Néstor Perlongher and Mysticism: Towards a Critical Reappraisal

Author(s): Ben Bollig

Source: The Modern Language Review , Jan., 2004, Vol. 99, No. 1 (Jan., 2004), pp. 77-93
Published by: Modern Humanities Research Association

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3738867

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 NESTOR PERLONGHER AND MYSTICISM:

TOWARDS A CRITICAL REAPPRAISAL

The apparent change in the poetry of Argentine writer and

Nestor Perlongher (1949-92) after the publication of his anth
on male prostitution (1987) and the emergence of AIDS in B
he turned his literary and academic attention towards mys
consternation amongst critics. Concerns focus on the abandon
politico-sexual radicalism and on the influence of the New
particular the Brazilian drug religion Santo Daime, on his wo
The influential Argentine writer and gay-rights activist J
attacked Perlongher's last works:
Con respecto a la obra de Perlongher [. . .] la parte desdenable
surrealismo heterodoxo de Georges Bataille, de Michel Foucault y
Lamentablemente esta influencia fue la predominante en su ultim
del demonismo a la mistica y aun al esoterismo.1

Sebreli criticizes Perlongher for his reliance on authors who

tities, and for focusing on the flow and force of desire in societ
insisted at the end of his thesis on male prostitution in Sao
do miche [The Business of Male Prostitution].2 While Sebreli
a homosexual identity, his insistence on the body as propert
reveals key ideological differences with Perlongher.3 Sebreli's
mosexuality, in particular the focus on the use of the body as pe
was one ofthe developments in Argentine post-dictatorship g
longher abhorred. In fact, it is possible to detect in Perlongh
of homosexuality as a theme for his writing in 1991 a respon
insistence on the notion of homosexuality as identity.4
Osvaldo Baigorria also exhibits some concern in his essay o
mysticism:
Su vinculacion con el Santo Daime inaugura la fase final, mas controvertida o asom-
brosa, de ese viaje sobre el filo de la identidad personal. Al contrario de lo que puede
pensarse, su enfermedad no parece haber tenido influencias sobre esta nueva direccion
de sus intereses: Perlongher descubre que es HIV positivo en el 89, en Francia, bas-
tante despues de haber conectado con la iglesia del Santo Daime. Y su 'devenir bruja'
habia comenzado aun antes. Por los anos 87/88 ?al mismo tiempo en que escribia sus
principales ensayos sobre el neobarroco? comienza a tomar ayahuasca o yage [. . .].5
This article was written while the author was in receipt of an AHRB grant for study towards a
Ph.D. at King's College, University of London.
1 J. J. Sebreli, 'La historia secretade los homosexualesen Buenos Aires', in Escritos sobre escritos,
ciudades bajo ciudades (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1997), pp. 275-370 (p. 370).
2 N. Perlongher, O negocio de miche: prostituicdo viril em Sdo Paulo (Sao Paulo: Brasiliense,
1987), p. 231.
3 Sebreli, 'Historia', p. 364.
4 Perlongher, Prosa plebeya (Buenos Aires: Colihue, 1997), pp. 85-90, first published as 'La
desaparicion de la homosexualidad', in El porteno (Buenos Aires), 119 (Nov. 1991), 12-15. In
future references Prosa plebeya will be abbreviated to Prosa.
5 O. Baigorria. 'La Rosa Mistica de Luxemburgo', in Lumpenesperegrinaciones, ed. by A. Cangi
and P. Siganevich (Rosario de Santa Fe: Beatriz Viterbo, 1996), pp. 175-81 (p. 178).

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78 Nestor Perlongher and Mysticism

Baigorria is attempting to deny the link between Perlongher's discovery

he was HIV positive and his mysticism. My aim in this paper is to analy
Perlongher's last two collections closely in order to detect the similarities
differences from earlier collections. This analysis displays three aesthe
Perlongher's last works: mystical masochism, mystical withdrawal, and m
purpose. While Perlongher's poetics and techniques do not differ in thes
collections, and the first of the three aesthetics is present in his earlier
the latter two demonstrate a change in Perlongher's writing, a change w
believe to be linked to those caused by AIDS in the possibilities for the
sex as an oppositional political tool.
A brief over view of Perlongher's earlier poetry will facilitate the an
that is to follow. Perlongher's first collection, Austria-Hungria (1980), co
many poems that allude, often through slang terms and literary referen
the secretive practices of homosexuals and transvestites in Argentina d
the 1976-83 dictatorship, as in poems such as 'El polvo' and 'La murga, l
lacos'. His second collection, Alambres (1987), included poems, such as 'E
and 'Daisy', that combined the elaborate performance of transvestites w
sordid background drawn from the streets of Buenos Aires. The collectio
(1989) cultivated elaborate geometric forms that echoed the Golden Age
roco without adopting complete barroco form, as in poems such as 'Pream
barrosos' and 'Formas barrocas'. The collection Parque Lezama included m
poems, such as 'Leyland' and 'Vahos', which alluded to the zones of hom
ual sex commerce in Sao Paulo. This was also the subject of O negocio do
(1987), which applied Deleuze and Guattari's theories on nomadology to
underworld of Sao Paulo. Perlongher is also renowned for the essay O q
AIDS (1987), a critique of the clinical and judicial reaction to the emerg
of AIDS.6

