PUSTEBLUME JOURNAL OF TRANSLATION

Editor: Amanda Cardenas Editorial Staff: Amanda Braun, Xiomara Forbez, Liza Katz, Laura Manuel, Dane Miller, Matthew Moran, Dygo Tosa Managing Editor: Zachary Bos Advisor: William Waters

B O S T O N , M A S S A C H U S E T T S , USA

Pusteblume is published annually in the spring semester of each academic year, under the supervision of the Department of Modern Languages and Comparative Literature at Boston University. Potential contributors are invited to submit translations from fiction and non-fiction prose, as well as poetry. Essays in English on the topic of translation are welcome, as well as any photos and artwork that pertain. Submissions are accepted year-round. More information about the journal, as well as electronic versions of our published texts and online-only content, can be found at our website, http://bu.edu/pusteblume. Manuscripts, inquries, and requests for reprints may be sent to [email protected] or by post to: Pusteblume Boston University Department of Modern Languages and Comparative Literature 718 Commonwealth Avenue Boston, Massachusetts 02215 © MMVIII Trustees of Boston University. All rights reserved. Reproduction of material contained herein without the consent of the author is forbidden. Printed by Offset Prep, Inc. of North Quincy, Massachusetts.

Editorial Note

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Contributors

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Quote from Camus translated from the French by James Johnson

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Essay: “The Big and Small of Microfiction”

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“Chanel No 5,”“Je t’aime,”“La viande des gens n’est pas gouteuse” (French) by Regis Jaufret

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translated by Nora Delaney, Juliet Johnson, and Zacahry Bos

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About Hernan Zuniga

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“Cybernadas” “ (German) by Albert Ehrenstein

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translated by Sheldon Gilman and Robert Levine

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Translator’s Note

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Carmen 97 (Latin ) by Catullus

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translated as “Ranking Aemilius” by Marcia Karp

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Carmen I.37 (Latin) by Horace

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translated as “An Horatian Toast” by Marcia Karp

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Essay: “About Khlebnikov”

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“

” (Russian) by Velimir Khlebnikov

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translated as “ARTISTS OF THE WORLD!” by Anastasia Skoybedo 29 Essay: “About Neruda”

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“Oda al vino” (Spanish) by Pablo Neruda

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translated as “Ode to Wine” by Maria Fellie

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“Komoyo-Mikomochi: Translating the Opening of the Man’yo¯shu¯ and the Difficulty of Translating Classical Poetry” by Dygo Tosa

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“All Kinds of Bread” a reminiscence by Willem de Kooning, translated into French, Spanish and Japanese, accompanying artwork by Gabriel Sosa

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Essay: “Seferis and Mycenae”

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“MUKHNES” (Greek) by Giorgos Seferis

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translated as “Mycenae” by Doug Herman

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Essay: “Conveying the Unspoken”

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“Le Souper des Armures” (French) by Théophile Gautier

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translated as “The Supper of Armor” by Christopher Mulrooney

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Translator’s Notes

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“Un giorno di fuoco” (Italian) by Beppe Fenoglio

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translated as “A Day of Fire” by Louisa Mandarino

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Essay: “Huidobro’s Creationism” 104 excerpt from Sátirexcerpt from De Rerum Natura (Latin) by Lucretius 122

The lines of verse quoted on the rear cover are taken from a Hungarian poem, “A Hortobágy poétája” (“The poet of the Hortobágy”) by Endre Ady (1877-1919), appearing in Volume VII of In Quest of the Miracle Stag: The Poetry of Hungary. The English translation shown is modified from a translation by Anton Nyerges.

Editorial Note The Pusteblume community has grown much larger since No. 0 was released last year. Our network of collaborators and readers now reaches far beyond Boston, with connections in many countries, including Spain, Switzerland and Kenya. The Journal itself has also undergone change; more so than in our first issue, we have emphasized the role of commentary and translator notes for each piece, and have been particularly diligent in seeking permission from copyright holders to print original texts. Also, several languages are represented for the first time in this issue: Japanese (in scholarly discussion), Italian (through translation), and finely-aged Latin (by way of ambitious modernization). Finally, to give you a taste of what’s to come in the fall, we’ve included a kernel of Hungarian on the back cover. Our readers and advisors noted the absence of permissions in our first print issue (since corrected online and in the print-on-demand edition). We take seriously the intellectual and artistic rights of authors, and consider it a privilege to reprint their works. We are grateful for having been alerted to this oversight. I am greatly indebted to the current editorial crew—including all the new faces who've signed on in the past year. Their creativity and dedication allowed us to improve upon our debut issue, and raised the standard for future editions. And as before, the meticulous work of Zachary Bos warrants my most heartfelt gratitude. My term as Editor comes to a close when I graduate this month. Therefore, I welcome Amanda Cardenas to the Pusteblume team as my successor. As I gather my wits and attempt to translate an education into vocational success, I leave confident that the Journal will continue to serve well those who love language and literature. As you read the issue in your hands, please consider contributing your own submissions or feedback. I hope you enjoy, as much as we do, the play of the languages that mingle herein. Merci beaucoup!

Matthew I. Kelsey

CONTRIBUTORS GREG BONTRAGER is a student at Florida Gulf Coast University, majoring in computer science and business administration and minoring in Spanish and French. His goal is to achieve a doctorate degree in at least one or two of these areas of study. ZACHARY BOS LINDITA CIKO NORA DELANE Y KELLY EGAN’S main pursuits in life include poetry, journalism and travel. She has an affinity toward urban and historic landscapes and dreams of someday living in an old, draughty castle. She graduated from Boston University in 2007 with a degree in Literature. DANIELA HUREZANU’S book reviews and essays have most recently appeared in Rain Taxi, The Chattahoochee Review, Women’s Review of Books and The Bloomsbury Review. She has translated French and Romanian authors into English and W. S. Merwin’s The Miner’s Pale Children into French. Her translation (with Stephen Kessler) of Raymond Queneau’s Eyeseas is appearing from Black Widow Press in Spring 2008. TOM JUNGERBERG recently finished the poetry MA program at Boston University. He currently lives in Rome, Georgia and works as a photolab technician.

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GEORGE KALOGERIS is an adjunct professor in the Department of Humanities and Modern Languages at Suffolk University. He also leads a poetry seminar at Boston University. His poetry has appeared in publications including Harvard Review, Ploughshares, Partisan Review, The Journal of the Core Curriculum, AGNI, and elsewhere. His book Camus:Carnets is available from Pressed Wafer Press. ALEXIS LEVITIN’S work has appeared in over 200 magazines, including American Poetry Review and Kenyon Review. He is a professor of English at SUNY Plattsburgh. JANE LOSAW graduated from Boston University Spring 2007 with degrees in History and Hispanic Language and Literature.

She currently resides in

Barcelona, Spain. LAURA MANUEL is a junior at Boston University. She studies German and English and plans to spend next year in Dresden. She has been instrumental in the production of this issue and will be sorely missed. ADAM J. SORKIN’S books of translation include Radu Andriescu’s The Catalan Within (Longleaf Press, 2007), translated with Andriescu, and three 2006 books: Magda Cârneci’s Chaosmos, with Cârneci (White Pine Press); Mihai Ursachi’s The March to the Stars (Vinea Press), mostly done with the poet; and Mariana Marin’s Paper Children, various co-translators (Ugly Duckling Presse). Sorkin won the Translation Prize of The Poetry Society, London, and has been awarded an NEA fellowship. DYGO TOSA is a senior at Boston University, where he studies ancient Greek and Latin. He wrote his thesis on the relation between the two and classical Japanese verse, highlighting the shared use of epithets. He has received a fellowship to study classics at University of Texas Austin.

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“Alpinistes on Mt. Blanc.” Photograph by Juliet Johnson, 2006.

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“Just because every strange language at first offers opposition in its most personal turnings to those who would copy it, it invites forces of expression which, otherwise unsought, would never come to light.” – Stefan Zweig

"The World of Yesterday" Hesperides Press: Nov. 2006 Viking Press New York; 2nd printing edition (1943)

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Photograph by Jeremy Tipton, 200.

