In early 2011, while I was in the middle of translating your novel EL ANTICUARIO, you candidly asked me why I had taken the task upon myself, and at the time – as far as I recall – I gave you no concrete response. Now that the work is done, and now that we have received the good news that the translation will be published by Grove/Atlantic in 2014, I am reminded that your question has remained unanswered, for which reason I’d like to take a few moments to respond.

As you and I both know, though many readers may not, the first Faveronian writings I was exposed to were critical articles that you had posted on the blog you were keeping at that time, Puente Aéreo, which my good friend and your compatriot, Renzo Roncagliolo, had turned me onto. I was immediately drawn to the unabashed way you were dissecting shaky arguments in literature and popular culture, showing up politicians and pundits for the falsity they tried to sell as fact, and turning common misconceptions on their head with a caustic yet good humored critique that I had not seen elsewhere and that I wanted to share with non-Spanish-speaking friends, colleagues, and readers in general. This led me to start by translating a few of those articles and posting them on my own blog, The Smelting Process, as well as on The Daily Kos.

When I saw on your blog that EL ANTICUARIO had been published, I immediately started scouring the internet for reviews. My curiosity was boiling over as I wondered what a novel would be like at the hand of a critic like you. When I got my hands on a copy and started to read, I was immediately struck by the opulent language you had employed – a narrative feature that in Gringolandia is generally frowned upon, or that at least, has been abandoned since Hemingway & Co. made their proclamations of the economy of language. This was the first seduction. I knew that a version of EL ANTICUARIO in English would need to go against the grain, would be justified in recreating that opulent linguistic ambiance, and the temptation to take on that task was already hard to endure; but this did not convince me completely.

As I continued my reading of the novel, letting my mind give in to the whirling, tantric prose and haunting vignettes that, together, create a maelstromesque narrative – perfectly in harmony with the labyrinthine structure of the city and asylum of the tale – I could not help but think that what I was reading could be genealogically traced to the Gothic narrative of Hawthorne, Poe, and Kafka. This hunch was confirmed through a couple of our conversations which revealed to me the deep influence that these writers, especially Hawthorne, and that genre have had on your aesthetic sensibility. And as I pondered this fact, I started to try to recall what U.S. novelist has dared to follow those footsteps and done so successfully. I could think of none. This was the second seduction. It became clear to me that a translation of your novel would need to be situated in the Gothic tradition without falling into the trap of anachronism. It would need to possess a new sensibility. EL ANTICUARIO is (and THE ANTIQUARIAN must be) Gothic and modern at the same time; though its language is complex, to say it with Vallejo, the sensibility “is simple and human and, at a first glance, could be taken as ancient or does not call into question whether it is modern or not.” It is, in this sense, the new sensibility of your book that motivated me to translate it. Having realized this, I was closer to an affirmative decision, but was not yet convinced entirely.

Nearing the end of the novel and discovering the method by which the mystery is solved, a perverse smile rippled across my face as I realized what a great challenge it would be to translate the linguistic acrobatics of the original without allowing the translation to drift too far away from the Spanish. This is perhaps the most selfish part of the art of translation; anyone who has translated even a few pages of literature will agree that the more complex and perplexing the source text, the more challenging and illuminating the process of translation. It is not just a matter of rendering incomprehensible language comprehensible, but of translating oneself to the matter that the text is talking about. Since I am the type of guy who usually lives in the dark, I try to situate myself in the vicinity of luminous things. (After all, “home is where is the hearth is,” right?) I do not wish to go into detail about how I translated the resolution of your novel or what these acrobatics concretely consist of – since this discovery, I believe, should occur in a reading of the novel itself and not here, or at least not now – but I will say that this feature of the narrative structure was the determining factor of my decision. When I saw the way your resolution had been carefully, technically, and humorously formulated, I knew that I wanted to face that challenge and translate your novel.

That being said, Gustavo, I only humbly request that, after you read my translation and have compared it to your Spanish version, while bearing in mind that the most loyal translation is never the most literal, you do not refrain from unleashing your most critical hounds.

Strong best,
Joseph

Acaban de nombrar a Víctor García de la Concha Director del Instituto Cervantes. Mediante el escrito adjunto un grupo de escritores y artistas pretenden hacer llegar al nuevo máximo responsable de la institución, que pretende hacer crecer la influencia de nuestra lengua y nuestra cultura por el mundo, la necesidad de que el Instituto tenga presencia en el Sáhara Occidental.

Especialmente en los campamentos de refugiados de Tinduf. Las razones son de sobra conocidas: los vínculos históricos entre España y la antigua colonia, la fortaleza, a pesar de la dureza de la vida para los saharauis en los últimos 30 años, de la presencia cultural española entre los habitantes del Sáhara Occidental y, en última instancia, la necesidad de hacer llegar a los saharauis la voz de ánimo de nuestro pueblo y nuestras instituciones.

Les  invito a sumarse a la firma de la carta, enviándonos su nombre, ciudad de residencia, y profesión. Pueden hacer llegar su adhesión a los autores de la iniciativa, en la persona del escritor saharaui: Bahia M.H.Awah (bahiaawah@yahoo.es).

AL DIRECTOR DEL INSTITUTO CERVANTES
Sr. D. Víctor García de la Concha
Asunto: Solicitud de la presencia del Instituto Cervantes en los campamentos de refugiados saharauis.
Remitida por: Escritores en lengua española, saharauis, africanos, españoles y latinoamericanos.

Estimado Sr.:

Permita, en primer lugar, que le expresemos nuestra felicitación por su nombramiento. Nos dirigimos a Vd. un grupo de escritores de diferentes nacionalidades que tenemos en común escribir en la lengua de Cervantes y la preocupación por el olvido de las instituciones culturales españolas respecto a la protección del uso del español en el Sahara Occidental.

Esta preocupación es la que nos lleva a plantearle lo que creemos es una asignatura pendiente por parte del Instituto Cervantes: su presencia en los campamentos de refugiados saharauis. Como es bien sabido, los saharauis no consideran la lengua española como una imposición de la colonización, sino como un elemento enriquecedor de su patrimonio, que forma parte esencial de su propia identidad, les une con los diferentes pueblos de España y Latinoamérica y les distingue claramente de un contexto geográfico en el que se hallan inmersos y que es en su totalidad francófono.

Desde el mismo momento en que España se retiró de ese territorio, el pueblo saharaui asumió como responsabilidad propia la conservación de la lengua castellana. Es admirable comprobar cómo en los centros docentes de los campamentos de refugiados saharauis el español forma parte de los programas escolares desde el nivel primario y es lengua vehicular de diferentes asignaturas, y todo ello a pesar de las dificultades existentes para la edición de libros de texto y la formación y reciclaje del personal docente. Más aún, el español es idioma ordinario en la vida administrativa, de cooperación y de creación intelectual en el Sahara Occidental.

Esta realidad ha sido posible, desde luego, por el empeño constante e ininterrumpido del pueblo saharaui, así como la generosa cooperación de algunos países latinoamericanos y la inestimable ayuda de algunas entidades universitarias, culturales y autonómicas españolas. Tales aportaciones han hecho el milagro no sólo de que se mantuviera en plena vigencia la lengua española en el Sáhara Occidental, sino que incluso emergiera un floreciente movimiento literario autóctono en la lengua de Cervantes.

Pero existe una laguna que nos duele constatar y es la ausencia en este campo de la primera institución llamada a promover el conocimiento y desarrollo de la lengua española: el Instituto Cervantes. Tenemos la esperanza de que, como persona consciente de la importancia que reviste para el futuro de la lengua española la conservación de nuestro idioma en el área geográfica norteafricana, sabrá encontrar la forma adecuada para hacer posible que el Instituto Cervantes, de conformidad con lo establecido en la Ley 7/1991, de 21 de marzo, de su creación, asuma como propia la responsabilidad que le compete en esa zona, que no puede seguir constituyendo una inexplicable excepción en su, por lo demás, meritoria tarea.

La solidaridad con el pueblo saharaui ha sido sobradamente demostrada por Ayuntamientos, Comunidades Autónomas, ONG’s y miles de personas anónimas que prestan ayuda material y apoyo humano. Animamos al Instituto a continuar y potenciar los primeros pasos que se han dado como el envío de libros de texto y la creación de la Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, donde están presentes escritores saharauis.

Los escritores abajo firmantes solicitamos el desarrollo de estas primeras iniciativas con una mayor implicación de su institución en el sostén de la lengua española en los campamentos de refugiados saharauis, suministrando libros de texto en español para niveles de primaria, secundaria y bachillerato; ayudando a la formación de maestros saharauis de español; facilitando cursos y formación a estudiantes saharauis, por ejemplo a través de las sedes del Cervantes en Argel y Orán; colaborando con la Comisión Internacional Promotora de la Universidad De Tifariti (Sahara Occidental) en la creación de la Academia Saharaui de la Lengua Española. En la misma línea reclamamos de su institución abrir un espacio a los escritores saharauis en español dentro de la actividad cultural y académica del Cervantes, tanto en España como en las sedes del Instituto en el extranjero.

En la seguridad de que nuestro llamamiento habrá de encontrar positiva respuesta en esa dirección, reciba nuestro el cordial y afectuoso saludo.

[JM]

ARTISTS FACING POLITICS

Paris, November, 1927

The artist, inevitably, is a political being. His neutrality, his lack of political sensibility, would prove spiritually shallow, humanly mediocre, aesthetically inferior. But in what sphere should the artist act politically? His field of political action is multiple: he can vote, join a protest, like any other citizen; lead a group of civil volunteers, like any other statesman on the block; to head a doctrinaire movement on the national, continental, racial or universal scale, or a la Rolland. In all of these ways, the artist can indubitably be politically active; but none of them responds to the powers of political creation, peculiar to his proper nature and personality. The political sensibility of the artist is produced, preferably and in its maximum authenticity, creating political concerns and clouds, vaster than any catechism or collection of ideas that are express and, therefore, limited, from whichever political moment you please, and are purer than any poll of periodical preoccupations or either political ideals, be they nationalist or universalist. The artist must not reduce himself either to turning the tides of an electoral vote of the masses or to reinforcing an economic revolution, but rather he must, before all else, give rise to a new political sensibility in man, a new political raw material in human nature. His action is not didactic, communicative or instructive of emotions and civic ideas, already packing the air. Above all, it means stirring, in an obscure, subconscious and almost animal way, the political anatomy of man, waking in him the aptitude to engender and rise to his skin, new civic concerns and emotions. The artist is not circumscribed to cultivating new vegetation in the field of politics, or in geologically modifying that field, but rather he must chemically and naturally transform it. This is what the artists did prior to the French Revolution and as the creation thereof; this what the artists have done prior to the Russian Revolution and as the creation thereof. The harvest of such political creation, brought about by true artists, is visible and palpable only after centuries, and not the next day, like what occurs with the superficial action of the pseudo-artist.

Diego Rivera believes that the Latin American painter must take men and the social strife of Latin America as artistic motifs and themes, as a political medium to combat the aesthetic and, therefore, economic imperialism of Wall Street. In this way, Diego Rivera lowers and prostitutes the political role of the artist, converting it into the instrument of a political ideology, in a cheap didactical medium of economic propaganda. “It is an incontrovertible truth,” says Rivera, “that the power, in the first place, is an aesthetic factor economically shifting the reference of consumer goods and in the second place, a psychological factor capable of channeling the mind and will of the proletariat down the shortest path toward the achievement of what befits its class interests.” Diego Rivera forgets that the artist is the freest of beings and works far above political programs without being outside of politics. He forgets that art is not a medium of political propaganda. I am talking about true art. Any versifier, like Mayakovsky, can defend, in good futurist verses, the excellence of Soviet sea fauna, but only a Dostoevsky can, without pigeonholing the spirit in any political, concrete and, therefore, already annihilated creed, give rise to great cosmic urgencies of human justice. Any versifier, like Déroulede, can stand up strait before the crowd and shout whichever democratic shouts he pleases, but only a Proust can, without registering his spirit with any political party, of his own or of anyone else, gives rise to, not new political tones in life, but new chords on which those tones ring.

Diego Rivera manufactures a record and intends to give it to the artists of America, so that they may take it upon themselves to make it spin. All political catechism, even the best of the best, is a record, a cliché, a dead object, when compared  to the creative sensibility of the artist. This political action is fine in the second-rate hands of a look-alike or knock-off artist, but not in the hands of a creator. Aside from that, it would be good, even in Rivera’s theory, to be able to discover the gunpowder; but history does not offer any example of an artist who, departing from political parties or polls, of his own or of others,  has managed to realize a great work. Theories, in general, hamper and hinder creation.

Before shouting on the streets or getting locked up in jail, the artist must create, within a tacit and silent heroism, the great, deep political aqueducts of mankind, which only over the centuries become visible and flourish, precisely, in those ideologies and social phenomena that later echo in the mouths of men of action, apostles and opinion-leaders we mentioned above.

If the artist refuses to create what we might call political clouds in the human wilderness, reducing himself to the secondary and sporadic role of propaganda or of the barricade itself, to whom would that great spiritual thaumaturgy fall?

By César Vallejo

[Mundial, No. 394, 31 December 1927.]

Translated by Joseph Mulligan

The reader first comes up again a gnarly convolution and is required to parse out the clauses, the clusters, work out the syntactical relations, identify the agency of the elements and aspect of the action. A more or less literal rendering could be: “Owner, finally, the North American enterprise “Mining Society”, of the tungsten mines of Quivilca, in the department of Cuzco, the New York management ordered the immediate commencement of the extraction of the mineral.” So as a translator, one wants to undo this syntactical knot, but this desire is then met by the question: can the end result be a loose thread? Isn’t the clarification of syntactical relations on an interpretative register just as essential as the replication of the entanglement on a creative register? As we look closely at the phrasing of the Spanish, the word order takes on a specific importance. It is by no accident that the word “dueña” (owner) inaugurates this book that unabashedly wields a socialist critique of capitalism during the high tide of 20th century revolution. This story is the tragedy of the highland miner, the innocent “indio” who gets exploited by the capitalist system, and this tragedy transforms one petty merchant, Leónides Benites, a bourgeois mestizo who prefers to think of himself as more Spanish than indigenous – the contrary is true – whose personal ambition, social pursuits and avarice lead to his moral downfall, a terrible reckoning, and search for redemption. To begin the sentence, begin the chapter, to begin the book, without the immediate image of the owner, the proprietor, the overlord, the master, is to pull a punch precisely where Vallejo goes for an uppercut.

The second problem is raised by the company name – it is “la empresa norteamericana ‘Mining Society’” – where we find an egregious mistranslation already in the original. There is little evidence to sustain that the author knew much English, whereas he spoke and wrote in French, made use of Russian sporadically through his later writings, and was comfortable enough in Quechua to pepper it through Hacia el reino de los sciris and proliferate that usage in La piedra cansada. The name “Mining Society” is a transliteration of “sociedad minera”, where “sociedad” means company (e.g. a “sociedad anónima”, often abbreviated as S.A., is a public corporation). The supposition of the transliteration is confirmed if we look at Vallejo’s theatrical farce Colacho hermanos – a play created out of Tungsten – where he has renamed “Mining Society” as the “Quivilca Corporation” in an early draft and then the “Cotarca Corporation” in a later. This leads one to believe that his attention had been drawn to the mistranslation after the novel had already been published, and that he saw it fit to make the change. Therefore, one must decide whether the name should be “corrected” in Tungsten or should be left unaltered. Yet there is another problem here too, since “norteamericana” is probably not intended to refer to Mexico or Canada, but to the U.S.A. Vallejo could have used the explicit “estadounidense”, but preferred the generalization.

Robert Mezey’s 1988 translation offers the following: “Having finally gained control of the tungsten mines in Quivilca, in the state of Cuzco, the New York management of a North American corporation called Mining Society ordered extraction of the mineral to begin immediately.” When I read these lines I am pleased to have in my hands what is, to my knowledge, the one existing complete English translation of César Vallejo’s only full length novel, but I am also disconcerted by the ease with which it reads. I’m afraid there is no knot, but only loose thread. Even though Vallejo’s language in prose does not usually present the same complexity as does his poetry, it is still remarkably idiosyncratic. Mezey’s rendering also makes me wonder why he preferred “state” over the very literal “department”, which is what the administrative divisions of Peru are typically called. And I share my confusion not to belabor apothegms on what gets lost in translation, but to show that, when we do translate Vallejo, what we find is not as simple as we might expect, that we are not through reading his work, and that – unless U.S. readers decide to read the Spanish – only when his idiosyncrasy (in poetry, in fiction, in drama, in journalism) is available to us in English will we be able to evaluate his literary project with a fair and discerning eye. And so, going on the supposition that there has not yet been some mass acquisition of the Spanish language among English speakers, and with a first draft of chapter one of Tungsten still on my desk, the first line, to my ear, to my eye, for now, goes like this:

“Owner, at last, of the Quivilca tungsten mines in the department of Cuzco, the American company, Mining Incorporated, had its New York management give the go-ahead for immediate extraction of the mineral.”