Mystical Masochism
Although Perlongher did not know he was HIV positive when he became in?
volved with esoteric religions, he exhibited an awareness of the radical way that
the virus had changed the possibilities for sex as a form of political resistance
in the postscript to the essay Avatares de los muchachos de la noche' (Prosa,
pp. 45-58),7 where he described his work on male prostitution as a 'piece of
archaeology'.
This change in perspective in Perlongher's work is revealed most strikingly
in the essay 'La desaparicion de la homosexualidad masculina', where he signed
off completely from the subject of male homosexuality. In this essay Perlongher
does not deny the real repression of those practising homosexuality, but rather
suggests the danger of normalization through identitv politics, as 'Gav Rights'
6 N. Perlongher, Austria-Hungria (Buenos Aires: Tierra Baldia, 1980); Alambres (Buenos Aires:
Ultimo Reino, 1987); Hule (Buenos Aires: Ultimo Reino, 1989); Parque Lezama (Buenos Aires:
Sudamericana, 1990) (for convenience I refer to the edition Poemas completos (Buenos Aires: Seix
Barral, 1997), abbreviated below as Poemas); O que e AIDS (Sao Paulo: Brasiliense, 1987).
7 First published as 'Vicissitudes do miche', in Temas IMESC, 4 (1987). Information on this
publication and on other first editions of Perlongher's poetry has been obtained from the edition
of Cangi and Siganevich.

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 BEN BOLLIG 79

becomes just another committ

pp. 85-90). Perlongher's turn a
disillusionment with the treatm
by the promoters of gay right
<Que pasa con la homosexualidad
social, sin llamar mas atencion de
siva de normalizacion [. . .] ha con
banalizarlo por completo. (Prosa,

The phrase 'ofensiva de norm

elements of the sexuality debat
and disciplinary measures and
as not deviant, but normal. Th
accepted, but no longer intere
and the Anglo-style gay-gay c
his terminology from Deleuze
the 'sociedad de disciplina' wit
Perlongher's response to the
worked out with reference to
Bataille distingue tres modos de d
tincion originaria de la fusion: la
disolucion de los cuerpos, pero est
del egoismo [. . .] del puro cuerpo
de si es mas duradera [. . .] Pero s
lo sagrado) es que se da el extasis t

The use of tense is key here:

orgy in theand past tense. Love,
less of the fatal risk, are in th
in sedentary individualism (Pr
as an attack on the 'monada individual'.
Perlongher's fifth and penultimate collection, Aguas aereas (1991),8 was in
spired by the author's experiences attending rituals ofthe Santo Daime religio
where he took hallucinogenic drugs and participated in songs, dances, and cer
monies. He also undertook a journey to the religion's headquarters, the Ceu d
Mapia colony in the Amazon. Perlongher's mysticism in Aguas aereas cultivat
a poetics that draws heavily on the sexual elements of his earlier poems, as
the case with the first poem of the series:
RECIO EL EMBARQUE, airado aedo
riza u ondula noctilucas
iridiscencias enhebrando
en el etereo sulfilar:
un trazo

(deleble persistencia)
en el enroque de los magmas
en el cuadriculado del mantel
-mental, la sala
de entrecasa (arte kitsch)
8 (Buenos Aires: Ultimo Reino, 1991). For convenience, I refer to the republication in Poemas.

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80 Nestor Perlongher and Mysticism

compostelaba medianias
en el corset del voile, leve y violado.
Pero los voladitos
De los encajes del mantel urdian
Mas que un texto una forma, una figura
Boreal o suave, sus caireles
no dejaban de iluminar los resbalosos
voleos del minue, por las baldosas: una
desprendida y procaz, aranando sus pases
el inane, traslucido volar.
Por espejismos de piel viva
en el tiron de las mucosas
los rasgueos de la una
elevaban las cantigas
al cielorraso hueco, sublunar.

Recio el cantor, brunidas las guedejas,

dejo de mambo inflige al modular
intensidades en el cieno,
plastica
porosidad de la materia espesa.
En el dejo de un espasmo
contorsionaba los ligamenes
y transmitia a los encajes
la untuosidad del nylon
rayandolos
en una delicada precipitacion.
(Poemas, pp. 247-48)

The experience of the Santo Daime ceremony implies a poetics. Rather than
a text, a stable production of writing, the ceremony demands a 'forma'. The
latter is a broader concept, and Perlongher's poem, itself a text, demonstrates
the Daime ceremony as a collection of artistic manifestations: a dance ('los res?
balosos | voleos del minue'); physical sensations ('espasmo', 'contorsionaba');
songs ('cantor', 'cantigas'); and kitsch interiors and fabrics ('arte kitsch'). What
is interesting here is that as well as proposing an expansion ofthe poetic project,
from 'texto' to the apparently more inclusive 'forma', Perlongher draws on ele?
ments from his overtly sexual poetry. The 'cantigas' were the central element in
his un-anthologized poem 'Cantiga' (1981),9 where the song and dance offered
a provocative challenge to clear divides between the sexes. The ceremony in
the first poem of Aguas aereas I is filled with unholy dirt, e.g. the 'cieno'?mud
or slime?on which the dance takes place. The physicality of the poem is also
closely related to that found in Perlongher's earlier and distinctly sexual collec?
tion Par que Lezama (1990), which Perlongher wrote while he was researching
his thesis on male prostitution. For example, the 'enroque de los magmas', a
castling implied by the chequered tablecloth, recalls the poem 'Nostro mundo',
where 'magmas' were used as the layers of throats of men admiring adolescents
(Poemas, p. 214), while 'enroque' is used to describe the crossing ofthe legs of
a male prostitute in Al miche' (Poemas, p. 231). Alongside the kitsch details
XUL, 2(1981), p. 27.