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THE BIG AND SMALL OF MICROFICTIONS In his Microfictions, Régis Jauffret conjures the macro from the micro, compiling a thousand-page tome from individual first-personal texts, each just a page and a half long. Although the pages are cumulative in number, their points of view are too diverse to be easily compounded in terms of theme or direction. Dizzy from the confrontation of such multiplicity, the reader struggles to find common themes in the heterogeneous crowd while the palpable dread of succumbing to pluralism mounts with each page turned. Univers, Univers, another of Jauffret’s award-winning novels, explores this concept on a different scale: a woman watches passers-by from her kitchen window and attributes to each a life story that actually reflects the multiplicity of her own nature. With the multi-perspective format of Microfictions, Jauffret pushes this exercise beyond a psychological study of a character to a forced examination of the reader’s own character. What ties will we find among these speakers? What of them will we see in ourselves? Yet the process of reading this novel isn’t meant to be satisfying; these are microfictions, not microtruths. Mediated by our inability to access the speakers’ actual inner monologues, by the invisible author, and by our own interpretations of the text, our motivation to find a final puzzle piece becomes the quest for something that does not truly exist. Jauffret forces us to acknowledge mankind’s myth of unity by laying bare our intense desire to discover it but never rewarding us, and he does this without even giving us the satisfaction of a single lesson to be learned from our haunting experience. ____________________ The French text on the following pages is taken from Microfictions by Régis Jauffret (2007) and appears here with the permission of publisher Éditions Gallimard of Paris.

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CHANEL N . 5 O

J’avais dix ans, ma mère était couchée depuis une semaine à la suite d’une pneumonie. Le soleil éclairait une partie de la pièce, mais les rayons ne parvenaient pas jusqu’à son lit, et la lampe de chevet était allumée. La bonne l’avait aidée à se coiffer, elle portait un châle en cachemire bleu. L’air empestait le Chanel n° 5, comme si elle avait voulu se suicider par asphyxie. Je me suis avancé pour l’embrasser. Elle m’a dit de rester près de la porte pour éviter d’attraper son mal. — Je vais sans doute guérir. Mais elle garderait des séquelles. À présent, sa mort était en route. Elle vivrait peut-être assez longtemps pour assister à mon mariage, mais il était possible aussi que je mette une rose sur sa tombe l’année prochaine. Elle avait eu une vie difficile, une enfance dans un manoir breton, un mari désagréable qui l’avait laissée veuve au bout de cinq ans. — Et puis, je t’ai accouchée comme une boule de feu. Si elle décédait, on trouverait dans son secrétaire une lettre à l’intention d’une amie qui m’accueillerait, et saurait m’élever avec tendresse. — Tu changeras de maman comme on change d’épouse. — Tu m’oublieras. Même en me creusant la tête je ne parviendrai pas à me souvenir d’elle. Quand on me montrera de vieilles photos de famille, il faudra qu’on entoure son visage avec un crayon rouge pour que je la reconnaisse. L’ingratitude des enfants est naturelle, elle me pardonnait d’ores et déjà. — Maintenant je suis fatiguée, retourne jouer dans ta chambre. J’ai marché à reculons jusqu’au couloir. J’ai fait un puzzle en entier qui 7

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CHANEL N . 5 O

I was ten years old; my mother had been in bed for a week recovering from pneumonia. The sun lit up part of the room, but the rays did not reach her bed, and she kept the bedside lamp lit. The maid had helped her with her hair. She wore a blue cashmere shawl. The air reeked of Chanel No. 5, as if she wished to commit suicide by suffocating herself. When I went up to hug her, she told me to remain by the door so I wouldn’t catch her illness. “I’m going to get better for sure.” But she would have relapses. Death was on the way at that moment. Perhaps she would live long enough to see me married, but it was also possible that next year I would be placing a rose on her coffin. She had had a difficult life, a childhood in a Breton manor, an unpleasant husband who left her widowed after five years. “And then I gave birth to you, like a ball of fire.” If she died, there would be a letter in her desk addressed to a friend who would take me in and know to raise me with tenderness. “You would change mamas like people change wives.” “You will forget me.” Even racking my brains, I would not manage to remember her. People will show me old family photos and will have to circle her face with a red pencil for me to recognize her. The ingratitude of children is natural; she was already forgiving me for it. “I’m tired now; go and play in your room.” I retreated as far as the hallway. I finished putting together a puzzle which had been lying around on my desk for a month. Then I undressed and went P USTEBLUME , I SSUE 2

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traînait depuis un mois sur mon bureau. Puis je me suis déshabillé, et je me suis mis le balcon. La bonne m’a découvert, elle m’a plongée dans un bain chaud. Quand elle m’a embrassé avant de m’endormir, j’ai éclaté en sanglots. — J’ai eu soixante-six ans avant-hier. Comme cadeau d’anniversaire, maman m’a apporté un portefeuille en lézard. Je n’aurai pas l’occasion de m’en servir, je suis incapable de bouger, et dans ce centre de soins palliatifs il est interdit de donner des pourboires. Je regrette de m’être relevé chaque nuit jusqu’à mon départ de la maison pour m’assurer que ma mère respirait encore. À quatre-vingt-huit ans, dans une semaine ou deux, elle sera assez alerte pour suivre à pied mon corbillard jusqu’au caveau où elle ne me rejoindra peut-être qu’au siècle prochain.

JE T’AIME Je t’ai dit je t’aime par inadvertance, et peut- être aussi parce que tu avais l’air déçu ce soir-là. Mes règles étainent trop douloureuses, nous ne pouvions pas fair l’amour. Au lieu d’oublier ces paroles de circonstance, tu t’accroches à elles encore aujourd’hui. Il y a longtemps que ce genre de conneries, n’engage plus à rien. On les dit à un amant d’un soir, une amie, un chat de gouttière entré par la fenêtre ouverte pour réclamer un bol de lait. Les chats s’en vont quand ils ont bu, et on ne passe pas sa vie à sa fenêtre en espérant les yeux larmoyants leur réapparition soudaine. Aussitôt qu’une parole sort de ma bouche tu t’empresses de la croire, comme si tu étais en train d’interviewer Yahvé, ou son gamin en train de monter sa croix comme une bête de somme jusqu’au sommet du mont des Oliviers. Nous vivons à l’époque de la liberté d’expression, les promesses sont enfin devenues autonomes, sitôt sorties des bouches elles s’envolent dans les airs comme des oiseaux. On ne sait pas où elles vont, sûrement nulle part, à moins qu’elles se reproduisent sur une tache de sucre comme des mouches. Quant aux je t’aime, il y en a trop, s’ils volaient, le ciel en serait obsurci, au point qu’on ne verrait plus ni le soleil ni les étoiles, et que l’humanité aurait l’impression 9

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out on the balcony. The maid found me and plunged me into a hot bath. When she hugged me before putting me to bed, I burst into sobs. “Two days ago, I turned sixty-six.” Mama brought me a lizard-skin wallet as a birthday present. I would never have the occasion to use it. I can’t move and I’m not allowed to give tips at the palliative care center. I regret having gotten up every night—until I left the house—to check that my mother was still breathing. At eighty-eight, in a week or two, she will be alert enough to follow my hearse, by foot, to the crypt where she might not join me until the next century. — translated by Nora Delaney

I LOVE YOU I told you I loved you inadvertently, maybe because you seemed disappointed that night. My rules were too painful; we couldn’t make love. Instead of forgetting those circumstantial words, you still hold on to them today. It’s been a long time since that kind of crap meant commitment. You say it to a fling one night, a friend, an alley cat come in through the open window to beg for a bowl of milk. The cats leave once they’ve drunk, and nobody spends life at the window, hoping teary-eyed for their sudden reappearance. As soon as a word comes out of my mouth, you rush to believe it, like you’re interviewing Yahweh, or his kid carrying his cross like a beast of burden to the top of the Mount of Olives. We live in the era of free speech, when promises have finally become autonomous: as soon as they come out of mouths they take flight in air like birds. Who knows where they go, surely nowhere, unless they spawn themselves on a sugar cube like flies. As for “I love yous,” there are too many of them. If they flew, the sky would be covered with them, to the point where you couldn’t see the sun or the stars, and mankind would think it had been shut up in a box. Those words should go right in the trash, and when murmured outP USTEBLUME , I SSUE 2

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d’avoir été scellée dans une boîte. Ils doivent partir directement à la poubelle, et ceux qui sont murmurés loin des chambres, se laissent entraîner par l’eau des caniveaux jusqu’à ce qu’une bouche d’égout consente a leur ouvrir ses portes. — Tu ne m’aimes plus. — Mais bien sûr que si. À la folie, je me jetterais au feu pour te sauver, et si tu avais le moindre problème cardiaque je te donnerais mon coeur, quitte à hériter à la place de ton organe ratatiné comme une vieille bite. Tu es l’homme de ma vie, même si tu n’es pas le seul, s’il y en a eu des dizaines avant toi, et si tu partages aujourd’hui ton trône avec d’autres mecs que je peux te présenter quand tu voudras. Vous pourriez même vivre en communauté comme des moines dans un couvent, et prier en attendant que j’appelle l’un d’entre vous lorsque j’aurais besoin de ses farces et attrapes. Tu rêves que je te sois fidèle comme une taularde à sa cellule, alors que je n’ai tué personne, que la police ne m’a même pas soupçonnée, et qu’on ne me jugera jamais.

