Me es fácil imaginar el mundo sin John Maxwell Coetzee

Me es fácil imaginar el mundo sin John Maxwell Coetzee, dice Coetzee. En cambio, me es imposible imaginarlo sin mí.

It occurred to me that it was all too easy to contemplate a world in which this fellow JMC, born February 9, 1940, was not present and had never been present, or else had lived a completely different life, perhaps not even a human life; but at the next instant it also occurred to me that it was impossible to contemplate a world in wich I was not present and had never been present.

I tried the trick again, thinking first the one thought (the world without JMC), then the other (the world without me), and again it worked. The first was easy to think, the second impossible.

The simple logical conclusion would seem to be that the equation "I = JMC" is false.

Habiendo leído a Rimbaud (y escuchado a Mari Trini) ya lo sabíamos: Je est un autre. Sólo que nadie lo había puesto tan claro.

Escultura de Ron Mueck