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 BEN BOLLIG 8l

of tablecloths and 'arte kitsch

bulary for his portrayal of th
fabrics as becoming 'nylon',
the dressing-up ethos of man
voile', another travesti tool. W
at this stage the ceremony h
poems, and there is no radica
overt subject matter.
Moreover, this poem displays
jouissance'.10 Bersani identifi
'impulse of self-dissolution'.1
longher's 'salida de si'. The ec
Santo Daime is also that foun
titioners in Bersani's concepti
Perlongher wrote in his essay
no se esta?/iAdonde se esta c
unanswerable, for the masoch
ceremony both deny the very
This same aesthetic is found
las iluminaciones.13 Prior to P
Daime religion as he felt that
stages of AIDS required. Perlo
ship for a project uncomplete
mystery play, which Sara Tor
and Modarelli, claims was hea
The first poem in the collec
techniques and classical myth
pological risk exhibited in ma

Undoso el que avanzara p

del espejo laqueado, su pe
docil al mando del cendal declina
rayado el rutilar de su plumaje.
Quien por interrogar las inestables
corrientes donde anega su pellejo
arruga de nerviosas denticiones
la quilla que traslucida corria
por parques de reflejos azulados,
impavido el azor, la crista altiva,
arriesga el hundimiento en ese anclaje.

10 L. Bersani, Homos (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1995), p. 94.

11 Bersani, p. 96.
12 First published as 'Poesia y extasis' in La letra A, 3 (1991).
13 Published as a collection of four poems (Caracas: Pequena Venecia, 1992), and later as a
collection of thirty-one poems in Poemas.
14 F. Rapisardi and A. Modarelli, Fiestas, banos y exilios: los gays portenos en la ultima dicta
(Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 2001), p. 200.

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 82 Nestor Perlongher and Mysticism

Porque, por mas que mirese a los hados,

no se retarda la fatal carrera
si tempestuoso pie pisa la pluma.
(Poemas, p. 297)

The swan, the modernista bird par excellence, as in Dario's 'Yo persigo una
forma' (1901), where the curved neck represents the unanswerable question for
the poet who cannot but question, is an image drawn from the symbolist poetry
of Baudelaire and Mallarme. Perlongher here offers an image ofthe questioning
that he has carried out in his poetry and anthropology: the swan, cipher for the
poet, is adrift on the dangerous waters. Perlongher reframes his earlier projects
within a mystical intent ('mirese a los hados'), and also within a morbid sense
of inevitability ('no se retarda la fatal carrera'). Difficulty is seen in terms of
darkness and waters, an experiment of going into the powerful unknown. This
unknown may well destroy the poet in painful and unexpected ways.
This returns us to Perlongher's earlier comments on force and form in poetry:
Esa desestructuracion del frenesi dionisiaco arrastraria la identidad individual en la
nebulosa afectual de los cuerpos (y, por que no, de las almas) en amalgama. Emper
ese fervor dionisiaco, en la medida en que librado a si mismo es [. . .] un 'veneno'
que conduce a la pura destruccion, precisaria de la armonia del elemento apolineo
le diese una forma, para poder mantener la lucidez en medio del torbellino. (Pros
p. 165)15

The begrudging ('por que no') use of 'alma' demonstrates Perlongher's para-
doxical position, in between the physical and the spiritual; 'frenesi' reminds
the reader of an earlier poem of the same name that contains elements drawn
from the Brazilian carnival (Poemas, pp. 105-08),l6 and in which grammar,
words, and syntax collapsed in a pure Dionysian frenzy. Now, however, in deal?
ing with the overwhelming forces let loose by death, Perlongher?inspired by
Nietzsche's Das Geburt der Tragodie (1872)17?has to use a clearer and more
organized form. This necessity accounts for the use of the sonnet, clearer syn?
tax, the image of the swan, and a logical method similar to his essays in a poem
that reflects on a poetic project that has met its fatal end. It also explains an ad-
herence to form that is not entirely strict, given that the forces in operation are
strong enough to annihilate the poetic project. Death is accepted as inevitable
and the real physical effects of AIDS?'la fatal carrera', 'tempestuoso pie'?are
drawn harshly into focus.
Santa Teresa's ideas on the mystical experience are of help here, particularly
with regard to pleasure and pain:
Era tan grande el dolor [ofthe mystical experience] que me hacia dar aquellos quejidos
y tan excesiva la suavidad que me pone este grandisimo dolor [. . .] No es dolor corporal
sino espiritual, aunque no deja de participar el cuerpo algo, y aun harto [. . .]. Pues
tornando este apresurado arrebatar el espiritu es de tal manera que verdaderamente
parece salir del cuerpo y por otra parte claro esta que no queda esta persona muerta, al
menos ella no puede decir si esta en el cuerpo o si no, por algunos instantes.18
15 First published as 'La force de la forme: notes sur la religion du Santo Daime', in Societes, 29
(1990).
16 First published in Alambres.
17 e.g. F. Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, trans. by S. Whiteside (London: Penguin, 1993).
18 J. Marti, Diccionario del pensamiento de Santa Teresa de Jesus (Valencia: Edicep, 1981), p. 395.

