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12

Events that lead you Here

Horatio P. grips his briefcase. It is a worn out briefcase that has been with him since

he left Nicaragua in 1979, right before the advent of the leftist revolution that changed

governments in his country. It has cradled his manuscripts for years. Horatio P. keeps in

there copies of his past books,Ars Moriendi and The Dance of Death, Diary of a Young Man

Who went Mad, Memories of Beowulf, in case he needs to give them away to an important

person or a good friend he has not seen in years.

Horatio P. continually thinks of the past. His last two years of high school at the

Pedagogic Institute in Nicaragua when he met famous poets and his interest in poetry was

born, the deep influence a Catholic education had on him like on James Joyce. The poets

circles he used to frequent at the bar La India where he held long discussions with fellow

writers about politics and the role of poets in it, literary theories and how his generation

lacked any, about the limiting confines of the country and the need of all poets to travel the

world. One is not a poet if one has not traveled beyond the little country one lives in used

to say one of the maestros of the 60s, poet Carlos Martinez Rivas. So Horatio P. finished his

high school, completed his doctorate in Literature at the National University, went to teach

in the same university, and started publishing his books. The Diary of a Young Mad Who

Went Madwas the first. It was well received by established and emerging poets. You are a

well read young man Carlos told him. But you need to expand your horizons with

experience. You cannot talk about Alphonse X properly without first visiting his native land.

You cannot grasp the vicissitudes of Nietzsche if you have not walked the streets he walked

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and drank the beer he drank. You cannot talk about poetry without first becoming mad

yourself with it!

So he decided to follow Carlos advice and traveled intensely throughout Europe. In

Spain, he completed a doctorate in Hispanic Literature and got heavily involved in the

movement of the nouveau roman poets like Francisco Brines and Gloria Fuertes; later on

he participated in literary circles and readings with Miguel Delibes, Luis Goytisolo and

Camilo Jose Cela . The Nicaraguan bards Francisco de Ass Fernndez, Julio Cabrales,

Beltrn Morales, Rolando Steiner and Luis Rocha also visited with him in Madrid. It was

one of the best times of his life. A poet needs the freedom of these open gatherings where

discussions run until well past midnight, multiple viewpoints are presented, argumentation

is constant with camaraderie and wine, to free the spirit and keep the creative juices

flowing.

He visited Germany to attend readings by members of the Gruppe 47, before they

disbanded in 1967and established long lasting friendships with Johannes Bobroski, Ilse

Aichinger, Peter Bichsel and Gnter Grass. These very polemic meetings taught him the

internal politics that permeate all human activity: politicians of course have it, but also

monks in a monastery, business competitors in a capitalistic system, sports stars of all kind

whether professional of Olympians, and any other one can think of. It is in the nature of

humans to try to control, impose their own agenda and conquer others no matter what. It

could be done with bullets or ideas. He decided there and then that a dose of solipsism was

the best way to avoid these sterile confrontations.

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He spent a few months in Italy and got in touch with Giuseppe Ungaretti, Primo Levi,

Italo Calvino, and found that no other country had the rich variety found among the

Italians: from futuristic ideas to poetry inspired in the chemical table of elements, from

socialist to fascist ideas, from poet-soldiers to poet-accountants all in a continuous revival

of their own poetry and that of their country.

It was during these years that Horatio P. realized how lonely he was, that he needed

a woman in his life, that his poetry was about to embark in a strange journey that would

mark his whole existence. He needed a woman who would anchor him to reality, any reality

that was not the endless nights discussing the fate of the arcane world of literature. That

reality was his, the reality at the edge of the Universe. He was the reflection above. He

needed the hologram below. He was ready to go back.

Upon his return to Nicaragua in 1967 several events cemented his Destiny and also

nudged him to his Fate.