Historia del guerrero y de la cautiva [Story of the Warrior and the Captive Maiden] Edición bilingüe, español- inglés, de Miguel Garci-Gomez. Dept. Romance Stydies --
EN LA PÁGINA 278 del libro La poesía (Bari, 1942), Croce, abreviando un texto latino del historiador Pablo el Diácono, narra la suerte y cita el epitafio de Droctulft; éstos me conmovieron singularmente, luego entendí por qué. Fue Droctulft un guerrero lombardo que en el asedio de Ravena abandonó a los suyos y murió defendiendo la ciudad que antes había atacado. Los raveneses le dieron sepultura en un templo y compusieron un epitafio en el que manifestaron su gratitud (“contespsit caros, dum nos amat ille, parentes”) y el peculiar contraste que se advertía entre la figura atroz de aquel bárbaro y su simplicidad y bondad:
La poesia (Bari, 1942), Croce, summarizing and shortening a Latin text by the historian Paul the Deacon, tells the story of the life of Droctulft and quotes his epi taph; I found myself remarkably moved by both life and epitaph, and later I came to understand why. Droctulft was a Lombard warrior who during the siege of Ravenna deserted his own army and died defending the city he had been attacking. The people of Raven na buried him in a church sanctuary; they composed an epitaph in which they expressed their gratitude (contempsitcaros dumnos amatille parentes) and remarked upon the singular contrast between the horrific figure of that barbarian and his simplicity and kindness:
Terribilis viste facies mente benignus, Longaque robusto pectores barba fuit!
(Tambíén Gibbon (Decline and Fall, XLV) transcribe estos versos).
terribilis VISU facies sedmente benignus, LONGA QUEROBUSTO PECTORE BARBA FUIT
(Gibbon also records these lines, in the Decline and Fall, Chapter XLV.)
Tal es la historia del destino de Droctulft, bárbaro que murió defendiendo a Roma, o tal es el fragmento de su historia que pudo rescatar Pablo el Diácono- Ni siquiera sé en qué tiempo ocurrió: si al promediar el siglo vi, cuando los longobardos desolaron las llanuras de Italia;, si en el VIII, antes de la rendición de Ravena. Imaginemos (éste no es un trabajo histórico) lo primero.
Such is the story of the life of Droctulft, a barbarian who died defending Rome — or such is th e fragment of his story that Paul the Deacon was able to preserve. I do not even know when the event occurred, whether in the mid - sixth century when the Longobards laid waste to the plains of Italy or in the eighth, before Ravenna′s surrender. Let us imagi ne (this is not a work of history) that it was the mid - sixth century.
Imaginemos, sub specie aeternitatis, a Droctulft, no al individuo Droctulft, que sin duda fue único e insondable (todos los individuos lo son), sino al tipo genérico que de él y de otros muchos como él ha hecho la tradición, que es obra del olvidó y de la memoria. A través de una oscura geografía de selvas y de ciénagas, las guerras lo trajeron a Italia, desde las márgenes del Danubio y del Elba, y tal vez no sabía que iba al Stir y tal vez no sabía que guerreaba contra el nombre romano. Quizá profesaba el arrianismo, que mantiene que la gloria del Hijo es reflejo de la gloria del Padre, pero más congruente es imaginarlo devoto de la Tierra, de Hertha, cuyo ídolo tapado iba de cabaña en cabaña en un carro tirado por vacas, o de los dioses de la guerra y del trueno, que eran torpes figuras de madera, envueltas en ropa tejida y recargadas de monedas y ajorcas. Venía de las selvas inextricables del jabalí y del uro; era blanco, animoso, inocente, cruel, leal a su capitán y a su tribu, no al universo. Las guerras lo traen a Ravena y ahí ve algo que no ha visto jamás, o que no ha visto con plenitud. Ve el día y los cipreses y el mármol. Ve un conjunto, que es múltiple sin desorden; ve una ciudad, un organismo hecho de estatuas, de templos, de jardines, de habitaciones, de gradas, de jarrones, de capiteles, de espacios regulares y abiertos. Ninguna de esas fábricas (lo sé) lo impresiona por bella; lo tocan como ahora nos tocaría una maquínaria compleja, cuyo fin ignoráramos, pero en cuyo diseño se adivinara una inteligencia inmortal. Quizá le basta ver un solo arco, con una incomprensible inscripción en eternas letras romanas. Bruscamente lo ciega y lo renueva esa revelación, la Ciudad. Sabe que en ella será un perro, o un niño, y que no empezará siquiera a entenderla, pero sabe también que ella vale más que sus dioses y que la fe jurada y que tódas las ciénagas de Alemania. Droctulft abandona a los′ suyos y pelea por Ravena. Muere, y en la sepultura graban palabras que él no hubiera entendido:
Let us imagine Droctulft sub specie aeternitatis — not the individual Droctulft, who was undoubtedly unique and fathomless (as all individuals are), but rather the generic "type" that tr adition (the work of memory and forgetting) has made of him and many others like him. Through a gloomy geography of swamps and forests, wars bring him from the shores of the Danube or the Elba to Italy, and he may not realize that he is going toward the so uth, nor know that he is waging war against a thing called Rome. It is possible that his faith is that of the Arians, who hold that the glory of the Son is a mere reflection of the glory of the Father, but it seems more fitting to imagine him a worshiper o f the earth, Hertha, whose veiled idol is borne from hut to hut in a cart pulled by cattle — or of the gods of war and thunder, who are crude wooden figures swathed in woven clothing and laden with coins and bangles. He comes from the dense forests of the wi ld boar and the urus; he is white, courageous, innocent, cruel, loyal to his captain and his tribe — not to the universe. Wars bring him to Ravenna, and there he sees something he has never seen before, or never fully seen. He sees daylight and cypresses and marble. He sees an aggregate that is multiple yet without disorder; he sees a city, an organism, composed of statues, temples, gardens, rooms, tiered seats, amphorae, capitals and pediments, and regular open spaces. None of those artifices (I know this) s trikes him as beautiful; they strike him as we would be struck today by a complex machine whose purpose we know not but in whose design we sense an immortal intelligence at work. Perhaps a single arch is enough for him, with its incomprehensible inscriptio n of eternal Roman letters — he is suddenly blinded and renewed by the City, that revelation. He knows that in this city there will be a dog, or a child, and that he will not even begin to understand it, but he knows as well that this city is worth more than his gods and the faith he is sworn to and all the marshlands of Germany. Droctulft deserts his own kind and fights for Ravenna. He dies, and on his gravestone are carved words that he would not have understood:
Contempsit caros, dum nos amat ille, parentes,Hanc patriam reputans esse, Ravenna, suam.
Contempsit caros dum nos amat ille parentes , Hanc patriam reputans esse, Ravenna, suam
No fue un traidor (los traidores no suelen inspirar epitafios piadosos); fue un iluminado, un converso. Al cabo de unas cuantas generaciones, los longobardos que culparon al tránsfuga procedieron como él; se hicieron italianos; lombardos y acaso alguno cíe su sangre —Aldiger— pudo engendrar a quienes engendraron al Alighieri... Muchas conjeturas cabe aplicar al acto de Droctulft; la mía es la más económica; si no es verdadera como hecho, lo será como símbolo.
Droctulft was not a traitor; traitors seldom inspire reverential epitaphs. He was an illuminatus, a convert. After many generations, the Longobards who had heaped blame upon the turncoat did as he had done; t hey became Italians, Lombards, and one of their number — Aldiger — may have fathered those who fathered Alighieri.... There are many conjectures one might make about Droctulft′s action; mine is the most economical; if it is not true as fact, it may nevertheles s be true as symbol.