By Joseph Mulligan

[This article was first posted at The Jivin' Ladybug.]

En el libro La magia de la poesía: breve antología de poesía del mundo no. 4 (Ciudad de Guatemala, 2011), aparece los primeros seis poemas de “El viejo Winnetou”, una serie de textos inspirados por el personaje Winnetou, del escritor alemán Karl May. Esta serie de poemas se destaca por su fusión de lenguajes diversos (inglés, alemán, francés, español, italiano, latín, griego) – al estilo de Pound y Eliot – pero ya desprovista de la obsesión formal con la que éstos estaban tan preocupados. A diferencia de ellos, y más ligado a la escritura automática de los surrealistas franceses y los Beats  o neo-románticos norteamericanos, lo que Joris nos propone es un especie de trance poético en el que “un alma cosecha en parálisis titántico el horizonte tintado”.

También se vio publicado el poema “26. Presencia (hudur)” de la colección Meditaciones sobre las estaciones de Mansur Al Hallaj (Río Grande Review no. 38, otoño 2011), colección que explora cuarenta conceptos de Mansur Al Hallaj (858-922) poeta persa de la tradición mística sufí. Aquí Joris nos proporciona una modalidad poética en la que se encuentra esa combinación de escritura-lectura, tendencia suya que recorre la mayoría de su obra. En el poema “26. Presencia (hudur)”, nos habla de lo fugaz del presente y del estado intermedio o el barzakh, que, según la escatología islámica, viene después de la muerte y antes del juicio final. “El presente”, escribe Joris, “es cómo / lo consideramos después”.

Este proyecto, que ya tiene vida desde hace más de un año, está avanzando, no sin las trampas y minas terrestres que se espera al traducir una poesía de tanta complejidad como la que ostentan los poemas de Joris, mas con cuidado seguimos para adelante, ahora con el apoyo editorial del crítico y traductor, Ernesto Livon Grosman. Me gustaría agradecer a los editores de las publicaciones mencionadas por habernos asistido en ponera la mano de los lectores estas traducciones.

–JM

THE FINAL JUDGMENT

In the house of Atovof, the pawnbroker. Winter morning in Moscow, a few years after the revolution. A miserable flat, raw light, solitude and decadence. On a cot, the pawnbroker, about to die, confesses to Father Rulak.

RULAK: (paternally) Speak slowly, my son. (placing a hand on his forehead)
ATOVOF: (panting) I was never afraid of death. But, all night, my moral strength has failed me…
RULAK: The cause of fear is death, my poor son, it’s not in the mystery of the afterlife, but in the sinful existence one has lived in this world. Children and saints die without shuddering in the least.
ATOVOF: I’m afraid it’s too late… My sin is more serious. Help me, Father, to confess it to you…
RULAK: The Almighty will know, even if you don’t have time to tell me.
ATOVOF: (with a raspy voice) Water, please…
RULAK: (giving him a glass of water) Don’t forget that life is but a valley of sorrow and that death, even for the most unworthy, is the supreme liberation and a step toward a better world.
ATOVOF: (in a painful memory, to himself) It was…
RULAK: (attentively) What are you afraid of? Place your trust in God.
ATOVOF: (decisively) Father, I have committed murder!…
RULAK: Murder?
ATOVOF: Yeah, during the revolution. I killed Rada Pobadich, the jeweler; I killed him so I could take his money.
RULAK: (filled with mercy) My poor son! You have killed… and so that you could steal!
ATOVOF: I killed him and I robbed him.
RULAK: Under what circumstances did you kill that man?
ATOVOF: (enraged) Wretch! Scoundrel!
RULAK: Lord, open the door of your infinite mercy!
ATOVOF: Father, I haven’t told you everything…
RULAK: I know, but wait a moment. Pull yourself together.
ATOVOF: It was a night, in the Red Square, a few days before the Bolshevik uprising… Rada Pobadich was there. I was following him… (coughs)
RULAK: Breath now, my son, don’t get upset…
ATOVOF: Lenin was rallying the crowd… Rada Pobadich, I don’t know how, had managed to position himself behind him, very close, almost touching him… Suddenly, a shot was fired. As in a flash of lightning I saw Pobadich aiming a revolver at Lenin, and I… I thought that the overthrow would fail so I shot at Pobadich…
RALUK: (paralyzed by these last words) He was aiming at Lenin?…
ATOVOF: Yeah, he wanted to kill him…
RULAK: But… But, my son… But, then you have saved Lenin from death?
ATOVOF: (continuing his confession) And I… took advantage of the confusion in the crowd to search his pockets… And the key… The key was there…
RULAK: (whose eagerness grows) But, let us see, my son. Rada Pobadich was truly going to kill Lenin? You’re sure that he would have killed him?
ATOVOF: Absolutely sure.
RULAK: I mean, that he would have taken out the head of the revolution, and, therefore, stopped the Bolsheviks from taking power… (still in shock) So then, it’s because of you that the red catastrophe has become a reality?…
ATOVOF: Ah! Father Rulak!…
RULAK: So you’ve saved the life of a man who brought misfortune to Russia and atheism to its souls?… (in an exclamation of holy anger) You wretch! You heinous man! The true culprit of the Russian disaster!…
ATOVOF: (profoundly) Let the wicked be forgiven!….
RULAK: Be forgiven!?… (horrified) An infinite sin!… A sin that surpasses all theological categories of sin!…
ATOVOF: (weakly outstretching his arms) Have mercy on me, Father Rulak!…
RULAK: (raising his eyes to the sky) Adesto nobis, Domine Deus Noster, et quos tuis mysteris recreasti, perpetuis defende subsidis, Per domine!… Join us, Lord our God, and defend, with the constant help of thy grace, those whom you have created to participate in thy divine mysteries!… Illuminate, Lord, my judgment with thy divine light!… (withdraws in reflection, abruptly sits up to listen and, full of anguish, exclaims) I hear the screams of the outraged church!… I hear the screams of the souls led astray by the Bolshevik devil!… The screams of my priestly conscience begging for punishment!… (leaning over the moribund man) You wretch!… Listen to your confessor!… Receive your verdict!… Do you hear me?… (waits, a deadly silence)
ATOVOF: (with a white, barely perceptible voice) He had an affair with your wife…
RULAK: (with a shudder) An affair… Who?… Who had an affair with my wife?…
ATOVOF: Rada Pobadich! (Rulak is petrified)
RULAK: (suddenly enraptured by a chaotic fit) You’re lying!… You’re mad!… You’re mad or lying right at the moment when you’re about to die!… Rada Pobadich did not know Svodna Ilivocha!… Who was he, this Rada Pobadich?… At least tell me how you knew him… Who told you?… Speak!… Tell me how!… (he suddenly falls silent, anxiously leans over the man on his deathbed, fixing his crazed eyes on him) You’re not dead yet, right?… (calls to him) Atovof! Atovof! My son!… (the pawnbroker has died, Rulak collapses, stunned) Good heavens! He’s dead! (remains laying there, pauses, and then, painfully pulls himself together, gets up from the cadaver and walks in darkness, like a blind man, like someone sleepwalking, he covers his face with both hands, falls to his knees, humbly holds the crucifix against his chest, bowing his head ever lower., then, calmly, sweetly,  whispers with infinite mercy) Lord God, with the same mercy reap every soul, large or small, that has fallen into sin…

César Vallejo, 1930

Translated by Joseph Mulligan

–JM

Bio Bio

But speak to me, Bio Bio,
These are your words that slip
from my mouth, you gave me
the language, a nocturnal song
mixed with foliage and rain.
You, no-one else heeding this child,
told me about the earth’s
dawn, the powerful
peace of your reign, the axe buried
with a branch of dead arrows,
those which the cinnamon leaves
spoke of for a thousand years,
and after, I saw you give yourself up to the sea,
broken into breasts and mouths,
wide and verdant, murmuring
a blood coloured history.

— | — | — | — |—

Bío-Bío 

Pero háblame, Bío-Bío,
son tus palabras en mi boca
las que resbalan, tú me diste
el lenguaje, el canto nocturno
mezclado con lluvia y follaje.
Tú, sin que nadie mirara a un niño,
me contaste el amanecer
de la tierra, la poderosa
paz de tu reino, el hacha enterrada
con un ramo de flechas muertas,
lo que las hojasdelcanelo
en mil años te relataron,
y luego te vi entregarte al mar
dividido en bocas y senos,
ancho y florido, murmurando
una historia color de sangre.

from “Canto General”

— | — | — | — |—

Insurgent America

Our earth, wide earth, solitudes,
populated with rumour, arms and mouths.
An unspoken syllable was burning,
gathering the hidden rose,
till the plains resounded
with hooves and metal.

A truth as hard as the plough.

The earth erupted, planted desire,
burying its seeds of propaganda
which bloomed in a secret spring.

The flower was silent, was denied
its reunion with light, the collective yeast
was fought against, the kiss
of hidden flags,
but it arose and broke down walls,
breaking through imprisoned earth.

The obscured nation was its cup,
received the withheld substance,
spread itself out to the sea’s limits,
crushed by unstoppable mortars.

And it emerged with written flourish
and with Spring clear ahead.

Yesterday’s hour, midday,
today’s hour once more, hour awaited
between the moment that dies and comes into being,
smarting before an age of lies.

Nation, you were given birth by woodcutters,
by children unbaptised, by carpenters,
by those who, like a strange bird gave
a drop of flying blood,
and once again is born in struggle,
from where the prison-keeper and traitor
believe you buried forever.

Just as then you’ll be born today as a nation.

Today you’ll arise from coal and dew.
Today you’ll smash locks from the doors
with your abused hands, with the pieces
of your surviving soul, with the gathered
gaze death couldn’t extinguish,
with disdainful tools
armed under your rags.

— | — | — | — |—

América Insurecta

Nuestra tierra, ancha tierra, soledades,
se pobló de rumores, brazos, bocas.
Una callada sílaba iba ardiendo,
congregando la rosa clandestina,
hasta que las praderas trepidaron
cubiertas de metales y galopes.

Fue dura la verdad como un arado.

Rompió la tierra, estableció el deseo,
hundió sus propagandas germinales
y nació en la secreta primavera.

Fue callada su flor, fue rechazada
su reunión de luz, fue combatida
la levadura colectiva, el beso
de las banderas escondidas,
pero surgió rompiendo las paredes,
apartando las cárceles del suelo.

El pueblo oscuro fue su copa,
recibió la substancia rechazada,
la propagó en los límites marítimos,
la machacó en morteros indomables.

Y salió con las páginas golpeadas
y con la primavera en el camino.

Hora de ayer, hora de mediodía,
hora de hoy otra vez, hora esperada
entre el minuto muerto y el que nace
en la erizada edad de la mentira.

Patria, naciste de los leñadores,
de hijos sin bautizar, de carpinteros,
de los que dieron como un ave extraña
una gota de sangre voladora,
y hoy nacerás de nuevo duramente,
desde donde el traidor y el carcelero
te creen para siempre sumergida.

Hoy nacerás del pueblocomo entonces.

Hoy saldrás del carbón y del rocío.
Hoy llegarás a sacudir las puertas
con manos maltratadas, con pedazos
de alma sobreviviente, con racimos
de miradas que no extinguió la muerte,
con herramientas hurañas
armadas bajo los harapos.

From “Los Libertadores”

About the Translator: Michael Lee Rattigan was born in Croydon, England. He studied at the University of Kent and Trinity College Dublin. He has lived and taught in Cancun, Mexico and Palma de Mallorca. Through Rufus Books he has published “Nature Notes” and a translation of Fernando Pessoa’s Caeiro poems. A full-length collection of poems, “Between Places”, is upcoming with Rufus Books. He currently enjoys being interrupted from anything resembling work by his young niece, Meadow Eden.

–JM

A traveler in transit…

A traveler, in transit, an expert,
who reads the paper & takes a stance
first taken by others, is rarely
affected by goodbyes. Today I notice
that something inside unstitches me
and leaves a heart exposed.
Embarrassed, unnerved and
afraid it will melt down,
I touch my chest. I find an electric
muscle that beats and today,
not without certain stupor,
sprays my sorrow.
The day sways toward twilight.
For your doubts I’ve got certainty
and sew patches on its sides.

A un viajero en tránsito…

A un viajero en tránsito, experto,
que lee la prensa y que adopta poses
inventadas por otros, los adioses
raramente le duelen. Hoy advierto
que algo en mi interior se me descose
y deja un corazón al descubierto.
Por algo de rubor, de desconcierto
y miedo a que de pronto se rebose,
me palpo el pecho. Encuentro un músculo
eléctrico que late y que hoy supura,
no sin cierto estupor, mi pesadumbre.
Bascula el día hacia el crepúsculo.
Para tus dudas tengo certidumbres
y hago remiendos para sus costuras.

— | — | — | —

What must the stone be thinking…

What must the stone be thinking
that crowns the high peak of Kilimanjaro?
Does it feel fortunate for his glory
for being high among the heights of this world?
Or might it consider that honor misfortune
that banishes it to desolation?
And if by virtue of their massiveness
stones were to speak a different language?
And were the stone to speak with its wake
while shattered it rolls through the kosmos?
And were it to speak with beacon light?
(When it reaches land, I will know.)

Qué pensará la pidra que corona…

¿Qué pensará la piedra que corona
el alto pico del Kilimanjaro?
Se sentirá dichosa de su gloria
de ser alta entre las altas de este mundo?
¿O se sentirá ese honor como infortunio
que la obliga a estar sola hasta desmoronarse?
¿Y si en virtud de su grandeza hablaran
las piedras una lengua diferente?
¿Y si hablara la piedra con su estela
mientras rueda hecha añicos por el cosmos?
¿Y si hablara con luz como los foros?
(Cuando vuelva a la tierra lo sabré).

— | — | — | —

Today I realize I’m not a stone…

Today I realize I’m not a stone
since I don’t even remotely understand the anxiety
that’s moved it to rise in himalayas.
I also can’t seem to empathize when it’s under the weather
and longing in front of this crouching, compact
and shiny lifeform we call stone
I’ve fallen victim to the prejudice
of thinking it’s inert.

Hoy descubro que no soy una piedra…

Hoy descubro que no soy una piedra
pues ni remotamente entiendo qué inquietud
la ha llevado a ergirse en himalayas.
Tampoco llego empatizar cuando se enferma
y extrañando ante esta forma de vida agazapada
compacta y recia que llamamos piedra
me he dejado llevar por el prejuicio
de pensarla inerte.

— | — | — | —

That old catharsis of the rock…

That old catharsis of the rock,
a landscape of overflowed stone,
all coagulate and scab,
splits open like a gash between volcanoes.
Old mute tongue, silent,
no longer capable of thunder and lightening,
you have lost the word’s glow
dissolved it all in arcane silence.

Esa viaje cartásis de la roca…

Esa vieja catársis de la roca,
un paisaje de piedra derramada,
toda coágulo y costra,
se abre como una herida entre volcanes.
Vieja lengua muda, silenciosa,
ya incapaz del trueno y del relámpago
has perdido el fulgor de la palabra
disuelta toda en un silencio arcano.

*(Otra lectura, ofrecida por Mario Domínguez Parra, se encuentra aquí.)

-JM

The Politician

Say what they will, a politician will always be bisexual. Can’t be gay, or lesbian, or heterosexual. One cannot be a candidate without knowing the sacred art of political Karmasutra.

El político

Digan lo que digan, un político siempre será bisexual. No puede ser ni gay, ni lesbiana, ni heterosexual. Un candidato deja de serlo cuando desconoce el sagrado arte del Karmasutra político.

— | — | — | — | —

Even

There is a moment in people’s lives that might not have existed. That moment tends to be forgotten. To tell the truth, no one remembers. They even say that they weren’t there when it happened. They don’t even know what I’m talking about. Even.

Incluso

Hay un momento en la vida de las personas que pudo no haber existido. Ese momento suele olvidarse. A decir verdad, nadie se acuerda. Incluso comentan que no estuvieron allí cuando sucedió. Incluso no saben de lo que hablo. Incluso.

— | — | — | — | —

Party

His father had taught him to play football. He had joined a political party. But on that field there was no ball. Shortly thereafter, he would learn that there weren’t any rules either and that as soon as he had taken home the national cup, the rest of the players would end up disqualifying him for having won.

