Cultura
Urbana
Santiago de Chile
April 2001
The Great Absentee:
David Rosenmann-Taub
By Patricio Rojas
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 At
this time
when great poets have gathered in Chile (at the Encuentro Internacional
de Poesía), David Rosenmann-Taub is, perhaps, the great
absentee.
We offer an exclusive interview with him.
Patricio
Rojas.: Do the metaphysical or transcendental concepts present
in your poetry correspond to any known school of thought or are
they the fruit of your experience face to face with the Mystery?
David Rosenmann-Taub: I am my life: I don't take my inspiration from schools of thought
of any era. My thinking does not depend on an arbitrary cultural
milieu. What is not metaphysical? What is not transcendental? Isn't
falling in love metaphysical? Isn't eating metaphysical? Isn't
getting
sick transcendental?
P. R.:
...or are they the fruit of your experience face to face with
the Mystery?
D. R.-T.:
They are the fruit of my experience not face to face with
the
Mystery but within the Mystery, which, moreover, has nothing
mysterious
about it...
When is poetry, poetry? When it is science.
P. R.
: Your book Cortejo y Epinicio begins with the poem "Prelude".
Could you give us an explanation of
this text?
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After,
after the wind between two peaks,
and the brother scorpion that rears up,
and the red tides over the day.
Voracious volcano: halo without empire.
The vulture will die: lax punishment.
After, after the hymn between two vipers.
After the night that we do not know
and outstretched in the never a sole body
silent as light. After the wind.
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D.
R.-T.:
The first line of "Prelude": "After, after
the wind between two peaks". You, like me, were born on
this planet. When did you begin, Patricio? You began to be aware
of yourself "after." Everything is "after."
There is no "before". It's always "after" that
you find out what
you like, what you dislike. Our perceptions always lag: simultaneity
is impossible. We are "after", even "after
after".
I,
like every human being, discovered my vocation "after."
And
the movement towards the exterior and interior world, with all
its
difficulties and easiness – all the energy that being here
represents – happens between two peaks. We face "two
peaks:" that of doing what we have to do, or that of not
doing
it.
And from
the point of view of Cortejo y Epinicio, my vocation happens
between two peaks: a beginning that I do not know and an
end that I do not know either.
From the point of view of memory – elaboration and creativity
– one peak is what I have witnessed, always "after;"
the
other is expressing it, "after."
"...and
the
brother scorpion that rears up:" the-one-who-seems-to-be
versus the-one-who-I-am. I need to struggle in order to be truly
one with my vocation. And to attain it internally and externally.
We all have a "brother scorpion," who does not want
us to fulfill
our goals.
In general,
the one who is ill-treated is the brother of the "brother scorpion;"
given how most people live, it is the "brother scorpion" who
prospers, not the other brother, the really real one. We are surrounded
by "brother scorpions." It's not just internal ones.
Also external
ones. Nature, while wanting there to be creation, does everything
it can so that there won't be. Nature constantly offers us a perverse
glass. We have to defend ourselves. Threatening to drown us in
the
blood of the universe, this glass, during our existence here, tries
to pour its liquid however it can into our mouth, in order to drown
us in our own blood. When a man decides "to be," he becomes
conscious of the "red tides," of the "brother
scorpion,"
of the "two peaks."
This is one
of the levels of meaning of the first three lines of "Prelude." Poetry
does not exist if it has only one level. To express things
on only one level is journalism. The aim of journalism is to achieve
exactitude on a single level. The opposite of poetry, which can
contain journalism as one of its aspects.
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