Cuando leí en el libro de Croce la historia del guerrero, ésta me conmovió de manera insólita y tuve la impresión de recuperar, bajo forma diversa, algo que había sido mío. Fugazmente pensé en los jinetes mogoles que querían hacer de la China un infinito campo de pastoreo y luego envejecieron en las ciudades que habían anhelado destruir; no era ésta la memoria que yo buscaba. La encontré al fin; era un relato que le oí alguna vez a mi abuela inglesa, que ha muerto.
When I read the story of this warrior in Croce′s book, I found myself enormously moved, and I was struck by the sense that I was recovering, under a different guise, something that had once been my own. I fleetingly thought of the Mo ngol horsemen who had wanted to make China an infinite pastureland, only to grow old in the cities they had yearned to destroy; but that was not the memory I sought. I found it at last — it was a tale I had heard once from my English grandmother, who is now dead.
En 1872 mi abuelo Borges era jefe de las fronteras Norte y Oeste de Buenos Aires y Sur de Santa Fe. La comandancia estaba en Junín; más allá, a cuatro o cinco leguas uno de otro, la cadena de los fortines; más allá, lo que se denominaba entonces la Pampa y también Tierra Adentro. Alguna vez, entre maravillada y burlona, mi abuela comentó su destino de inglesa desterrada a ese fin del mundo; le dijeron que no era la única y le señalaron, meses después, una muchacha india que atravesaba lentamente la plaza. Vestía dos mantas coloradas e iba descalza; sus crenchas eran rubias. Un soldado le dijo que otra inglesa quería hablar con ella. La mujer asintió; entró en la comandancia sin temor, pero no sin recelo. En la cobriza cara, pintarrajeada de colores feroces, los ojos eran de ese azul desganado que los ingleses llaman gris. El cuerpo era ligero, como de cierva; las manos, fuertes y huesudas. Venía del desierto, de Tierra Adentro y todo parecía quedarle chico: las puertas, las paredes, los muebles.
In 1872 my grandfather Borges was in charge of the northern and western borders of Buenos Aires province and the southern border of Santa Fe. The headquarters was in Junin; some four or five leagues farther on lay the chain of forts; beyond that, wh at was then called "the pampas" and also "the interior." One day my grandmother, half in wonder, half in jest, remarked upon her fate — an Englishwoman torn from her country and her people and carried to this far end of the earth. The person to whom she mad e the remark told her she wasn′t the only one, and months later pointed out an Indian girl slowly crossing the town square. She was barefoot, and wearing two red ponchos; the roots of her hair were blond. A soldier told her that another Englishwoman wanted to talk with her. The woman nodded; she went into the headquarters without fear but not without some misgiving. Set in her coppery face painted with fierce colors, her eyes were that half - hearted blue that the English call gray. Her body was as light as a deer′s; her hands, strong and bony. She had come in from the wilderness, from "the interior," and everything seemed too small for her — the doors, the walls, the furniture.
Quizá las dos mujeres por un instante se sintieron hermanas, estaban lejos de su isla querida y en un increíble país. Mi abuela enunció alguna pregunta; la otra le respondió con dificultad, buscando las palabras y repitiéndolas, como asombrada de un antiguo sabor. Haría quince años que no hablaba el idioma natal y no le era fácil recuperarlo. Dijo que era de Yorkshire, que sus padres emigraron a Buenos Aires, que los había perdido en un malón, que la habían llevado los indios y que ahora era mujer de un capitanejo, a quien ya había dado dos hijos y que era muy valiente. Eso lo fue diciendo en un inglés rústico, entreverado de araucano o de pampa, y detrás del relato se vislumbraba una vida feral: los toldos de cuero de caballo, las hogueras de estiércol, los festines de carne chamuscada o cíe vísceras crudas, las sigilosas marchas al alba; el asalto de los corrales, el alarido y el saqueo, la guerra, el caudaloso arreo de las haciendas por jinetes, desnudos, la poligamia, la hediondez y la magia. A esa barbarie se había rebajado una inglesa. Movida por la lástima y el escándalo, mi abuela la exhortó a no volver. juró ampararla, juró rescatar a sus hijos. La otra le contestó que era feliz y volvió, esa noche, al desierto. Francisco Borges moriría poco después, en la revolución del 74; quizá mi abuela, entonces, pudo percibir en la otra mujer, también arrebatada y transformada por este continente implacable, un espejo monstruoso de su destino...