LA VIANDE DES GENS N’EST PAS GOÛTEUSE —Je suis arrivée tôt à Roissy. L’avion décollait à neuf heures. Attentat la veille sur une compagnie indienne. La police et l’armée sur le pied de guerre. On avait même aménagé des cabines près du portique de sécurité pour faire déshabiller entièrement les passagers qui le faisaient biper. Un charter pour les Antilles. Bourré à craquer. On avait meme enlevé des toilettes pour pouvoir installer des sièges supplémentaires. Les hostesses n’arrêtaient pas d’aller et venir. Elles avaient du mal à sourire tant elles paraissaient angoissées. L’une a renversé un verre de jus d’orange en servant un enfant. L’autre un plateau-repas. En plus, des trous d’air au-dessus de l’Atlantique. L’impression que l’avion allait laisser ses ailes là-haut et que la carlingue éclaterait au contact de l’eau. Un vieillard pris soudain d’une crise de nerfs. Sa femme qui se solidarise. Trois rangées qui les imitent. Les autres immobiles. Qui laissent la peur les ronger de l’intérieur. Le commandant 11

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doors they should get carried away by gutter water until a sewage drain agrees to open its doors to them. “You don’t love me anymore.” “But of course I do.” Out of madness I’d throw myself on the fire to save you, and if you were to have the slightest cardiac episode I’d give you my heart to take the place of your organ, shriveled like an old cock. You’re the man for me, even if you’re not the only one, even if there have been dozens before you, even if today you share your throne with some other guys. I can introduce you when you want. You could even live together like monks in a monastery and pray, hoping for me to call one of you whenever I could use some of his fun and games. You dream that I’m loyal like a cell mate, but that I didn’t kill anybody, and that the police didn’t even suspect me—that no one will ever judge me. — translated by Julie Johnson

PEOPLE MEAT IS NOT DELICIOUS I got to Roissy early. The plane took off at nine o’clock. Just been an attack on an Indian company. The police and the army were ready for war. They even put cubicles right next to the metal detectors so passengers who beeped could be stripped naked. A charter for the Antilles. Absolutely packed. They had even taken out toilets to make room for extra seats. The hostesses never stopped bustling back and forth. They were so sick of smiling they appeared to be in anguish. One spilled a glass of orange juice glass while serving a child. Another, a meal tray. What’s more, turbulence over the Atlantic. The impression that the plane was going to leave its wings up there and the fuselage would burst on contact with water. An old man taken suddenly with an attack of nerves. His wife who remained stalwart with him. Three rows which imitate them. The other ones motionless. Who let the fear eat away at their insides. The pilot no longer seems to be well. P USTEBLUME , I SSUE 2

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de bord semble ne plus se sentir très bien non plus. Il doit masturber le manche à balai. En tout cas, l’appareil tressaute. Fait des embardées comme une voiture qui freine sur un lac gelé. —Les hostesses s’attachent sur leur siège. Pliées. La tête entre leurs mains rebondissant sur leurs genoux. L’avion se met à tanguer comme un vieux ferry. Certains crient que les hublots gonflent. Que les portes de secours menacent de jouer les lâcheuses. Les écrans de télé se mettent à diffuser un film catastrophe. Des mines. Des obus. Des gens masqués qui déciment à la mitraillette. Scènes de torture avec amputations. Exécutions sommaires à la grenade. Visages qui flottent aux quatre coins d’un lac sombre comme un bac de caviar. Images d’un soleil agonisant. Qui finit par s’éteindre en émettant un bruit de viscères. Une publicité pour une nouvelle marque de bombes atomiques. Démonstration. Le globe qui éclate de toutes parts comme s’il était recouvert de furoncles arrivés à maturité. Reportage sur un hôpital psychiatrique. Les maladies tournent dans une pièce. À force de piétiner ils ont usé le sol jusqu’à creuser une sorte de rigole. Un médecin qui surgit. Ils l’étouffent en s’empilant sur lui. —Tout le monde debout dans l’avion. Les hôtesses qui subissent un interrogatoire musclé. Qui s’effondrent et meurent sous les semelles de nos souliers. Le pilote qui apparaît. Puis qui se replie en panique gonflé de cadavres. Boîte de conserve oblongue remplie de chair humaine. Atterrissage homérique sur un îlot bourru. Perdu on ne sait où au milieu de hordes de requins qui grimpet sur les rochers en guettant leur proie. —Trois mois à gratter les os pour se nourrir. La viande des gens n’est pas goûteuse. Finalement découverte de l’épave par un navigateur solitaire. Sauvetage par hélicoptère. Arrestation à Point-àPitre. Procès à Bobigny pour anthropophagie. —Vacances pourries.

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He must be jerking off the joy stick. In any case, the plane lurches. Swerves like a car hitting the brakes on a frozen lake. The hostesses still stuck in their seats. Bent over. Heads between their hands bouncing off their knees. The plane starts to pitch like an old ferry. Some people shout that the windows look like they will break. That the emergency doors are threatening to abandon their post. The video screens flicker to life with a disaster film. Mines. Shells. Masked people who decimate with machine-guns. Scenes of torture with amputations. Summary executions by grenade. Floating faces which fill a murky lake like caviar in a tin. Images of a failing sun. Which ends up burning out with a sound like the squelch of internal organs. Ad for a new brand of atomic bomb. Product demo. The sphere which bursts in all directions like it was covered with ripe whiteheads. Newsflash about a psychiatric hospital. The disturbed are pacing in a room. They trample the floor until they’ve dug a kind of trench. A doctor appears. They choke him as they pile upon him. Everyone upright on the plane. The hostesses who undergo a harrowing interrogation. They cave in and perish under the soles of our shoes. The pilot who appears. Then recoils in a panic amplified by the corpses. A tin can filled with human flesh. Homeric landing on a small ragged island. A lost atoll, who knows where, amid hordes of sharks which lurk among the reefs while waiting for their prey. Three months of gnawing on bones to survive. People meat is not delicious. Wreck finally discovered by a solo sailor. Rescue by helicopter. Arrest in Point-à-Pitre. Prosecution in Bobigny for anthropophagy. Crap vacation. — translated by Zachary Bos

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ABOUT HERNAN ZÚÑIGA A major figure in artistic circles in Guayaquil, he is active in painting, graphics, theater and poetry. As a member of the generation of the 1970s, he reveals in his art a deep sympathy for the marginalized urban poor. His painting is considered neo-expressionist, with evident influences from pop culture and conceptual art. The reflection of his artistic tendencies in his poetry makes his style unique in contemporary Ecuadorian letters. Despite a substantial poetic output, most of his poetry has only appeared in marginal and limited editions, or in the form of mixed media constructions, pamphlets, or imbedded in larger visual projects.

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CIBERNADAS Los titulares de los diarios apenas son mirados a pesar de la sangre chorreada. Parece que no impactaron pero así vamos no más. El voceador grita muerte como los pájaros que madrugan cada día. Crimen es el mandamiento impuesto. La sacralización post-moderna del sabido salsa. de los regímenes caporales con su tortura hidro-eléctrica del relumbrón apocalíptico de los chips en gracia y la numerología cabalística de los hackers a la orden del que más pague. Sí señor.

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CYBERNADES The headlines of the papers are barely glanced at despite the blood gushed forth. It looks as if they make no impact And on we go, just the same. The vendor cries out murder like birds crying in the dawn each day. Crime is the imposed commandment. The post-modern sacralization of the cool dude the regime of the captains with their hydro-electric torture the apocalyptic brilliance of the chips in favor the cabalistic numerology of hackers in the service of whoever pays the most. Yessiree.

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AMORES PARALELOS La musa del placer perverso vive y hace vivir al poeta al filo de la navaja. Cuando se le ocurre pincha su enfermo corazón con alfileres de oro. Goza con la sangre que chorrea espesa como rubíes al vacío hasta hacerse piedras. Ríe con todo el nácar de sus dientes por cada una de las lágrimas de amargos versos en el otro. También llora engreída cuando el vate ríe con su mentiroso estruendo de payaso.

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PARALLEL LOVES The muse of perverse pleasure lives and makes the poet live on the razor’s edge When she feels like it she pricks his sickened heart with golden pins. She takes pleasure in the blood that spurts thick like rubies into emptiness until it´s turned to stones… She laughs with all her pearly teeth for all the tears of bitter verses in the other. She also cries spoiled tears when the bard chortles with the misleading uproar of a clown.

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Van juntos como inocentes conejos en un campo repleto de tréboles y emprenden a pie alborozados, juntos de la mano, hacia el invisible horizonte del naufragio. Siempre han sabido con engaño que una mitad nada vale sin la otra. Juntos van buscando el puente desde donde se lanzan los desesperados.

