We began with a scene from Idle Days in Patagonia, which we might call “A Lesson in Optics.” Situated in Hudson’s childhood, it takes place around 1851. At that moment on the plains, in the desert (Hudson tells us), there is an Englishman with a gaucho who learns to see, who sees for the first time, and so we might also call the scene “Ways of Seeing.” The gaucho laughs at the European because he’s wearing eyeglasses. To him, the man looks ridiculous with that artificial device fixed over his nose. There is a challenge and some tension over determining which of them really does see what he sees well, and little by little the gaucho plays along, finally agreeing to try on the Englishman’s glasses.
And as soon as he tries them on (which work perfectly for him, in an almost surrealist act of chance), the paisano sees the world as it is; he discovers that, up to this point, he’s had a clouded vision of nature and has been seeing only vague blotches and uncertain forms on the gray plains. He puts on the lenses and everything changes; he sees colors and the clear contour of the landscape and recognizes the true coat of his dappled horse, and he suffers a kind of optical epiphany.
“I can see that cart over there,” the gaucho says, unable to believe its vivid color, and then he goes over and touches it, thinking it’s been freshly painted. The gaucho’s walk toward the cart and his gesture of touching what he sees represents a discovery and an encounter with reality. The world has become visible and real to him. (“The green of the leaves, the yellow of the grass.”) The gaucho understands that nature was not so natural before, or that nature in its truly natural form is only visible to him by means of an artificial device.
So it is a scene of transformation, a pedagogical scene we might say, but also, of course, a scene of colonialism: the native has become civilized. Hudson belongs to the lineage of Conrad, and the title of that chapter is “Sight in Savages.” From then on, the gaucho starts wearing glasses and surely becomes the first gauderio to ride bespectacled on horseback across Buenos Aires Province.
Who wore glasses in Argentina during the mid-nineteenth century? I showed them a few images and engravings. With the invention of the printing press, the demand for glasses had increased, and by around 1829 it had expanded to the point that an English eyeglass manufacturing corporation was granted rights to export to Argentina. On the other hand, we should apply the notion of Kulturbrille (cultural lenses) from the anthropologist Franz Boas, who underlined the disadvantage that any writer who sets out to study another culture must reckon with.
Hudson would separate and stop talking about himself, situating himself in the biased position of the witness who was there. This method of construction bore a familial resemblance to that of other writers fascinated by distant worlds. It was what Conrad had elevated to perfection beginning with Youth, the novella that began his series narrated by Marlow. I asked them to read that work as well as Kipling’s story “Mrs. Bathurst,” in which, along with that disconnected intimacy, cinema had appeared for the first time in literature. I also added “Juan Darién,” the Horacio Quiroga story in which a tiger, transformed into a man, watches the world with incredible lucidity and detachment and pays the price for the clarity of his vision.
I handed out the syllabus, organized the oral presentations, and for the first few weeks everything went along fine. Each of them read Hudson’s books in a different way, as though they were actually texts written by different authors. Rather than unifying these versions, I tried to delve into their differences.
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I was gradually adapting to the passage of days; the academic routine helped me to order the disorder of my life. My nocturnal visions weren’t improving, but at least I was busier. I’d started to record my meetings with Orion in my notebooks. I’d dedicated myself to observing him, studying his routines and the places where he took refuge over the course of the day. He had a habit of sitting motionless for a long time, always in the sun, as though trying to conserve energy. He shifted around, following the light and settling himself in sunny islands, seeking warmth and brightness. “Like a stone, Monsieur,” he told me one day, “we must try to be like stones, hard and firm.” His other primary activity was walking, and he went about town as if on a journey, moving with a balanced and tranquil step, a way of walking that he called the mental march. He was only able to think if he was on his way somewhere. At dusk he’d be approaching Natural, an organic supermarket at the bottom of town. There, among the end-of-day scraps, he could find everything: yogurt, fruits, vegetables, bread, cereal, cookies. He called it food rescue, and
