How To Pop The White Spot On Throat

History The outcome of the captive soldier and died

Jorge Luis Borges story
This concludes my trilogy proposal for Engagement with Borges. Soon I'll be discussing some issues that I have marveled at this great writer.

On page 278 of Book Poetry (Bari, 1942), Croce, abbreviating a Latin text of the historian Paul the Deacon, tells the fate and the epitaph quoted Droctulft, they struck me singularly, then I understood why. Droctulft was a warrior in Lombard the siege of Ravenna left to their own and died defending the city had previously attacked. The Ravenna buried him in a temple and wrote an epitaph in which expressed their gratitude ("contempsit expensive, dum ille amat us, parent) and the peculiar contrast between the figure was warned that barbaric and heinous of its simplicity and goodness :
terribilis visu facies mind Benignus, robust Longaque
inspectors fuit beard!

Such is the story of the fate of Droctulft, barbarian who died defending Rome, and this is the excerpt from his story that could save Paul the Deacon. Not even know what time it happened: when the middle of the sixth century, when Lombard ravaged the plains of Italy, whether in the eighth, before the surrender of Ravenna. Suppose (this is not a historical work) first. Imagine
, sub specie aeternitatis to Droctulft, not the individual Droctulft, it certainly was unique and unfathomable (all individuals are), but the generic kind of him and many others like him have made the tradition, which is work of forgetting and memory. Through an obscure geography of forests and swamps, war was brought to Italy from the banks of the Danube and Elbe, and maybe did not know he was going south and may not know that war against the Roman name. Perhaps professed Arianism, which holds that the glory Son reflects the glory of the Father, but is consistent devotee imagine Earth, Hertha, whose idol was covered hut to hut in a cart pulled by cows, or the gods of war and thunder, which were clumsy wooden figures, wrapped in woven clothing and ornate coins and bangles. It came from the forests and wild boar inextricable uro; was white, cheerful, innocent, cruel, loyal to his captain and his tribe, not the universe. The wars you bring to Ravenna, and there is something that has never seen, or has not been fully. Go on and cypresses, and marble. See a set which is multiple without disorder, is a city, a body made of statues, temples, gardens, rooms, stands, vases, capitals, regular and open spaces. None of these plants (I know) is impressed by beautiful, as we now play it would play a complex machinery, designed to downplay, but guess whose design is an immortal intelligence. Maybe you just see a single arc, with an incomprehensible inscription in Roman letters eternal. Suddenly the blind and renews this revelation, the City. Knows that she will be a dog or a child, and not even begin to understand it, but he also knows that she is worth more than their gods and the oath and all the swamps of Germany. Droctulft abandon his own and fight for Ravenna. Dies and the burial recorded words that he had not understood:
Contempsit expensive, dum ille amat us, parentes,
patriam reputans Hanc esse, Ravenna, suam.
was not a traitor (the traitors do not usually inspire pious epitaphs), was a visionary, a convert. After a few generations the Lombards who blamed the defector came like him were Italians, Lombards and perhaps some of his blood-Aldíger-bred who could have fathered the Alighieri ... Many assumptions can be applied to the act of Droctulft, mine is the cheapest, if not true as fact, it will be a symbol.
When I read in the book of history Croce Warrior, it touched me in an unusual and it seemed to recover, in various forms, something that had been mine. Fleeting thought of the Mongol horsemen who wanted to make China an infinite pasture and then aged in the cities they had longed destroy the memory was not that I sought. Finally I found it was a story I heard once in my English grandmother, who has died.
Borges in 1872 my grandfather was head of the northern and western borders of Buenos Aires and Santa Fe Southern Command was in Junin beyond four or five miles of each other, the chain of forts, and beyond, what was then called the Pampa and Tierra Adentro. Sometime, between wonder and mocking, my grandmother said her destiny English banished to the end of the world, he said it was not the only and I said, months later, an Indian girl who slowly crossed the square. Wearing two red blankets and was barefoot, her tresses were blonde. One soldier told another British wanted to talk to her. The woman nodded, walked into the command without fear, but not without misgivings. In the copper face, daubed in fierce colors, the blue eyes were half-hearted that the English call gray. The body was light, like deer, hands, strong and bony. It came from the desert, Inland, and everything seemed to have outgrown: the doors walls, furniture.
Perhaps the two women felt for a moment sisters, were far from their island home and in an incredible country. My grandmother spelled out a question, the other replied with difficulty, looking for words and repeating them as amazed an ancient flavor. Fifteen years would not speak the native language and it was not easy to retrieve. He said he was from Yorkshire, which his parents emigrated to Buenos Aires, who had lost in a raid, who had led the Indians and was now the wife of a chieftain, who already had two children and was very brave. That I was saying in a rustic English, interspersed with Araucanian or plain, and behind the story is glimpsed a feral life: the horse-hide tents, the fires of dung, charred meat feast or raw viscera, the stealthy march at dawn, the assault of the pens, the howl and looting, war , the mighty herding farms by riders naked, polygamy, the stench and magic. At that barbarism had lowered an Englishwoman. Moved by the shame and scandal, my grandmother urged not to return. Swore to protect, vowed to rescue her children. The other replied that he was happy and turned that night into the desert. Francisco Borges died soon after the revolution of 74, perhaps my grandmother, then, could perceive in the other woman also washed away and transformed by the implacable continent, a monstrous mirror their destiny ...
Each year, the blonde used to come to India from shops on Junin, or Fort Lavalle, in search of trinkets and "services" did not appear, from the conversation with my grandmother. However, they were again. My grandmother was hunting, on a ranch near the marshes, a man slaughtered a sheep. As in a dream, India spent on horseback. He threw himself down and drank the warm blood. I do not know if he did because he could not do otherwise, or as a challenge and a sign. Thirteen hundred years
sea mediate between the captive's fate and destiny Droctulft. The two, now, are equally unrecoverable. The figure of the barbarian who embraced the cause of Ravenna, the figure of the European woman who opts for the desert, may seem antagonistic. However, the two snatched a secret impulse, an impulse more profound than reason, and both complied with the momentum that had known no justification. Perhaps the stories I mentioned are one story. The obverse and reverse of this coin is, for God, equal.