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They go together like innocent rabbits In a field filled with clover And hand in hand they wander off enraptured, towards the invisible horizon of the ship wracked at sea. They always knew and wrongly so that half is worthless without the other half. Together they head off to seek the bridge from which the desperate hurl themselves.

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ABOUT HIPOLITO ALVARADO Alvarado is a quiet poet whose work reveals a feeling of social commitment and, stylistically, a desire to break down the usual literary genre distinctions. His poetry manifests two diverse interests: one focusing on the day-to-day of ordinary people, filled with the details of quotidian urban life, the other leaning towards an examination of spirituality, principally through Indian religions. The literary influences on Alvarado, as on several other poets in this anthology, include James Joyce and e.e. cummings, as forerunners in the search for artistic freedom and especially in the championing of the use of colloquial language.

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ESPERADURA cuentopoema en voz alta para carmelina que me dio su amor desde dos tiempos de amar para adentro resbalándome a la penúltima costura de mí mismo te espero vibrante en el recuerdo tu última ansia bocarriba tus muslos sólidamente morenos cruzándose esbeltos en el aire descruzándose en un gemido de fuelle reventado tu espalda en mis manos temblorosa tu aliento cálido zumbido de ángel en mi oído y en vuelco rápido aspiro la raíz de tu trigo crecido para afuera para adentro leche biberón pi pi la lluvia de costado del otro lado de mi ventana desde el soportal de la esquina ganchos carnes moscas del aire colgando furiosas manos gordas manchadas de sangre envuelven el corazón en un periódico diminutos soles para el suelo tubitos de cristal de luz caídos en la vereda rebotando en la pared de la carnicería don gutiérrez a mi despácheme oiga vea apúrese gordo acuoso diente de oro 25

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LONGHARDWAIT storypoem to be read aloud to carmelina, who gave me her love from two times of loving inwards i slide towards the penultimate seam of myself i await you vibrant in memory your final yearning mouth upwards your thighs firmly black legs crossing slender in the air and uncrossing in a moan burst from a bellows your back trembling in my hands your warm breath the humming of an angel in my ear and with a sudden twist i´m inhaling the root of your wheat grown outwards and inside the milk baby bottle pee rain slanting sideways on the other side of the window from the arcade on the corner hooks meat flies of air hanging furious fat hands stained with blood wrap the heart in newspaper diminutive suns dripping to the ground little tubes of crystal light falling on the sidewalk bouncing off the butcher´s walls mr. gutiérrez, sir, over here, it´s me, listen, look, down here, hurry up flabby guy with a gold tooth P USTEBLUME , I SSUE 2

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baba resbalosa sonrisa entrega el cambio espanta a un perro meando su propia sombra contra el poste el grifo de agua el hijo desnudamente sucio de nuestra señora de los motes más acá del poste telefónico cuanto caserito cuanto en tanto el niño apara las gotas rápidas que salpican su rostro desde el perro ojos ávidos desde el suelo risas grititos líquidos el semáforo cuatro ojos vigilantes — la calle húmeda sombra de colores contra el suelo chorros de luz los carros proyectando pequeñas lluvias de los faros para abajo tanteando paredes el asfalto lluvia breve de altanube salpica el suelo pan arriba así desde ese ángulo creí ver el límite de tu cuerpo contra el cielo nueve lunas cociendo nuestro pan con leche y mantequilla levado desde mi fermento y tu saliva como también pude imaginar el cielo tostado de tu cuerpo desde el charquito de agua saltando desde la mano del niño que a sorbitos golosea y golosea su frescura -de lluvia destechada descargada contra algún caminante rezagado a su menestra 27

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drool dripping down, smile gives back some change, scares off a dog pissing his shadow on the lamp post the water tap the naked filthy son of our lady of corn meal this side of the telephone pole how many you want sir how many while the child reaches for the rapid stream from the dog splattering his face eager eyes close to the ground laughter little liquid cries the traffic light four vigilant eyes the street shadowy wet colors on the ground streams of light, cars projecting tiny downpours from their lights touching walls touching asphalt brief rain from high clouds splattering up from the ground and from that angle i thought i caught the outline of your body against the sky nine moons baking our bread with milk and butter leavened with my ferment and your saliva and i could also conjure the toasted sky your rounded body from that tiny pool of water sprinkling from the hand of the boy who with little sips savors the sweet freshness of the dripping rain falling on some passerby late for his vegetable stew P USTEBLUME , I SSUE 2

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malhumorado contra el invierno abajo el agua carajo muera el lodo, pendejo abajo los truenos los relámpagos y la puta que parió a los mosquitos desde mi corazón en la escalera oigo feligreses pasos menuda sombra alta desde ayer la espero cruje el escalón leve roce contra el suelo tum tum la puerta digo alegre y se abre de bruces mi corazón a la vida y al diablo con toda esta escritura

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in a bad mood with the winter rains down with the water dammit die you stupid muck down with the thunder the lightening and the bitch who gave birth to mosquitoes with my heart I hear the steps of parishioners on the stairs the tall slim shadow i´ve been waiting for since yesterday now is climbing up the creaky stairs lightly grazing the floor knock knock the door says happily my heart opens wide to life and to hell with all this writing with all this crap

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KIMI MATSUTO 君待つと 我が恋ひ居れば 我がやどの 簾動かし 秋の風吹く (kimi ma ts u to / a g a koiore ba / wa g a ya do no / s uda re ugoka s hi / a ki no ka ze fuku)

額田王 (nuka ta -no-ōkimi) [Ma n’yōs hū 4 .4 9 1 / 4 8 9 ]

For you must I wait, As my longing sits entwined At the entrance with A slight shuffle of blinds, the Autumn wind passes me by -The Princess Nukata

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ORIGINAL TRANSLATIONS FROM THE CLASSICAL JAPANESE MAN’YōSHū A headnote to this verse explains that Princess Nukata wrote it in longing for the Emperor Tenchi as one of his consorts. Here are three different existing English translations below: While I wait for you, / My lord, lost in this longing Suddenly there comes / A stirring of my window blind: The autumn wind is blowing. [Cranston 177] As I stay here yearning, / while I wait for you, my lord, the autumn wind blows, / swaying the bamboo blinds of my lodging. [Masayuki 93, Trans. Levy] As I sit yearning, / wondering if he might come, the autumn wind blows, / stirring the thin bamboo blinds at the entrance to my house. [McCullough 107] Cranston notes that Princess Nukata (638-690?) was a better poet than her two husbands, and “in fact is the first person in Japanese literary history to leave a reputation primarily as a poet” (Cranston 172). But notable figures are always left in some controversy. In the case of this poem, Cranston’s praise is most generous, “Princess Nukata speaks in her private capacity as a woman in love . . . P USTEBLUME , I SSUE 2

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this fine tanka evokes the sudden hope caused by the stirring of the window blind and blends a season sadness with human longing in its effective last line” (Cranston 177). McCullough responds coldly that the poem is a “composition frequently praised for the conviction with which the author expresses personal unhappiness, but one that could be interpreted as merely an experiment with the Chinese theme of the neglected lady listening to the autumn wind” (McCullough 107). Cranston counters that while several Chinese analogues have been cited, “its ‘sincerity’ need not be regarded as impugned by such ‘influence,’” since “the poem is completely successful in its own terms, linguistic, affective and formal” (Cranston 177). Although the same is difficult to say for his translation, Cranston is quite touched by this poem. Ōoka comments that it is “one of [Nukata’s] most beloved poems”, “treasured for its sensitive lyrical mood,” of “an image of a beautiful woman yearning for her lover to arrive” (Masayuki 93). Thus whereas McCullough has found an image of unhappiness, others believe that the poet is meant to be hopeful. Ōoka points to the image of the “autumn wind” as “a secret premonition of someone’s arrival, the exquisite touch of the autumn wind awakened the senses of the ancients” (Masayuki 93). The Princess Nukata was quite fashionable for her talent at poetry; an allusion to the sensuality of the wind is an erotic portrayal accompanied by the emptiness of her longing. Her graceful subtlety implies her sensitivity, as she notices even the smallest act of nature: the autumn wind moving the blinds. The stillness of her waiting is contrasted against the movement of the wind, which symbolized the approach of her lover. The drama of the scene is delicate and significant. While McCullough may be able to find Chinese analogues, the poem is distinctly personal. Cranston’s translation is simple and succeeds to convey some of that sense of subtlety; the other two are extensive and divert from the plain contrast between the “I” and “you”. Cranston omits the “yadono” to isolate the action, which does not seem to detract from the poem in translation. The other two render sudare as “bamboo blinds,” but the alliterative effect is clumsy when it should rather be graceful.

