[Remembering ENRIQUE FERNANDEZ; Author and cultural historian.]
“See, I have slipped into belic imagery. Age is no enemy. It is what is. Battling it makes no sense. Sure, one can be stronger and more supple as one ages if one engages in activities that could include, among many options, martial arts. The arts of Mars, who by now must be a very old god.”
“As must be Venus. Still, we continue to imagine her firm-breasted and alluring. Mars, Venus Aphrodite, gods that enthralled me in my early life when I first discovered them, read about them, saw their images in sculpture and painting — or rather the reproductions of such works, until the day I visited the Louvre and sweet mutilated Venus was surrounded by camera-clicking admirers from Japan.”
“Oh gods of violence and sex. Let this mortal who has worshipped you since pre-adolescence live a little longer. Without fighting, though perhaps one could stretch the meaning and say his physicians are.
So no belic imagery in my obituary. No battles lost. Say that I loved, not always wisely, but who does? Say that mostly I sang. Achilles died, even if Homer did not tell us. But Homer never died. He was a succession of singers, he was many. And without trying, he became eternal, like the gods. So let me disappear into his fold. Without a battle. Say that I never stopped singing. And never will.”
ENRIQUE FERNANDEZ ( Nov 22 1943 – December 30 2018).
