A cracked heart-shaped stone with carvings lies cracked in a desert landscape.
Inquisitor
He told me to read, and plucked my left eye from its orbit; he slashed the glowing globe of the other. Knowledge leaked out: loose threads dangling, the reverse side of a tapestry.
He told me to speak, and squeezed dry dust between my teeth. I spouted a diet of Catechism and Confession.
He emptied my mind of poetry and history. He destroyed the myths of my people. He filled me with fantasies from a far off land. I live in a desert where people die of thirst, yet he talked to me of a man walking on water.
On all sides, as stubborn as stucco, the prison walls listened, and learned.
I counted the years with feeble scratches: one, four, two, three; for an hour, each day, the sun shone on my face; for an hour, at night, the moon kept me company. Broken worlds lay shattered inside me. Dust gathered in my people’s ancient dictionary.
My heart was a weathered stone withering within my chest. It longed for the witch doctor’s magic, for the healing slash of wind and rain.
The Inquisitor told me to write down our history: I wrote how his church had come to save us.
A group of cloaked figures stands in a dimly lit stone courtyard as they burn ancient scrolls and books in a large central fire.
Image generated by AI
Ryan and Don Roger
5
Book Burnings
In 1492, the Spanish Jews were given the choice of conversion to Catholicism or of being expelled from Spain. Many chose to leave. Those who converted, and remained, were kept under constant supervision. In an effort to stamp out their faith, their books were condemned to the flames by the Spanish Inquisition. A similar burning of the books in Don Quixote’s library occurs in DQI, 6. Is book burning effective? Some people think so. Other people aren’t so sure.
The Spanish conquest of Mexico, led by Hernán Cortés, concluded on August 13, 1521, when Spanish forces and their native Tlaxcalan allies captured the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan and emperor Cuauhtémoc, marking the end of the Aztec Empire and the beginning of Spanish colonial rule. The country was then called New Spain.
Mexico is famous for its codices. These are fan-fold picture histories, drawn on vellum covered with gesso, of tribal conquests, social norms, tables of the gods, in fact a whole cultural and historical record of pre-Hispanic Mexico. The Zouche-Nuttal codex, for example, sets out the conquests of Ocho Venado / Eight Deer, nicknamed Garra de Tigre/ Tiger Claw, a Mixtec warrior, who lived between 1063 and 1115. Five of the Mixtec codices survive. Many, many more were burned. The cover of the Vindobonensis shows the burn marks where some daring person pulled the codex from the flames and saved it. Without such saved codices, we would have much less knowledge of pre-Hispanic Mexico.
Why is this anecdote important? Because prior to the invention of printing, in 1474, manuscripts were written by hand. Yes, some were copied, but many copies were single and unique. Burn the manuscript, destroy the knowledge it contains. Post 1474, with the printing of multiple copies of books, the individual book might be destroyed, but some books would survive from the printing sequence. Apply this to Don Quixote’s library and we note several things. First, Don Quixote’s copies are destroyed. Second, other copies of his books survive elsewhere. In addition, although Don Quixote’s books are burned the ideas in those books survive in the knight’s head and he lives by their rules. Those ideas are spread throughout the history of his adventures to everybody with whom he comes in contact. Conclusion – you can destroy the books. You cannot destroy the ideas that those books contained.
Ray Bradbury, in Farhenheit 451, describes the burning of books in his dystopian novel. 451F incidentally is the temperature at which paper burns. The books are burnt in Bradbury’s world, but the book people survive. The book people are those who memorize their books and are able to quote them from memory and pass them on orally to other people.
And people protect their books. How? By placing them in small rooms within their houses and walling up those rooms so that the books could not be found. This happens in DQI, VI – 6. Don Quixote awakes, goes to find his library, but it has disappeared. The housekeeper swears that a sage enchanter descended on a dragon and the library vanished in a puff of smoke. Don Quixote believes the metatheatrical lie and acts as if it were the truth. He then bemoans the fact that he is pursued by malignant sorcerers. These evil enchanters will pursue him throughout the novel whenever he wakes up from his illusions and is faced by reality. Clearly, the sage enchanters have robbed him of his moment of glory (illusion) and reduced him to sorry (the truth).
