submitted, and soon no longer needed to be tied to the desk and could move with a certain freedom around that foul, stinking den, so dark that the gaslight had to be lit at four o’clock in the afternoon. He gradually adapted to that hideous mold, renouncing childhood, becoming old at fifteen, and unconsciously imitating the long-suffering attitude and the mechanical gestures of Hermógenes, the bald, yellow-skinned assistant, who, having no personality, likewise had no age, and was neither young nor old.
Even though that horrible life shriveled both body and soul, as if they were grapes laid out in the sun, Horacio nevertheless managed to keep alive his inner fire, his artistic passion, and when his grandfather allowed him a few hours of freedom on a Sunday and treated him like a human being, giving him one real to spend as he pleased, what did the boy do? He found paper and pencils and drew whatever he saw. It was a terrible torment to him that, although the shop was full of tubes of paint, brushes, palettes, and all the other materials required for the art he so loved, he wasn’t allowed to use them. He was always hoping for better times, watching the monotonous days go by, each day the same as the next, like the identical grains of sand in an hourglass. What sustained him was his faith in his destiny, which allowed him to withstand that mean, wretched existence.
His cruel grandfather was as tightfisted as the miserly schoolteacher Cabra in Quevedo’s The Swindler , and he gave his grandson and Hermógenes just enough food to keep them from starving, with no culinary refinements, as these, in his view, merely clogged up the digestive system. He wouldn’t let Horacio play with other boys, because company, even if not entirely bad, served only to corrupt: boys nowadays were as riddled with vices as men. And as for women . . . that particular aspect of life was the one that most worried the tyrant, and if he had ever discovered that his grandson had developed a soft spot for some girl, he would have beaten him to within an inch of his life. In short, he refused to allow the boy a will of his own, because other people’s wills were as much of an obstacle to him as were his own physical aches and pains, and seeing a flicker of self-will in another person provoked in him something like a toothache. He wanted Horacio to embrace the same profession as him, to acquire a taste for “merchandise,” for scrupulous accounting, commercial rectitude, and the actual running of the shop; he wanted to make a man of him, a wealthy man; he would arrange a suitable marriage for him, that is, provide a mother for the children he was sure to have, build a modest, orderly house for him, and continue to rule over his existence into old age and over the lives of his heirs and successors too. In order to achieve this aim, which Don Felipe Díaz deemed to be as noble a struggle as the struggle to save his soul, the most important thing was to cure Horacio of his foolish, childish desire to represent objects by applying paint to a piece of wood or canvas. What nonsense! Wanting to reproduce Nature, when Nature was right there in front of his eyes! What was the point of that? What is a painting? A lie, like the theater, a dumb show, and however skillfully painted a sky might be, it could never compare with the real thing. According to him, all artists were fools, madmen, falsifiers, whose sole utility was the money they spent in shops buying the tools of their trade. They were, moreover, vile usurpers of the divine gifts, and were insulting God by trying to imitate him, creating the ghosts or shadows of things that only divine action could and should create; indeed, the hottest spot in hell would be reserved for them for committing such a crime. Don Felipe despised actors and poets for the same reasons, just as he prided himself on never having read a line of poetry or seen a play; he also made much of the fact that he had never traveled, be
Even though that horrible life shriveled both body and soul, as if they were grapes laid out in the sun, Horacio nevertheless managed to keep alive his inner fire, his artistic passion, and when his grandfather allowed him a few hours of freedom on a Sunday and treated him like a human being, giving him one real to spend as he pleased, what did the boy do? He found paper and pencils and drew whatever he saw. It was a terrible torment to him that, although the shop was full of tubes of paint, brushes, palettes, and all the other materials required for the art he so loved, he wasn’t allowed to use them. He was always hoping for better times, watching the monotonous days go by, each day the same as the next, like the identical grains of sand in an hourglass. What sustained him was his faith in his destiny, which allowed him to withstand that mean, wretched existence.
His cruel grandfather was as tightfisted as the miserly schoolteacher Cabra in Quevedo’s The Swindler , and he gave his grandson and Hermógenes just enough food to keep them from starving, with no culinary refinements, as these, in his view, merely clogged up the digestive system. He wouldn’t let Horacio play with other boys, because company, even if not entirely bad, served only to corrupt: boys nowadays were as riddled with vices as men. And as for women . . . that particular aspect of life was the one that most worried the tyrant, and if he had ever discovered that his grandson had developed a soft spot for some girl, he would have beaten him to within an inch of his life. In short, he refused to allow the boy a will of his own, because other people’s wills were as much of an obstacle to him as were his own physical aches and pains, and seeing a flicker of self-will in another person provoked in him something like a toothache. He wanted Horacio to embrace the same profession as him, to acquire a taste for “merchandise,” for scrupulous accounting, commercial rectitude, and the actual running of the shop; he wanted to make a man of him, a wealthy man; he would arrange a suitable marriage for him, that is, provide a mother for the children he was sure to have, build a modest, orderly house for him, and continue to rule over his existence into old age and over the lives of his heirs and successors too. In order to achieve this aim, which Don Felipe Díaz deemed to be as noble a struggle as the struggle to save his soul, the most important thing was to cure Horacio of his foolish, childish desire to represent objects by applying paint to a piece of wood or canvas. What nonsense! Wanting to reproduce Nature, when Nature was right there in front of his eyes! What was the point of that? What is a painting? A lie, like the theater, a dumb show, and however skillfully painted a sky might be, it could never compare with the real thing. According to him, all artists were fools, madmen, falsifiers, whose sole utility was the money they spent in shops buying the tools of their trade. They were, moreover, vile usurpers of the divine gifts, and were insulting God by trying to imitate him, creating the ghosts or shadows of things that only divine action could and should create; indeed, the hottest spot in hell would be reserved for them for committing such a crime. Don Felipe despised actors and poets for the same reasons, just as he prided himself on never having read a line of poetry or seen a play; he also made much of the fact that he had never traveled, be
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