Perhaps for one instant the two women saw that they were sisters; they were far fro m their beloved island in an incredible land. My grandmother, enunciating carefully, asked some question or other; the other woman replied haltingly, searching for the words and then repeating them, as though astonished at the old taste of them. It must ha ve been fifteen years since she′d spoken her native language, and it was not easy to recover it. She said she was from Yorkshire, that her parents had emigrated out to Buenos Aires, that she had lost them in an Indian raid, that she had been carried off by the Indians, and that now she was the wife of a minor chieftain — she′d given him two sons; he was very brave. She said all this little by little, in a clumsy sort of English interlarded with words from the Araucan or Pampas tongue,* and behind the tale one caught glimpses of a savage and uncouth life: tents of horsehide, fires fueled by dung, celebrations in which the people feasted on meat singed over the fire or on raw viscera, stealthy marches at dawn; the raid on the corrals, the alarm sounded, the plun der, the battle, the thundering roundup of the stock by naked horsemen, polygamy, stench, and magic. An Englishwoman, reduced to such barbarism! Moved by outrage and pity, my grandmother urged her not to go back. She swore to help her, swore to rescue her children. The other woman answered that she was happy, and she returned that night to the desert. Francisco Borges was to die a short time later, in the Revolution of ′74; perhaps at that point my grandmother came to see that other woman, torn like herself from her own kind and transformed by that implacable continent, as a monstrous mirror of her own fate....
Todos los años, la india rubia solía llegar a las pulperías de Junín, o del Fuerte Lavalle, en procura de baratijas y “vicios”; no apareció, desde la conversación con mi abuela. Sin embargo, se vieron otra vez. Mi abuela había salido a cazar; en un rancho, cerca de los bañados, un hombre degollaba una oveja. Como en un sueño, pasó la india a caballo. Se tiró al suelo y bebió la sangre caliente. No sé si lo hizo porque ya no podía obrar tic otro modo, o como un desafío y un signo.
Every year, that blond - haired Indian woman had come into the pulperías* in Junin or Fort Lavalle, looking for trinkets and "vices"; after the conver sation with my grandmother, she never appeared again. But they did see each other one more time. My grandmother had gone out hunting; alongside a squalid hut near the swamplands, a man was slitting a sheep′s throat. As though in a dream, the Indian woman r ode by on horseback. She leaped to the ground and drank up the hot blood. I cannot say whether she did that because she was no longer capable of acting in any other way, or as a challenge, and a sign.
Mil trescientos años y el mar median entre el destino de la cautiva y el destino de Droctulft. Los dos, ahora, son igualmente irrecuperables. La figura del bárbaro que abraza la causa de Ravena, la figura de la mujer europea que opta por el desierto, pueden parecer antagónicos- Sin embargo, a los dos los arrebató un ímpetu secreto, un ímpetu más hondo que la razón, y los dos acataron ese ímpetu que no hubieran sabido justificar. Acaso las historias que he referido son una sola historia. El anverso y el reverso de esta moneda son, para Dios, iguales./td>
Thirteen hundred years and an ocean lie between the st ory of the life of the kidnapped maiden and the story of the life of Droctulft. Both, now, are irrecoverable. The figure of the barbarian who embraced the cause of Ravenna, and the figure of the European woman who chose the wilderness — they might seem confl icting, contradictory. But both were transported by some secret impulse, an impulse deeper than reason, and both embraced that impulse that they would not have been able to explain. It may be that the stories I have told are one and the same story. The obv erse and reverse of this coin are, in the eyes of God, identical.