Curiously enough, a 16th Century walled-up library was found in a house in Barcarrota, Spain not so long ago. The books were hidden, probably from the Inquisition, so that their owner could escape prosecution. The discovery sheds light on how individuals hid literature from the Inquisition during the 16th century in Spain. It also illustrates how closely Cervantes followed the reality of his times when writing the Quixote.
You can destroy books. But it is very difficult to destroy the ideas they contain. In this fashion, although the burning of that one book ends the life of that particular volume, it rarely ends the life of the ideas contained within its covers. We might not recognize the names of the characters that Don Quixote quotes from his memory of those histories, but many of the people who encounter the knight during his adventures know them and remember them. Amadis of Gaul is never dead, not when his name lives on. The same is true of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. King Arthur is said to fstill be alive and can be seen in the shape of a White Crow, bran gwen, in Welsh. And even Walt Disney knew, and profited from, the legend of the sword in the stone.
We will also see, as we continue our journey, that in the same way that tall oaks grow out of small acorns, large parts of later events found in the Quixote already have their seeds sown in these early chapters. Metatheatre, illusion and reality, authorship and censorship, truth and falsehood, waking events and dream sequences – and that is just the start.
“What is this sound?” It is your own death sighing, groaning, growing while you wait for it to devour you.
“What is this feeling” It is the itch of your own skin wrinkling and shrinking, preparing to wrap you in the last clothes you’ll wear.
“What is this taste?” It is the taste of your life, bottled like summer wine once sweet tasting, now turning to vinegar.
“What is this smell?” It is waste and decay, the loss of all you knew and of all that knew you.
“That carriage outside?” It is the dark hearse come to carry you to your everlasting home.
Comment:
Moo thinks that his portrait of me is perfectly good for this poem. He told me not to rage, rage against the accuracy of the portrait, but he did tell me to rage, rage against the lack of paper. Où est le papier, indeed. As for the rest of it, he said it’s the same for everyone, so stop making a fuss about it. “You’ve got one last bottle of mescal on the shelf,” he told me. “I know. I’ve seen it. Just swig it down, worm and all, and you’ll have nothing to worry about.”
Oh dear. The worm in the bottle. They used to sell the gusanos in Oaxaca’s mescal street at a price of five for ten pesos. I used to buy a two litre coke bottle, filled with mescal from a barrel, and drop ten worms in it. They made yellow streaks as they descended through the liquid. Sweet dreams when you chewed on that lot – and an end to your worries. El brujo, the witch doctor, told me to stick a marijuana plant in the bottle of mescal and when the leaves turned white to rub the liquid into my arthritic knees. “Which doctor was that?” one of the tourists in my apartment block asked me. But I didn’t tell her. Nor did I do it. A waste of good mescal. And to think I now have one last half bottle left. And one little squirmy, crunchy, chewy worm.
Speaking of chewy, crunchy – I had never eaten chapulines, fried grasshoppers, until I went to Oaxaca. I didn’t like the look of them. At the first party I attended was confronted by the host who demanded I eat some. I told him they were taboo, against my religion. He shrugged. When he, and the other guests lost interest in my presence, I tried a couple. They were delicious. A real delicacy. I loved their crunchy little legs.
I guess one is always afraid of the unknown – the gusano in the mescal, the chapulines on the plate, that first plate of calamares en su tinta – squid in its own ink. I love bara lawr – Welsh laver bread – or Welsh caviar, as Richard Burton used to call it. I also know that people who have never eaten bara lawr won’t go near it – it looks like cow pats – but luckily doesn’t taste like them. Don’t ask me how I know. Some people get over their fear of the unknown, others don’t. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.
A sharp-edged double sword, this down-sizing, this clearing out of odds and ends.
Library shelves emptying. books disappearing, one by one.
So many memories trapped between each page, covers, dust-bound now, dust to dust and books to ashes.
Sorrowful, not sweet, each parting, multiple losses, characters never to be met again, except in dreams.
Heroes, thinkers, philosophers, poets, their life work condemned to conflagration.
Alpha: such love at their beginnings. Omega: such despair, with Guy Fawkes celebrations the means to their ends.