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Lastly, Cranston’s translation uses “suddenly” to bring the action immediately, while the other two use to gerunds, creating a sense of continuity: McCullough uses “yearning,” “wondering,” and “stirring,” while Levy uses “swaying” in attempting to include Ōoka’s reading of aroused passion (but it seems unnecessary when applied in the blinds). The poetry excels because Princess Nukata demonstrates a complex emotion which could only be described in its projection upon nature and her surroundings. Translator’s Notes For my original translation, I have attempted to replicate the Princess’ careful word order and subtlety, attempting to reflect the original poem’s attributes as well as working English poetics in translation. Some elements could be carried over easily, such as the full stop in the “matsuto” sound which is found in “must” and “wait”. The syllabic count is maintained. There is a chiasmus, “kimi . . . / a . . . / wa . . . / aki no kaze” which strongly suggests the poet wanting to believe that the wind is her negligent lover (“kimi”), and I have partly echoed the sentiment with the “you . . I / my / me,” with enjambment on the definite article indicating emphasis on her desire for her lover in the very lack of his presence. Using “entwined” was a difficult choice, but the slant rhymes with “blinds” and “wind”, along with evoking the bamboo blinds with its “twine” seems to justify its approximation for “oreba.” Alliteration of “slight shuffle . . blinds” describes the sound of the wind on the blinds, and the sighs and heart beats of the poet are found in “as / at / a / autumn.” Overall there is a fleeting, ephemeral quality to the poem, reflecting the heart of the poet and her unfulfilled longing.

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Historical Context

風をだに 恋ふるは羨し 風をだに 来むとし待たば 何か嘆かむ (ka ze wo da ni / kofuru ha tomos hi / ka ze wo da ni / komutos hi ma ta ba / na nika na ge ka mu)

鏡皇女 (ka g a mi-no-ōkimi) [MYS 4 .4 9 2 ] If only a windWho knows love, I do envy If only a windBe here, for whom I might wait Then I could sigh in longing -The Princess Kagami The Princess Nukata had an older sister, the Princess Kagami. Upon reaching adolescence, Kagami became consort to Prince Naka-no-Ōe and Nukata was presented as a virgin priestess. Over time, Nukata eventually became consort to the Prince Ōama, and gave birth to the Princess Tōchi. Prince Naka-no-Ōe became the Emperor Tenchi, and while there still exist sōmon love poems exchanged between Tenchi and Kagami, over time Tenchi’s love shifted to his brother’s wife, the Princess Nukata. As the headstone of the earlier poem records, Nukata was thinking not of her husband but of Tenchi. Thus the context of the two translated poems is thought to have been when Tenchi’s love had begun to shift to Nukata rather than her sister, and the implications are heart-wrenching. The subtlety of the initial poem, described earlier, gives way to Nukata perhaps even flaunting her new relationship with her sister’s husband. Her sister responds using Nukata’s very language, repeating her line about the wind twice, desperately in longing. 35

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While there is nothing on the surface of these lines, perhaps as simple as “wind imagery” borrowed from Chinese poetry, underneath them lies an incredible passion that refuses to be contained within the words themselves. Interestingly, Kagami and Nukata were never recorded in the formal historical record as the wives to the two emperors, and must have held ambiguous positions as consorts. There are even theories that the two sisters were consorts to Tenchi simultaneously. The lack of knowledge concerning marriage customs and regulations in hinders our knowledge of how such matters were worked out, and it is easy for us to impose our own expectations on past times. Nonetheless, the passion that we feel from these poems is real, for love is the deepest and most universal experience. The story behind the two princesses is well known in Japan but seems to be lost to English translators, and it is representative of how far behind scholarship of Ancient Japanese in English is, facing the language barrier.

Sources for Other Translations: Cranston, Edwin A. A Waka Anthology: Volume I: The Gem-Glistening Cup. Stanford, Stanford University Press: 1993. Masayuki, Miyata, Ōoka Makoto, Ian Hideo Levy, Donald Keene. Love Songs from the Man’yōshū. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 2000. McCullough, Helen Craig. Brocade by Night: ‘Kokin Wakashū’ and the Court Style in Japanese Classical Poetry. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985.

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ABOUT MIGJENI Millosh Gjergj Nikolla (October 13, 1911 – August 26, 1938) was born in the northern Albanian city of Shkodër. After completing elementary school in his city of birth, he continued his education in Montenegro and later, Macedonia. In 1932 he graduated from the Seminary of Saint John the Theologian. Shortly after, he was appointed teacher in a village near Shkodër, the first of his many teaching positions in the impoverished villages of northern Albania. Around this time, he started publishing his prose and poetry in various literary journals. In 1936 he published his first and only collection of poems, Vargjet e Lira (Free Verse). He died two years later in the Sanatorium of Torre Pellice near Turin where he had gone to seek treatment for his tuberculosis.

Translator’s Note In the essay “The Origin of the Work of Art”, Martin Heidegger, referring to the translation of Greek into Roman, writes “Beneath the seemingly literal and thus faithful translation there is concealed, rather, a translation of Greek experience into a different way of thinking.”i It is tempting to see translation as an “innocent process” through which a work is transported into the experience of a new language. In describing this process, as Heidegger points out, we cannot escape from the precarious “trans”. So when I decided to translate a few of Migjeni’s writings, translation seemed a transparent activity, more so a means to present his work to an English-speaking audience. I became an invisible mediator between the work and the work-in-English. But in the first moment of the process of translation, my being as a translator became opaque.

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It is easy to rewrite a text in a language different from the original as languages have a relative equivalency of words. In the innocent approach to translation, which we have to assume to a certain degree for reasons of practical communication, the translated text is approached as an original. However, in translation what must be brought across from one language to the second is the world of the text, something which Heidegger, mirroring the reservation and even resistance of some authors against translation, holds to be impossible. The authenticity of the original’s world is rooted in its first expression. Thus to translate constitutes to a degree the “rootless” movement across languages without the corresponding world contained in the text. The problem of translation is the concept of translation itself. The greatest challenge of presenting Migjeni in English lies in the fact that he writes in a very stylized form of dialect, notoriously difficult even for native speakers. Since dialects are specific to a certain region and cultural environment, it would be a misrepresentation, even a parody, to translate his work into such an English or American dialect. The most sincere way of translating such texts, is to use a simple form of the language of the translation and follow Mark Strand’s advice to “find words for which you yourself have fondness.”ii However, Migjeni’s work usually written in dialect often contains technical words or constructions, which in the original create a parody of the anxieties of the bourgeoisie, or as here of the reflecting individual. This effect appears in translation as discrepancy of style. In the present translation, I have tried to make the text approachable while preserving a sense of strangeness in terms of expressions and constructs, to retain something of Migjeni’s idiosyncratic style, although his obscured world reveals itself in brief glimpses. ____________ i. “The Origin of the Work of Art” pg. 23 ii. Mark Strand, The Monument. #14, pg. 66

The editors wish to thank Mr. Leonard Fox and Mr. Gjeke Marinaj for help with the Albanian. P USTEBLUME , I SSUE 2

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KANGA E TRUMCAKUT* … (i) lodhun, dhe ma i pakënaqun trumcaku me fat, qëndron mbi degë. Me urrejtje shikonte natyrën që s’e krijoi ma artistikisht. Me përbuzje vërente bylbylin. Tashma e kuptoi mirfilli se duhet të vuejë nga fataliteti i gjanave! — Kështu tue mendue ndjen një lehtësi trumcaku. Në thellsin e ndërgjegjes së tij filloi të ndjehet filozof. (Kish të drejtë! se kush arrin ndër trutë e vet të jetë I pakënaqun me fat, ai me të vërtetë fillon me bamë filozofi—dhe një filozofi ma të vërtetë se çdo tjetër filozofi). Çuditej trumcaku për madhështinë e ndjesive të tij dhe çuditej për fatalitetin e gjanave. Pse asht trumcak, vetëm pse asht trumcak nuk mund ta thotë kangën e bylbylit. Çuditej për padrejtësinë e natyrës dhe ish gati të bajë diçka: një kryengritje kundra natyrës!… Por, trumcaku filozof e mundi trumcakun harbut. Me një indiferencë apatike fishkkloi dhe fluturoi nga dera nën strehë të pullazit. Dhe aty ia nisi: Çiu-çiu e çiu-çiu, çiu-çiu si filozof cinik e faqezi. Ky paradoks i trumcakut mund të ngjajë edhe një milion vjet, kur truni i trumcakut të zhvillohet aq sa asht sot i zhvilluem truni i njeriut. E na, njerzit e këtij skaji të Dheut, për një milion vjet mund t’arrijmë që mos t’ia kemi zili njerzve që na rrethojnë (si trumcaku që ia jish zili bylbylit). Një milion vjet— afat I bukur… Si ju duket?— Jo, jo nuk asht shum. Ç’janë një milion vjet para eternitas… —Sanatorium, prill 1938 [from VEPRA published by Cetis Tirana (of Tirana), mbledhur dhe redaktuar nga Skënder Luarasi, who married Migjeni’s niece.] ____________ * Faqja e parë e dorëshkrimit ka humbur.

