[ TBP ] Manon Lescaut

Paris, mid-18th century: an intriguing destination for time travelers of thought. Who wouldn’t indulge in walking down those magnificent alleys where legend crossed paths with history, thickening a set of plots so retold and yet too mystifying for the modern eye to fully conceive?

Paris is the place where the fearless thinkers of Humanity first confronted their spiteful social habits. It’s the everlasting capital for an omnipresent nation of romantics. An amazing Arena where passion and destiny collided. It couldn’t be but in those streets that Manon Lescaut meets her Chevalier; it’s a fair place for the Chevalier des Grieux to be held eternally captive to the love of his life.

It’s probably some sort of unconscious jaundice coming from the amateur writer in me that managed to prevent me from acknowledging (whole-heartedly and from the start) that an author could actually have meant for all the hidden meanings and interpretations the analysts grant his work with.

How could a relatively short and humbly-narrated story manage to underline the clear distinction between carnal and emotional faith, and at the same time speak out for a woman’s right to define and manage her sexuality? It’s the pre-romantic era for God’s sake, and yet, Abbé Prévost came to shoot down all my medieval convictions by giving me a character so true and fascinating such as Manon: a woman whose sole inheritance was her outspoken passion for life; a lady whose entire graciousness emanated from gratifying her need for pleasure; a persona we never actually get, who’s hard to interpret, that was –yet– granted selfless love for as long as she lived. This book framed my jealousy in so many different ways…

Such a collection of interesting notions I inherited after immersing my head into the fiction of the relationship between Manon and des Grieux. I realized that I don’t know Manon at all, and yet I found it easy in myself to judge her too harshly. Although the story is constantly narrated by des Grieux and all I can see is his point of view –there is not even a description to Manon’s way of speaking her mind– I found myself forming the world’s most sinister opinion around this woman, not long after the very first chapter of the book! I’m positive that this feeling of mine had nothing to do with Abbé Prévost’s intentions: he only managed to show me in the most prolific way how superficial and skin deep I can be, whenever I come across a person who dares in things that I sometimes feel I wouldn’t...

And that shocking idea of mental fidelity as a self-standing form of bonding, totally unrelated to physical contact; what a brain-maze that was! To hear a couple momentarily parley the concept, made it potent in my head! I could even word it my own way: “Worry not, my love, for our hearts are eternally conjoint. I am and always will be your significant other, yet my body needs to take a separate way. But I remain true to you, in a form that no man could ever comprehend or transcribe. I am yours till death do us part, but only by breaking our physical bond can I ensure our survival”. Come to think of it, by not sticking to that initial rule, someone died in the end…

I am not good at analyzing other people’s work; I see that, now. I’m not even disciplined enough to stay within the assignment’s word limit. However, there might be hope that I’m not so bad in analyzing the emotional marks that other people’s art leaves in me. And it’s this story, of the Chevalier des Grieux and of Manon Lescaut, which helped me draw up, still breathing and unharmed, parts of my serenity I thought lost for good.

I’m a better person than I was some time ago, although I retain some substantial amounts of guilt for the moments of weakness in my life when I seem to have ignored the miraculous fact that I, being almost as capricious as Manon, remain blessed with a noble man’s immaculate loyalty and affection.

Ριζόχαρτο

Το κάρβουνο έτριζε πνιχτά μες τ' ακροδάχτυλα του Αγοριού.
Το μεσημέρι εναπόθετε εαυτόν στην αγκαλιά της ιστορίας,
κι εγώ αναμασούσα μ’ εμμονή την πρωινή μου αερόφουσκα.
Κι ήταν το σκούρο τρίμμα μυροβόλημα για να ξεσκίζει την κλεισούρα,
και το μειδίαμά του άκαμπτο, στο στόχο του δοσμένο:
θα μου σχημάτιζε έναν πρίγκιπα· θα τον απόθετε στον τόπο του·
πτωχό από παλάτια κι άλογα, μ’ ένα τρανό γαρύφαλλο για έγνοια.

Πα στο λευκότατο ριζόχαρτο, χρωματισμοί του μαύρου·
κι εγώ ανυπόμονα κρατούσα τη σειρά στο χτύπημα των ρολογιών.
Και το Aγόρι πάνοπλο, κάρφωνε στη μονοτονία μου ίντριγκες σχημάτων:
δεν είναι, δα, αθώες οι γραμμές σα γίνονται καμπύλες·
κι ούτε οι γωνιές ενδείκνυται να μένουν αναπάντητες.
Του κάκου, όμως, εμμονή: απόκριση δε δόθηκε.

Κι έτσι και έγινε, με μιας, στην τόση αποσύνθεση,
με μια καρδιά πεντάρφανη κι ένα μυαλό στους έξι ανέμους,
κι έμεινε ατέρμονα ατέλειωτο ένα πτωχό μ' αθώο σχέδιο:
βορά εξ’ ημισείας κολπωμένη σε προσδοκία και κατάπληξη.

Κι ο έρμος παρ' ολίγον πρίγκηψ μου, που έτσι δε χάρηκε το βιός του,
παρ’ ότι δεν εκλείψαν απ' τη γη ούτε τα ωραία υλικά μηδέ οι καλοί τεχνίτες,
παρηγορείται ολημερίς, όπως κι εγώ μαζί του, μ’ ένα ριζόχαρτο παρέκει:
στους κόλπους του γεννήθηκε, λαμπρή, η πιο αγνή Βασιλοπούλα.

[ TBP ] The Fiction of Relationship

The minute I found myself typing the phrase in a distinguished dictionary service, it struck me: I am doing it all wrong. “Define: relationship” I wrote; all I remember from that point onward is a pure need to replace the internet browser’s window with a blank sheet of digital paper. 

I felt it to my mental bone: little can epistemology do in providing with a definition to “relationship” (other than informing me that it’s a twelve-letter noun), in the same way that dictionaries could prove inadequate in covering the multiple aspects of “fiction”.

And it’s this incessant frenzy of our era, urging us to accumulate no more than mere facts and figures, which drove me to hand-pick a direction so irrelevant to begin with: one cannot simply explore terms mentally, unless one allows his emotions to get deeply involved. 

Unless I have actually felt (or am willing to feel) the true dimensions of “relationship”, I am doomed to mentally suffer my way through social self-consciousness; and if I do not refrain from urges forcing me to limit my perspectives to mere paradox or post-modern criticism, I am in no position to distinguish all aspects of “fiction”. 

That said, there's a chance I might see more clearly now:
The “Fiction of Relationship” is not a controversy.
It’s not a principle either.

For all I know, it could be a creative perspective under a humanized form, exhausted by its suffering journey to incarnation, seeking for a sanatorium and a chance to re-invent itself.
It’s a seed I am willing to take in; how it flourishes remains to be seen…