Word-fires: the means of forging those book worlds that surrounded us.
Bonfires: the means to end them.
Steadfast, the book-fires, flames fast devouring
all but an occasional volume snatched by burning fingers, from the flames.
Comment:
Funny things, book burnings. Why would anyone burn anything as innocent as a book? Good question. Yet people do. And people always have.
I think back to Don Quixote I, 6 and the Scrutiny of the Library. The Priest and the Barber go through the mad knight’s library and one by one examine the books of chivalry and either spare them, or cast them into the flames. This, in itself is a parody of some of the judicial actions of the Spanish Inquisition. In particular, any book that they considered to be unsafe or heretical went into the flames. Our Spanish Knight, of course, went mad through reading too many books of chivalry – and his brain dried up so that he totally lost all reason.
It is very interesting to read which books were spared and why. Equally interesting to find that many were burned on aesthetic grounds – they were not well written, or they were boring. Fascinating.
Fascinating too the book burnings that took place in Mexico during the Conquest of that country by the Spanish Conquistadores. Many pre-Columbian codices were burned. Priceless treasures and histories lost forever. Some, I think the Vindobonensis, still bear the marks of the flames when they were pulled from the fire in an effort to save them.
Moo tells me that my books will never be burned. And I am thankful for that. I asked why they wouldn’t be and he replied that nobody reads them anyway! Not such a comforting thought. So, in an effort to keep me happy and to preserve my books from the flames, another of my friends laid them out on the beach at Holt’s Point, New Brunswick. They certainly won’t burn when the tide comes in.
More important, I see that junk from Canadian Beaches, dated about 1960, has just arrived on the shores of the European continent, sixty plus years later. So – a floating book, a message, perhaps, in a time-bottle, destined to achieve immortality and live for ever. What a comforting thought for those of us who believe in the time and the tide that wait for no man! But they both might wait for his books.
In my dreams, I track the sails of drifting ships, white moths fluttering before the wind.
I think I have caught them in overnight traps, but they fly each morning in dawn’s unforgiving light.
I give chase with pen and paper, fine butterfly nets with which to catch and tame wild thoughts.
I grasp at things just beyond my fingertips.
I wake up each morning unaware of where I have traveled in my dreams.
Comment:
White moths fluttering before the wind – my dreams at night. How do I trap them, catch them, squeeze them between my fingers, hold them, pin them to the show case of memory? I remember in Oaxaca – the young boys, trapping the moths. Huge, gigantic butterflies, moths, as large as birds. They severed their wings, and sold them to the passing tourists. Such beauty, such colour.
I heard an angry buzzing, looked down, and saw flightless bodies, wings clipped, rowing their stumps of bunt oars, skidding sideways across the gutters, and dreaming painfully of the stars.
BonusPoem
Dreams
White moths fluttering before the wind my dreams at night.
How do I catch them, trap them, pin them in memory’s showcase?
In Oaxaca young boys traps moths. Gigantic moths, huge jungle butterflies, as large as birds.
They cut off their wings, sell them like postcards to passing tourists.
I hear an angry buzzing and look down.
Flightless bodies, wings clipped, rowing stumps of blunt oars, skidding sideways across the gutters dreaming painfully about the stars.
In my dreams, I track the sails of drifting ships, white moths fluttering before the wind.
I think I have caught them in overnight traps, but they fly each morning in dawn’s unforgiving light.
I give chase with pen and paper, fine butterfly nets with which to catch and tame wild thoughts.
I grasp at things just beyond my fingertips.
I wake up each morning unaware of where I have traveled in my dreams.
Comment:
White moths fluttering before the wind – my dreams at night. How do I trap them, catch them, squeeze them between my fingers, hold them, pin them to the show case of memory? I remember in Oaxaca – the young boys, trapping the moths. Huge, gigantic butterflies, moths, as large as birds. They severed their wings, and sold them to the passing tourists. Such beauty, such colour.
I heard an angry buzzing, looked down, and saw flightless bodies, wings clipped, rowing their stumps of bunt oars, skidding sideways across the gutters, and dreaming painfully of the stars.
