The Man of Feeling Read Online Free PDF

course there were differences, because although the facts and my vision of the story all correspond, I dreamed what happened in another order, in another tempo and with time apportioned and divided differently, in a concentrated, selective manner and—this is the decisive and incongruous part—knowing beforehand what had happened, knowing, for example, Dato's name, character and subsequent behavior before our first meeting took place in my dream. The strange thing is that, while in my mind there was synthesis, in my dream there was progression. It is true, on the other hand, that while I was dreaming, I could not know if my dream would depart at a given moment from what happened four years ago or if it would keep close to it until the end, as proved to be the case and as I now know and can say as the morning advances. But it is also true that now I do not know to what extent I am recounting what actually happened and to what extent I am describing what happened in my dream version of events, even though both things seem to me to be one and the same. I once read in a book by a German writer that people who choose not to eat breakfast are trying to avoid contact with the day so as not to enter fully into it because it is only through that second awakening, that of the stomach, that you can entirely leave behind you the darkness and the nocturnal realm, and it is only once you have arrived safe and sound on the other shore that you can allow yourself to recount what you dreamed without bringing down calamities upon yourself, since, if you do so before you have broken your fast, you are still under the sway of the dream and you betray it with your words, thus exposing yourself to its vengeance. And you tell it as if you were still asleep. Beneath its pretended intention of taking the dream very seriously indeed, this idea, which has unmistakably popular origins, conceals—as do those bandied about by psychiatrists, psychologists, psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and all the other usurpers of the word "psyche"—an infinite scorn for the dream, because it is based on the assumption that there are two separate worlds, that of dreaming and that of waking, or, even worse, two hostile, contrary worlds, fearful of each other, ready to hide their wealth and knowledge, and never to share them or combine them except through the violent capture, forced conversion, and invasive interpretation of one of the territories, with the peculiarity that the only world that feels this yearning for submission, the only one that achieves this spirit of conquest, is the diurnal world. But what prompted me to this confession is that, while I do not accept such an idea, I have chosen, just in case, not to have any breakfast this morning, in the hope that I will be able to tell both what happened and the dream of what happened, by dint of not distinguishing between them. That is why I have still not eaten anything, and who knows when I will.
     

 
    A ND YET I FIND MYSELF RESISTING telling you everything. A poor tenor who is afraid of his own story and of his own dreams, as if using words instead of lyrics, words that have not been dictated, invented phrases rather than repetitive written texts, learned, and memorized, had paralyzed his powerful voice, which up until now has only known the recitative style. I find it hard to speak without a libretto.
    I was not an entirely free man then, and what I do not know and what I fear I will never know is why I lied about this to Dato that night in the hotel bar, when he enquired about my marital status. It wasn't one of his first questions, but it makes no difference: I could not have imagined then what he was going to propose without actually saying that he was proposing something. And if I had told the truth, he might not have proposed anything.
    "Ah, so you're a singer. I should have guessed as much from that great chest of yours, and those shoulders, those pectorals, that virile appearance; you know, you