Partido

Su padre le había enseñado a jugar al fútbol. Él se había afiliado a un partido político [2]. Pero en aquel campo no había pelota. Comprendería, poco tiempo después, que tampoco habría reglas y que tan pronto obtuviera la copa nacional los demás jugadores acabarían descalificándolo por haber triunfado.

— | — | — | — | —

Gestures

As he left his house and closed the door, he realized that his gestures were not coinciding with the habitual sounds, that they were not in sync. After a few minutes passed, he managed to listen to the creaking of the door to his house, closing on another street, while he observed the bustle of the plaza in silence from inside a taxi. Someone was talking to him, and he could listen to him right then, but rather, afterward. For this reason he began to believe that he was hearing voices. He also realized that his work place no longer existed…. And that, in reality, he had gotten lost because he could not find his way home.

Gestos

Al salir de su casa y cerrar la puerta se percató de que sus gestos no coincidían con los sonidos habituales, de que no estaban sincronizados. Después de transcurrir unos minutos, consiguió escuchar el crujido de la puerta de su casa cerrándose en otra calle, mientras observaba en silencio, dentro de un taxi, el tránsito de la plaza. Alguien le hablaba y no podía escucharle en el mismo momento, sino después. Por eso empezó a creer que oía voces. Se percató también de que su lugar de trabajo ya no existía… Y de que, en realidad, se había perdido porque no encontraba el camino de regreso a casa.

NOTES:
[1] The title of the book, Visiones desde el marco, could be rendered a few different ways. As I have it, “visions from the frame,” I am basing the image on one meaning of “marco,” which can refer to the frame of a painting. In this sense, the expression is not of the artist looking at the work, but of the work looking at the viewer. However, the title could also be translated as “visions from the mark” where “mark” might be taken as measurement, and this would be in line with the theme of intermediary spaces which the poet is so fond of.
[2] García de Mesa plays off the double-meaning of the word “partido,” a political party and also a game.

Apolonia 

Here, we have Domínguez Parra’s poetic debut. A complex book of cantos filled with Mediterranean salt and space, an emptiness & a grittiness, in a crumbling world. The poet, like an archeologist having uncovered deteriorated ruins, recreates & yet updates the structures with the brutal syntax of language in torsion. An examination of the fault-lines & a measurement of the techtonic movement in both macro and micro kosmos, convene in this poetry of perserverence, languaged by barbaric tongues.

My thanks to the poet for allowing me to present my translations along with his Spanish versions.

–JM

1α

In a signal
common to a
whole,
even to it,
they made us
axis,
a zone dead
as an origin,
depleted with the
eyes in envious
mosaic
asphalt
She’s not
in the bramble
of courtship
not a face
or a lake
but a scar
the covering
began
a landslide of
opacity
Swept up in
microclimate
two winds that
were extending
a bilabial
altarpiece
The cold that stays
within us
the questions
and the laughs
The ceramic
unbreakable
dialogue
and skin
brushes

Iα

En un signo
común a una
totalidad,
a ella incluida,
nos hicieron
eje,
zona muerta
como origen,
hastiada y con los
ojos en mosaico
de envidia
pavimento
Ella, no en
una zarza
de cortejo
no un rostro
ni un lago
pero cicatriz
comenzó la
cobertura
alud de
opacidad
Tomados en
microclima
dos vientos que
prolongaban
un retablo de
dos labios
Frío que nos
permanece
las preguntas
y las risas
Cerámica
irrompible
diálogo
y pinceles
de piel.

– | – | – | – | – | –

III

Violent passenger picturing
the brushing of fingers against the blinds.
Assayed, the argument
of continual distant sprinkler.
Mishmashed liturgy on the nod!
Paregoric with a maelstrom placed
at the bottom of your eyes
the skeletal cacophony
of hanging gardens
that administer death
in pellets of absence.
Coat racks left bare
outside EMEIΣ.
Soul curare.
The laudanum
of your jaws
frame of the crossbreading.

III

Pasajero violento retratando
el roce de los dedos con persianas.
Aquilatado argumento
el de un aspersor continuo y distante.
¡Liturgia abigarrada y somnolienta!
Paregórico de abismo situado
en el fondo de tus ojos
la esquelética cacofonía
de jardines colgantes
que dosifican su muerte
en postas de ausencia.
Percheros esquilmados
fuera de EMEIΣ.
Curare de almas.
El láudano
de tus fauces
marco de mestizaje.

– | – | – | – | – | –

XIII

Frayed as we are
let us thread
the needle
of emergence
we the porters
of lively
rhinestone
of a jumble
of dark chasm
To swap and oil
the cuttings of love
plowed in jagged
obsidian
a veil in the badlands
that surround the road
like a ghost town
To creak open the head
of the phythia
that longs
for the end
of our
sunshine hides
Without curls
like yours
to covet
behind her back
transported to
the knees of
a static
tetragon
EMEIΣ
Cold case
and scuffle
smiling at the shore
facing the dark
sails
of cascading strength
Fixed winnings stacked
in the chasm of one gray
fear

XIII

Surquemos
enhebrados
la aguja
del surgimiento
porteadores
del abalorio
de piedra viva
del amasijo
de sima oscura
Trocar y lubricar
las tallas de amor
arado en obsidiana
puntiaguda
velo en los páramos
que circulan el camino
como pueblo fantasma
Descalabrar
a la pitia
que anhela
el final
de nuestras
pieles de sol
Sin bucles
como loa tuyos
que codiciar
a sus espaldas
transportados a
las rodillas de
un tetrágono
inmóvil
EMEIΣ
Carpetazo y
escaramuza
sonriente a la orilla
ante el oscuro
velamen
de esfuerzo cascada
Trucaje apilado
en la sima de un miedo
gris

– | – | – | – | – | –

XXVII

Bristly
in penitential
austere
caverns
Without exhaling
a label
of sorrow
in front of them
connections and thoughts
in a spring
about to split
apart some
battlements
Beads used
to mask the
space between
gaunt as even
a sky of lanterns.
Mildness
of the mistletoe
penetrated
through the blue
porticoes in the two-faced
scandal.
To imbibe
your motives
with a torch
that lost its leaves
and glitter through
the orbit of
lip and ring
In between
those walls
the cycle of
the stone prayer
breaks

XXVII

Hirsuto
en las cavernas
penitentes
austeras
Sin soplar
ante ellas
un marchamo
de pesadumbre
conexiones y pensamientos
en una fuente
próximo a escindirse
entre unas
pocas almenas
Abalorios para
poner máscaras al
intersticio
enjuto hasta
un cielo de lámparas
Mansedumbre
del muérdago
penetrado
por los pórticos
azules del escándalo
bifronte
Escanciar
tus motivos
con una antorcha
deshojada
y maltrecha por
órbita de
labio y anillo
Por entre
aquellos murales
se rompe
el ciclo de la
oración de piedra

The Other Imperialism

–JM

 THE OTHER IMPERIALISM

That rumble came from the army led by the prince and heir to the throne, as it reached the city limits, on its way home from a deadly tour in Quito. From the terraces at Sajsahuamán the receiving line formed at the entrance to the Intipampa at the end of the wide highland road.

With the build still of a boy (as this was his first military campaign), at the head was Hauyna Cápac, who had grown bronze from exposure, from scorchers and deep freezes in the north. Decimated by ice in the heroic land of the Chachapoyas, the army now forded the first rivers of Cuzco, at a slow march, paced by the war drums’ beat. The weapons of the empire were next in line, and just a catapult shot behind them, the rumancha masters. Then the rainbow flag was unfurled, embroidered onto a banner of wool and feathers, with holes left by a suntupáucar spike through which a consistent golden egret light was shining. Angular heroes pushed on, triangulated by wrinkles, on their shoulders a dense mass of a queschuar, gap-toothed and gouged in counterattacks; gaunt and gangrene sling-shooters; skeletal hunchback archers with flimsy bows; a third of the metal poison-tipped arrows in bundles, the reed bow resting on the shoulder; lancers with enormous dangling arms wearing guayacan headpieces with tassels; axe-men falling out of formation, painfully limping… In the middle was an apusquepay, an old man with an enormous chin and serene eyes, wearing his yellow turban, tied by a stretched out bow-string and feathers.

The army entered the city, downcast, damaged. Only a few generals, officers of nobility and veterans smiled as they walked through the streets. Instead, the soldiers and even the heir apparent were possessed by great sorrow as they trudged on.

As the last soldiers disappeared from sight at the heart of the city, the workers of the fortress saw them and were overcome by a strange indifference. There was no applause, no enthusiastic shouting. The women and children, appearing at the doors, watched the warriors coldly. Some women crossed the road and gave a relative who was returning a few swigs of chicha or a few handfuls of fried hominy and sweet ocas. The heralds kept quiet. Mouths filled with a turbid silence instead of the usual victory hailli. When the army crossed in front of the temple of the Chosen Ones in Hanai-Cuzco, an old woman burst into tears.

The war horns sounded in the distance as the army entered the Plaza de la Alegría. They were the murmurs of those bugles made from the skulls of dogs that were hunted in enemy camps. In the mouth of these skulls sonorous strings of monkey-teeth from the north were fastened in such a way that, when the barbarous instrument was filled with air, a spine-tingling and ravenous chatter was produced… When their sounds became clear, the city swathed itself in pity and silence.

When he learned that Huayna Cápac was approaching, Tupac Yupanqui waited for him in the palace’s patio of copper, surrounded by the court. His face was shriveled with rage. The prince arrived at the foot of the imperial throne, uncovered his head and bowed. He expressed his fealty and obedience and, with a submissive and prostrated tone, recounted the story of the expedition:

“Father”, he said, “the conquest of the Huacrachucos has been consolidated. Five-hundred mitimaes come with me and I’ve left fifty Children of the Sun on the shores of Marañón. The Quechua’s bravery was heroic when they forced that province to surrender, whose young men fought ferociously, and were it not for the advice from their elders, whom I managed to win over with generous benefits and incentives, the surrender of the Huacrachucos would never have come to pass…”

The Inca remained indifferent. The eyes of the others turned to him, eager to see the effect that would be elicited by the words of the prince whose arrival at Cuzco was early and unexpected. The Inca’s decrees currently in force had not laid in store for him, despite the largely unsuccessful results of the tour. Not the hearths in the mountains, not the chasquis, nothing had announced such a sudden return.

“After many journeys through the jungles” Huayna Cápac continued, “I attacked the Chachapoyas at their own walls and forts. Their resistance was even greater than the Huacrachucos’. Over the course of three moons I laid siege to the city. There I lost the brunt of the army. My axe-men died trying to cut back the jungle while the natives used it as line of impenetrable defense. It was there that many veterans of Maule and Atacama fell. I remounted the attack. Looking for a weaker flank, we backtracked at nightfall and climbed into the punas of Chirma-Cassa…”

When he reached this point, Huayna Cápac uttered his words in a tragic tone. The court stood at attention to listen. Only Túpac Yupanqui maintained his unaffected expression, as if he knew ahead of time everything the heir apparent would have to say.

“…In that deadly region” added the prince, “any strategy we applied paid the price of a great denial. In faraway lands beset by hostility, I chose to take the most direct roads, and this, our greatest risk and sacrifice. So it was. I lost three-hundred Warriors of the Sun, who were left frozen in the cold, on the eve of our final and fatal encounter with the enemy. Battle in those conditions was impossible. We withdrew and, since the army had been almost completely cut down, I consulted my advisors and decided to return to Cuzco…”

Thus spoke Huayna Cápac as he knelt before his father. The Inca’s expression suddenly changed and, in a fit of rage, he raised his voice loudly addressing the terrified court, and said: “The Children of the Sun have first been defeated in the mountains of Beni, wherefrom only one thousand soldiers out of the ten thousand who embarked on boats that had been built over the course of two years returned to Mojos; then, as the conquest of the Chirihuanas began, they were afraid of the salvage cannibals, tried to cross the Maule again, but gave in to the fierce Promoncaes. And today, my son, prince and heir to the throne, on your first military campaign, you make an embarrassing withdrawal and thereby disrupt the conquest of the Sciris… Very well: The Conquest is over. Let us tend to the work of peace!”

Tupac Yupanqui rose from his golden seat and entered his chambers, followed by Raucaschuqui. The others were not sure how they should behave in the wake of the Inca’s fit of rage. The heir apparent covered his jaguar head and, with an expression of anger and pain, he flung cape over his shoulder, headed toward the portico and disappeared, followed by two young huaracas, his campaign advisors.

 1924-1928

[Glossary: The Quechua vocabulary has been left as Vallejo preferred it, with the not very traditional spelling. The following are more definitions than translations:  Sajsahuamán – military fortress in the Sacred Valley near Cuzco; Intipampa – lit. plain of the sun; suntupáucar – a lance decorated with feathers; queschuar – a kind of shield; guayacán – Guaiacum agustifolium, Soap-Bush; apusquepay – leader of an army; chicha – distilled maize beverage; hailli – triumph; mitimaes – maidens, young ladies; chasquis – foot messengers, carried of the quipus (system of knots used for communicating and record-keeping); puna – plain, high plains; huaracas – slings used in warfare, here, referring to the soldiers who used them.]

But more posts are coming soon, very soon, maybe tomorrow… Thanks for your patience and for reading.

In the United States the assassination was celebrated with exuberant joy. As the dust has settled over the past month and a half, there is now a need to ask if this act was really cause for celebration. I think it was not. Let me explain why, and we’ll see if you agree.

A day after the news broke, Robert Fisk wrote an article in The Independent (“Was he Betrayed?…”, 3 May 2011) where he pointed out that, at the time of his death, Bin Laden’s political influence was, for all intensive purposes, null and void: “the mass revolutions in the Arab world over the past four months mean that al-Qa’ida was already politically dead.” Osama Bin Laden, the most wanted man in the United States, was “a middle-aged nonentity, a political failure outstripped by history – by the millions of Arabs demanding freedom and democracy in the Middle East.”

On the day this Osama Doe was finally put to death (a day we all were expecting to come eventually), “the world went mad,” says Fisk: “The Americans were drunk with joy. David Cameron thought it ‘a massive step forward’. India described it as a ‘victorious milestone’. ‘A resounding triumph,’ Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu boasted. But after 3,000 Americans dead on 9/11, countless more in the Middle East, up to half a million Muslims dead in Iraq and Afghanistan and 10 years trying to find Bin Laden, pray let us have no more ‘resounding triumphs.’” Even though they are difficult to formulate and their responses, disconcerting, it is crucial I think to raise questions at times like these: Could the reaction to Bin Laden’s death possess a richer meaning than the decision to do the deed? Why was America so drunk with joy to hear that Bin Laden had been killed? Are we sure that we haven’t just guillotined a cadaver? What was the price of killing this enemy?

My suspicion is that the United States was in dire need of something to rally around as a nation, in order to at least momentarily remember what it feels like to reconcile differences and feel united again. Obama was likely keen to this, and his timing, convenient, as he gears up for the 2012 elections. But, there is something more to this atmosphere of celebration, something that Dan Carlin recently brought to our attention in an episode of Common Sense titled “Pyrrhic Schadenfreude” (2 May 2011). As CNN was transmitting images of a crowd chanting in front of the White House, Carlin was thinking to himself, “While it was understandable that people would be jubilant, I wasn’t not sure that these people in the crowd who were so jubilant understood exactly what this guy had done to us. I’m not sure it’s a triumph sort of period. It’s sort of like a pyrrhic victory.”

Perhaps Bin Laden had become a non-entity in the context of geopolitics, but in the context of U.S foreign and domestic policy, his legacy lives on, not in the sense that his cronies are embedded in the U.S. strategizing their next terrorist plot, but in the sense that his actions have affected and continue to affect the way we look at ourselves, at each other, at the world (not to mention all that we are willing to sacrifice in the name of combating the threat that his legacy poses). Carlin offers a precise metaphor for the U.S. reaction to the death of Bin Laden: “He came and stabbed us in the back and gave us a potentially mortal wound, where we could bleed to death very easily. We turned around and killed him and then we laughed in his face. I’m not so sure he would be upset with the results. I think this guy got exactly what he wanted, every step of the way… And we’re living with the ramifications and I don’t think they’re positive, and people are chanting USA! USA!… It’s almost like they don’t know how bad the wound is that’s bleeding from our back” (ibid.).

And Fisk, who had personally interviewed Bin Laden several times, corroborates Carlin’s suspicion: “In the years after 2001,” Fisk sent Bin Laden “a list of 12 questions, the first of which was obvious: what kind of victory could he claim when his actions resulted in the US occupation of two Muslim countries? There was no reply for weeks. Then one weekend, waiting to give a lecture in Saint Louis in the US, I was told that Al Jazeera had produced a new audiotape from Bin Laden. And one by one – without mentioning me – he answered my 12 questions. And yes, he wanted the Americans to come to the Muslim world – so he could destroy them” (Fisk, ibid.).

