My First Encounter with a Man of Importance

December 7, 2023

By Eduardo N. Cordovi Hernandez

HAVANA TIMES – George Ivanovich Gurdjieff was born in a part of Armenia that was sometimes controlled by the Russians, other times by the Greeks, and yet others by the Turks. It’s thought that he was born sometime between 1866 and 1878. He died in Paris on October 29, 1949, and exactly one year after that I was born on that same date. I wasn’t aware of that detail when I first had contact with his work, but later I felt that the coincidence distinguished me.

He was a very controversial individual, enough to merit a book about him written by Louis Pawells and Jaques Bergier. The work is badly titled El hombre más extraño de este siglo [“The strangest man of this century”], in reference to the twentieth century. Among other activities, Gurdjieff spent time as a philosopher, musician, doctor, Russian spy, writer, choreographer and spiritual leader. His book Encuentros con hombres notables [Encounters with men of importance”] also motivated me to write about my own encounters, but with a different vision. I never finished it though, and most of the essays that it contained were later absorbed into chapters for a novel. Now, I’ve revisited some parts that got left out, and that’s what I want to share here.

Like Gurdjieff, the first man of importance I met was my father.

I believe I owe him this public recognition, because he left this world without knowing I felt that way. I, myself, didn’t realize it until a very short time ago.

He died when he was nearly ninety-five, or possibly past that age. We lived under the same roof for nearly fifty-three of those years, but I never heard him complain of high blood pressure or headaches. When he died, there wasn’t a tooth left in his mouth but he never visited a dentist, nor did I ever hear him complain about a toothache. He didn’t even have callouses on his feet, and he was proud of that.

As a youth, he smoked cigars for some years, but one fine day he quit. Nearly twenty years later, he began smoking cigarettes once again, and did so for another ten years, only to once again definitively quit “the smoke,” as he phrased it, when he was nearly seventy.

In his entire life, his total beer consumption was less than five bottles, and maybe one of red wine. He was a heavy-set man, not educated or cultured, but he was a very unusual individual.

He never gave the impression of being a religious man, but when he was in situations of crisis, he would always exclaim: “May God’s will be done!” or: “Let it be as it will!” or “May it be as God wishes,” all of which seemed to be more our of fear than an act of faith, at least that’s how my mother understood it. Nonetheless, I admired that irreverence, or maybe it was just a trusting security. Trusting in such an unknown will for anything!

He was a person focused on himself, selfish and a miser. Today, I recall him as an example since he functioned at one extreme while I was on the other. I feel like I need to evoke him today to be able to put myself at a lesser distance.

I’ve reached these conclusions late, because I went through the life we lived feeling I shouldn’t imitate him, as if he were a necessary bad example: someone who was there so I would do the opposite. I didn’t hate him for never worrying about me, or even for making my mother suffer. Every day that passes it seems more likely to me that she made herself suffer, even without realizing it.

After my mother died, I understood that the old man’s disregard could have been his way of allowing me to be, including turning over to my mother the control that could have been his role. Not out of negligence, a lack of authority or irresponsibility, but to give her that authorization as a tribute.

He wasn’t very sociable. He wasn’t one of those old men who play cards or dominoes in the afternoons with their friends, nor those who sit in the parks or on the corners to gossip, talk about baseball or criticize the government. I’m sure that if he had had a more active social life he would have lived better.

Towards the end of his life, I began to modify my opinions about him, although, as I said, I still didn’t stop negatively judging his behavior.

With no set method or school discipline, I’ve tried to approach the teachings of Jesus. The mystery of the fear of God – the beginning of wisdom according to Ecclesiastics – has penetrated my atheist upbringing, and I’ve thought that the healthy longevity of my old man, his ancient wisdom and strength right up until the last moment, were a divine gift. How could it be that God, in his great wisdom, would award such privileges and notable closeness to an individual like him? And I recalled that film of Kurosawa, “The bad sleep well.”

Something was clear: there must be some error in my perspectives. Life isn’t always what it seems, nor can anything be judged without sufficient elements of judgement. Attaining these requires an effort; that effort betters us, and we can find a teaching in everything that surrounds us, even in someone who at one point in time we considered negative.