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Giorgio de Chirico, The Duo
(The Manikins and the Pink Tower), 1917
The knot was for Hebdomeros a cipher infinitely more
profound and disturbing than the ithyphallic sign or that of the
anchor or the two-headed ax…Moreover, he saw life as a huge
knot which death untied; and yet he also regarded death as a
knot retied which birth in turn undid. —Giorgio de Chirico
***
“Should the signs be regarded as open secrets?” he thought, as
he wandered through the Egyptian junkyards. As though
pregnant, the earth stretched out before him. The traveler
was not who he was. I am not who I am. No clock was allowed
to tell the ocean to behave.
Infinite the regression of signs. Nostalgia. There is an island
where black rain falls. There is a dark speck on a turret. It
looks like the seer. He waits for centuries to shoot the noon
salute. That cannon is no longer there. It is time to go. The
ocean, my beloved, breathes. I too must exercise. After being
sick, I desire to be healthy! My breath expands, does it not, to
the edge of the horizon? To what lengths must I go to
resuscitate my Will?
O womb of the first elements! O alloys of the youth! Death is
false, and only I see beyond the snares of Modern Art. The
future world had once sent heralds to a dream beyond the
sunset. Cartographers had dropped anchors to keep coasts
from disappearing. The dawn had promised wonders to the
technicians of the rocking horse. “This is the scary part,” said
one of the Eight Half-Human Teachers, “crowds across many
lands are to rearrange your toys. False rulers will wheel in
substitutes for the planets. Only the mad will then hear the
real ones.”
The gods play less than they did, as do I. Others strategize in a
game whose labyrinthine ends are beyond us, in which we do
not know we compete. Paris, City of Lights! Of what is this a
center? The gladiators in their diving helmets have all but lost
their respect for practice. They whack away indifferently or
fly into a rage. My contemporaries show almost no devotion
to the rediscovery of the realm of subtle forms.
I went to shake the hand of the one who both does and does
not resemble me. You did not at first speak when you were
called. Prehistoric observatories echo under strata. Giants
fossilized in pots. The trees crooked, with foreign roots. Birds
that never came.
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