Flames flow sparkling waters, a cataract of fire, down church walls as the Castillo burns.
Fireworks claw upwards to knock on heaven’s door and waken the sleeping gods reminding them not to forget their people.
A knife edge slices sun from shadow, heat from cool, solombra, Paz calls his neologism with its combination of sun and shade / sol y sombra.
66
I will never forget the taste and smell of my own sweat as I walk beneath the heaviness of a midday sun, its heat falling vertical and rebounding in waves from concrete and cobbles.
I recall the roughness of hand-hewn stone heated by that burning sun, the smoothness of silk contrasting with the harshness of tares in hand-woven wool, marketed in the central square.
Commentary:
Fireworks claw upwards to knock on heaven’s door. The celebrants would buy their rockets in groups of 3, 6, or 12. When the first rocket went up – whoooosh – BANG! – we would wait for the fourth. When the sixth rocket went up, same thing – do they have a full dozen? And when the seventh rocket goes up, indeed, we know they do. Sometimes, we would be woken up in the early morning, as the joyful people returned home after a night of reveling. When that seventh rocket flew skywards – we knew it was useless to try and go back to sleep!
I remember leaving the zócalo one night, turning into a side street, and being met by a wall of people. A whole village, with its accompanying band stood there, waiting. Up went the first rocket, the band started to play, and the dancing broke out. No sleep for the gods that night. Their people needed them and had come knocking on the door. I was always amazed by the way the old gods stood shoulder to shoulder with the new gods of Christianity. The number of people who worshiped both also surprised me.
I last visited Oaxaca in 2001. I wonder how much has changed. I hope the dancing trees never change. Inside them, young children, their eyes peering through the bark, followed the band music. Occasionally, one of them would stop, open his or her tree, and invite you in. Alas, I never had the courage or the skill to accept the invitation. Even by 2001, the traditional carnival figures – monos – were gradually being replaced by Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse. Tragic, in so many ways. I hope they keep the traditions of the rockets and the music and the trees.
I cannot bring you the sounds and smells of my own backyard, let alone those of Oaxaca.
The pungent odour of the first drops of rain, falling from a blue sky into dry dust.
The tang of bees’ wax candles, burning in the cathedral’s darkness where la Virgen de la Soledad clad in black velvet sequined with stars stands on guard in her small side chapel
Nor can I bring you the high notes sung at the golden altar in Santo Domingo by the old woman, dressed in black, who sings here every day.
The central market is a bustle of bursting scents, rooftop goats snicker above me, my neighbor’s German Shepherd patrols the roof-garden and growls in my ear.
Commentary:
Sun and Moon is the first book in the Oaxacan Trilogy – Sun and Moon, At the Edge of Obsidian, Obsidian 22. I travelled to Oaxaca for 6-8 weeks each year between 1995 and 2001. I taught there and also researched the language, the culture, and the Mixtec Codices. Quite simply, my Oaxacan experiences changed my artistic, linguistic, educational, and cultural life. How? I earned to distinguish between what I could, and couldn’t do. A simple lesson, but one that needs to be understood at the deepest level of understanding.
The lessons took in all of my five senses – touch– dry dust, carved wood and stone, the tares in woven blankets -, taste– mole, flor de calabaza -, sight – the castillo burning -, sound – animals, goats and sheep, herded to the market-, smell– the central market is a bustle of bursting scents – hearing – rooftop goats snicker above me. A select few that blended with music of guelaguetza and the dancing that accompanied the village bands. But the experience(s) went beyond that. I began to realize, deep down, who I was, what I was, and, perhaps more importantly, what I wasn’t, what I could never be a part of, what separated myself from the other, the other whom I loved, who loved me, but who could never be a part of me.
Goodrich Castle – Civil War tore down its curtain walls, fired its stables, drove horses and people mad with fear, all destroyed, a way of life, gone overnight.
I stand in the ruins of the solarium beneath towering columns empty now of the stained-glass that would have kept out the rain and retained the sun’s heat.
I imagine standing there, speckled in sunshine, coloured diamonds covering me.
22
I stop in the ruined quad to sniff the air, to imagine the panic, to smell the crackle of burning, to hear the high-pitched screams of dying horses, trapped in the stables.
