After years, I read Julio Ramón Ribeyro again with his Dichos de Luder (Revuelta, 2018. Colophon and notes by Jorge Coaguila). A small text with a hundred sayings in which, “with the Luder mask; Ribeyro freely expresses his ideas, committing some exaggerations, without ensuring that he said them” (p. 86). It is a pleasure to read Ribeyro’s sober, clear prose. I read some of his stories in my school days and have enjoyed his diaries, particularly the one from the period 1975-1978.
I have accompanied the reading of these brief sayings with a smile and continuous complicity. In more than one, the many phrases of Rick, the character from Casablanca, came to mind, full of sincerity, self-confidence, and cynicism – friendly, by the way. Many of his ideas collected in the format of sayings are comforting to me, such as when he notes: “Come with us,” his friends tell him. The night is splendid, the streets quiet. We have tickets to the cinema, and we have even reserved a table at a restaurant. -Oh no! -Luder protests-. I only go out when there is a degree, even a minimal one, of uncertainty (n. 4). An uncertainty, by the way, is very typical of practical life, given that the future tends to slip through the ins and outs of planning. Schedule, plan, well; but, everything planned, and measured, is too much for life and my way of being. I enjoy plans and schedules in the same proportion as plans without an agenda or deadlines.
Luder is not given to mortgage his free walk to the current ideologies, the avant-garde, or the Marxist determinism of his time. He prefers the small, the concrete, without messages or messianic pretensions to save the world: “Loving humanity is easy, the difficult thing is loving your neighbor” (n. 23). That neighbor that we have next to us, with his genius and, also, with his demons. The ordinary citizen bustling from here to there. One day it is pleasant, another day it can be stressful. He goes from good health to illness. In one state or another he asks for attention, time, dedication. In these specific circumstances, love for one’s neighbor is put to the test. The neighbor, each one, is the one who has immense value, he is an end and not a means. This is also what Arthur Koestler saw in his novel Zero and Infinity, who, in the times of purging Stalinist communism, the main character blamed himself for having betrayed the revolution for having preferred the specific person and not the humanity or social class.
With Luder you can dialogue, exchange opinions and disagree, as when he states: “Freedom, unfortunately, cannot be shared,” says Luder. Every company, no matter how pleasant, involves a concession. Only the solitary can be free (no. 73). In this, Luder is markedly Roussonian, a noble libertarian savage, without ties, without commitments. Hobbes would find it overwhelming with his habit of tying up the human wolf so that it does not harm the flock. Rousseau’s freedom, on the other hand, does not admit ties and encourages individualism. This libertarian emotivism finds it distressing to make long-term promises, especially if they are promises for life. A wandering, solitary freedom, perhaps, for certain stretches of life, but I do not share it as an ideal of life. A life with purpose requires, rather, the ability to generate bonds, a vital dimension that is achieved when freedom is dedicated to a commitment with all that is joy and effort.
These measures are not intended to be exemplary, moderately skeptical; without romantic outbursts or Christian madness. Of course, sayings to relieve mood contractures and relax frowns.
