221 CHRONICLESnQuartet (Quarteto)nby Octavio Pazn(translated by Michael Schmidt)nOre, fermate il volone, carolando intornona I’alba mattutinanch’esce de la marina,nI’umana vita ritardate e’l giorno.n— TassonI.nKNOWN yet always strange, the lie of the land,nthe riddle of the palm of one’s own hand.nThe ocean sculpts in each wave, stubbornly,nthe monument in which it falls away.nAgainst the sea, a will that’s turned to rock,nthe faceless headland keeps the sea in check.nThe clouds: they are inventing sudden baysn—where a plane is a barque that melts away.nThe rapid scribbling of the birds aboven— others are fishing where the water moves.nBetween the sea-foam and the sand I tread,nthe sun is resting light upon my head:nbetween what’s static and what will not staynin me the elements enact their play.nII.nTHERE are tourists also on this strand,ndeath in a bikini, death with jewelled hand,nthere are rumps and bellies, loins, lungs, thighs,na cornucopia of bland enormities,na scattered abundance that precedesnthe meal of ashes where the worm will feed.nAdjacent, yet divided by those linesnstrictly kept but tacit, undefined,nare vendors, and the stalls where fries are sold.nthrough 25 centuries and because they read backwards intonthat chronicle the evolution of system-formation fromnThales to Wittgenstein and Ricoeur.nAnother by-product of the “revisionist” view is thenrehabilitation of religion as an enterprise in which thengreatest minds of the West engaged. If, from Augustine tonGilson, it is said that one cannot philosophize withoutntaking religion into account, we have Plato’s confirmingntestimony that the philosopher must have fair thoughts andnlive a good life in order to qualify.nThis would leave our academic philosophers and Ph.D.’snout on a limb and would mean that they are unable to teachntheir discipline because it cannot be learned from twice-aweekncourses or from so-tagged Great Books. Our studentsnwant an A, in philosophy not less than in home economics,nand are not ready to devote their lives to sophia unless she isna pretty coed.nBut let us draw a more substantial lesson. It is notnrelativism to say that things change according to the viewernnnand panders, parasites, untouchables,nthe rags of poor men and the poor man’s bones.nThe rich are stingy while the poor man fawns:nGod loves them not, nor do they love themselves:n’each does but hate his neighbour as himself.’nIII.nTHE wind breaks forth and gathers up the grove,nthe nations of cloud disperse above.nThe real is fragile, v/avering, unsuren— also, its law is change, it does not tire.nRound and round the wheel of seemings spinsnupon a fixity: the axis time.nLight sketches all and then turns all to flame,nwith daggers that are brands it stabs the mainnand makes the world a pyre of mirrorings:nwe are mere white horses of the sea.nIt’s not Plotinus’s light, it’s earthly light,na light of here, but it is thoughtful light.nIt brings, between me and my exile, peace:nmy home this light, its shifting emptiness.nIV.nTO wait for nightfall, I have stretched myselfnunder the shadow of a throbbing tree.nThe tree is a woman in whose leavesnI hear the ocean roll beneath noon heat.nI eat her fruits that have the taste of time,nfruits of forgetfulness, fruits of wisdom.nBeneath the tree, the images and thoughtsnand words regard each other, touch.nThrough the body we return where we began,nspiral of stillness and of motion.nTo taste, to know—it is finite, this pause:nit has beginning, end—is measureless.nNight enters and it rolls us in its wake;nthe sea repeats its syllables, now black.nand the perspective — in our case, that philosophy is not thensearch for truth but a personal conversion because, obviously,nthe disciple of Plotinus had little in common with thenadept of Epicurus. Only through this wider grasp can wenadvance to the overall ideal of ancient philosophy: findingnamong the itineraries of conversion the privileged one, thenvia recta. Yet the last thing that the post-Kantian era, innwhich we are still orbiting, would suppose is that spiritualnexercises (Hadot refers to those of Ignatius of Loyola) werenat the heart of Greek wisdom. Our philosophy lessonsnusually begin with the Cartesian cogito or, nowadays, withnthe structure of language which is said to determine it. Atnany rate, the modern student’s first encounter with philosophynis a thorough skepticism in regard to the outside world,nas well as to his own existence. Cogitur (it thinks) is thenwatchword three centuries after Descartes. How does it feelnfor student and professor to be told that the gray plasternbusts of Greek sages do not hide iconoclastic inquiries, butnways of going beyond mere self and seeking out the Good?n