It is a strange question to ask, but it needs to be asked: If the U.S. government has played right into Bin Laden’s hand, then what is there to celebrate? Does anyone think Bin Laden did not wish to be a martyr? The U.S. is overextended economically, fighting long and discombobulated wars, and the Judicial branch has had to “reinterpret” the constitution (this interpretation, of course, being classified) in order to sustain the legality of Executive branch’s so-called ‘security measures’. Perhaps it is hyperbole to say that the US has been destroyed (as Bin Laden had wanted), but the integrity of our constitutional rights seems less and less important to government officials and citizens alike.

What’s more, certain processes of destruction do not happen in the blink of an eye (like the 9/11 attacks), but are long, drawn out and sometimes hard to notice. The destruction of a building brought down by a wrecking ball is fast, loud, tremendous, dramatic. The destruction of a building that has fallen into decay (because it lacks maintenance or prohibits maintenance) is much less likely to appear as a threat at all, since from the outside the building continues to project the appearance of stability and security, even while it’s rotting at its core, in its foundation.

The videos that Bin Laden produced over the years are likely to haunt us through the decades to come. In those videos, as Carlin recalls, “one thing he said was that the attacks would have an effect all out of proportion to the damage done, because they were directed at a country that hadn’t seen war on its soil in 100 years. He had talked about how, if you blow up a building in a country that’s used to having bombs explode, it’s not that big of a deal; if you do it in a tranquil, peaceful place that hasn’t known war, the place is likely to freak out. The place freaked out” (ibid.). Now, a month and a half after Bin Laden’s death and the fiestas patrias that followed it, the nation is, if not still freaking out, then at least zombified to the matter.

To imagine where the U.S. would be as a country, had the 9/11 attacks not taken place, had the U.S. military not sent ground troops to Iraq or Afghanistan, is to envision a world without Bin Laden. It is an tantalizing dream, but it is only a dream, our reality is here, in this crisis that is painful to accept as our own. Bin Laden has impacted U.S. foreign and domestic policy more dramatically than any individual legislator in the United States, and this impact, as the prognosis suggests, is shocking. “We’re dealing with amazing amounts of security, when judged by pre-9/11 standards: who’s responsible for that? That’s that knife-wound in the back, folks, continuing to bleed long after we’ve cut Osama’s head off. You want to pick it up and laugh at it? It might laugh back” (Carlin, ibid.).

Does anyone else find it hard to understand why we would celebrate the death of the single most wanted terrorist? Is it not within us to celebrate an achievement in international politics that guarantees everyone the possibility of a better coexistence without the threat of terrorism? The jubilance in response Bin Laden’s death is a clear indicator that what is being celebrated here is something ephemeral, dislocated from the origins of the problem. Did the capture of Abimael Guzman put an end to terrorism? Will the death of Bin Laden guarantee a terror-free world? It’s not very likely, as long as we continue to skirt the central problem: How can we coexist in a peaceful and civilized way, recognizing that we are part of both the problem and the solution? I hope that one day we can celebrate great peace accords between many people, instead of the death of one individual. Between now and then, let peaceful reflection be our guide.

By Joseph Mulligan

[This article was cross-posted at Daily Kos, June 14, 2011]

Looking at the Peruvian electoral results, there are a number of evident truths that, in the light of day, are painful to see. The first of these is the fact that a large portion of Lima’s upper class, which for several decades supported multiple dictatorships (including Alberto Fujimori’s in the 90s), stubbornly continues to be smitten by authoritarian solutions.

Another is the high percentage of Lima’s population that not only customarily forgets about the miserable socio-economic situation of the rest of the country, but is not even afraid to maintain the status quo and delve deeper into centralization, thereby creating a wider rift between the capital and the provinces, which stems from an inability to recognize the problems of other people. Lima condones the treacherous growth of one sector of its economy and doesn’t bat an eyelash at the cries coming from the rest of the country.

Facing the victory of Ollanta Humala, some of us would like a government that is willing to reconcile differences across party lines. Last night, the parasites of television were already spinning that notion, transforming it into an idea of “reconciliation” with “that 50% of the electorate who would prefer Fujimorism.” If not a fallacy or an outright lie, this is at least a Manichean distortion of reality (half of those who voted for Keiko Fujimori yesterday didn’t vote for her in the first round of elections).

Yes, the government of Humala must reconcile differences. But this entails a negotiation only with the democratic powers of the country, which are those that would guarantee the elimination of any authoritarian risk. What could members of the Fujimori regime contribute to this coalition? What democratic value would be reaffirmed by placing convicts like Alberto Fujimori or his figureheads at the negotiation table?

More than 30% of Peruvian voters preferred Humala in the first round, with his message reminiscent of Lula da Silva’s, with his modern and updated version of the more or less moderate leftist proposal. Another 20%, in the second round, preferred this over a return to dictatorship. Therefore, Humala’s mandate is clear:

He must govern from the moderate left. But he must not, in any way, become either of the two things that most Peruvians have rejected throughout the electoral process: not the routine president who sets out to manage mediocrity without improving either the government agency or well-being of the poorest citizens or without diversifying the country’s economy. Additionally he also must not, in any way, become a domineering violence-monger like Alberto Fujimori was and like, Keiko Fujimori undoubtedly would have been, as the puppet of her father and his mafia.

The election of Ollanta Humala does not make me happy, for sure. There are many other things that would be required for a Peruvian to be happy. But I am convinced that yesterday’s result was a necessary requirement for the achievement of all those things. We would have gained nothing by placing a convicted criminal back in power, directly or through the intermediary of his political heirs.

Maybe those who today splenetically stroll through the streets ofPeru, lamenting the defeat of a criminal ring, will understand this over time. Those people who look at Humala voters with outrage have to understand that the millions of Peruvians who voted for Humala have just saved the dignity of those who did not, at least for the upcoming years. In the future, however, they will need to learn how to save it for themselves: it is unacceptable and shameful that a large number of citizens would try to place the country’s future in the hands of criminals and their party members. That is complicity.

In the Peruvian political spectrum, Fujimorism is not an achievement, but a stain. In the years to come it will seek—because this is all it has left—longevity as a lobbying force. This observation was made last night by Steve Levitsky (1) in a televised interview (and snatched by Jaime de Althaus (2) to consecrate Fujimorism as a long-lasting and legitimate axis ofPeru’s new politics). If that happens, we will be poisoning our politics for years to come.

A political party whose motives are crime, theft, murder, human rights abuses and the subsequent release of the perpetrators—a party that lacks even the decency (or the intelligence) to hide those motives behind the articulation of a system of ideas—is gangrene on an open wound. Or, what’s worse, it’s the festering sign of other rotting wounds: the demoralization of our public stage, the devaluation of our ethical standards, the plummeting of our value systems.

The part of Peruvian society that has democratically rejected Fujimorism, that has mobilized to reject it through the fundamental action of voting as an expression of its will, without orchestrating filthy mudslinging campaigns, without resorting to the tactics of Fujimorism, must not miss out on this opportunity to make crystal clear that Fujimorism was defeated yesterday, by no matter how narrow a margin. In the most crucial election that this generation of Peruvians has faced, the past and potential dictators have been stifled, rejected, put in their place.

That place is not a seat at an upcoming negotiation table. Alberto Fujimori is in prison: that’s where he belongs. Montesinos is in prison: that’s where he belongs. Keiko Fujimori is running to prison to weep on a criminal’s shoulder: that’s where she belongs. The cast of high-handed Fujimoristas who have made their way back into parliament are the undertow of the past, and that is how they must be seen. The next wave will come to wash them away and, in doing so, it will cleanse of us them.

This is a good day. But in the political history of nations, good days don’t ensure the goodness of days to come. Humala has many allies, and not all of them are favorable; he has many rivals—radical or circumstantial—and not all of them will want to cooperate in the construction of a better society. He has many overseers, many who voted for him and pledged their watchfulness: those are the ones who will be most valuable in the long-run. Since inside him, Humala has another even greater rival: the Humala of the past, the one with half-baked ideas and catastrophic plans.

And Humala also has, in Fujimorism, an enemy that’s corrupt in as many ways as one can be corrupt—an enemy who must be seen as a common threat, for those who wish to help Humala and those who hope he builds a government that goes above and beyond our expectations, high or low as they may be. What does he have in his favor? Above all, this: the breath we will take when we see him this July 28th, knowing that his place could have been filled by the terrible ghost of the past, the ghastly phantom of the old regime (3).

We’ve pushed past the first crossroads. May we never again face that threat. Peru deserves a 2016 election without a Fujimori or an Alan García in the second round. Peru deserves serious political parties and has little time to form them. That endeavor should be made chiefly outside of parliament, which for five more years will house the shadows of thuggery, the shadows of cronyism, the shadows of corruption and personal ambition. Now is the time to become a country again, if ever we were one, and to send those who clown around off to join the circus.

Just one more point. Our true revolution will come through education. Peru insists on seeing itself as the country of mediocre hacks like Aldo Mariátegui (4), of scrupulous demagogs like Jaime Bayly (5), of negligent clowns like Raúl Romero (6), of covert propagandists like Nicolás Lúcar (7).

That is not Peru. And if it is, it should not be. Peru must become the country of José María Arguedas, Manuel Gonzalez Prada, Clorinda Matto, José Carlos Mariátegui, César Vallejo, Martín Adán, Mario Vargas Llosa, Julio Ramón Ribeyro, Blanca Varela; the country of Unanue, Leoncio Prado, Miguel Grau, Micaela Bastidas, Francisco Bolognesi, Maria Helena Moyano.

Fujimorization killed that country, over a long period of time in which a society of officials forced the country to stay on its deathbed, transforming those images into empty rhetoric and silhouettes in a photo album. Behind those names are the ideas that will redeem us. We must return to those names, to those books, to those examples. We are not a country of nonentities and have no obligation to keep living with so much mediocrity.

 Translated by  Joseph Mulligan

NOTES:
*This article first appeared on the author’s blog, Puente aéreo, June 6, 2011.
(1) Steve Levinsky is professor in the Department of Government atHarvardUniversity and currently serving as visiting professor at PUCP, Lima, Peru.
(2) Jaime de Althaus is director and host of the TV news program La Hora N, columnist for the newspaper El Comercio, and author of several books on national development.
(3) Peruvian inauguration falls on July 28th, which is also Peruvian independence day.
(4) Aldo Mariátegui is an attorney and Editor-in-Chief of the newspaper Correo.
(5) Jaime Baily is a celebrity personality and talk show host of El Francotirador.
(6) Raúl Romero was a pop musician who now hosts the TV program Habicilar.
(7) Nicolás Lúcar is a journalist who reported extensively during the Fujimori era and was largely discredited on account of corruption.

I cannot begin to recall how many times I’ve crossed New York State on I-90. From Batavia, where I grew up, to Albany where I studied, or passing Erie & to the Iron City of Pittsburgh, my last home before moving to the Hudson Valley. But, it is wrong to say that I “crossed” the state on this road, since this is one of those highways that unfolds before a traveler, magnetically pulling bodies forth like an undertow & opening up into ever wider expanses. Where I-90 passes Albany, the earth rests quietly in a patch of flatlands that span the triangular gap between the rising Catskills to the south, the Berkshires to the east & the Adirondacks to the north. Space there, in this sense, opens in a westward direction.

For the past five years, Luke Williamson has painted the I-90 landscape in a series that delivers the unraveling feeling a traveler of those parts will know in his bones as he pushes west past Schenectady, Utica, Syracuse, & into the Genesee Valley, my own stomping ground & gateway to the Great Lakes. This upstate / central / western region is an elongated glacial depression defined by a southeastern jet-stream that acts as a constant reminder of the ancient ice’s slow & atrocious trajectory. Straying from the traditional flock of Hudson Valley painters, Williamson has refrained from plucking that pristine chord to play the natural-ized Music of the Spheres; although, his technical dexterity in other landscapes, namely those on his website, does show his decision to work through rather than around the tradition.

What sets Williamson’s painting apart is the way it highlights the very modality in which it  represents a landscape. It surpasses the notion of the landscape as secret-keeper, an object-in-itself, in order to explore the relationship between the landscape & the perception that opens up toward it. It is at once self-reflective & critical of visual art in the new millennium. I must add, the fact that this article on Williamson’s painting is being distributed via RSS & contains digital reproductions of his oil on canvass reinforces the relevance of his argument & makes these words the perfect target for his critique.

The closer we look at the clouds in Williamson’s painting, the more we notice that they are pixelated & from those nebulous bodies disintegrate into nearly abstract shapes. At their apogee, they are nothing more than chromatic quadrilaterals. Such is the sky in the eyes of this artist: bricks of color. This pixelated atmosphere denies the viewer the luxury of forgetting that… Continue reading article at Barner Books Blog.

from UNTITLED

EVERYTHING THESE DAYS IS DONE IN A RUSH

The dew
Is produced in a minute
There’s no longer a need for the gaze
& in its place
There’s an all-knowing
Silver screen. But who cares
For there still are magnolias
Things will be much worse
When pain disappears
Or loneliness becomes
Artificial

EVERYTHING IS PARIS FOR ME

& Rome is also New York
Or Lima. Everywhere I go I breath
Put on a pair of pants & smile
Everywhere I get out of or
Into bed while staring at the stars
Even though they are not out
My name is Jorge & I’m the same
Lad who used to read Rimbaud
& Mallarmé weeping like a child
All my dreams & feces
Are the same in Paris Rome
New York or Lima

IMMEDIATELY AFTER READING

These words
Shut tight the windows & doors
Don’t blink too much
Don’t startle the fluttering
Yellow butterfly
Standing still on a chair
Flush the toilet
& let life pass by
As though nothing had happened
Then answer the phone
Talk about stupid or famous things
Hang up the phone
But this time bearing in mind
That the entire world is just
This mysterious yellow butterfly
Standing still on a chair

Translated by Joseph Mulligan

Now a shoe store, now a dentist’s office, now a storage closet, now a bedroom. He has obtained certain data that may contain clues for the detective work that his photo art requires of its viewers. 

His Raumportraits / Room Portraits harness the early 20th century technique of montage & direct it at the expression of “more than just rooms,” as Karen Helmsteidt has suggested, “but intimate scenes of life lived” – scenes that, let us add, depict human life without visually representing the body (1).

“At first the mostly deserted spaces and rooms look like scale models. Only after a closer look does one realize that the rooms are real,” remarks Uwe Goldenstein. This “impossible perspective”, moreover, is attained by attaching the camera to a monopod, hoisting the monopod to the hight of the ceiling & taking 100-150 images from multiple angles while stabilizing the camera at different points on an invisible grid. The images are then montaged until each pixel lines up flush with the next, giving the impression that only one photograph was ever taken & the feeling that the Eye of the Beholder is located precisely above each & ever inch of these human habitats.

The other  night, after looking through Menno Aden’s Room Portraits for several hours, thinking about  what they mean to say, wondering if they mean what they say, I fell into a restless sleep. Then, in the strangest dream, Menno Aden appeared to me as a Cyclops. A grotesque monster of gargantuan proportions. Yet, one that did not possess the fury that traditionally characterizes such beasts. No. This was a curious Cyclops who, on account of his great size, was only able to observe human life at his feet by removing his only eye from its socket & extending it downward in his hand. He directed that oversized eyeball, coated in saline secretions, at the house across the street from where I was standing – a house almost identical to all the others in the neighborhood. & suddenly a woman ran out of that house, shouting & shaking a cast-iron skillet: “Hey you! Up there! Hey, down here! At this house visitors enter through the front door!” I awoke in a sweat to the cackling of jackhammers…. Continue reading article at Barner Books.

“MURO DOBLEANCHO / DOUBLEWIDE WALL” comes from the first section of that book, “CUNEIFORMES / CUNEIFORMS” & situates us in the jail cell. The following text is drawn from my complete translation of Scales & will be added to a lengthy anthology of Selected Writings by César Vallejo that is currently in the works.

 DOUBLEWIDE WALL

On this swelter of a night, one of my inmates tells me the story of his trial. He finishes the abstruse narration, stretches out on his soiled dais and hums a yaraví (1).

I now possess the truth of his conduct.

