Danilo Lopez Thesis: An Echo of Swelling Voices (a novella)

6 The Consolation of Madness 1

the world on his back. He goes from classroom to classroom, from office to restroom, from parking lot to office in a mechanical path that resembles a robot. He recalls Boethius and two students seating on a bench outside involved in a heated discussion. He never saw His trained brain overhears something about literature this two are discussing. He his Consolation of Philosophy while incarcerated at Ticinium awaiting Death. He passes by

Horatio P. looks tired. Life weighs heavy on his shoulders. He is no Atlas supporting

them before. They look foreign to this country, to this city, to this place and time. But then identifies key words like literature, madness, inspiration, alternate reality, brain wave functions, state of ecstasy, bliss, classics, disease. Then names start to surface Yukio Karin Boye. His brain is racing, what do all these poets have in common? Ryunosuke cultures.

again, he himself is a foreigner and will always be both in Texas and in his native Nicaragua.

Mishima, Jerzy Kosinski, John Berryman, Anne Sexton, Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemmingway, Akutagawa, Richard Brautigan, Hunter Thompson. What is it that makes them be named in the same discussion? They all belong to different times and styles, different countries and long and black very curly hair, dark skin, maybe Middle Eastern? Horatio P. cant say for madness? Between madness and politics? -Very well, I see your point concedes the male student, a guy in his early twenties,

sure, his accent appears to be Arabic, but dont you see a correlation between suicide and
1

From Diario de un Joven que se Volvi Loco, Day 28, page 29, by Horacio Pea, Nicaragua 1962

Danilo Lopez Thesis: An Echo of Swelling Voices (a novella)

suicide, and most of them had mental problems if not all, which brings Horatio P. to his

morning worry: the cancer in his brain that came back from the dead, his past bows with thinks we are ready. But madness, we can choose or she can choose us.

Of course! This is the clue Horatio P. was missing, all of these poets committed

depression, no, never suicide, his Catholic convictions do not allow that at all. Death is a gift we receive not one we snatch from the Creator. It will come when we are ready, when He looks in her early twenties, with long blond straight hair, fair skin, no more than 110 -Between madness and politics and then the other student, a female that also

pounds, falls silent for a few seconds. Would you consider madness when political poets

risk their lives to fight a government, when they forsake everything for the love of country, when they jeopardize their families or, worse yet, renounce to even having a family in the Havel, Aleks Drenova, Jaime Sabines Wait, wait, wait interrupts the male student Aleks what? first place for the sake of Country? I am thinking Ernesto Cardenal, Percy B. Shelley, Vaclav

name, Asdreni? He wrote his countrys National Anthem.

Aleks Stavre Drenova, from Albania, you never heard of him? Maybe by his pen

heads towards him with a silent penetrating gaze, he sees them and feels pierced in the depth of his mind and consciousness. Horatio P. clutches his eyes, shakes his head and

Neither did I, murmurs Horatio P. lost in his thoughts. Both students turn their

looks back at the students sitting in the bench ready to participate in the discussion and to

Danilo Lopez Thesis: An Echo of Swelling Voices (a novella)

know more about this poet unknown to him and, apparently, to the male student as well. But the bench is empty.