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From Migjeni’s last writings i.

THE SONG OF THE SPARROW … ii tired and satisfied with fate no longer, the sparrow stood perched on a branch looking with hatred at nature which had not created him more artistically. With contempt, it scrutinized the nightingale. Now it understood quite clearly that it must be suffering from the fatality of things. Thinking so, the sparrow felt relieved. In the depths of its own consciousness, it started to feel like a philosopher. (It was right! Because whoever realizes he’s not satisfied with fate through his own thinking, he really starts to practice philosophy, a philosophy more genuine than any other philosophy.) The sparrow was astonished at the greatness of its own sensibilities and at the fatality of things: Because it’s a sparrow, and only because it’s a sparrow, it can’t sing the song of the nightingale. It was astonished at the injustice of nature and was ready to do something: a revolt against nature! But the sparrow-philosopher subdued the sparrow-rebel. With apathetic indifference the sparrow flew from the branch to the eaves of the roof. There it started chirping: chiu-chi and chiu, chiu, chiu-chiu, like a cynic and impudent philosopher. This paradox of the sparrow could happen even in a million years, when the brain of the sparrow will develop as much as the human brain has today. In a million years from now, we, the people of this end of the world, could arrive at the point where we are no longer envious ( like the sparrow that envied the nightingale) of the people around us. A million years – a nice deadline. What do you think? No, no it’s not long. What’s a million years before eternity... ____________ i. Written in Sanatorium San Luigi in April 1938, less than four months before his death. ii. The first page of the manuscript is missing.

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A NOTE ON LYRICAL TRANSLATION In the translation of song lyrics, the desires to render meaning faithfully and to preserve rhythm, melody, and beat oppose each other. The translator faced with this dilemma often elects to favor one set of complementary considerations over another, producing two recognizably distinct modesë of lyrical translation. The first, solum sensui (“only with respect to meaning”), is in my estimation the least difficult. Conveying little more than the literal content, it reflects considerations involved in the translation of literary or academic prose but has no aspirations of being musically compatible. Translation for singing, pro canendo, is aimed at resolving this inherent conflict. However, it makes no pretense of reconciling absolute fidelity to meaning and perfect musical compatibility. The main idea behind the pro canendo approach is to stay as faithful as possible to the original meaning while expressing that meaning in foreign words that fit the rhythm and melody of the song. Inevitably, some specific meaning is sacrificed, but the goal is to minimize that loss. When translating a song pro canendo, there are serveral expressive aspects the translator (depending on the target language) aspects of the song one must analyze and consider when writing the foreign lyrics: rhythm, syllabication, and melodic stress. Rhythm Where the lyric translator is concerned, rhythm is the repetition of vowel sounds, particularly at the ends of the lines in poetry or song lyrics. A rhyme scheme is the pattern in which those repeated vowel sounds occur. Rhyme may consist of only a repeated vowel sound, or a terminal consonant that follows the vowel may also be repeated. 41

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Furthermore, sequences of vowels in two or three syllables may also be repeated. In translating song lyrics, there is some flexibility in fidelity to a rhyme scheme consisting of multisyllabic rhymes, but the rule is that if any rhyme exists between a pair, triplet, or quartet of lines, there should at least be a corresponding monosyllabic rhyme in the translation. Syllabication This refers to the number of syllables in each line. One should be careful not to look strictly at the lyrics when counting syllables. If the music calls for the singer to draw out what would otherwise be one syllable into two or more syllables, this grants the translator some extra liberty, as he then has the option of keeping the lengthened word as a monosyllable and using the extra syllable(s) to insert a separate foreign word that enhances fidelity to meaning. Melodic Stress This refers to the stress imposed on certain syllables by the melodic beat. This is the only aspect of pro canendo song translation that may or may not apply depending on the nature of the target language. If you are translating song lyrics into a stress-dependent language (meaning that the location of the stress in an otherwise identical word makes a difference in meaning, as in Spanish trabajo and trabajó), it is a factor that must be considered. Otherwise, it can be wholly disregarded. If melodic stress is a factor, the stress imposed on certain syllables by the beat of the song must correspond with the standard spoken stress in the foreign word. Any syllable or sequence of syllables not stressed by the beat are ambiguous and can be treated thus, but a syllable stressed by the beat must be the same as that which is stressed in speech.

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Tricks of the Trade There are a few useful strategies that can be applied in pro canendo translation. One highly important tactic is to analyze the lyrics and determine any key elements of meaning that you think are central to the song and are unwilling to sacrifice. The translator may also reverse the order of lines within a verse in order to accommodate better rhythm. He or she may add minor modifiers if a translated line is actually shorter than the original or restructure a sentence so that the right word occurs at the end of a line. There is no rule against being cunning in lyrical translation.

This article has been abridged for publication. To read the original, complete with sample

English

verses

and

possible

Spanish

renditions

http://www.hsmespanol.com and go to the Methodology page.

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thereof,

please

visit

“A TRUE-BORN Englishman does not know any language. He does not speak English too well either but, at least, he is not proud of this. He is, however, immensely proud of not knowing any foreign languages. Indeed, inability to speak foreign languages seems to be the major, if not the only, intellectual achievement of the average Englishman.” "How to be an alien" (1946) by György Mikes, Nicolas Bentley drew the pictures, Andre Deutsch

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ABOUT MARIANA MARIN Mariana Marin was considered one of Romania’s most important poets at the time of her death at the age of forty-seven on 31 March 2003, exactly five years to the day that I am writing this. A proverbial born poet who used her gifts in staunch resistance to the communist dictatorship, Marin wound up silenced for much of the 1980s by the Ceaușescu regime for the uncompromising dissidence that can also be seen in her angry, traumatized poetical style even when she is not directly or indirectly political. I first met her in 1991, and I saw her again some seven or eight times afterwards. I always think of Mariana as both a fragile figure of innocence and naiveté, asking earnestly what she could do for you despite her having nothing, and at the same time a toughened psyche as it were lit by the black light of an inward darkness, chronic dissatisfaction, bleak pessimism. Her strength of character seemed forced on her by history, society, the politics of disaster, but she reacted out of honesty and a personal sensitivity that derived from an impossible ethical ideal necessarily turned sour. In the atmosphere of repression and censorship, and the enforced poverty of daily life in Romania in the last decade of the socialist state, her mixture of stubbornness and passive suffering were given an edge by local conditions and impossibilities. The destructiveness of the external world mirrored a selfdestructiveness that welled up from within. A kind of poète maudit, she was in her life a natural resister to happiness. Marin published five books of poems. Her first, A Hundred Years’ War (Un război de o sută de ani, 1981), won the Romanian Writers’ Union Prize for a debut in poetry. One of the important volumes of the decade, it established Marin’s reputation as well as her prominence among the young poets who made their debut in the early 1980s. After a collective volume that gathered five young poets in 1982, she published her second book, The Secret Annex (Aripa secretă), in 1986. In it, she employed a not uncommon coded 45

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strategy to circumvent censorship, in which the writer intentionally displaces the setting to some other time, some other place. In The Secret Annex, Marin created a kind of fantastic lyrical diary of, and dialogue with, Anne Frank. This was her last book before the Romanian revolution; for the rest of the decade she was unpublishable. Right after the December 1989 Revolution, Marin published a volume in France that had been planned by friends before the fall of communism: At the Crossroads of the Great Trade Routes (Au carrefour des grandes routes commerciales, 1990). The same year, in Bucharest, Marin published her third book in Romanian, The Studios (1980-1984) — Romanian title: Atelierele (19801984). It was not until 1999 that Marin published her next, long-planned book of new poetry, The Mutilation of the Artist as a Young Woman (Mutilarea artistului la tinereţe), which won a number of major literary awards, garnering the poetry prizes of both the Romanian Writers’ Union and of its rival, the Association of Professional Writers in Romania—ASPRO. In 2001, she won the Virgil Mazilescu special literary prize, named after a poet who is thought to have been hounded to death in 1984 by the Romanian Securitate. And in 2002, she published a career retrospective, The Dowry of Gold, sponsored by The Romanian Literature Museum Publishing House (Editura Muzeul Literaturii Române, Bucharest), which had published her 1999 book as well. The 320-page volume also contained twenty-one new, previously uncollected poems. It was her final book, as it turned out. In 2006, Ugly Duckling Presse published Paper Children, a collection of forty-four Mariana Marin poems in both Romanian and English; the translations were mine with various collaborators. Later this year, The Factory of the Past, twenty-three poems in my collaborative translation with Daniela Hurezanu, will appear from Toad Press. The three poems that follow will be included. The poems in Pusteblume are in a tonality very familiar to me, a sense of nightmare and imagery of doom, chill, death; equally characteristic are the crazed marionette, the fantastical dialogue, the moments of thematic explicitness mingled with what sometimes becomes almost oneiric, hermetic expressP USTEBLUME , I SSUE 2