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 BEN BOLLIG 83

The paradoxes (pain or pleasure, body

difficulty in presenting the mystical ex
nonsense. Santa Teresa explained the
in very visual terms:

Porque verse ansi levantar un cuerpo de l

y es con suavidad grande, si no se resist
gusano tan podrido, que no parece se cont
que quiere el cuerpo, aun tan mortal y de
hecho.19

The acceptance of the low ('gusano, 'tierra, 'sucia', 'cuerpo') by the high
('espiritu') is reminiscent of many of Perlongher's earlier poems, where sex?
ually obscene themes are mixed with Golden Age and modernista techniques,
and also the masochistic relationship between the 'top' and the 'bottom' Bersani
describes in the S/M performance.
Comments on the Christian mystics made by Jacques Lacan may allow us
to reframe Perlongher's mystical poetry. Discussing the notion of a specifically
feminine jouissance, Lacan observes, 'being not-whole, she has a supplementary
jouissance compared to what the phallic function designates by way of jouis?
sance [. . .]. There is a jouissance that is hers that belongs to "she" that doesn't
exist and doesn't signify anything.'20 Women, Lacan argues, and 'bright people
like Saint John ofthe Cross [. . .] can also situate [themselves] on the side ofthe
not-whole [...]. They get the idea or sense that there must be di jouissance that
is beyond. They are the ones we call mystics. It's like for Santa Teresa?you
need to go to Rome and see that statue by Bernini to immediately understand
that she's coming.'21 For Lacan, then, there is a certain sexual contact with God
to which the mystic and the woman are privileged: 'it is insofar as her jouissance
is radically Other that woman has more of a relationship to God than anything
that could have been said in speculation in antiquity following the pathway
of that which is manifestly articulated only as the good of man'.22 This late
work by Lacan demonstrates an attempt to link feminine sexuality?the extra,
non-phallic jouissance of the woman?to contact with God. What is interest?
ing, above and beyond Lacan's esoteric specul(um)ations, is that Perlongher,
although not through direct reference, is reflecting a move in French thought
that reappraised the mystics. Santa Teresa's insistence on the inseparability of
pleasure and pain in the mystical experience, placed in the mould of French
psychoanalysis, offers a formulation close to the masochistic mysticism above,
whereby, despite its potentially lethal effects, suffering becomes potentially di?
vine. However, this masochistic mysticism, as we shall see, is fundamentally
linked to the imminence of death.
Perlongher's masochistic aesthetic, however, also appears in his earlier poems.

19 Santa Teresa de Jesus, Obras de Santa Teresa de Jesus, ed. by P. Silverio de Santa Teresa CD,
9 vols (Burgos: El Monte Carmelo, 1915), 1, 148.
20 J. Lacan, The Seminars of Jacques Lacan. On Feminine Sexuality. The Limits of Love and
Knowledge. Book XX. Encore 1972-73, ed. by J.-A. Miller, trans. by B. Fink (London: Vintage,
1998), pp. 73-74.
21 Lacan, p. 76.
22 Lacan, p. 83.

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84 Nestor Perlongher and Mysticism

An examination of 'Herida pierna', from Austria-Hungria (1980), can help

connections between the two mystical stages, and also allow us to consi
further whether Perlongher's mystical poetry presents as dramatic a cha
the commentators above might lead us to suspect:
Coser los bordes de la herida? debo? puedo? es debido?
he podido? suturarla doliente ya, doliendome
rastreramente husmeando como un perro
oh senor a sus pies oh senor con esa pierna
atada amputada anestesiada doblada pierna
[...]
O estoy? ando? metiendo los estiletes en el muslo
para que arda para que mane
haciendole volcar lechoso polvo en la enramada
ampliandola estirandola
[? ? ?]
No me hagas caso, Morenito, no la hagas
asi, tan prominente y espantosa la herida lo que hiende
la penetracion del verdugo durante el acto del suplicio
durante la hora del dolor del calor
de la sofocacion de los gemidos
impotente como potente bajo esa masa de tejidos
arbitrarios como bandidos asaetados por los chirridos
Quiero pues? deseo, pues? despues?
[? ? ]
Debo chupar? mamar? de ese otro seno herido
desangrado con la pierna cortada con la daga
en la nalga ah caminar asi, rauda cual rafaga
montanas de basura magicas y luminosas
ser lucida? ahora, hoy?
tumbada cual yegua borracha cual chancha echada
cual vaca animal animal
No me hagas caso, Morenito: ve y dile la verdad a tus padr
(Poemas, p. 47)

The poem creates a relationship of guilt and humiliation b

voice and other subjects, e.g. the 'verdugo', a torturer or execu
members. The narrator voice is placed repeatedly in subo
various animals and a naughty child, and is the object of
bled, and suffocated. This relationship is highlighted as o
potency. The position is also characterized by dirt and
'polvo' and 'basura'. Alongside this violence and ritualistic
read surprisingly esoteric vocabulary, e.g. the 'montanas
y luminosas'. This magical, luminous material stands in k
dirty subservience that dominates the poem.
This aesthetic is also found in the work of Jean Genet. In
Genet proposes a form of mystic humiliation, generally r
ality and transvestism. In the novel Our Lady of the Flower
Divine [a transvestite] died holy and murdered?by consumption.
[Darling] walked down the Rue Dancourt, drunk with the hidden
treasure) of his abjection [. . .] (p. 70)
23 Trans. by B. Frechtman (London: Paladin, 1988).

