is always uncertain, because things