Flavio Belisario (505-565 d.C.) nació en Iliria (la parte occidental de la península de los Balcanes) de padres pobres y se convirtió en uno de los mayores generales del Imperio bizantino si no el más grande. Belisario se cuenta entre los candidatos destacados para el título de «Último de los romanos», un título que se utiliza para denominar a la persona que mejor encarna los mejores valores del Imperio romano. Sirvió como comandante del Ejército bajo el emperador bizantino Justiniano I (que reinó de 527-565), con quien tuvo una célebre difícil relación.
Feeling discouraged, so here's a short, unfinished Godos piece that will never be realised. Nikolai's attempting (read: failing) to write his first draft of a play (an adaptation of Dead Souls, Part 2). Fyodor was going to cheer him up and inspire him, somehow, but I don't have any clue how, so this is all I could get out of that idea. (I do at least like how it turned out, though, unfinished as it is.)
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The words on the page taunted Nikolai like so many Sufi dervishes. They blurred, swirled into characters half-formed, who jumped and jeered just out of Nikolai’s sight. ‘Find us,’ they seemed to say. ‘Come and see our beautiful lives! And then depict us, reveal us to everyone, that we may truly exist.’ They beckoned him to find them, invited him to view their marvelous exploits, to laugh along with their absurd adventures—and then just as he reached to meet them, they slipped away, laughing. Unendingly they tortured him with scenes just beyond grasp, a perfect story hidden in the periphery of a dense fog.
Nikolai groaned, leaned back, and pressed his palms against his eyes. It was a perfect picture of agony, well-practiced and endlessly rehearsed. ‘Yet all the acting in the world won’t save a lacking script,’ he thought. ‘Ah, why can’t you just write yourselves? Hop along, I’ll even guide the quill, so long as you do something, anything, oh please…’ His entreaties, of course, prompted naught but more formless tittering. Nikolai sighed, and contemplated how effective bashing his scull against the door-jam would be at shaking something loose.
“Is something the matter?” an irritatingly calm Fyodor asked from behind him. Nikolai swung around in his chair, resting his arms on the back, and stared pointedly at his relaxed friend who lounged so serenely on the green recliner, a book nestled under his folded palms. The question itself was preemptive, a set-up, a frivolous first line of a three-line script which always arrived at the same conclusion. Nikolai recognised the offer for friendly—and perhaps even needed—advice, but took it no less bitterly. He smiled mirthlessly. Nevertheless, he played his part.
“Whatever gave you that impression? Was it the willful suicide of the last of my creative expression? Or perhaps you hear them laughing too?”
“Your characters won’t work with you?” (Here, the second phrase, to be replied with…)
“Oh, far beyond that. They won’t speak to me at all! I’m being shunned.”
“I see.” Fyodor concluded and stood, pulling the curtain on their impromptu play. Nikolai watched him go, mildly curious which remedy Fyodor would prescribe this time. “I need to visit the theatre,” he said finally. “Would you like to join me?”
Nikolai laughed flatly. “For what? The stage doesn’t—and I say this from great experience—do anything for one’s imagination. If anything, it’s worse, because you see everything that has been and none of what could be! Can you imagine that? I know, I know, you’re ‘not that way artistically inclined,’ but imagine for a moment that the sentences of your computer codes were jumping and jaunting about in front of your very eyes, and so to fix it, you decided to stare at someone else's pages. Well? Would that help you very much?”
“Most likely it wouldn’t.” Fyodor smiled. “But we won’t be going to the stage. I need to stop by the costuming department. Misha talked one of the women there into parting with an unused costume design for Verenka, but couldn’t pick it up himself.”
“And you just so happen to be free?”
“No,” Fyodor said, a bit dejected. “But I couldn’t stand to stare at my colleagues’ ‘pages’. As you say, it won’t do any good.” He sighed wearily. “Some fresh air and new scenery, tea, something else to think about… I need them greatly. And some company would be nice, too.”
Nikolai stood without ceremony (a shame, yes, but recall his lack of inspiration and forgive him), stretched, and said flatly, “Well then, what are we waiting for?”
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As it turned out, Nikolai was quite quick to regret those words. A lovely stroll down the uncharacteristically sun-touched streets of St. Petersburg wound down into a bustling cafe.
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Surprisingly, all went well at the theatre. The lady was quite nice, expressing her condolences and well-wishes for the ‘poor young woman’, and waved them on their way. Pattern safely secured, the two stopped by the next-door cafe, ‘The Stray Dog’, (home to aspiring and established artists alike), for a spot of tea. And thence all collapsed.
Los visigodos eran la tribu occidental de los godos, un pueblo germánico, que se estableció al oeste del mar Negro en algún momento del siglo III d.C. Según el experto Herwig Wolfram, el escritor romano Casiodoro (en torno a 485-585 d.C.) acuñó el término visigothi en referencia a los "godos occidentales", ya que entendía ostrogothi como "godos orientales". La intención de Casiodoro no era más que acuñar un nombre para diferenciar a las dos tribus existentes de godos en su época que claramente se diferenciaban la una de la otra. Estas tribus no se referían a sí mismas por esos nombres. El historiador romano Amiano Marcelino (siglo IV d.C.) se refiere a los visigodos como los tervingi (o Thervingi), tervingios, que puede que fuera su nombre original. Sin embargo, parece ser que la designación de visigothi les gustó a los propios visigodos, con lo que acabaron usándola para sí mismos.
"Really!" Nikolai burst out, with all the indignity of a scorned mother. "Have I not crossed you every night, blessed your sneezing nostrils, swaddled you when you were wet and cold? Have I not, God forbid, prayed for you every day since we met, every evening without fail, never once cursing or thinking ill of you—and now all for what?! He sits there, typing, typing, typing away, gnawing at his fingers, not letting anyone take them away or, God forbid, kissing or applying ointment, all while this Devil takes his place. Oh, but what a nice Devil it is, how kind, how considerate, how sweet, and my dear friend seems to have entirely forgotten my love of all that is savoury! But no, of course, my beloved would have me suffer out three cold nights and such terrible frights, nearly spooking my soul right out into the deepest depths of Hell!"
This rant, seemingly to no one and solely for the sake of it—and indeed, with very little points of fact—did produce a rather noted effect on the company. Behemoth burst out laughing.
I feel that my writing tends to be better when I'm enjoying it. I don't remember much of writing this, but I do remember that I had fun.