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 BEN BOLLIG 85

His life is an underground heaven throng

night, and Queens of Spades, his life is a
Slowly but surely I want to strip [Divine]
saint of her. (p. 82)

Genet's technique, like Perlongher's,

with the mystical, so that the under
Perlongher's poem the flashes of lig
miliation are a glimpse of an unspec
remarkable in their courting of the
offer a radical challenge to the stru
economic?that frame such positions.
traction of humiliation, there is a st
accept the structures whereby such h
In the wider context, while the adop
ment of terms such as 'faggot' and 'dy
of rendering harmless a term of abus
order's ability to invent and impose
suggests, 'resignification cannot destr
of mystical humiliation through S/M

Masochistic jouissance is hardly a politic

although the self-shattering I believe to
the result of surrender to the master, al
discipline. Psychoanalysis challenges us t
subject?or, in other terms, to dissociate m

Problematically, then, Perlongher's

structures of violence and power, bu
cates them for the purposes of sexua
sive at a surface level, suffers the ke
with death.
On the evidence of these intertextual references I would argue that Per?
longher's 'mystical turn' is by no means as sudden as many commentators
attempt to suggest, and that the physical intensity of Perlongher's earlier work,
although abounding in references to the sordid and painful, still contains an
aesthetic whereby humiliation and suffering are, perhaps problematically, per?
ceived as having divine qualities.

Mystical Withdrawal
In Aguas aereas there is another aesthetic that does differ from Perlongher's
earlier work. After Poem XIX, where the ceremonies and visions reach their
ascetic and ascendant conclusion with the vision of a god (Poemas, p. 273),
Poem XX marks a change by creating an Amazonian environment where a
journey is undertaken inland into the rainforest:
Bersani, p. 51.
Bersani, p. 99 (italic original).

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86 Nestor Perlongher and Mysticism

Zambullen la ondulacion chispas de espumas suave, verde

claro, en reflejos de magma vegetal que a la madera de la proa as-
tillan, al hacer restallar en el derretimiento de la luz. Ruido
de espumas y olor de aguas mareosas en el deslizamiento (todo se
vuelve lento) por el Purus y las madejas en remolinos entroncadas
que hacen de galeria a la hirsuta piragua

(Poemas, p. 274)

The poem describes a journey through the Amazon rainforest, 'por el P

one of its rivers. Despite the absence of drug-related details?cups or pu
for example?there still operates in this poem the same process of break
up monads that occurs in the ceremony poems. Lights and watery reflec
dominate the poem, while non-reflecting surfaces begin to reflect ('incru
del palo') through the play of light on water, and light takes on the qual
water ('derretimiento de la luz'). The poem therefore reveals a new sensit
of the ayahuasca user to synaesthesia.
The poem's Amazon journey also proposes a change in aesthetic compa
with earlier poems, as in Parque Lezama, or Perlongher's urban anthrop
in his thesis O negocio do miche. Whereas the work carried out in O ne
do miche might be described as a drift?around the streets?and a movem
down?in terms of income, class, legal position, and physically onto the s
down into nightclub basements or public toilets?into the city, Perlongh
movement here is also a drift, in the kayak on the river's current, but on
is characterized as up, towards the light and the divine, back to origins,
from the city, and towards a periphery, less in terms of class or social p
than ofthe physical isolation ofthe religion's headquarters, away from th
and the southern cities that dominate Brazil politically and economically
Poem XXI continues this Amazonian journey:
EL JUEGO DEL CLAROSCURO en la echada hojarasca, como un
calco, estampaba de ramilletes puntillistas la oscilacion de los an-
dariveles. Habia el peligro de la gran serpiente fluvial, la amenaza
sombria de la raya, la sonrisa desconfiada de los yacares y la raida
sombra de una tortuga al sumergirse entre las estelas alborotadas.
Todo tan leve y al mismo tiempo tan caliente, tan exhausto. Nos do-
blega con su inmensidad el cielo como un tapado celeste inspirado
en Femirama. Una sutil femineidad cincela con delicadeza los cuer-
pos trabajados (a tachas) de los que reman y sus gestos agiles como
panteras en el marihuanal. No es facil abstraerse en lo celeste cuan?
do estas superficies bronceadas nos deslumbran con su acento de
canto. Sin embargo, se tiende a lo sublime, sublime resplandor.
(Poemas, p. 275)

Despite the sexual abstinence of members of Santo Daime, the poem describe
strong sexual attraction towards co-religionaries, described as 'superficies bro
ceadas'. The same connections of desire between parts of bodies exist as in
earlier poems. What is more important is that the bodies of these rowers a
engaged in becoming-woman?'una sutil femineidad cincela con delicadeza los
cuerpos'. There is a play between the hardness of the bodies and the subtlety
as attention to the blurring of differences, of femininity. As Guattari observed,

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 BEN BOLLIG 87

'If a man breaks away from the pha

tions, he will become involved in vari
becoming. Only then can he go on to
music.'26 For Perlongher Guattari's su
first step in escaping phallocentrism, an
capitalism and heterosexuality, provi
the revolutionary possibilities that he
I would suggest that in this poem P
sexual sexual relation that Bersani detects in the work of Andre Gide. Bersani
talks of 'nonrelational pederasty', whereby the necessity of a relation is elimi
nated from sex.27 Unlike the shattering of the ego in S/M, which Bersani sug
gests is complicit with death, or the sedentary couple, easily recoverable by th
state, this non-relational relation is neither easily stratified nor potentially fatal.
The sexually charged description of the becoming-woman of the rowers echoe
the sexually charged description of the miche in Parque Lezama and O negocio d
miche. Prostitution, and the nomadic wandering and anonymous sexual liaison
that accompany it, and the Santo Daime religion, offer the same possibilitie
for escaping the individual through desiring-connections. However, while th
former is both dangerous, through AIDS and frequent out breaks of violenc
(Prosa, pp. 35-40),28 and increasingly accepted within the market place and
thus tamed of the possibilities for unleashing becomings that challenge the
dominant social order, the latter, organized through the structure of a religion
and still ignored if not marginalized by the state in Brazil, represents a more
feasible alternative, distanced from the market, yet relatively safe.
The same aesthetic is also found in several poems in El chorreo. The title of
Albaniles Desnudos (I)' is drawn from a late nineteenth- and early twentieth
century theme in painting used as a means for portraying the male nude;
previously in Western painting only the female nude was considered worthy o
the artist's attention:

