#69 Mon (8/29/22) - SOMEONE DREAMED IT, SOMEONE WILL DREAM IT by J.L.Borges (Los conjurados, 1985)

SOMEONE DREAMED IT [ALGUIEN SUEÑA]

What has Time dreamed up to now, which is, like all now, the apex? The sword has dreamed, whose best place is the verse. He has dreamed and wrought the sentence, which can simulate wisdom. He has dreamed of faith, he has dreamed of the atrocious Crusades. He has dreamed of the Greeks who discovered dialogue and doubt. He has dreamed of the annihilation of Carthage by fire and salt. He has dreamed the word, that awkward and rigid symbol. He has dreamed the happiness that we had or that we now dream of having had. He has dreamed the first morning of Ur. He has dreamed the mysterious love of the compass. He has dreamed the bow of the Norwegian and the bow of the Portuguese. He has dreamed the ethics and metaphors of the strangest of men, the one who died one afternoon on a cross. He has dreamed the taste of hemlock on Socrates' tongue. He has dreamed of those two curious brothers, the echo and the mirror. He has dreamed of the book, that mirror that always reveals another face to us. He has dreamed of the mirror in which Francisco López Merino and his image saw each other for the last time. He has dreamed the space. He has dreamed of music, which can do without space. He has dreamed the art of the word, even more inexplicable than that of music, because it includes music. He has dreamed of a fourth dimension and the singular fauna that inhabits it. He has dreamed the number of the grains of sand. She has dreamed of transfinite numbers, which cannot be reached by counting. He has dreamed the first who in the thunder heard the name of Thor. He has dreamed of the opposite faces of Janus, which will never be seen. He has dreamed of the moon and the two men who walked on the moon. He has dreamed the well and the pendulum. He has dreamed of Walt Whitman, who decided to be all men, like Spinoza's divinity. He has dreamed of jasmine, which cannot know that they are dreaming it. He has dreamed the generations of ants and the generations of kings. He has dreamed of the vast web that all the spiders in the world weave. He has dreamed of the plow and the hammer, cancer and the rose, the chimes of insomnia and chess. He has dreamed of the enumeration that treatise writers call chaotic and that, in fact, is cosmic, because all things are united by secret bonds. He has dreamed of my grandmother Frances Haslam in the Junín garrison, a distance from the desert spears, reading her Bible and her Dickens. She has dreamed that in battles the Tartars sang. He has dreamed of Hokusai's hand, tracing a line that will soon be a wave. He has dreamed of Yorick, who lives forever in the words of the illusory Hamlet. He has dreamed the archetypes. He has dreamed that throughout the summers, or in a sky before summers, there is a single rose. He has dreamed the faces of your dead, which are now tarnished photographs. He has dreamed of the first morning of Uxmal. He has dreamed the act of the shadow. He has dreamed the hundred gates of Thebes. He has dreamed the steps of the labyrinth. He has dreamed the secret name of Rome, which was his true wall. He has dreamed the life of mirrors. He has dreamed of the signs that the seated scribe will trace. He has dreamed of an ivory sphere that keeps other spheres. He has dreamed the kaleidoscope, pleasing to the leisures of the patient and the child. He has dreamed of the desert. The lurking dawn has dreamed. He has dreamed of the Ganges and the Thames, which are names of water. He has dreamed maps that Ulysses would not have understood. He has dreamed of Alexander of Macedon. He has dreamed the wall of Paradise, which stopped Alexander. He has dreamed the sea and the tear. He has dreamed the crystal. He has dreamed that Someone dreams it.

 

SOMEONE WILL DREAM [ALGUIEN SOÑARÁ]

What will the indecipherable future dream? He will dream that Alonso Quijano can be Don Quixote without leaving his village and his books. He will dream that an eve of Ulysses may be more lavish than the poem that narrates his labors. He will dream of human generations that will not recognize the name of Ulysses. You will dream more accurate dreams than today's vigil. He will dream that we will be able to perform miracles and that we will not, because it will be more real to imagine them. He will dream worlds so intense that the voice of just one of his birds could kill you. You will dream that forgetfulness and memory can be voluntary acts, not aggressions or gifts of chance. He will dream that we will see with the whole body, as Milton wanted from the shadow of those tender orbs, the eyes. He will dream of a world without the machine and without that suffering machine, the body. Life is not a dream but it can become a dream, writes Novalis.