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-ionism. Daniela Hurezanu did first versions, but after I revised, we went back and forth in a dialogue about phrasing, tone, image, accuracy. To me, the key to Mariana Marin is to capture both the rawness of emotion, yet contain it in a kind of inexorability of words that somehow contain and constrain what would otherwise be neurosis and confessionalism, a diary of demons, not poetry. Phrases needed to be kept short and to move forward with a sense of the inevitable, the diction conversational, the rhythm quiet but, at moments, insistent. More problematic than any passages in the poems is the title of the Marin book these derive from, her 1999 volume The Mutilation of the Artist as a Young Woman. In Romanian, Mutilarea artistului la tinereţe is really not gendered but reads “The Mutilation of the Artist in Youth.” Here’s where a translator’s luck was with me. This collection was long gestating, and I had interviewed Mariana Marin in the summer of 1991, at which time she told me this book’s title and pointed out that its reference was explicitly to James Joyce’s first novel. I took the hint and kept the allusion in English, grammatical and semantic fastidiousness aside. Mariana Marin played a crucial and brave role as one of the models of cultural and personal resistance to censorship and political oppression. Just this month, on a trip to Bucharest, I was pleased to discover that she is still respected in Romania by many of the younger generation of poets now coming into their own, for both the power of her poetry and her unwavering belief in truth.

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ELEGIE Ani în șir am stârnit răul din mine, doar-doar voi supravieţui celui din afara mea și ,,viaţa era totdeauna așa cum nu trebuie să fie viaţa“. Ani în șir am crezut că voi învinge încă de pe vremea tinereţii și ,,tinereţea era așa cum nu trebuie să fie tinereţea“. Acum privesc singurătatea și aleg coșmar de coșmar din seara aceasta de noiembrie pentru că nimeni și nimic nu-mi mai pot șterge gustul umilinţei și frigul din mine.

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ELEGY For years on end, I cultivated the evil inside me, hoping I’d survive the evil outside me, and “life was always what life shouldn’t be.” For years on end, ever since my youth, I believed I’d triumph, and “youth was what youth shouldn’t be.” Now I stare at loneliness, sorting nightmare from nightmare on this November night because no one, because nothing, can rid me of humiliation’s aftertaste and this icy chill deep inside.

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TINEREţE FăRă DE ARTă Când m-am apropiat de treizeci de ani a început vârtejul. În jur dezastrul devenea tot mai intens, niciodată nu știam dacă a doua zi voi mai fi în viaţă, dacă nu se va rupe arcul, dacă rotiţele n-o vor lua dracului la vale. Eram aidoma unei biserici ameninţate cu demolarea —fapt care exista și în realitate pe care îl puteam pipăi cu privirea zilnic în orașul meu prăfuit. Clopotele îmi băteau turbate sub piele, în creier și nu puteam să mă întreb pentru cine. Știam. De la un anotimp la altul, ba poate mai des, rămâneam tot mai puţini. Una dintre fete spunea că am devenit niște ciocli. Mi-era frică de telefoanele de la miezul nopţii prin care ne anunţam moartea prietenilor și transa în care intram cu toţii la înmormântări. Și din atâtea gâtleje ale minţii urletul mut: cine urmează? Când tocmai am împlinit treizeci de ani 51

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YOUTH WITHOUT ART When I was almost thirty the whirlwind started spinning. Everywhere, disaster grew in intensity. I never knew if I’d still be alive tomorrow, if the stretched spring would snap and the little wheels hurtle down to hell. I was like a church ready for demolition —a fact that existed in my everyday reality, that in this dusty city I could touch with my own eyes. Its frantic bells tolled under my skin, in my brain, and I never asked for whom. I knew. From one season to the next, even more quickly, we became fewer and fewer. One of the girls said we were like pallbearers. I dreaded each middle-of-the-night phone call to herald the news of the death of other friends and the hypnotic trance we’d automatically enter at funerals. Out of the mind’s many throats, a voiceless cry: Who’s next? Barely past thirty, P USTEBLUME , I SSUE 2

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Waveam în spate o zestre frumușică de morţi și între patru pereţi mă împiedicam zilnic de un geamantan cu prieteni plecaţi —un fel de moarte și-aceasta pentru cei care rămâneam în viaţă aici. Acum sunt singură. Doar maimuţoiul ăsta dement agăţat de funii lustruindu-le cu rânjetul satârului ca un stindard, trage în continuare clopotele privindu-mă oarecum curios cu mila lui băloasă îmbrăţișându-mă peste atâta bătrâneţe fără de moarte și tinereţe fără de artă.

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I’d already amassed a rich dowry of the dead, and every day inside my four walls I stumbled over a suitcase crammed full of friends gone abroad —another kind of death for those of us left behind, here, in this life. Now I’m all alone. Only this crazed marionette dangling from its strings, polishing them, its ox-like grin unfurled as a banner, continually tolling the bells, observing me with mild curiosity, its mouth drooling with pity, embracing me across this old age without death and youth without art.

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CEEA CE MI-A RăMAS Ceea ce mi-a rămas iese noaptea la drumul mare și se leapădă de sine. Adună floricele de câmp, rostește silabe rotunde ca un cort ţigănesc, apoi mă poartă în cârcă printre coioţi singuratici, în floare. —Mi-e frică de tine, animal rău, aș vrea să-i spun dar e atât de rău încât încep să-mi ghicesc singură-n palmă: ,,încet pe linia vieţii, ceva rămâne și ceva se desparte; norocul vine târziu și în noapte: stelele sus, moartea aproape. Ceea ce ţi-a rămas nu se-mpacă cu tine. Nu te vrea. Nu te ia de soţie“. —Erau vremuri când schelălăiam numai ce puneai piciorul în oraș. Mă guduram pe lângă casa omului doar ca să te adulmec mai bine, clipește șiret coiotul. Îl cred, nu îl cred? Năpârca iar pe sânișor mi se ivește. 55

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WHAT’S LEFT FOR ME What’s left for me ventures out on the highway at night and renounces the self. He picks wildflowers, pronounces syllables round as a gypsy tent, then gives me piggyback rides amid solitary coyotes in full bloom. “I’m afraid of you, vile animal,” I’d like to tell the good-for-nothing, but he’s so spiteful I decide to read my own palm: “On your lifeline, eventually something remains, but something else takes leave; luck shows up late at night: stars above, death near. “What’s left for you isn’t a suitable match. Doesn’t want you. Won’t take you for a wife.” “There were times I’d start to howl as soon as you set foot in town. Fawning, I’d slink past your house, all the better to sniff your scent, my dear”— and the sly coyote winks. Do I believe him? Do I believe him not? Again, the asp raises its head on my small breast. P USTEBLUME , I SSUE 2

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—La Roma! Șuieră atunci nerăbdător coiotul. Ai încredere! La Roma! Dacă talentul se mai ia, coiotule, a nu te gudura pe lângă înaltele porţi se învaţă de unul singur. Unii obișnuiesc să și moară așa. Fie și Roma! Legea morală își gâdilă gâtlejul cu mine.

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“To Rome!” the coyote hisses, impatient. “Show trust! To Rome!” If talent is contagious, coyote, you must learn on your own not to fawn before the high gates. Some even happen to die this way. Let it be Rome. Morality clears a bad tickle in its throat with me.