Con temple atisbo desde la ilusion de los tules biceps lardos

lerdez de movimientos en el aire desnudo tachonado
de cuerpos que se tasan a la luz esplendida del cuelgue
de las cuerdas tonsado el halito frio de la brisa
vespertina agitando calzones desde lo alto de si, donde
se arroja.
Cata la turmalina rociada trepidez
de polvos que se echan al vacio desde arriba
de un mueble:
cuece andamios la costa
inefable su jalde borroneo,
en balde la cosquilla de la roca en la nube.
Vecina a las inspiraciones abre los brazos socorriendo
la distraccion de la pupila en las hamacas paraguayas.
Tizne del morenillo y el resbalar oleoso de los huevos.
Los huecos en la cima, el portland los rellena con su balde
26 F. Guattari, Molecular Revolution (1977), trans. by R. Sheed (Harmondsworth: Pengu
1984), p. 228.
27 Bersani, pp. 122-23.
28 First published as 'Matan a una marica' in Fin de siglo, 16 (1988).

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 88 Nestor Perlongher and Mysticism

irguiendo toscamente las arenas del sueno en el serrallo.

Hay una confusion de abedules erectos, la contorsion, la
distorsion arquean
arqueros apostados en las almenas liminares
cuyo salto doblega al malandrin en el torneo deseante.
Y humeda flecha moja la entretela sudada.
(Poemas, p. 301)29

The poem exhibits a play between metaphorical base (it is a poem th

be described as being about sexual relationships with proletariat men
drift away from that base; here the effect is achieved through long
less enumerations (lines 1-5), an accumulation of nouns ('la turmalin
trepidez | de polvos'), and the inflation of clauses through conjuncti
prepositions ('abre los brazos socorriendo | la distraccion de la pup
hamacas paraguayas').
The poem's language juxtaposes two quite distinct fields: the m
body at work ('albaniles', 'biceps', 'calzones', 'polvos', 'mueble', 'po
'arenas') and the classical in register and theme ('temple', 'ilusion', 't
'vespertina', 'serrallo', 'arquero', 'almenas', 'malandrin', 'torneo', 'flec
mercantile elements are dealt with in Perlongher's thesis: for example
que se tasan a la luz esplendida del cuelgue' recalls 'la conversion de l
sidades libidinales en signos monetarios'.30 There is in parallel in the
'sintaxis de la piel' and a 'gramatica de los cuerpos' that connect the
exchange value.
The poem's ending thus defies a unified reading; it has elements t
be read as sexual metaphors or as a barroco castle scene ('abedules
'humeda flecha'). The last line offers several possible readings; intrig
its two elements offer literal readings, each of which calls for a met
reading of the other. Therefore

humeda flecha [arrow] moja la entretela [i.e. bloodies the guts]

or

humeda flecha [i.e. ejaculation] moja la entretela [wets the lining, where 'en
synonym of 'forro', and therefore condom].

An irresolvable tension is thereby created between two possible read

as the 'arqueros' are stationed on 'almenas liminares': that which is
to divide in what Perlongher called the 'sistema significante despot
p. 96)31 is instead placed in an unstable, liminal and dynamic shutt
tantly, this shuttle is between sex and death, pleasure and pain. Ag
returns us to the mystical experience, aided by the effect of distancing
ject matter, e.g. the 'ilusion' and 'sueno', together with vision: 'atisbo
It is this physical distance from the sexual act itself that changes th
the poem. Perlongher described the anthropological immersion of hi
and the Doems in Paraue Lezama that dealt with nrostitution as a form of nar-

First published in Diario de poesia, 22 (1992).

N. Perlongher, Laprostitucion masculina (Buenos Aires: Edicionesde la Urraca, 1993),
First published as the prologue to Caribe Transplatino (Sao Paulo: Illuminaras, 1991).

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 BEN BOLLIG 89

ticipative observation.32 Here we ha

consideration of potential sexual part
This distance, framed by Perlonghe
was bedridden while writing many o
upon by Leo Bersani. Bersani argues t
Gide, and Genet, although by no means
lenge to homophobia and the society
attacks on conventional relations betw
desexualization of the erotic, or, in o
plicate received social classifications
beyond genital sexual contact. In the
Bersani detects what he calls 'a nons
explain this, one might call on Perlon
the behaviour of the client seeking t
with the miche is potentially masoch
of violence. With the appearance of A
in comparison with the development
in Perlongher's poems that interacted
distanced poems offer a different aes
lationship that Gide's protagonist und
without ever engaging in sexual inte
erasty'. This 'eliminates from "sex" th
For Bersani, this circumventing ofth
in Genet's Funeral Rites,35 offers a n
the entire theater of good',36 and of
all'.37 Despite the seemingly nihilistic
relational relation, the community a
radical potential: bodies project 'out
each other'.38 What is important for
that the combination of a sexually dis
cal background allows Perlongher to
for anti-social socialization that mov
and dynamic, while maintaining the

Mystical Purpose
This turning away is taken a step fu
longher's last two collections, specifi
purpose. After a series of poems in v

32 M. Eckard and E. Bernini, 'Nestor Perlon

y produccion, 10 (1991), 82-86.
33 Bersani, p. 99, quoted more fully above at
34 Bersani, pp. 122-23 (italic original).
35 Trans. by B. Frechtman (London: Faber &
36 Bersani, p. 163.
37 Bersani, p. 168.
38 Bersani, p. 165.

