FROM KING'S LEAR FOOL TO BOB DYLAN'S DESOLATION ROW (IV)

FROM KING LEAR'S FOOL TO BOB DYLAN'S DESOLATION ROW (III)

 

FOOL    AND I'LL GO TO BED AT NOON

( Act III, Scene 6)

Ahora a media noche todos los agentes

Y el grupo de superhombres

Salen y rodean a cualquiera

Que sabe más que ellos

Entonces los traen a la fábrica

Donde la máquina de ataques al corazón

Es atada sobre sus hombros

Y entonces el queroseno

Es traído desde los castillos

Por agentes de seguros que van

A comprobar que nadie escapa

A la Fila de la Desolación

(Bob Dylan)

Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood
With his memories in a trunk
Passed this way an hour ago
With his friend, a jealous monk
He looked so immaculately frightful
As he bummed a cigarette
Then he went off sniffing drainpipes
And reciting the alphabet
Now you would not think to look at him
But he was famous long ago
For playing the electric violin
On Desolation Row

Dr. Filth, he keeps his world
Inside of a leather cup
But all his sexless patients
They’re trying to blow it up
Now his nurse, some local loser
She’s in charge of the cyanide hole
And she also keeps the cards that read
“Have Mercy on His Soul”
They all play on pennywhistles
You can hear them blow
If you lean your head out far enough
From Desolation Row

(...)

And Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot
Fighting in the captain’s tower
While calypso singers laugh at them
And fishermen hold flowers
Between the windows of the sea
Where lovely mermaids flow
And nobody has to think too much
About Desolation Row

Yes, I received your letter yesterday
(About the time the doorknob broke)
When you asked how I was doing
Was that some kind of joke?
All these people that you mention
Yes, I know them, they’re quite lame
I had to rearrange their faces
And give them all another name
Right now I can’t read too good
Don’t send me no more letters no
Not unless you mail them
From Desolation Row

(Bob Dylan)

© 1965 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1993 by Special Rider Music

KING'S LEAR FOOL: I WILL TARRY, THE FOOL WILL STAY (II)

 

NOTHING SEES MIRACLES BUT MISERY

 

"Men say they know many things;
But lo! they have taken wings, —
The arts and sciences,
And a thousand appliances;
The wind that blows
Is all that any body knows”

HDT

Know you this, that men

are as the time is

(Shakespeare, King Lear)

"Some men are as the time is, some always are, and they have always said so in self-justification.But Cordelia is not, Kent is not, Edgar is not, Albany is not, even the Fool is not.

(...)

No, "unaccomodated man " is not the type specimen of humanity.No, you are not eligible to conclude that the gods kill us for their sport.No, all men are not "as the time is"".

(WB, The uses of adversity)

NADA VE MILAGROS/

SALVO EL DOLOR

Sabed esto, que los hombres son

como es su tiempo

(Shakespeare, King Lear)

"Algunos hombres son como es su tiempo, algunos siempre lo son, y ellos siempre lo han dicho como autojustificación. Pero Cordelia no lo es, Kent no lo es, Edgar no lo es, Albany no lo es, incluso el Bufón no lo es.

(...)

No, el hombre sin hogar no es el ejemplar prototípico de la humanidad. No, no estás autorizado a concluir que los dioses nos matan por diversión. No, todos los hombres no son "como es su tiempo"".

(WB, The uses of adversity)

(Esta entrada está dedicada, con agradecimiento y admiración, a Wendell Berry, que no es como su tiempo-el nuestro- es; que tiene hogar y defiende el hogar de todos los lugares: "For the wages of sinne is death; but the gifte of God is eternal life")