This man is a criminal. His mask of innocence transparent, the criminal has been arrested. Through the course of his prattle, my soul has followed him, step by step, through his illicit act. Between us we have festered through days and nights of idleness, garnished with arrogant alcohol, chuckling dentures, aching guitar strings, razor-blades on guard, drunken bouts of sweat and disgust. We have disputed with the defenseless companion who cries for her man to quit drinking, to work and earn some dough for the kids, so that God sees… And then, with our dried out guts thriving on booze, each dawn we would take the brutal plunge into the street, slamming the door on the groaning offspring’s own fat-lips.

I have suffered with him the fleeting calls to dignity and regeneration; I have faced both sides of the medallion, I have doubted and even felt the heel dig in, insinuating a one-eighty. One morning this barfly, in great pain, thought about going on the strait and narrow, left to look for a job, then ran into an old friend and took a turn for the worse. In the end, he stole out of necessity. And now, given what his legal representative is saying, his sentence is not far off.

This man is a thief.

But he is also a killer.

One night, during the most boisterous of benders, he strolls through bloody intersections of the ghetto, while at the same time, an old-timer, who then holding down an honest job, was on his way home from work. The drinker takes him by the arm, invites him in, gets him to share in his adventure, to which the upright man accepts, though much to his regret.

Fording the earth ten elbows deep (2), they return after midnight through black allies. The irreproachable man with alarming diphthongs brings the drinker to a halt; he takes him by the side, stands him up, and berates the shameless scum:

“Come on! This is what you like. You don’t have a choice anymore.”

And suddenly a sentence bursts forth in flames and emerges from the darkness:

“Hold it right there!…”

An assault of anonymous knives. Botched, the target of the attack: the blade doesn’t pierce the flesh of the drunkard, but mistakenly and fatally punctures the good worker.

Therefore, this man is also a killer. But the courts, naturally, do not, nor will they ever, suspect the third hand of the thief.

Meanwhile, he keeps doing pushups on that suspicious dais of his, while humming his sad yaraví.

Translated by Joseph Mulligan

NOTES:
* César Vallejo, portrait, acrylic on canvass, by Beatriz Sosa (2009).
(1) The Quechua word “yaraví” refers to a genre of song from the Andes. Rather than translating it as “blues”, which would have brought with it undesirable cultural references, I’ve preferred to leave it in Quechua.
(2)It is not clear what Vallejo means here by “Vadeando hasta diez codos de tierra”, and in view of this opacity, I have rendered a more intelligible phrase, aware that this could over-simplify the author’s complexity & interested in finding a better option.

Those who still get a thrill out of going back to Poe’s tales or sinking their literate teeth into prose seared rare will enjoy the suspense of this inaugural novel by the Peruvian writer – a novel that for some has appeared as a fire baptism. My thanks to the author for his continual feedback as I venture through his winding labyrinth.

GOTHIC HORROR TODAY
The Antiquarian by Gustavo Faverón Patriau

Few projects in prose these days are as bold as Gustavo Faverón Patriau’s El anticuario / The Antiquarian, published by Peisa last October in Lima & Santiago. While the Peruvian’s literary & social criticism has made waves in Hispanic circles, his first novel marks a new achievement in the literature of the Americas, finding a way to harmonize narrative traditions from South & North, by stitching together terrifying narrations with a violent patch-worked murder plot to produce what, for all intensive purposes, can be called a postmodern gothic thriller.

From the outset we learn that Daniel has killed Juliana, more than three years ago, & has been sent to a sanitarium. Gustavo, Daniel’s long-time friend & confidant, is determined to figure out how & why he killed her. The investigation is carried out on both external & internal registers, comprised of conversations & interrogations with conspicuous characters as well as steadfast cerebrations, speculations, proofs, & deductions that are elaborated in the mind of Gustavo.

To bring the literary gothic tradition up to date, Faverón Patriau, while writing in Spanish, shows a clear affinity for Edgar Poe & has innovated the genre by implementing fragmented narrative techniques that are reminiscent of Boom literature. In Faverón Patriau’s project of innovating that gothic thread, there is an echo of José Lezama Lima’s resuscitation of the Baroque. But here, we have a gripping tale that questions the limits of friendship, fraternity & human pain, where the consolation for struggle is found in the shared pursuit of knowledge.

El anticuario takes place in an unnamed city, a coastal city, a thinly-masked Lima, where night falls as the fog rolls in enveloping the metropolis with its saline breath. This is the location for the story of Gustavo, a psycho-linguist whose wife has passed away from cancer before the story begins, & of his close friend, Daniel, a bibliophile whose encyclopedic memory constantly leads him into anecdotal digressions that offer the reader stories within the story. The other protagonists include Sophia, Daniel’s sister; Juliana, Daniel’s girlfriend; Adela, Daniel & Juliana’s maid; Huk, a female mental patient; & then Mireaux, Yanaúma, & Gálvez, co-owners of The Circle, a book store where the rarest of objects & services can be acquired, always for a price. Finally & centrally, there is a character that goes by the name of The Antiquarian, likely the most poetic persona of the drama. We can look to the author for a succinct description of him:

“The Antiquarian is the type of man who cloisters himself in a tower of books and sun-faded bundles of paper, ever a stranger to the world around him. He reads about the life of the deceased in octavo tomes, printed in venerable languages, and he studies both time and space without exposing himself to the inclemency of neither time nor space: a prisoner, surrounded by columns of printed paper, illegible scribbles, oriental characters, each moment of humanity available to him in alphabetical order lining the walls of his room, immune to everything save for his gaze. Thirty years of his life has he consumed in this place, from which he escapes by himself after nightfall. With a book in his hand and a finger saving his page, the Antiquarian most carefully verifies the similarities and differences between the physical world and the world that he knows by memory from the books…”

Faverón Patriau makes literary use of terror, not as theme, not on a decadent whim that elicits an exploration of the grotesque (i.e. not limited to scatology), nor even as a socio-political platform upon which another writer might have espoused a mundane ideology. For Faverón Patriau terror is a vehicle that facilitates a penetrating investigation into the reality of human suffering & camaraderie. In this way & in El anticuario, the same road that leads into the nether regions of the world, where violence reigns in a gruesome depiction of reality, also leads into the Self, where internalized ethical dimensions of being are examined with… Continue reading this article at Barner Books Blog.

THE HEMATITE HILLS

by Joseph Mulligan

Stop. Don’t move an inch. Procrastinate. I’m sure it can wait. Have you loitered much? Stop listening. Stop reading. Stop understanding or trying to understand or understanding what you understand & for a moment feel the force of Tuesday’s indifference:

The sun today
is a piece of hematite
a blood-red stone in the atmosphere
melts into stone-red blood
flows through telluric channels
charges my rivers & their tributaries
with the magnetism
of Kircher’s dreams
& powers my water clocks
until they toll one, two…
Drink from the water
says the sun, go drink
says Kircher himself imbibe
with the pureness of animals
& thirst of untrodden sand
I drink a glass of water & think
about this piece of hematite
attractive little stone
bloody as it were
set in a ring you wear
in the knells I hear

inside a snow globe gifted to a demigod infant, who in a tantrum gives it a violent shake, I don’t hate the rain in my face the ice on the roads the coldness the wetness or the darkness as I go forward & forgo, my body is leaven, face melts into head & on the murky glass smears a smile, genuine with the joy of still being able to smile

for fog has rolled in
after your departure
the date on your ticket
falling precisely on itself
your final breaths still
blow around in February

yet what en el más allá will I think about what I’m doing in the dry here & now? Here & how (en el más acá), but twenty years from now, what will I be like then & what will it be like to wake up on a Thursday nearing months end & feel similar questions bubbling behind the wallpaper? I don’t know can’t know & subsequently feel the inaneness of wanting to know, the mystery of time

unlike the lake effect
storm you vanished into
a flurry of victorian flakes
a damp cold now, brutal humidity
the breath a body of its own
fog has rolled in

this compound fracture only heals by fission

the bag I leave
on the bus tonight
after a week of work
& commuting to work
bag that contains one item
purchased for one reason
has a different meaning
for whomever found it
that it does for I
who have lost it

& face these hills like a climber who has yet to summit; not like one who has fallen.

BuGaLu was fed up with that young musician who thought the world of himself & expected the world to do the same. BuGaLu was on fire, his voice powerfully rising. He shot rejoinders in blasts of vituperative gunpowder. He screamed into the mouthpiece of his cell phone, then, aiming at me. When flames curled out his nostrils, I heard the call to action & instinctively threw a bucket of water on him.

I was pleased to read Ron Petrides’ recent article on Marvin, published last February in Modern Drummer magazine. This musician, one of the few who can say he sat under the high-hat of the greats until they let him play, Marvin grew up studying under his older brother Earl “Buster” Smith, who played with Eric Dolphy & Oscar Petiford. Visits by hard-hitters like Roy Haynes, Charlie Persip & Donald Byrd were common at the Smith house. At the age of 19, BuGaLu went to California for a gig that, underfunded as it was, changed his 2 week stint into a 2 year stay. During his time in California he was introduced to Nichiren Buddhism & chant, “Nam Myo Ho Renge Kyo”. After working with funk bands through the late 1960s, BuGaLu then opened a new chapter of his life when left the U.S. for Italia…

Continue reading this article at Barner Books’ blog

Fue cofundador de la revista de poesía Madrona y trabajó para la Seattle Housing Authority antes de regresar a Grecia en 1972. Actualmente trabaja como profesor de ESL (English as a Second Language) en su academia de lenguas en Meligalas, en la región de Messinía. Escribe poesía desde hace cuarenta años. Varias revistas de los Estados Unidos y de otros países publicaron muestras de su obra poética. La revista Poetry Salzburg Review, que dirige Wolfgang Görtschacher, publicó poemas suyos en los números 2, 3, 6, 9, 11, 14 y 18. Algunos de sus poemas fueron incluidos en la antología How the Net is Gripped: a selection of contemporary American Poetry (Stride, UK, 1992).

Es autor de dos libros de poemas, Sentences (Querencia Books, 1976) y Aural (Singing Horse Press, 1984); y de la plaquette Triptych (Kater Murr’s Press, Piraeus Series, 2005). Tiene un libro inédito: The Intricate Evasions of As. Escribe en griego y en inglés. En su blog publica poemas y prosas en inglés.

Mario Domínguez Parra

TRADUCCIÓN DEL INGLÉS

TRÍPTICO

GUERRA DE DESGASTE

Al volverse
vieron que

lo que los des-
gastaba no era 

su in-
constancia, 

sus constantes
fricciones, 

sino cómo amar,
honrar y acatar 

una vida compuesta
de ficciones.

WAR OF ATTRITION

Looking back
they saw 

what wore them
down was not

their in-
constancy, 

their constant
frictions, 

but how to love,
honor and obey

a life made up
of fictions.

— | — | —

BOCA A BOCA

Imaginarios ardientes
Vocablos de polilla 

En llamas, que se extienden
Como fuego arrasador,

Nunca más.

WORD OF MOUTH

Imaginary burning
Words of moth 

In flame, spreading
Like wildfire, 

Never again.

— | — | —

EL PRESENTIMIENTO

En verdad sentimos
Que nuestros huesos seguirán 

El velatorio,
Para desvelarse 

En la oscuridad
Del mañana, 

Para hallar la trémula
Luz de la luciérnaga, 

Su ondulante vientre invertebrado
Que nos apuntala 

Las mismas entrañas.

THE PRESENTIMENT

Verily we feel
Our bones shall follow

The wake,
To wake

In the dark
Of the morrow, 

To find the glow-
Worm’s glimmer, 

Its spineless undulating underbelly
Underpinning

Our very marrow. 

 TRADUCCIÓN DEL GRIEGO 

EFÍMERO

A la memoria de J.P., 1956-2002

Dios mío,

Solo un minuto—
Necesitaría

La baja nube
Gris para cruzar

Una eternidad
Dame—

Este instante
Para devenir.     

ΕΦΗΜΕΡΟΣ

Εις μνήμην Χ.Π., 1956-2002.

Θεέ μου, 

Μόνο ένα λεπτό—
Θα χρειαστεί

Το χαμηλό γκρίζο
Σύννεφο να περάσει

Μια αιωνιότητα
Δως’μου—

Τη στιγμή αυτή
Να προσπεράσω.

(2003)

— | — | —

PEÁN

Oh,

Portentoso el rayo
De sol

Sobre el cuerpo helado,
La gota de lluvia

En la hoja que arde;
Pura, absoluta

Gloria de las suelas que pasan
Sobre la Tierra giróvaga.

ΠΑΙΑΝΑΣ

Ω, 

Υπέροχη η αχτίδα
Του ήλιου

Πάνω στο παγωμένο σώμα,
Η στάλα της βροχής

Στο φύλλο που καίγεται΄
Ανόθευτη, απόλυτη

Δόξα των πελμάτων που περνάνε
Πάνω στη στρεφόμενη Γη.

(2006)

— | — | —

PRESAGIO

Hermoso sería que llegara
El mensaje que nos mantiene

Concentrados, extasiados,
Aquí y allá—

Hermoso sería escuchar
Más allá del rumor,

La noticia: que nuestros viejos
Y queridos amigos

Aguardan dicho mensaje
Para regresar juntos,

Hermoso sería escuchar
El ruiseñor que se acerca

Antes de evaporarnos
Todos juntos.

ΟΙΩΝΟΣ

Ωραία θα’ταν να έφτανε
Το μήνημα που μας κρατάει 

Προσηλωμένοι, συνεπαρμένοι
Εδώ και εκεί—

Ωραία θα’ταν ν’ακούγαμε
Πέρα απ’ τη βουή,

Τα νέα πως οι φίλοι μας,
Παλαιοί και ακριβοί,

Περιμένουν αυτό το μήνημα
Να γυρίσουνε μαζί,

Ωραία θα’ταν ν’ακούγαμε
Τ’ αηδόνι που πλησιάζει

Προτού ξαφανιστούμε
Όλοι μαζί.                       

(2007)

This act of censoring pro-labor art brings to mind the destruction of Diego Rivera’s “Man at the Crossroads” at Rockefeller Center in 1934 – a piece which, incidentally, would later be recreated in Mexico City.

In Maine, a group of media artists known as BrokeFix, reacted to this decision on April 2, 2011 by obtaining a digital image of the mural &, as their online video shows, by projecting it onto the façade of the capitol building in a stealth act of defiance. In keeping with the militant vocabulary of the Avant-garde, the name assigned to this act of political art is a “photo-bomb”. That it has been praised by progressives in the national media leads us to ask: in our increasingly polarized political climate, is this progressive art?

The issue here is (at least) double-sided. First, it highlights the spuriousness of the motives behind Governor LePage’s decision to order the removal of the mural precisely at the moment when the very issues of labor’s place in the state budget were being discussed at the legislative level. One need not venture far in this direction before it wreaks of rats. Yet there is also the question of how & to what extent BrokeFix’s projection of the mural image back onto the capitol building actually integrates itself into the political discourse to thereby alter the course of our political reality…

The complete article is available at Barner Books.

S–>i–> g–>l–>o 

n–>ó–>m–>a–>d–>e 

a–>d–>e–>l–>a–>n–>t–>e

Me encamino hacia un futuro que no existe,
dejando a cada instante un nuevo cadáver en mis huellas
(René Daumal) [1]

no porque yo podría haber sido un arcángel de cera o una lluvia vespertina o un catálogo automovilístico
(Tristan Tzara)

1. HORA DE CERRAR: Mientras este siglo se aproxima a su final, aparece en cada uno de nosotros el espeluznante sentimiento de haber estado aquí antes o de que, en las palabras inmortales de Yogi Berra [2]: «Es déjà vu una y otra vez». Así, parecería que el hombre de Joyce, Vico, hubiese tenido razón después de todo, que todo es cíclico, que nuestro fin reposa en nuestro principio, y que la espiral se enrosca con fuerza exponencial alrededor de nuestros desaliñados cuellos. Pero en este siglo cierto tipo de historia fue abolido o, por lo menos, planteado en breve y expuesto como la estafa que es —(¡oh, no! no por los artistas de guerra oficiales, ni por los pensa-solda-dores y hojalateros ambulantes de la Politesfera, ni por los Jacadémicos [3] perros guardianes de la kulchur [4])— es decir, la máquina del tiempo escatoeleológico y lineal que está por acabarse. Ustedes ya saben a qué/quién me refiero: a los numerosos fascismos, al Vaticano, a las federaciones de castradores protestantes; a miríadas de totalitarismos a nivel macro y micro; etc. La condition humaine, escribió cierto hombre [5], es una revolución en un país lejano; y luego regresó a casa y renovó el mundo en forma de museos subsidiados por el estado.