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90 Nestor Perlongher and Mysticism

visions, the sixth poem of Aguas aereas reverts to the prose form used in
of the poems of Par que Lezama:
Acrilico (Acre Lirieo)* mas que esplendor volumen tornaluz
luz fria acuatica su raye (interseccion de elitros, choque o ba-
llet de vagalumes, niagara) de guante calza el espesor glaseando el
manati de una cuticula de nubes, cutis niveo, glostora de nivea, en
la ampulosidad del ademan glorioso disponiase el zarpe de la raya,
cuadriculado en vertigo, craquele, sin dejar de ser ruina, pegoteado
de babas, la rebaba de nacar estirada en el borde de su vaina de
vals, rispido enroque que trastoca los estremecimientos en connu-
bios, leves, alados, casi voiles, manaties sirena, bosques rio, pues el
milagro de su sobresalto, al cascar, en granadas, los aretes de espar-
to, les despertaba napas de titilante anade, vacio, vagabundo, su ter-
sura de plumas en el cauce azaroso, no nada sino que se deja llevar,
ser arrastrado, en el remolineo de las helices por el torrente panta-
noso, escandalo de espumas la ola orin, agua de porcelana en el
chorro de joyas, un portland numinoso al recubrir da vuelta al pul-
po como un guante, perla que se revela en goma o nace caucho, do-
lido por el acre o el acibar, en lenguas marejadas de un-unguento
encantado.
* Caetano Veloso.
(Poemas, p. 256)

Two fields of language are at play here. The first is that of the purge, the
mony, and the visions; hence 'acre lirico' offers the bitterness of vomit and
lyrical ordering of a hymn. We also have 'acibar', aloes, a bitter herb with purg
tive effects, together with lights and illuminations ('tornaluz', 'luz', 'vagalu
Portuguese for glow-worm). The second is distinctly sexual, particular th
elements that imply sheathing and ejaculation:
su raye [. . .] de guante calza el espesor
glaseando el manati
pegoteado de babas
la rebaba de nacar estirada en el borde de su vaina
agua de porcelana en el chorro de joyas
da vuelta al pulpo como un guante
perla que se revela en goma o nace caucho.

These are given a focus by the central cultismo 'connubios', a marriage couple.
One must be careful, though, not to say that Perlongher is writing here abou
penises, condoms, and ejaculation. While 'manati' and 'guante' may be very
close to the type of slang used to describe sexual practices in many earlier
poems, as described above, they are not simply metaphors for the initiated.
This is revealed by the appearance of the 'anade'?which might be interpreted
as 'ano'?alongside 'su tersura de plumas en el cauce azaroso': too much duck
to be just an anus. The difference between this work and earlier poems is that
elements that might have been interpreted sexually are stripped of any street
context. Thus while words such as 'anade', previously sexually suggestive
appear in these poems, they are orientated in a different direction. This new
direction is indicated by two other sets of vocabulary in the poem. The first is
related to flight: 'elitros', 'vagalumes', 'vertigo', 'leves', 'alados'. The second,
with which there is some crossover, is light. Therefore I would argue that whil

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 BEN BOLLIG 91

the poetics and aesthetics of

those displayed before, still c
educated figure into a predom
by drugs, dirt, and intense phy
in the earlier poems the mov
into the darkness, towards th
lowness may still be present,
facing in the opposite directi
Similarly, in El Chorreo, Pe
cura' has for a title an oxym
epigraph from Santa Teresa
pain and pleasure:
Si atrevesada por la zarza
arder a lo que ya encendi
hace, el dolor en goce tra
fria la carne mas el alma
en el blanco del ojo el ojo
cual nieve en valle torrido: el deseo
divino se echa sobre lanzas igneas
y muerde el ojo en blanco el labio henchido.
Funambulesca beatitud la suya,
de claroscuros, que al soltar el pliegue
de luz inunda el esplendor febeo.
lNo es resplandor que nos deslumbra, sino
una blancura suave y el resplandor difuso
que alto deleite da a la vista y no
la cansa, ni la claridad que se ve para ver
esta hermosura tan divina\
(Poemas, p. 304 (italic original))

The opening line recalls a rapture recounted by Santa Teresa:

Veiale [Jesus] en las manos un dardo de oro largo, y al fin del hierro me parecia tener
un poco de fuego; este me parecia meter en el corazon algunas veces y que me llegaba a
las entranas; al sacarle, me parecia que las llevaba consigo y me dejaba toda abrasada en
amor grande de Dios.39

The image is of opening oneself up to pain so as to achieve divine ends, thus

lending corporeal sensations a purpose other than the search for intensity. We
have discussed the problems that Bersani attributes to the supposedly death-
complicit nature of these aesthetics. However, Perlongher's poem is now in?
formed by a new purpose, and unlike the mystical poems of distanced relations,
exhibits a different teleological aesthetic; this is reinforced by the final verse, a
quote from Santa Teresa that exceeds the confines of the sonnet form in rhyme,
line length, and metre. Teresa's quote deals with the overwhelming bright-
ness of the mystical experience. Teresa Bielecki, a Carmelite follower of Santa
Teresa, observes:
Sex is disguised mysticism [...]. Eroticism, a preoccupation with genitality, is a deflec-
tion of real energy and the end of any mystical possibility [. . .]. Sex is a need, Eros is
Marti, p. 393.

