David Markson: Vanishing Point. Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2004.
David Markson obtuvo el favor de la crítica tras publicar con más de sesenta años Wittgenstein’s Mistress (Dalkey Archive Press, 1988). El manuscrito original fue rechazado en cincuenta y cuatro ocasiones. El tema de fondo en la novela de Markson es el solipsismo, tópico del que también se ocuparon recurrentemente Ludwig Wittgenstein y Samuel Beckett. Así, por ejemplo, la duda cartesiana de Wittgenstein en Sobre la certeza o el monólogo solitario del protagonista en Compañía de Beckett. Dos libros inolvidables: léelos.
En Wittgenstein’s Mistress Markson va desgranando los pensamientos heterogéneos de una mujer que se cree la última habitante del planeta. Pensamientos como ruinas de una ciudad bombardeada. Todo cabe, todo se mezcla: de Zenón de Elea a Willem De Kooning. El resultado final es a la literatura lo mismo que Pollock a la pintura.
En décadas posteriores Markson refinó el estilo de Wittgenstein’s Mistress en cuatro novelas de superior calidad e imprescindible lectura: Reader’s Block (Dalkey Archive Press, 1996), This Is Not A Novel (Counterpoint, 2001), Vanishing Point (Shoemaker & Hoard, 2004) y The Last Novel (Shoemaker & Hoard, 2007).
El título es la primera incógnita. La traducción de Vanishing Point es «punto de fuga«, el lugar donde confluyen todas las líneas del cuadro para crear la ilusión de la perspectiva. Pero la novela de Markson carece de punto de fuga, es un collage.
El narrador es el propio Markson que se autodenomina «Autor«. Aparece en escena con los problemas habituales de la vejez: pérdida de memoria, de orina, de movilidad, de identidad. Todo lo que sabe, todo lo que es, está a punto de desvanecerse (en este caso sí: Vanishing Point) así que recopila de modo anárquico anécdotas y pensamientos en fichas de tres por cinco que guarda en dos cajas de zapatos. ¿Es este caos lo que se espera de una novela? Evidentemente no, pero da igual, porque como dice Willem de Kooning en el epígrafe con que comienza Vanishing Point:
Every so often, a painter has to destroy painting. Cézanne did it. Picasso did it with cubism. Then Pollock did it. He busted our idea of a picture all to hell.
A pesar de todo, se puede decir que, si bien no existe en la novela un único punto de fuga, sí que hay varias obsesiones que la atraviesan desde el principio hasta el final. Por ejemplo:
1. El proceso creativo.
Actually, Author could have begun to type some weeks ago. For whatever reason, he’s been procrastinating. (p. 3)
Living in a single attic room in The Hague for the last seven years before his death at forty-four, Spinoza was known to sometimes go as long as three full months without once stepping out of doors. (p. 7)
I do at least three paintings a day in my head. What’s the use of spoiling canvas when nobody will buy anything? Said Modigliani, penniless in Paris in mid-twenties. (p. 7)
Alprazolam. (p. 142)
2. Ideas explosivas.
The greatest work of art ever, Karlheinz Stockhausen called the destruction of the World Trade Center. (p. 8)
On the wall in Gerhard Richter’s studio at the time also – a photo of the same event. (p. 9)
3. La mística.
William Blake, at thirty, witnessed the death from consumption of his younger brother Robert –
And insisted he had seen Robert’s soul rising throung the ceiling and clapping its hands for joy. (pp. 11-12)Blake’s portraits of Mohammed, Canute, Owen Glendower, Wat Tyler, Lot, William Wallace, and others.
All of whom he insisted had posed for him, in visitations (p. 36)
4. Las peculiaridades del genio.
Richard Wagner’s pink underwear (p. 11)
As he grew older, W H. Auden was known for living in extraordinary filth. His own brother acknowledeged that he frequently urinated in his kitchen sink.
He is the dirtiest man I have ever liked, Stravinsky said of him.(p. 13)T. S. Eliot was afraid of cows (p. 15)
Did El Greco use hashish? (p. 17)
From a Hemingway letter, on T. S. Eliot:
A damned good poet and a fair critic; but he can kiss my ass as a man. (p. 30)A fraud and a fake, Nabokov called Eliot (p. 80)
Spinoza’s queer insistance that he found it almost impossible to believe he had ever been a child (p. 121)
Jackson Pollock was classified 4F because of psychiatric problems and thus never drafted in World War II. (p. 153)
Proust’s deathbed photo. By Man Ray. (p. 127)
5. El antisemitismo.
The inner truth and greatness of Nazism, Martin Heidegger spoke of (p. 19)
Asses loaded with books.
Mohammed, who could not read or write, dismissed the Jews as. (p. 22)Giacomo Meyerbeer selflessly gave Richard Wagner all manner of aid at the start of Wagner’s career.
For which in turn Wagner later scurrilously denigrated him in an anti-Semitic pamphlet.
Anonymously. (p. 34)
6. La Filosofía.
How many things there are in this world that I do not want. Said Socrates, strolling through a marketplace in Athens. (p. 15)
The poet shall compose nothing contrary to the ideas of the lawful, or just, or beautiful, or good, which are allowed by the state.
Said Plato. (p. 90)Thales of Miletus, asked why he never became a father: Because I love children (p.111)
7. La catástrofe y la miseria de la crítica.
As if painted with mud. Hideous. Irremediable. Like the designs schoolchildren make by squeezing flies between the folds of a sheet of paper. Worse.
Being but few of the more typical critical comments on Cézanne in the year or so before his death (p. 23)
Georges Seurat, who was dead at thirty-one.
And had sold only two paintings in his life. (p. 26)
If on a winter’s night with no other source of warmth Author were to burn a Julian Schnabel, qualms?
Qualmless (p. 104)
Willem de Kooning did not have his first one-man show until he was forty-three. (p. 116)
8. La música
Brahms was forty-three before he completed his first symphony.
A symphony is no joke – unquote. (p. 24)
Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time -which was composed and first performed in a German prisoner-of-war camp (p. 156)
9. La pintura
The George Grosz drawing of Jesus, crucified, wearing a gas mask and combat boots, and captioned Shut up and carry your orders.
Dated 1928.
The Max Ernst painting of the Virgin Mary spanking the infant Jesus. (p. 167)
10. La muerte.
No one truly believes in his own death
Said Freud (p. 184)Selah (191)
Aula de Filosofía de Eugenio Sánchez Bravo. 