La realidad no está allí simplemente, hay que buscarla y ganarla.
Paul Celan)

Yo tenía mucha curiosidad por ver cómo pretendían resucitarme.
(clasificador de -ismos de Jefim Golycheff) Tocar objetos de la colección está terminantemente prohibido tengo mareos (Kurt Schwitters)

2. JAKI-JAKI [6]: Proseguimos o regresamos, por puro valor, en balsas hechas de la piel de nuestros dientes [7], siendo la nostalgia siempre lo que ya lo es; por ejemplo, precisamente aquella fórmula lingüística que nosotros mismos tratamos de descubrir en viejos periódicos y revistas; doblamos las páginas y de pronto nos percatamos de que todas las imágenes se han desvanecido, se han recortado con mucho cuidado; solamente la sombra de su ausencia, solamente el borde irregular de sus contornos ofrece alguna imprecisa indicación de quién o qué estaba aquí, o sea, allí. Jaki-jaki. Están por allí, quiero decir por aquí, ahora, reorganizadas, como esquejes que se añaden a y se recortan de un collage, montadas y desmontadas [8], embutidas en la sintaxis y en la parataxis pero tasadas sin duda [9], ciber-montadas en la autobiografía demoníaco-maníaca de este siglo, «prescrita» por Time-Life, The Saturday Evening Post, Paris Match, Die Welt, Popular Mechanics, El Moujahid, Rolling Stone, Pravda y reescrita por las varias vanguardias del collage y del cut-up. ¿Esto les parece familiar? Debería—este siglo ha vuelto para atormentarles, para (re)velarse una última vez como lo que fue, como lo que representó y combatió, desde Tzara hasta Kitaj, desde Duchamp hasta Keinholz, desde Schwitters hasta Pélieu, desde la a hasta la z: COLLAGE, su innovación central, prevista por Lautréamont a finales del siglo pasado. Cortó las cronologías, nos enseñó una nueva historia, y aún más, es también un injerto, una reorganización de estructuras arborescentes, árboles que ya desde siempre son raíces / tronco / ramas, incluso al ser cortados y reorganizados, digamos ramas / tronco / raíces, el árbol celestial crece hacia abajo en polaridades que ya no podemos permitirnos, si es que alguna vez pudimos. Sin tiempo ya, ni el ascenso ni el descenso nos llaman. VÁYANSE a las peladas llanuras del pleistoceno, NO se vuelvan, NO RECUERDEN; SALIR DISPARADOS cual flecha veloz por la curva telúrica es el único camino [10]. Pónganse a cuatro patas y corran, conviértanse en zorros, lobos, conviértanse nuevamente en animales.

el errar crea el desierto
(Edmond Jabès)

soy una línea que se extiende y deseo crecer en una férrea tubería de estaño
lo digo para entretenerte.
(Tristan Tzara)

3. APERTURA: Lo que ahora se necesita es una poética nómada. Su método será rizomático: que se distingue del collage, es decir, una rizomática no es una estética del fragmento, la cual ha dominado la poesía desde los románticos e incluso ha sido distorsionada por el modernismo, culto y popular [11], y en tiempos recientes actualizada en la forma neoclásica de la cita —irónica y/o decorativa— a lo largo de lo que se conoce como «posmodernismo». Strawberry Fields Forever. Una poética nómada atravesará lenguas, que no solo se traducirán, sino que se escribirá en todas o en cualquiera de ellas. Si Pound, HD, Joyce, Stein, Olson y otros han señalado el camino, ahora es preciso llevar el asunto más allá, otra vez, no tanto como «collage» (aunque conservaremos aquellos logros), sino como un flujo material de materia lingüística. Tratar y considerar, entonces, este asunto incluso como pre-lengua, proto-semántica, como si se originara de lo que Julia Kristeva denomina jora [12], definida por ella como «una articulación temporal, esencialmente móvil, constituida por movimientos y sus estados efímeros». Y después, perseguir este flujo de rupturas y articulaciones, de ritmo, entrando y saliendo de espacios semánticos y no semánticos, circundando y penetrando los rasgos que acrecen hasta formar el poema, un cubismo-lenguaje, no, un barroco-lenguaje que es ya, no un «explosante fixe» (Breton) sino un «explosante mouvante».

Las relaciones de la poesía son, para nuestro período, muy semejantes a las relaciones de la ciencia. No se trata de utilizar los resultados de la ciencia, sino de ver que existe un punto de encuentro entre todos los tipos de imaginación. La poesía puede proporcionar ese punto de encuentro.
(Muriel Rukeyser)

Las gentes desean establecerse: solo si no se establecen
habrá esperanza para ellas.
(Ralph Waldo Emerson)

4. EL ESTADO DE: Los días de cualquier cosa estática, forma, contenido, estado ya terminaron. El siglo pasado nos ha expuesto que cualquier cosa que no participe en una transformación continua se endurece y muere. Todas las revoluciones han hecho exactamente eso: tanto aquéllas que intentaron ocuparse del estado como aquéllas que intentaron ocuparse del estado de la poesía.  

Yo viví en el primer siglo de las guerras mundiales.
La mayoría de las mañanas amanecía más o menos demente.
(Muriel Rukeyser)

Nunca he podido distinguir un comienzo a partir de un fin.
(George Braque)

5. CRIATURA MEMORADA: Del siglo veinte retendremos todo—en la memoria. Nada olvidaremos y nada perdonaremos. También recordaremos que el siglo veinte fue el rabo meneado por el perro decimonónico.

Lo que he pretendido hacer es declinar la lengua francesa, transformarla para expresar, digamos: Este yo, este yo negro, este yo criollo, este yo martiniqueño, este yo caribeño. Por eso me interesó mucho más la poesía que la prosa—justamente porque es el poeta quien crea su lenguaje, en tanto que el escritor de prosa, por lo general, lo usa.
(Aimé Césaire)

La poesía es la promesa de un lenguaje.
(Hölderlin)

6. BARROCO: Escribiremos en lenguas extranjeras (reales o inventadas) para llegar a la comprensión de que todas las lenguas son extranjeras. Y aquellas que no lo son resultan tediosas por su egoísmo auto-reflexivo. Todas las lenguas vivas son acriolladas por lo que Edouard Glissant ha llamado el mundo-caos. La primera urgencia, por lo tanto, es terminar para siempre con la cárcel de la lengua materna, es decir, ¿por qué cualquiera habría de escribir en la lengua de mamá y papá? ¿por qué debería ser esa elección edípica la única posible o legítima? ¿por qué no debería ser mi propia elección, ese instante del descubrimiento del otro, ese instante en el que es nuestra conjunción cuerpo/mente la que habla y no la de nuestros progenitores? La lengua materna devendrá la lengua del amante, la lengua del otro. Una lengua nómada de afectos, de versos liberados en erótico vuelo, los que rompen las constricciones triangulares (la forma más fuerte, como Bucky Fuller nos ha mostrado) de la scène de famille freudiana y de su macro-proyección socio-política, el estado-nación.

Nos relacionamos con todos los componentes del universo, como también con el más allá y con la antigüedad. La decisión de cultivar tal o cual relación—que nos es indispensable y que debe realizarse— depende solamente de la dirección y duración de nuestra vigilancia.
(Novalis)

en el hule de taimadas estratagemas
(Dennis Brutus)

7. MUNDO: Ahora heme aquí, proponiendo la expansión del hermoso dicho de Robin Blaser, «es una América ausente cuya presencia está en juego» para leer «es un Mundo ausente cuya presencia está en juego». Un mundo por inventarse. El Déjà vu por todas partes no ha de ganar. Mientras escribo esto, marzo de 1998, la Biblia y la Espada (en la forma del más reaccionario de los papas y del más acomodadizo de los presidentes estadounidenses) están zigzagueando por África, debilitando las resistencias del continente [13]  para el Nuevo Colonialismo del siglo que viene. En los medios estadounidenses, la única voz que escuché hablando de manera precisa sobre esta condición fue la de un poeta—Dennis Brutus. Lo que me recuerda la idea de Helène Cixous, de que «el siglo veinte, por su violencia, ha suscitado el matrimonio de la Poesía y la Historia». La historia no muerta todavía, la imaginación, imagina, no muerta [14] todavía, la historia está por venir, todos tenemos la necesidad de hacernos arqueólogos del día después.

labio sin boca, anuncia
que algo ocurre, todavía,
no lejos de ti.
(Paul Celan)

NOTAS SOBRE LA TRADUCCIÓN:

(1) En el texto presente Joris incluye numerosas citas de escritores que él ya había traducido al inglés del alemán y del francés. En vista de la propuesta de Joris en este ensayo, hemos preferido basar nuestras traducciones en sus versiones en inglés.
(2) Berra (St. Louis, EE.UU., 1925) es uno de los más importantes jugadores de béisbol de todos los tiempos.
(3) Joris emplea el neologismo adjetival «Hackademic» que fusiona los sustantivos «hack» y «académico», de modo tal que viene a significar «académico sin escrúpulos». Hemos creado un neologismo que otorga un matiz peyorativo a cierto tipo de académicos, al mezclarlo con una jaca y convertirlos en centauros (una de las acepciones de «jaca» en el DRAE es «yegua») y al mezclarlo también con una jaca (gallo inglés de pelea al que se le deja crecer los espolones, según el DRAE, espolones que utiliza sin escrúpulos para atacar).
(4) El poeta alude al concepto de «kulchur» desarrollado por el escritor estadounidense Ezra Pound en su libro Guide to Kulchur.
(5) Andre Malraux (1901-1976), escritor francés, viajero empedernido, combatiente en la Guerra Civil Española, en la Resistencia Francesa y más tarde Ministro de Interior y de Cultura en el gobierno del General De Gaulle.
(6) Joris escribe «SNIP-SNAP» que parece una onomatopeya que expresa el sonido que hacen las tijeras. Alusión a la acción de hacer collage. Hemos utilizado una onomatopeya que nos parece cercana al sonido de las tijeras, onomatopeya que proviene del japonés.
(7) The Skin of Our Teeth es una obra de teatro de Thornton Wilder. Joseph Campbell escribió: «Mientras miles de personas aplauden, nadie ha señalado todavía que la emocionante obra de teatro del señor Thornton Wilder, La piel de nuestros dientes, no es una creación totalmente original, sino una re-creación americanizada, apenas embozada, de Finnegans Wake, de James Joyce» (Mythic Worlds, Modern Words: Joseph Campbell on the Art of James Joyce, ed. Edmund L. Epstein, Novato-California, New World Library, 2003, p. 257).
(8) En el inglés la voz francesa «collage» se acepta como sustantivo y también como verbo. Joris juega con esta última acepción al formar el verbo «decollaged», lo que aparentemente significaría «deshacer un collage». Lo mismo ocurre con el sustantivo «montage» (montaje), a partir del cual Joris crea «demontaged».
(9) Joris crea neologismos al verbalizar los sustantivos «syntax» y «parataxis» como «syntaxed» y «parataxed», para que concuerden en su función gramatical con el verbo «tax». Recordemos que la «parataxis» es la colocación de múltiples cláusulas dentro de una sola oración sin conjunción alguna que las conecte, como por ejemplo, «leí el poema, no lo entendí, cerré el libro».
(10) En esta oración Joris deliberadamente emplea un anacoluto, es decir, la inconsecuencia gramatical en la construcción.
(11) Cuando Joris habla del «modernism» no ha de confundirse con el «modernismo» tal como se entiende en la literatura hispana. Este último más que nada se traduce como «symbolism». Para nuestro poeta, el «modernismo culto» se refiere a los pioneros vanguardistas como Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, James Joyce y H(ilda) D(oolittle), inter alia; y el «modernismo popular» se refiere a William Carlos Williams, e.e. cummings y Charles Olson, inter alia.
(12) La palabra «χώρα» proviene del griego y significa «país».
(13) El uso del verbo «soften up», «debilitar las resistencias», puede conllevar críticas a la política del Vaticano con respecto al uso del condón (por su nada fiable afirmación de que el condón no previene el SIDA) y a las empresas farmacéuticas (porque no les interesa, puesto que perderían dinero, que los países africanos puedan fabricar genéricos más baratos, que cualquier persona se podría permitir) que desemboca en un colonialismo religioso y sanitario en el que priman los beneficios pseudo-espirituales y económicos de dichas empresas (es decir, El Vaticano y las multinacionales farmacéuticas).
(14) «Imaginación muerta imagina» («Imagination dead imagine») es el comienzo de un texto de ficción de Samuel Beckett,traducido al español como «Fuera todo lo extraño» («All Strange Away»), un texto de 1963 (en Samuel Beckett, Manchas en el silencio, traducido por Jenaro Talens y Juan V. Martínez Luciano, Barcelona, Tusquets Editores, 1990).

My first step was to look at the prolific poet & long-time professor, Robert Kelly, who will be celebrating his 75th birthday and 50 years at Bard College in a Poetry Reading on April 21. The conference Logic of the World will be held on May 7 in New York City. The following in an excerpt from that article.

LONGEVITY: THE DEATH OF STYLE

A ravenous reader would enjoy devouring, at length, the works of Robert Kelly, the way he or she would enjoy not only Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, but also his Democratic Vistas; not only Pound’s Cantos, but also his Guide to Kulchur; not only Williams’ Spring and All, but also In the American Grain… A broad survey of this sort leads beyond the poetic epidermis & into the nerve-center of that animal anima. The poetry of Robert Kelly appears before us as an indispensable corpus, an ongoing parade of corpulent volumes, a voluminous body for sure. As we look at it, we are no doubt met with much more writing than we are used to encountering when we read most contemporary poets from the United States. Added to the works in print, there is no shortage of Kelly media online.

However, the breadth of this corpus may seem daunting to a reader today, as it must have 30 years ago to Jed Rasula, after he read Spiritual Exercises & observed that “Kelly’s stature, like Whitman’s, is characteristically American in proportion to the embarrassment with which it is received. The work is vast, his ‘readers’ have not really read him, and his own often contradictory impulses cast him as a chameleon in an arena where pure bulk is not a simple substance but another arcanum.” Rasula, one of the few critics to recognize the significance of Kelly’s poetry & evaluate it on a massive scale, reminds us just how stark the contrast is between Kelly & many of his contemporaries.

Kelly’s writing is ‘chameleonic’ neither by accident nor due to caprice. It does not concern itself with whether it appears ancient or modern. It is sanely disinterested in the state of poetry & devoted to measuring, in language & in spirit, that crucial tension between the drive toward & occultation of human understanding. That line from Heraclitus, that the logos likes to hide itself, seems to echo through this poetry. Rather than a report of discoveries, we are more likely to reach Kelly in the midst of his search, as we do in Finding the Measure, where he sings: “Finding the measure is finding the mantrum, / is finding the moon, as index of measure, / is finding the moon’s source [...] Style is death. / Finding the measure is finding / a freedom from that death, a way out, a movement / forward” (4). Style is death because style is the repetition of bad habits, because style is stasis & truncates real transformation into mere trend. The same search can be seen in the poem “Injune” where we read, “The gold / hides in the ground // the way tomorrow’s weather / hides in the air, // the way what I finally will know / hides in me now” (5).

The linkage of movement & meaning in tension gives birth to an aesthetic of longevity that has slit the throat of style in a venerable ritual. The winding syntactical knots in Song XXI, for example, transform into potency & simplicity in The Flowers of Unceasing Coincidence, thrust forward by an unforced lyrical sensibility: “pretend it is a ship / and what we feel / that’s so like moving / is a meaning / and what pitches is uncertainty and / what rolls is the sumptuous / pleasure of having a body to be in / while the ocean itself / captains your brief ears / and guides you to blue places” (6).

Kelly’s continual transformations confirm that this poet writes for his life, not for a living, & that he has done very well for himself. The result: a poetry of discovering, not discovery, a poetics of longevity. The healthy distance that Kelly has kept from stylistically cohesive schools has resulted in the uninhibited proliferation of an organic lyric. “A knowledge of the future”, we read in Mill of Particulars, “is what the close / study of written texts provides, / given a reader / wise with natural sympathy: // in some book is recorded / each thing will ever happen. // This is not style. / These words now / are part of your future / (not just that I’ll be there for breakfast) // & the least song / rimes with the end of the world” (7).

