Blacksmiths of Better Stories

Author: Aljoša Pužar

No one really knows if Hermes Trismestigus or Mercurius Trice-Greatest actually put together the Emerald Tablet, the Tabula Smaragdina. After all, he was a patched-up Greek-Egyptian God, an invented king who was thought to have written smartly and abundantly. Yet, the same is believed of other invented gods and patched-up kings of today. As it were, for the generations of Islamic and Christian philosophers, alchemists, and mysticists, the biggest truth was carried through centuries by the first two lines of this very emerald table. “Truth! Certainty! That in which there is no doubt! What is above is like what is below. What is below is like what is above. Together to make the miracle of the One.” A hypothetical Daoistic source and many later versions see this relation as more than just a copy-paste one: what is below is from what is above, and what is above is from what is below, creating a unique beautiful miracle – Dao. Big cosmos is all in the small one, and the small one is all in the big one: in a snowflake, in the neurons of the field mouse, in the stars of the Milky Way, in the cosmic or divine spark of the spirit that writes and the one that reads.

We don’t know whether Antonio Puzar, the blacksmith residing in 30 Via Veruda in Pula, wrote or read something. We don’t even know which gods’ names were on his lips when he was recruited to the Austrian Imperial Cavalry in 1889. Born in Pazin, in a family that public authorities wrote down as alloglot, “of the other language”, and which arrived some two hundred and fifty years earlier from Chakavian Bosnian lands when they were raided by the Ottomans. Still, this particular Antonio, unlike many of his relatives, was not labelled as “of the other language” in the military archives of Trieste. It is written next to his name that he is italophone, that his language is Italian. They wrote this note in a seemingly careless, underhand way, always in the section intended for marital status. In the empty space between sections “Married with the permission of…” and “Became a widower…” they fit, in only a few letters, the language, the origin, and the state of literacy. An entire quasi-universe of big and small politics, migrations, hopes, and strivings stretched between Antonio’s Slavic childhood and his Romanic maturity. Many Istrian dramas and long centuries were digested in those 42 kilometres of air distance between Pazin and Pula. 

Antonio is a fabbro. The Imperial Cavalry needs a blacksmith. Everything is and it is not a coincidence. The entire world of power and military interests of one huge empire was digested in the length of a small nail in a horseshoe, standing between Antonio’s smithy and the Imperial hoof. Such is the deceit of the social order. To think that we are one with the Emperor and the Empire, that hammers and sickles are made from the same molten as the imperial sceptre. The poisonous alchemy of the system takes the gold and returns it as lead bullets; seduces the wisdom of the philosophers and translates it into the dumbness of fanaticism. 

We don’t know if the horseshoes brought luck to Antonio Puzar, but later on, as it is written in the archives, he worked in the department for trains. Shackling iron horses on the rails in this world of North Adriatic and Sub-Alpine mixtures. We don’t know if he dreamt of going somewhere with these trains. He remained in the world that we inhabit even when there is no sophisticated Claudio Magris to describe it for us, to take us with his noble hand through our microcosmoses that there is nothing we don’t know about, that we always know all about and know nothing, that everybody does (not) know everything about, shipwrecked on this or that little island, with a blurry gaze towards the mountain Učka. 

That same mountain was described with love and passion by the Glagolitic translator of the Czech and European Lucidar (medieval encyclopaedia). We already know what it is about: “There is a land in this world. It is called Istria. And in that land there is a mountain, called Olinfos in Latin – Učka. And the height of that mountain goes all the way to the clouds.” It means there is Istria in this world and there is Učka in it, and the latter is literally connecting what is down with what is up there. This is often quoted and mentioned. But, to tell the truth, the Glagolitic Slavic writer also adds: “And by that mountain, a land begins, that is called Italy.” Well, that part is, for some reason, more rarely quoted. 

Yes, all the omissions and all the announcements, all the Istrian demarcations and land fissures, all that is dangerous to someone, all that attracts and cherishes worried gazes. As in the case of Magris, those gazes are both very personal but also coming from above, direct but also roundabout. Those gazes towards our little big world are obsessive because they rely on the fear from our two-step dances, on the unpleasant map of large and small movements and the shifting borders, on the challenge to the clumsy built-up stories that think for themselves to be the One and Only and under the mercy of the One. On the beautifully empty sections that someone wants to fill with who we are and what we are. Each and every of our colourful villages is always also an old colony, a trace of someone’s big plan, a field on the checkboard or the Monopoly board. Always in danger of ending up, once again, on the nationalist spike, or in the darkness of liberals’ treasure chest. 

When three decades ago, amid the most deafening screams of the fools, gods, and kings through the fogs of the mountain Učka, in the heart of the city, on the Forum, and in front of the seat of power, a book fair appeared in the heart of the heart of the heart of the heart of Europe, such a miraculous, defiant summoning of the macrocosm in the microcosmos could have only been devised by the mind of someone playful, and in love. 

Without Obradović’s cheerful subversions and wise childishness, those cosmoses would yet again fail to ‘mystically’ meet and reflect each other. They would be covered by the fog of the invented unity that despises play and replaces eros with the petrifactions of piety. It is said, in Capote and elsewhere, that when the cannons are heard, the muses are silent. So they probably needed to shut up at that point, and many times since throughout these strange decades. And they didn’t. Because someone exists, who would dip their finger in the sea foam, and dream and feel all those with whom they talk in such a way. Someone who would turn the ear to the world across the mountain and who would dare. Worlds of course exist, including those in the heads of wannabe kings, who terribly want to chain up, to horseshoe, to blackmail the Dreaming, or to render it their little golden horseshoe. So while the copycats are trying very hard to replicate the dream in their tubes or eprouvettes, the dream lives on, at the edge of chaos and order where creation thrives. 

In the contemporary world of fractal geometry and complex systems, the small can move the big, from some almost invisible initial conditions the miraculous mandalas of sense are created.  From the initial conditions of play and defiance, wise childishness and resilience of spirit. Thinking about that edge, the contemporary mysticists of science will speak, like some old alchemists, about the growth of the new from what appears as chaotic, about sensing the surroundings and coming in touch with the other, about how the imperfection is good, how heterogeneity and colourfulness are the matter of strength and not the weakness, how equilibrium equals death and chaos leads to ruin, while only life and walking on the edge is what is ultimately seen, what means, what grows and what is loved. 

This year for the thirtieth time, connoisseurs and lovers of the written and painted word, the curious ones and accidental passers-by will all together enter the skylit palace of the book, the world at the edge of chaos, the Pula factory for wise childishness and smart play; they will dive between the shadows of the past, and right into the colours of all futures. Sit at the desk, on the bench, smell the ink of the paper, mirror in which each and every one can and must be reflected. 

Vita! Vita! Let everyone look at themselves in that mirror without fear, let them comb their hair and dishevel it back again in the microcosmos of the book, at the heart of Istrian microcosmos, at the heart of human speech. Let them walk where one bravely reaches upwards, where the large and small meet in their One, where blacksmiths of the better stories, travellers of the trains and rockets rushing far away, grooms of the tired Pegasuses reign. Where cheerfully and bravely we show our tongues to the tough judges and dark clouds, to the all too important world tempests of senselessness and fear.