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92 Nestor Perlongher and Mysticism

a desire [. . .]. Eros is the longing to enjoy such deep and wide-ranged dimensi
relatedness?all originating from a critical center and tending towards an ultimate

This approach to desire offers a radical alternative to Deleuze and Guatt

view of it as flow, connection, and flight, the view that dominated Perlon
earlier works; Bielecki's mystical desire is a movement out of the body,
is logocentric and teleological. Nevertheless, Bielecki characterizes this ex
ence as a radical attack on binary systems:
In Hebrew there are no separate words for 'body' or 'soul' [. . .]. Only in the my
experience is the dilemma of duality resolved. For to the mystic is given the un
vision of the One in the All and the All in the One [. . .]. Santa Teresa, the gran
woman of Avila, teaches us to live life in its total polarity: agony and ecstasy, w
and wedding, madness and reason, masculine and feminine, action and contempl
discipline and wildness, fast and feast [...]. Life is not either-or but both-and.41

However, rather than replace the binary with the multiplicitous or the
zomatic, the new term is Oneness: a movement from Henri Bergson to
Two aspects of Perlongher's poem suggest this change in perspective: the
whelming light in the poem ('luz', 'esplendor') and a qualifier for desire, d
over a line-end by enjambment for emphasis: 'deseo | divino'. As Bersan
serves, S/M practitioners often speak about pain in terms of 'cosmic ecst
Perlongher's extension of this is to inscribe pain totally within the fram
of religious teleology.
The poem Alabanza y exaltacion del Padre Mario', from El chorreo, ta
the form of a long prayer with refrains and imprecations for the divin
priestly figure of the title. Much of the poem stands in radical contras
Perlongher's earlier poetics, particularly with regard to light and dark
Perlongher can also be seen dealing with the contradictions and paradox
thrown up by a meeting between experimental poetics and teleological rel
systems. This occurs particularly with Perlongher's treatment of the up
binary. Whereas in previous works Perlongher has moved down (to the
the penis, the petticoats, or the sewer), here a change occurs:
Oh Padre
Curenos
la salud y las escoriaciones del alma y los pozos del trauma y las he-
ridas que hilan en el fondo de si de cada cual las babas de la sierpe
y nos enriedan la cabeza enrulada hasta hacernos perder toda ra-
zon y arrastrarnos enloquecidamente con el absurdo sueno de salir
por abajo bajando descendiendo sin ver que la iluminacion viene de
arriba como un soi que fijo sobre los ventanales de voile atravesan-
dolos de luz divina luz de la que irradian sus ojos claros ojos abrien-
do una vereda de fulgor en la tiniebla floreciendola.
(Poemas, p. 332)

Perlongher's becoming-mystic is posited on two very new premisses: up is good

and down is bad; there is centre to the universe, a source of all light and therefore
40 T. Bielecki, Holy Daring: An Outrageous Gift to Modern Spirituality from Santa Teresa the
Grand Wild Woman ofAvila (Shaftesbury: Element, 1994), p. 48.
41 Bielecki, pp. 99, 115.
42 Bersani, p. 93.

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 BEN BOLLIG 93

all goodness. This again offe

is, furthermore, another key
his poetics: the notion of cur
cultivated an aesthetic of ext
in El chorreo can be divided b
and those that suggest a form
as inevitable. This poem diff
this to Perlongher's late fasc
revealed in his writing outsi
friend Sara Torres points ou
'vino su fascinacion con el Padre Mario, un cura sanador [. . .] de Gonzalez
Catan [a suburb of Buenos Aires], donde iba en peregrinacion cuando ya habian
comenzado los sintomas de la enfermedad'.43
The aesthetic of curing offers a contrast to Perlongher's early reaction to
AIDS. The essay 'Disciplinar os poros e as paixoes' (1985)44 and his book O
que e AIDS (1987) both attacked medical and judicial discourses that promoted
safe sex as a means of preventing the spread of HIV; however, in later interviews
Perlongher seemed to recant his early, combative stance:

La expansion de la enfermedad fue mucho mas grave de lo que 7 u 8 anos atras uno s
podia imaginar. Ahora es un momento para auxiliar a los enfermos y en el que la cuestio
de la muerte nos obliga a repensar el tema del hedonismo individual occidental. En u
primer momento mi reaccion fue decir: 'resistamos'. Ahora me doy cuenta de que en
muchos aspectos me equivoque. Y en relacion con la enfermedad, le tengo temor y
respecto, la tengo en cuenta.45

The change that Perlongher highlights is that AIDS moved from distant men-
ace to real threat, and with it death became a far more immediate threat. Bersani
criticizes the 'death-complicit' aesthetic of many gay theorists.46 However, th
question Perlongher's work raises is how one avoids being death-complicit
when death is brought into the closest possible focus and visibility by termina
illness. Perlongher's last poems approach the near impossibility of answering
this question without recourse to metaphysics or mysticism.
In Perlongher's final collections, then, we can detect three key aesthetics:
firstly, the masochistic aesthetic of mystical suffering; secondly, the non-rela
tional relation that questions conventional notions of sociability; and, thirdly,
poems turned completely towards the divine that react to imminent death. Hi
mystic poems are related to the end of possibilities presented by sex and pros
titution, but still show the strong influence of the sexual and kitsch aesthetic
that he developed in his earlier poems.
King's College, University of London Ben Bollig
43 Rapisardi and Modarelli, p. 198.
44 Lua nova, 2.3 (1985), 35~37-
45 C. Ulanovsky, 'El SIDA puso en crisis la identidad homose
1990, p. n (interview with Perlongher).
46 Bersani, p. 97.

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