Journal of Italian Translation

Anne Milano Appel/ Claudio Magris
than of good wood that doesn’t con you – if it’s oak it’s oak and if
it’s pine it’s pine, there’s no ruse, while flesh, especially human flesh,
is always deceptive. In any case, men suspended over the depths
already have too much fury in their hearts and require serenity,
namely, impersonality as colorless as water.
Here’s a beautiful illustration, a plain, unknown figurehead
preserved, it says below, at the Maritime Museum of Anversa. If
you look at her from the front she has a doleful expression, but
when she was at the prow, the place for which she was made, she
wasn’t seen from the front; rather she displayed her profile to the
sailors, and that profile is impassible, generic, a clarity unclouded
by any anguish. “Only noble simplicity and serene greatness can
sustain the sight of the Gorgon, bear like a caryatid the intolerable
weight of reality…” Well said in the booklet, but the fact is that
when it comes to us, on the other hand, it comes crashing down on
us, it flattens us, it crushes our head to a pulp. Take a look at those
X-rays in your drawer, at how mushy my brain is.
Just imagine whether the noble, inexpressive face of this figurehead
of Anversa could ever be reduced to this, even Dachau
would leave her cold. How could it be otherwise; inside and out
there is nothing, and nobody can do anything to this nothingness,
no fist can squeeze it and crush it, that’s why I like them so much,
these prow figures. I also like to carve and sculpt them. I wish I
could copy all of them, all the figures in this catalog, unacquainted
with passion, with sorrow, with identity – unaware like that, of
course being immortal would be worth it… It says here that
Thorvaldsen, a master of neoclassic sculpture, served his apprenticeship
in the studio of his father, who carved figureheads for the
Danish fleet – like me, creator of these figures that nobody will be
able to send to forced labor camps.
Look how well they turn out, the torso grows out of a whirlwind
that, at the base, seems to ripple the waves and continue on
to the fluttering garment, an undulating line that will dissolve into
amorphousness, but meanwhile… And those eyes wide open on
the beyond, on imminent, unavoidable catastrophes. Maria’s eyes…
a far cry from mine, blind… there, this is how I do the eyes, carving
out the wood, creating a cavity, only emptiness can sustain the
sight of emptiness; look at how much sawdust there is on the floor,
it’s the eyes of my figureheads, ground up and pulverized, as my
brother Urban used to do with sapphires and emeralds, blue eyes
and green eyes, as cold as the Iceland sea…
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