Joseph Mulligan
New Paltz, NY

NOTES:
(1) The following is a (likely incomplete) list of Robert Kelly’s published poetry: Armed Descent (1961), Her Body Against Time (1963), Round Dances (1964), Enstasy (1964), Lunes (1964), Lections (1965), Words in Service (1965), Weeks (1966), The Scorpions (1967), Song XXIV (1967), Devotions 1967), Twenty Poems (1967), Axon Drendron Tree (1967), Crooked Bridge Love Society (1967), A Joining (1967), Alpha (1968), Finding the Measure (1968), Sonnets (1968), Songs I-XXX (1968), The Common Shore (1968), A California Journal (1969), Kali Yuga (1970), Cities (1971), In Time (1971), Flesh Dream Book (1971), Ralegh (1972), The Pastorals (1972), Reading Her Notes (1972), The Tears of Edmund Burke (1973), The Mill of Particulars (1973), A Line of Sight (1974), The Loom (1975), Sixteen Odes (1976), The Lady Of (1977), The Convections (1978), Wheres (1978), The Book of Persephone (1978), The Cruise of the Pnyx (1979), Kill the Messenger Who Brings Bad News (1978), Sentence (1980), Spiritual Exercises (1981), The Alchemist to Mercury (1981), Mullberry Women (1982), Under Words (1983), Thor’s Thrush (1984), A Transparent Tree (1985), Not This Island Music (1987), Doctor of Silence (1988), Oahu (1988), Cat Scratch Fever (1990), Ariadne (1991), A Strange Market (1992), RED ACTIONS: Selected Poems 1960-1993 (1995), Lapis (2005), May Day (2007).
(2) From Jed Rasula’s review of Spiritual Exercises, in Sulphur 6, Vol. II. California Institute of Technology: Pasadena, 1983.
(3) See The Alchemist to Mercury: An Alternate Opus: Uncollected Poems 1960-1980, Robert Kelly. Ed. Jed Rasula. Richmond: North Atlantic Books, 1981; see also the essay “Medusa’s Gaze: Deep Image, or Traveling in the Dark” in Modernism and Poetic Inspiration: The Shadow Mouth, Jed Rasula. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009.
(4) In RED ACTIONS. Black Sparrow Press. Santa Rosa: 1995, 80.
(5) Ibid., 99.
(6) Ibid., 153-154
(7) Ibid., 289.

This article first appeared at Barner Books.

Aside from writing half of Poemas humanos / Human Poems, the entire suite España, aparta de mí este cáliz, Vallejo completed (or nearly completed) the full length tragedy, La piedra cansada / The Tired Stone, which today stands as irrefutable proof of his desire to work seriously in genres other than poetry.

To commemorate the life of “the greatest of the great South American poets”, to say it with Jerome Rothenberg, I’d like to share a draft of my translation of this remarkable & too frequently ignored play. The following scene is the opening of the play. Since the setting of the drama is in the Incan Empire, during the construction of the great temples and fortresses, Vallejo incorporate a great deal of Quechua into the dialogue, often creating permutations & translations of those lines within the text itself.

[JM]

THE TIRED STONE

ACT ONE: Scene One

The scene displays several megalithic walls, forming part of a bastion being constructed at the Sajsawaman fortress. Porticos, corridors, stairways. Some trapezoidal windows already finished, others incomplete. At the base of the walls, loose blocks of different sizes, thick pikes, large handbarrows and other materials and tools of the stone-masons. Cyclopean atmosphere.

Before the program begins, the curtain of the scene is raised, and the decoration, therefore, is visible to the audience.

When the bell rings, all the lights of the theater are turned off and complete darkness and silence dominate therein. Dawn slowly descends onto the largest of the blocks that are loose at the base of the walls, leaving the rest of the stage in the darkness still. When the brightness of day floods the scene, Tolpor appears seated at the base of the aforementioned block, with his elbows resting on his knees and his face in his hands, immersed in deliberation. Converging footsteps of a crowd echo around the scene. Out of the rhythmic and tumultuous noise of these footsteps, the overture of Hymn to the Sun is born without interruptions. At different places in the scene, stonecutters and masons come hastily to work, with their tools for work in hand. Gathered in the scene, they sing the hymn in chorus, immobile, inscrutable, while the sun rises behind the walls of the bastion. Tolpor raises his head and rubs his eyes.

THE QUECHUAS, finishing the song they greet each other.

Ama sua! Ama Llulla! Ama Kella!… (They circle around the giant stone and try to move it with ropes and levers)

QUECHUA 1, from high on one of the walls.

Mama roca! Beautiful stone! Another day illuminates your tiredness! Another day we’re going to raise you. Will you arise? Will you finally give in to our pikes and champis?… (They all remain still, anxiously staring at the fatigued block).

QUECHUA 2, from high on one of the walls.

It’s useless. The Pissaj quarries have bloated innards, like those of sterile women.

QUECHUA 3, down below.

The stones of Pissaj have the bad breast, their earthly gaze distorted. From the time they leap up from the quarry, to when they are incorporated into the fortresses, they leave in search for it extermination, blood, tears, many lives deceased, smashed by its implacable and fateful heaviness.

QUECHUA 4, down below.

The stones of Pissaj are the most beautiful in the kingdom!

QUECHUA 5, from high on the walls, at once.

Telluric block, arise!

QUECHUA 6, from high on the walls, at once.

Wretched basalt, you will get up!

QUECHUA 7, from high on the walls, at once.

Lugubrious rock!

QUECHUA 8, from high on the walls, at once.

Whole stone, proud as you are! Stone stone! Basalt choice grain for the great spokes of simple agglutinations! Give in! Give in!

QUECHUA 9, from high on another wall.

What’s wrong, Mama Roca? What’s come over you? Perhaps you’re sleeping? In pain? Who know? Are you achy? Dreaming?… (everyone again awaits the stone’s response). Answer!… (Pause).

TOLPOR, from atop the highest wall.

Workers of the stone! Builders of the temples, palaces and citadels! Two mysterious birds have sung, tonight, in the branches of my pepper tree: the one-winged bird and the…

A VOICE, anxiously interrupting.

And the apterous bird?

TOLPOR

Yes. The bird with no wings. (Surprised voices and movements). When the stars took leave, the pepper tree, unmoving as it was, began to tremble and twist, as if the tips of its leaves were in pain.

QUECHUA 10

That’s what all plants do when they’re sprouting.

TOLPOR

I arose from bed, saw through the keyhole of the door…

QUECHUA 11

Evil! A tree’s secrets are sacred!

TOLPOR

Seated on a lower branch…

VARIOUS, lively.

The bird with no wings? The apterous bird?

TOLPOR

No. The bird with only one wing. A delicate little creature, but at the same time, god-awful ugly! Its neck was arched toward my cabin, as if it were spying on me. A shudder ran through my body. I stifled a scream and returned to bed, horrified.

VARIOUS

Misfortune! Military setbacks! Evil wars!

TOLPOR

But, alas, no sooner had I left the doorway when I heard that mangy bird launch a sustained, deep and gruff caw… (Murmurs. Excitement).

QUECHUA 12

Before the Inca Pachacútec died, they heard the same bird cawing from the rooftop of the palace of Kassana.

VARIOUS

May Viracocha protect his people.

TOLPOR

The pepper tree then started to bellow, as if it were announcing a storm. Then I felt the bird was abandoning the branches…

QUECHUA 13

The flight of those birds can’t be heard: it is so quiet, so imperceptible, like the flight of the soul, when it passed from the branch of life to the branch of death.

TOLPOR

Shortly thereafter, a song—this time it was a song and no longer a caw—a song wandered into the night. Where did that song go off to?

QUECHUA 14

The song of the apterous bird is the voice of fetuses in their mothers’ wombs.

QUECHUA 15

It’s the voice of the accursed pumas.

QUECHUA 16

It’s the voice of the plants that weep for humans.

TOLPOR

Good workers of the stone, architects of the greatest fortresses in the Tahuantinsuyo! There is no sweeter or sadder tune than the tune of the wingless bird!

QUECHUA 17

Enough! To work! The designs of fate don’t depend on man, and neither does the song of the birds.

TOLPOR comes down from the wall and, with a mysterious air, looking firmly at the tired stone.

It got lost along with her. What has happened?… I don’t know. (The others let him be, intrigued. Tolpor turns around to face the stone, as if looking for something). It came directly from the pepper tree and stopped here, there is no doubt…

QUECHUA 17

What stopped here, next to the stone?

TOLPOR, with exaltation.

The wingless bird is here! Under the fatigued stone! (Laughter. Tolpor raises his voice and invokes the block). Weary pebble! Where is it? Did it leave?… Are you hiding it? Could it be hiding beneath your mass?… (With both hands he pushes the stone and shouts, infuriated). Say Jusca! Mama Roca! Where is it? Have you swallowed it?… (He pushes against it again with all his might).

ALL, with sudden astonishment.

Oh! Oh! Oh!… It has moved! It has moved! (An infinitely sad song, words, crosses over the wall. The Quechuas stop to listen).

TOLPOR, with his dazzled upward gaze.

There it is!… There it is!… (The singing comes closer and becomes clearer: it’s the architect, foreman of the workers at the fortress, who comes singing. Tolpor and the other workers, when they see him, hurry up and try to move the block, in a vast and collective maneuver). 

ALL, daunted, to the architect who descends a stairway between two walls.

It has moved! The tired stone has moved!…

THE ARCHITECT

No killing! No lying! No being lazy!

THE QUECHUAS

The fatigued stone has moved!

THE ARCHITECT

Good. The Inca had expressed his desire to attend the lifting. Before that, I wish to see it move, for myself. Let’s go. Champis! Pikes! Picks!… (The curtain has begun to drop amid the bustle of the Quechuas, who set out to move the block).

[– JM]

INTRODUCTION

Tree of Diana by Alejandra Pizarnik. (Chem.): verbal crystallization by amalgamation of passionate insomnia & meridian lucidity in a solution of reality subjected to the highest of temperatures. The compound does not contain any deceitful particle at all. (Bot.): the tree of Diana is transparent & gives off no shade. It has its own light, twinkling & brief. It is born in the arid regions of America. The hostility of the climate, the inclemency of the discourses & shouting matches, the general opacity of the thinking species, its neighbors, due to a phenomenon of well-known compensation, stimulates the luminous properties of this plant. It has no roots; the stalk is a cone of slightly obsessive light; the leaves are small, covered by four or five lines of phosphorescent writing, elegant & aggressive buds, toothed edges; the flowers are diaphanous, the females separated from the males, the first axillary, almost somnambulant & solitary. The latter ones in beards, thistles and, more rarely, thorns. (Myth. & Ethno.): the ancients believed that the arc of the goddess was a branch dangling from the tree of Diana. The scar of the trunk was considered as the (feminine) sex of the cosmos. It may refer to a mythical Fig Tree (the sap from the branches is milky, lunar). The myth may allude to sacrifice by dismemberment: an adolescent (male or female?) was chopped apart each new moon, in order to stimulate the reproduction of the images in the mouth of the prophetesses (archetype of the union of the lower & upper worlds). The tree of Diana is one of the masculine attributes of the feminine deity. Some see in this the supplementary confirmation of the hermaphroditic origin of gray matter and, perhaps, all matter; others deduce that it is a case of expropriation of the masculine solar substance: the rite would only be a ceremony of magical mutilation of the primordial ray. In the current state of our understanding, it is impossible to decide on any of these hypotheses. Let us point out, however, that the participants afterward ate incandescent embers—a custom that persists in the present day. (Blaz.): a talking coat of arms. (Phys.): for a long time the physical reality of the tree of Diana was denied. In effect, due to its extraordinary transparency, few can see it. Solitude, concentration & a general refinement of one’s sensibility are indispensable requisites for the vision. Some people, with a reputation for being intelligent, complain that, despite their preparation, they see nothing. In order to dispel their error, it suffices to recall that the tree of Diana is not a body that one may see: it is an (animate) object that allows us to see beyond, a natural instrument of vision. In any case, a small test of experimental criticism will, effectively & definitively, lay to rest the prejudices of the contemporary illustration: placed facing the sun, the tree of Diana reflects its rays & joins them in a central filament called a poem, which produces a luminous heat capable of burning, smelting & even volatilizing the non-believers. This test is recommended to the literary critics of our language.

Octavio Paz

Paris, April of 1962

In this, the last section of that poem, García de Mesa describes a peculiar element of poetic intuition — not unlike what we see in Tree of Diana by Alejandra Pizarnik. García de Mesa’s writing enters the paradox of an instant that is described not by words, but by silence. Words only reveal themselves as inadequate, imprecise & vague lexical matter or they don’t reveal themselves at all. Thus, it is in the absence of words that the breath of the poema en potencia can be heard.

My curiosity crawls. Is it true that someone “who observes the movement of the world discovers that words, when they fall silent, announce their only true moment”…? After unsuccessful & repeated attempts to flesh out in language vague or abstract sentiments & ideas that I have experienced, I too have heard an eloquent silence. I have been convinced hasta el tuétano that silence, rather than language itself, is the only medium capable of accurately expressing certain centripetal perceptions of existence’s slippery proximity & of the psyche’s turbulent atmosphere.

In “Retórica” García de Mesa raises the question of poetry & with it, the question of translation, since, in the silence that he describes, “nothing gets translated”. Nothing gets translated. Why does nothing get translated? After several minutes of silent contemplation & self-reflection, I realize that I am repeating this question aloud.

At first, I want to say that ‘nothing gets translated’ because there is no need to translate anything. Heme aquí un silencio universal, like some pre-Babelian linguistic harmony brought back to this world in its negative form. It is not the now intelligible rambling of a Nimrod dantesco, but the intrinsic meaning of Nimrod that emanates from his being without his needing to say anything at all. In this silence, in this ‘descriptive instant’, nothing gets translated because there are no languages to translate into or out of.

But now, I wonder if, when García de Mesa writes that ‘nothing gets translated’, he may not be referring to that moment when nothing is translatable, when nothing can be & therefore is not translated. Perhaps this breathing silence is what we hear when untranslatablity invades the poetic intuition with the implacable feeling of impossibility & imminent failure?

Perhaps it is that huffing, panting or even gasping silence that runs through our fingers like sand when we search for a translation & only find words that don’t lend themselves to or that even obstruct their traslado from one language to another? If the silence of “Retórica” & the feeling of untranslatability were one & the same, then it would mean that we are talking about poetry deprived of the this-sidedness of language & a poetic intuition that has no integral & practical application.

I doubt that the latter is the case; however, I am not convinced of the former either — & this is what keeps sending me back to “Retórica”, back to García de Mesa’s silence, back to the question of poetry & the feeling of untranslatability… Perhaps someone else, the poet or any other curioso, can shed light on this & help bring this ‘forma de porvenir’ into focus & into the present.

Hoy tengo el agrado de presentar el poema «Retórica», escrito por el poeta español Roberto García de Mesa, cuya generosidad aprecio sinceramente.

Retórica

Roberto García de Mesa

1

Antes de entrar quiso decir algo… Pensó que el tiempo se había detenido. Y quiso decir… Porque es extraño… Es extraño, pensó, que nada marque la hora. No sé. Me he olvidado de pintar los minutos y sus ecos… Y cada vez que guardo silencio doy un paseo por otros mundos. Y todas las incógnitas no hablan el mismo idioma. Y quiso decir que no hay un punto de vista. Tan solo una línea que conduce a otro espacio. Una línea direccional. Una línea de encajes, de huesos, de vacíos, donde todo el mundo dice lo que no dice. Por eso, no podía hablar. Y quiso decir, pero no lo hizo, realmente. Es extraño, pensó otra vez… Pensó otra vez. Es extraño que, al cruzar el umbral del olvido, aún conserve mi reloj, aunque ya no marque las horas.

2

A veces las metáforas sospechan de mí porque soy un recipiente preparado para la melancolía. Hay quien no cree en estas cosas. Lo entiendo. Pero es que la luz de mis manos va apagándose poco a poco. Y los minutos desesperan, se escuchan ya los murmullos del aire. La naturaleza prepara una gran conspiración. Lo sé. No hay nada mejor que ignorarlo todo. Lo sé. Pero este espacio que gobierna las luces y las sombras, a veces me dice cosas. Me dice que es difícil llegar a tiempo porque todo está perdido de antemano. Porque la línea huracanada, con la que pinto todos los días la imagen de mi vida, me ha marcado una dirección confusa. Y me siento un estúpido por ello. Lo sé, lo sé… Llegaré con las maletas deshechas, sin zapatos y con la camisa por fuera. Mi borrachera durará eternamente.

3

Una isla suele cerrar sus ojos con facilidad para ver los colores propios, la luz oscura, sus silenciosas palabras. Y, en ese estado de permanencia, la claridad se niega a sí misma. Una isla es libre para elegir. Pero ahora soy yo el que cierro los ojos agrietados por la oxidiana. Los hijos pagan los errores de sus padres. Aunque no es isla todo lo que parece isla. Los ojos. No. Los dientes. No. La boca. La arquitectura invisible de una idea. Las vocales. Por eso nace una isla. Nace una isla del lenguaje de otra isla. Y nace su tiempo, su corto tiempo azul. No hay insulares libres. Con ellos el viento provoca una respiración artificial. Y una isla devora a otra isla. Y no hay isla qué defender porque entre padre e hijo todo se perdona. Nos miramos los unos a los otros. Nos miramos simplemente. Nos miramos a través de colores ausentes de realidad. Sin viajes, ni esperanza, ni conflicto. Una isla muerta. Solo eso. Sin fantasía. Tan solo esgrimiendo un gesto imperial, un gesto que hace soplar todas las caracolas.

