God

Fernando Savater. Philosopher. San Sebastián, 1947

 

Concerning Dios lo ve
I’m delighted to send you an aphoristic contribution for your Encyclopaedia (as an old 18th-century enthusiast, I love encyclopaedias). The word I have chosen is “Dios-God” from your latest beautiful, profound and entertaining book. / In a book of my own, A caballo entre milenios, which is a literary, horse-racing diary of the year 2000, I dedicate a tribute to Dios lo ve. The only merit of my tribute is that I generally can’t stand literature about art, aesthetics and other such nonsense... The sole virtue of the lines that follow is that they were written with affection. / GOD (highly substantive, substantive noun, masculine… perhaps, and also singular, particularly singular). It is the Seeing Eye which counts the exact number of birds that make up the flock we barely discern as a fleeting shadow, it is He who walks a little disgruntled, with His hands clasped behind His back, behind the scenery and with an expert finger strokes the loose threads on the reverse side of every tapestry. He sees the careful way we cut up the ingredients for the salad we shall hurriedly eat alone, as we sit watching TV and cursing our fate. He nods with satisfaction when we take the trouble to achieve perfection, and He forgives all failures but not a single ruse. He smiles at each of our failures: they remind Him of His own.