Sometimes, at night, fate mans the pumps of my blood, and sends fire alarms surging through my veins.
I do not want to die alone, defenseless, besieged by memories that gnaw away my remaining days, like flames.
Commentary:
Memories burn away my remaining days, like flames. Fire controlled, stolen from the gods by Prometheus in Greek Mythology, by Zopilote, the Trickster, in Oaxacan Mythology. I will always recall those early mornings in Oaxaca, standing on the azotea (rooftop) doing my morning exercises in the half light. High above me, Zopilote slowly spiralled. His wings glowed red in the sun that had not yet penetrated to the earth below. As he descended, he brought the sun fire down with him and gifted it to humans.
Fire and flames, under control, in the candle on the table, on the birthday cake, in hearth and fireplace, a life-giving source of heat, light, and energy. Fire and flames, uncontrolled – wild fires in the woods, blazing out of control. It happened last summer. A severe drought, and the woods so dry. A lightning strike – and fire and flame soon raged, out of control. Smoke darkened the skies and the smell of burning hung around for days. So many people evacuated, moving out of their houses with three days, two days, one day’s notice. Sometimes it was so much less. Three hours, two hours, one hour … our community newsletter contained details of what to have ready to cover each of those situations. Very sobering and thought-provoking.
Back now to Goodrich Castle. The occupants trapped inside the walls with no place to go. Horses and livestock trapped in the stables, and those life giving flames now bringing death and misery. “Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can.” Hands up all of you who recognize the author of those lines, a great English poet who is possibly not as well recognized as he ought to be. I know who he is, but I’ll leave you guessing and googling! Go on, Google him. I know you want to!
Some days I feel you are slipping away, sliding slowly into yourself, losing all thoughts and feelings in your mind’s twisting maze of secret ways.
It gets harder and harder for me to drag you away from the color tv and back into the black and white realities of the daily life we used to share.
I do my best. I drive you out for a daily walk in the local park. I do the shopping on my own, selecting the groceries I think will please you.
I pick up your prescriptions from the pharmacy. I prepare a croissant sandwich for your lunch. Every night, I cook you the supper of your choice.
The possibility of losing you starts to affect me. Already I am feeling alone and desperate and I grieve for that which I might lose, your active presence.
What is happening to us? Is it just old age? The longer it goes on, the more it seems that you are like a sailing ship at sea, diminishing in the distance, or like early November snow, slowly fading away.
Commentary:
Moo liked this poem. He thought that First Snow was an excellent choice for the painting. This is Canada. We all know how that first, early snow storm can suddenly drift away into nothingness. The original poem ended with the line ‘like a sailing ship at sea, diminishing in the distance’ but Moo begged me to add another line – and so I did ‘or like early November snow, slowly fading away’. Good old Moo, he mothers me like a mother duck with only one duckling. He has some good ideas, though, and I love some of his paintings. It’s Thanksgiving Monday in Canada today and yes, we can all give thanks for Moo and his paintings! Well, I can anyway. So, here goes – thank you Moo.
Not that there’s any early snow here. Not yet, anyway. Frost yes, but last year I only used the snowblower on three occasions. That is a crazy winter. We used to get nine feet of winter snow here in Island View, and when the spring melt came, our black Labrador retriever could swim around the block in the flooded ditches. Now we scarcely get enough water to fill the aquifer and we live in fear of a water shortage that may, next year or the year after, dry up our wells. “De Nile ain’t just a river in Egypt.” No water shortage yet this year – but we are being very, very careful with our water usage. The St. John River is lower than anyone can remember – four feet down at least as it descends towards the sea. And that is not good news for anyone. “Those who have eyes, but will not see until the river fails to reach the sea.”
Many of us care. And we all do our little bit. No watering the lawns. No washing the car. No watering the flowers. Use the dish-washer once every few days, one weekly load, not multiple daily loads. Don’t leave the tap running while you brush your teeth. When they stayed with us, our friends from Oaxaca looked on in astonishment at the amount f water we wasted. We learned a great deal about water conservation from them. I must include them in my Thanksgiving Thanks as well.
rogermoorepoet 