4

Sobre el momento de las cosas, tengo algo que decir… Y es que no encuentro ese momento. Lo olvidé dentro de un recipiente cerrado. Allí todos son exactamente iguales. Y si el tiempo transcurre, yo no vivo en él. Sólo repaso una escueta partitura que siempre se mira a sí misma, pero que no confiesa los pormenores de la desintegración… del tiempo, quiero decir. Mi improvisación se desnuda alegremente y sobrevive como si habitara un manifiesto o el filo de algo que no tiene nombre, pero que se encuentra en cada uno de nosotros. El tiempo es una fábrica de corcheas envueltas en un silencio ensordecedor que lo lastima todo. Yo quisiera ignorar este destino impreciso y degradante. Yo quisiera acercarme a un huerto y hundirme en la tierra fértil hasta morir de asfixia. O tal vez viajar a través del sonido oculto de las cosas. O tal vez buscar el silencio oculto de las cosas. O tal vez convertirme en otro espacio minucioso e inútil.

5

¿Cómo explicarle a Medea lo que es un Hamlet? ¿Cómo decirle ‘respira’ y pretender que no lo haga? Los espectadores desean un final trágico, un final. Sí, pero Medea continúa sin saber. Medea contra Hamlet. Dos superhéroes. La amante de Hamlet. La madre de Hamlet. Un final que decida sus propias palabras. Eso es todo. Un espacio vacío y una voz cristalina. Un espacio rodeado de agua por todas partes. Hamlet y Medea beben en silencio. Y mueren abrazados. Los ojos fuera de sus órbitas. Ojos para decir todo o nada… Los espectadores nadan ahora en el océano. Se deleitan con el tacto rocoso de la costa. Pero dos cuerpos han dejado de sonar. Sólo navega un silencio. Un silencio para observarse los unos a los otros. Un silencio visual o un falso silencio. Aquí finaliza la nueva épica. Varios telones azules caen sobre el agua, que se escurre por los huecos de la sala.

6

Andaba sobre un camino de clavos y llegué a una puerta antigua. Mis pies sangraban. La abrí y había un bosque muy espeso, cubierto de niebla. Apenas podía ver. Resbalé y caí cuesta abajo. Llegué a un lago. En él bebía agua una pantera blanca. Nadé hacia ella y lamió las heridas de mis pies. Luego, me condujo hasta un acantilado. Y allí desperté. Sudaba, pero hacía frío, mucho frío.

*

Delante de mí, estaba yo, mi otro yo. Nos mirábamos mutuamente, en silencio, inmóviles. En paz. De pronto empezó a caer una lluvia muy fina y mi doble se desvaneció. Entonces me quedé solo, mojado, mirando al infinito y sentí una gran alegría. Y así dejé que aquella lluvia también traspasara mi júbilo.

*

Un sueño de pájaros. Los escucho en la oscuridad. Enciendo una cerilla. Una corriente de aire se lleva mi cara. Y la luz.

*

Cruzo la calle corriendo, rápido, muy rápido. Mi corazón no puede más y me invade un temblor, un brote de asfixia. Me detengo en mitad de la carretera, agotado. Respiro forzadamente, como si quisiera vivir.

7

Empezaré diciendo que el teatro está lleno de sabandijas, de muertos vivientes. Y tú pensarás que la comedia purifica a los necios. Yo te diré que los hace más necios. No puedes pasar por alto que la crisis les ha dejado sin poesía: el hambre y esta maldita zona cero de cada uno, en la que nos olvidamos de nosotros mismos. Este lugar es la madre, la madre principal de todas las crisis. El teatro en una jaula, temeroso, siempre huyendo sin saber a dónde. Ya lo sabes. No iré a ninguna parte. Ni siquiera a esta mierda de espacio, a este diálogo de etiqueta que me insulta por dentro. Lo oigo siempre que te veo. Pensarás que al mirarte me has convencido y que es perfectamente inmoral lo que te digo, pero no estaré de acuerdo. Y cuando te vuelva a mirar a los ojos escucharé los sonidos más estúpidos que existen. Sí, porque tú eres el público y yo el poeta.

8

Un ojo gris se desnuda para decir que el principio de algo ha llegado a su conclusión. No es literatura, no. Es demagogia porque este ojo perjudica los contornos de las cosas. No es arte, no. Un horizonte funcional porque la mente se empeña en gritar desde el silencio. No es belleza, sino un punto con forma de hombre. Un cuerpo casi redondo. Un ojo que refleja el espacio gris de una hipótesis. La ciencia ha pretendido determinar el horizonte de esta mirada. Pero una flor casi sin pétalos, un contador de imágenes por segundo y una boca triste dialogan lentamente. Quien sobrevive a ello decide el aire que respira, decide su horizonte de silencios. Todo es redondo, entonces, como una flor compuesta de pétalos imaginarios. Una palabra tatuada sobre un ojo en crisis, a principios de un nuevo siglo.

9

Hay quien estudia el pasado de las letras. Hay quien me dice que las cosas fueron de todas las maneras posibles. A saber. No contiene un único color la tensión de cada palabra. Se discuten las definiciones, mientras las letras cambian de tonalidad. Ninguna tiene un aspecto fijo. Las combinaciones dependen del sonido, de las tensiones ocultas. Porque se alcanza la excelencia cuando se olvida lo aprendido. Hay que poner la mente para detrás y sentir de otra manera. Así se transmite la necesidad de olvidar. Así se miran las palabras. Una gama de colores es capaz de declarar una guerra. Y hay quien busca el modelo áureo, aquel que defina las transiciones de la letra, la curva, la línea absurda que envuelve una tradición. Una guerra es una sinfonía de colores. Un orgasmo es un espacio de guerra. Hay quien estudia el pasado de las ideologías. Y el pasado está marcado por el color de cada palabra… Retórica de un espacio, retórica de una forma de porvenir.

10

La luz que guía las voces de los muertos se ha enamorado de mí, de mi vigilia absurda. Soy incapaz de comprender mi pasado o mi futuro. Pero me presento tiritando en mitad del verano. En mitad de mi sombra. No hay calor que supere este frío. No hay luz que valga más que esta oscuridad. El viaje es inmenso, pero tan frágil como el crepitar de unas ascuas. Yo creo que mañana no estaré aquí. Me instalaré sobre mis océanos imaginarios. Daré rienda suelta a mi rutina de olvidar. Pereceré de nuevo. Y regresaré una vez más porque quise, y no porque me obligaron. No habitaré otro lugar porque estoy hecho de materia transparente. Daré rienda suelta a mis deformidades, a mi inútil ira contra los dioses y volveré a representar el papel encomendado. Puede que solo esta vez sonría un instante bajo la máscara. Fingiré estar dormido o que no me acuerdo o que he llegado al final. Fingiré por ti, madre.

11

Hay un silencio esta noche que bien vale el rumor de todos los silencios juntos. Y me pregunto si esto sirve para algo. Y si la luz oscura lo devora todo, por qué no abandonarme a ella. Si este minucioso espacio ha de comerme entero, que lo haga rápido, que me desmenuce en fragmentos irreconciliables y me sirva sobre una bandeja de plata. Estoy acostumbrado al fuego de las hogueras, aquellas que te amenazan dulcemente al anochecer. Puedo también pensar que la armonía se construyó para entenderse a uno mismo. Tantos restos me encogen los oídos. Pero me gusta escuchar el rumor de las estrellas cuando caen.

12

Porque el índice de las palabras proyecta una conclusión inesperada. Porque la vida sigue y las letras continúan trazando un movimiento a contraluz. Porque el que mira sin cerrar los ojos fracasa de momento. Y este es el instante descriptivo, donde no se traduce nada. En este momento se puede escuchar la respiración de un espacio no escrito. Y la confusión de los puntos de referencia presenta una escena que nunca termina: la elegía de uno mismo. Porque no hay ejercicio de habilidad que no contenga la ausencia, la negación positiva. Quien ejerce su derecho a respirar lo sabe. Quien observa el movimiento del mundo descubre que las palabras, cuando callan, pronuncian su único momento verdadero.

«Bestial olvido»:
Sobre Oblivion, de Roberto García de Mesa

Mario Domínguez Parra

Roberto García de Mesa publicó en 2009 el poema Oblivion (Ediciones Idea). El título en inglés, que significa «olvido», remite, como el mismo poeta me informa, a unos versos del Acto IV, Escena 4, de THE Tragicall Hiſtorie of HAMLET, Prince of Denmarke, by William Shakeſpeare (en la versión del Quarto 2, de 1604, que cito y traduzco:

… now, whether it be
Beſtiall obliuion, or ſome crauen ſcruple
Of thinking too preciſely on th’euent,

… ahora, ya sea
bestial olvido o cobarde escrúpulo
por pensar el hecho con demasiada precisión,

Este viraje de Shakespeare hacia Oriente, hacia un desprendimiento de la memoria, hacia la conjunción de Vacío y Plenitud (título del libro de François Cheng, del que hablaré) se puede ver, primero, en este aforismo de Oblivion: «El último mandamiento de la existencia es la meditación» (p. 12), así como también en estos versos del mismo:

Ha deshojado su cuerpo de visiones, de recuerdos, de tierra.
Pinta el aire sin hacerlo. 
Lo piensa.
 Lo escucha (op. cit., p. 13).

En estos versos se concentran ciertas influencias en la obra de García de Mesa: el arte y la estética de Extremo Oriente (sobre todo el I Ching) y la música y los escritos de John Cage. Incorpora a su escritura diversas artes, sobre todo la pintura, la música, el teatro y la danza (recuérdese el título de su libro de ensayos La poesía en el teatro, la pintura en la música, Ediciones Idea, 2009).

En el texto que antecede el Preliminar de Oblivion, hay tres elementos a tener en consideración: el hombre, el pájaro y el espacio (este último concepto es de gran importancia en la obra de García de Mesa): «Pues no es el tiempo, sino el espacio, / el modo invisible de ser hombre o pájaro» (op. cit., p. 9). Las criaturas son las que lo cartografían:

Desde un acantilado se suelen adivinar los mapas oceánicos. 
Y muchos pájaros han servido de observatorios,
 de puntos celestes que ayudan a fijar las medidas exactas (op. cit., p. 10).

En relación con este tema, el compositor, escritor y artista plástico John Cage (1912-1992), en su texto «2 pages, 122 Words on Music and Dance» («2 páginas, 122 palabras sobre música y danza», de su libro Silence: lectures & writings, Silencio: conferencias y escritos, London, Marion Boyards, 1987, pp. 96-97), habla de «Points in time, in space» («Puntos en el tiempo, en el espacio»). Complementa este pensamiento con la siguiente frase: «Activities which are different happen in a time which is a space: are each central, original» («Las actividades que son diferentes ocurren en un tiempo que es un espacio: cada una central, original»). Y remata este texto con un consejo: «Where the bird flies, fly» («Vuela hacia donde el pájaro vuela»). Es éste un consejo de fusión entre criaturas que habitan un espacio, sin tiempo, siendo el futuro un espacio ignoto:

Cantan a las piedras de la costa por un futuro sin acentos líquidos
sin reconstrucción posible,
 por un desierto absoluto,
 por un enclave libre de ataduras (Oblivion, p. 10).

El hombre recorre esos acentos líquidos, énfasis en el estado de la materia que conforma un espacio concreto, bajo esta influencia: «Y escucha las músicas sutiles en aquella cáscara del azar» (op. cit., p. 13). Llega la fusión que mencioné más arriba:

El hombre es testigo de un diálogo entre los pájaros y el océano.
 Se siente mitad de todo.
 Siente las conexiones ocultas entre los elementos.
Intuye la hermandad de las fuerzas sutiles.
 El océano es el cuerpo de la isla.
 Ésta, el pensamiento de aquella arquitectura líquida (op. cit., 14).

Con ella llegamos al cumplimiento del último mandamiento de la existencia, que menciono al principio de este texto: la meditación, la abstracción de todo espacio e interconexión con otros seres, tras ser uno con ellos. Un espacio quiebra otro, rotura que posibilita la llegada a un tercero, y así sucesivamente (este adverbio se desprende de su filiación temporal):

Mientras se acerca a la costa, el oleaje quiebra la barca.
 Invade la vieja, la nueva isla, y allí decide aguardar,
 golpeado por las rocas de la playa y flagelado por el oleaje (op. cit., p. 15).

Y llegamos a otro más, el libro, y con él, una Teogonía sin dioses aparentes o nombrados, hasta ese lugar del poema. El lector o lectora halla la configuración de un espacio que lleva a otros:

El primer libro del mundo dibujaría el paisaje,
 diseñaría las corrientes sutiles de la percepción,
 todo el misterio que envuelve la falta de voluntad,
el significado de los signos y sus reglas (op. cit., p. 16).

Para superarlo por medio de un segundo libro, «su autor cerraría los ojos y se imaginaría en otro espacio» (op. cit., p. 16), compuesto de «geografías interiores», «muestras contradictorias», «caídas sin fin». Dispone de un «principio soñado y olvidado». El compositor, pintor y escritor Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) aconsejaba a sus alumnos (John Cage entre ellos) que para superar la tradición musical había que conocerla a fondo. Ese espacio a olvidar ha tenido que ser previamente habitado y urbanizado, para poder deshacerlo, destruirlo:

Para recordar la fiebre del segundo día
hace falta deshacerse de lo anterior,
 hace falta perderse en la imposibilidad de huir,
 reconocer que a partir de entonces, todos los demás inventarían
aquellos otros mundos que nunca se han inventado (op. cit., pp. 16-17).

iebre y sueño, dos estados intermedios de conciencia del espacio. Llegamos al concepto de vacío, que aparece en Oblivion en varias ocasiones y es un tema, me parece, mayor en este poema. Siguiendo una recomendación del poeta, adquirí en su momento el libro del escritor francés François Cheng (1929) Vacío y plenitud: El lenguaje de la pintura china (traducción de Amelia Hernández y Juan Luis Delmont, Madrid, Siruela, 2005). Profundo conocedor de la cultura china, Cheng escribe lo siguiente:

En la poesía, el vacío se introduce mediante la supresión de ciertas palabras gramaticales, llamadas precisamente palabras-vacíos, y mediante la institución, dentro de un poema, de una forma original, el paralelismo. Estos procedimientos, por la discontinuidad y la reversibilidad que engendran en la progresión lineal y temporal del lenguaje, revelan el deseo que tiene el poeta de crear una relación abierta de reciprocidad entre el sujeto y el mundo objetivo, de transformar también el tiempo vivido en espacio viviente (p. 69).

Un paralelismo que García de Mesa utiliza al hablar de espacios ganados y espacios a olvidar, con un intermediario que es la fiebre, un momento de vibración en el espacio del cuerpo, de la mente. No existe una medición de los momentos en que ocurren los acontecimientos, sino que hay una sucesión de lugares habitables, habitados y desechados por otros lugares, ese espacio viviente sobre el que escribe, en primera persona, en el «Preliminar» de Oblivion (p. 21):

Me desprendí de toda memoria,
 de las metamorfosis anteriores,
 del conflicto y del tiempo.

Es decir, se desprende de tres posibles estados de la materia: su recuerdo, su transformación y su contacto.  Cheng da varias definiciones del vacío:

El vacío no es solamente el estado supremo hacia el cual se debe tender; concebido él mismo como una sustancia, se discierne dentro de todas las cosas, en el seno mismo de sus sustancias y sus mutaciones […] En el orden de lo real, el vacío tiene una representación concreta: el valle. Es hueco y aparentemente vacío, pero hace crecer y nutre todas las cosas; lleva todas las cosas en su seno, y las contiene sin dejarse nunca desbordar ni extinguir (Vacío y plenitud, p. 82).

Y las sitúa cada una en dos espacios: el de lo supremo y el de lo real. En ese espacio que yo creo en la misma cita, un vacío que nutre los dos fragmentos, quedan dos definiciones de Laozi del vacío, que cita Cheng: «La gran plenitud es como vacía; entonces es inagotable (cap. XIV)» y «La vía fluye por el vacío intermedio, eso suele hacer. Nunca falta, empero, ni se desborda (cap. IV)». El espacio que el valle crea es, en Oblivion, la conjunción de isla y mar, la arquitectura líquida y su pensamiento.