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ABOUT DÁMASO ALONSO The Spanish poet Dámaso Alonso was an integral, though lesser known and less frequently translated, member of The Generation of 1924-1925, an avant-garde group of Spanish poets who set out to develop their revolutionary artistic vision. This vision initially had to do with a “pure” form of poetry that tended to avoid social and political concerns and that placed emphasis on imagery, specifically the creation of bold new metaphors. The seeming aloofness of these poems from social concerns gained them criticism for being a “dehumanized” approach to literature. I would argue, on the other hand, that this poetry requires a certain sensibility among the members of its audience with which they may perceive its deeply humanistic aspect, which deals with the basic themes of human existence that precede the relatively superficial layers of social and political trends. The “new realities” created by the poetic vocabulary of this group are in fact those which reconnect the reader to these themes. In Hijos de la Ira (1944), one of his later works, Alonso creates a poetic landscape of archetypal images drawn from nature. Just as the natural world can be considered an organism functioning as a whole, so the natural imagery found in Alonso’s work can be seen as working in thematic alignment to form a cohesive body of poetic thought. I have kept these notions in mind constantly in translating his work, and have strived to reconstruct his images in English. In doing so, I have focused on maintaining the purity of his unadorned physical descriptions. To cloak Alonso’s imagery too vividly and too specifically would be to lessen the scope of his archetypal scenes. The simple profundity embodied in his imagery seems to reflect his working with a deeply ingrained connection to the very spirit of the Spanish language. Alonso’s use of the language demonstrates a full awareness of his words’ etymological beginnings. This awareness contributes to the ability of his language to appear simple and 59

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unornamented on the surface while at once giving way to great philosophical depths. Reading the poems in the Spanish, I was moved by these depths, and I struggled with the fact that the scope of the words seemed to dissipate when transferred to the English. My solution to this problem was to try and match, where I could, the etymological impact of the words in English. This involved my investigating the Latin roots of some of Alonso’s word choices, and then choosing the English word I found to be the most resonant with his prescribed meaning. In the earlier works from Poemas Puros, it was the concise rhythm of the words to which the English became a threat. In both cases then, in the earlier and later works, there is a mechanism, whether musical or visual, that lulls the reader into the poetry; it is from this level of immersion that the philosophical landscape of the poem opens up. As a translator, I have strived to facilitate this process of lulling in the English, while at the same time preserving the integrity of the emotional core of the poem.

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GOTA PEQUEÑA Gota pequeña, mi dolor. La tire al mar. Al hondo mar. Luego me dije: ¡A tu sabor ya puedes navegar! Mas me perdió la poca fe… La poca fe de mi cantar. Entre onda y cielo naufragué. Y era un dolor inmenso el mar.

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SLENDER DROP A slender drop, my sorrow. I cast it to the sea. To the deep sea. Then I said to myself: As your heart would dictate, now you may seek! But I lost what little faith… What little faith within my song. I was shipwrecked between sky and wave. And it was a heavy sorrow, the sea.

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LOS CONTADORES DE ESTRELLAS Yo estoy cansado. Miro esta ciudad —una ciudad cualquiera— donde ha veinte años vivo. Todo está igual. Un niño inútilmente cuenta las estrellas en el balcón vecino. Yo me pongo también… Pero él va más deprisa: no consigo alcanzarle: Uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco… No consigo alcanzarle: Uno, dos… tres… cuatro… cinco…

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STAR COUNTERS I am weary. I look at this city —it could be any— where I have lived for twenty years. All is the same. A child uselessly counts the stars from a balcony nearby. I begin to count also… but he goes more quickly: I cannot catch up: One, two, three, four, five… I cannot catch up: One, two… three… four… five…

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ABOUT NICOLAS BORN Nicolas Born (b. 1937) was a German writer from Duisberg in NordrheinWestphalen whose novels and collections of lyric poetry had earned him a certain amount of renown in the 1960s and 70s before his early death from cancer in 1979. With Rolf Dieter Brinkmann, His left-wing politics and antiwar convictions factor prominently in his work, but he never takes a didactic tone. “Da hat er gelernt was krieg ist, sagt er,” is the only poem that may be directly discussing his family’s experience in World War II; at least, Born’s father was a soldier deployed on the eastern front who returned home in 1947.

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DA HAT ER GELERNT WAS KRIEG IST, SAGT ER I Er hat eine Ahnung von Nichtwiederkommen in der Allee die sich hinten ordentlich verengt wie auf Fotos. Aber kaum verschwunden ist er wieder da kaum bin ich vom Fenster weg wird er riesengroß auf Fronturlaub der immer (sagt er zu seiner Frau) der letzte sein kann. Er ist im ganzen eine Überraschung seine Stimme klingt im Korridor etwas anders (es ist eher die Stimme seines Bruders der vermisst ist) du du sagt er und sieht sie komisch an und fragt – da bin ich weg – wo ist der Junge. Sie stöbern mich auf ziehn mich hervor knallrot die Augen zu aus dem Einmach-Regal. Als hätte ich Spaß gemacht lachen sie und verlangen von mir das gleiche ich muß umarmt und geküsst werden bis ich schreie.

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HE LEARNED THERE WHAT WAR IS, HE SAYS I He knows something about not coming back in the Allee that neatly narrows in the back as in pictures. Barely disappeared there he is again I’ve barely left the window and there he is gigantic on leave always for (as he tells his wife) what could be the last time. He is altogether a surprise his voice sounds somewhat different in the corridor (rather it is the voice of his brother who is missing) hey hey he says and looks at her strangely and asked – and then I was gone – where’s the boy they track me down pull me beet-red eyes closed out of the cupboard. As if I’d been playing a joke they laugh and want the same from me I have to be hugged and kissed until I scream.

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Nachdem ich ihn nicht mehr gemocht habe mag ich ihn wieder er spürt das sofort und nimmt von mir was er kriegen kann. Es ist das Erlebnis der Weite sagt er das man in Russland hat es ist ein rätselhaftes Land. Später einigt er sich auf die Bezeichnung: Land der Gegensätze. Er ist da in voller Überlebensgröße will auf einmal wieder mein Vater sein das kostet ihn Geld und viele Worte. Ich liebe ihn nur wenn ich reite auf dem hohen Nacken dieses Vatermenschen der in Russland war. II Theodor Anton Friebe (40) schlug mich hart er zog mich hoch aus Zimmerecken teilte die Schläge in Rationen ein (zwischendurch drehte er sich um ob er noch die Zustimmung meiner Mutter hatte sie weinte nickte aber tapfer zu jeder Ration). Er ist ein Arschloch habe ich geschrien wenn Vater kommt der macht ihn kaputt doch Theo Friebe (Asthmatiker, stellvertr. Bürgerm.) sagte: Dein Vater ist mein Freund wenn du mich erpressen willst hier ist dein Vater und nahm das Bild in beide Hände 69

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After I did not like him anymore I like him again he senses that right off and takes from me what he can get. It’s this feeling of open space he says that you get in Russia it’s a mysterious land. Later he settles on the label: land of contrasts. There he is larger than life wants to suddenly be my father again that costs him money and lots of talk. I love him only when I’m riding on the high shoulders of this father-person who was in Russia. II Theodor Anton Friebe (40) slugged me hard he dragged me out of room corners rationed out the blows (in between he turned around to see if he still had my mother’s approval she cried but nodded bravely to every blow). He’s an asshole I screamed when Father comes he’ll rip him apart but Theo Friebe (asthmatic, deputy mayor) said: your father is my friend if you want to threaten me here is your father and took the picture in both hands P USTEBLUME , I SSUE 2

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und trieb mich vor sich damit her ich wich meinem Vater zur Seite aus doch Friebe entwischte ich nicht: Hier ist dein Vater entschuldige dich. Friebe schlug mich hart in Milligen am Rhein bis ich mich entschuldigte mit Nasenbluten bei meinem Vater der danach wieder ganz ruhig auf dem Klavier stand. III Da hat er gelernt was Krieg ist, sagt er brachte aber kein Streifschuß mit keinen Splitter im Rücken der nicht zur Ruhe kommt der ihn verändert hätte später als ich wehrpflichtig wurde. Er brachte Geschichten von Feindberührung zum lebendigen Erzählen beim Bier er brachte das Geständnis Angst gehabt zu haben was ihn mir nicht glaubhafter machte aber reinlich stand er da und reimte alles „Churchill hat gesagt: Wir haben das falsche Schwein geschlachtet“ und liebte mich ab 47 wieder von vorn er war nicht amputiert und nicht gar nicht zurückgekommen ich weiß nicht ich glaube ich atmete trotzdem auf.

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J AUFFRET

TRANS . BY

D ELANEY, J OHNSON , B OS - P USTEBLUME

LORUM IPSUM While the lines of classical English verse are closed off with solid end rhymes, even when French poetry rhymes it often leaves a tail of unpronounced consonants and vowels dangling from its ends. Just because these letters are silent does not mean they are superfluous, however; in French poetry, both the spoken and the unspoken elements of words constitute a rhyme, which results in an intriguing disparity between poetry as it is written and poetry as it is read. An example of this phenomenon is illustrated by the difference between masculine and feminine rhymes in English and in French. In English, the criterion for distinguishing between the two types of rhymes is the placement of the stressed syllable—a spoken trait. In French, however, feminine rhymes are those that use words ending in a silent “e” or “es.” The effect of this femes are centered within the end words of the lines, such as “rock” and “demolished,” and in the manner of hard masculine rhymes, such as “passé” and “cassé,” other pairs have their rhymes brou feminine rhymes in English and in French. In English, the criterion for distinguishing between the two types of rhymes is the placement of the stressed syllable—a spoken trait. In French, however, feminine rhymes are those that use words ending in a silent “e” or “es.” The effect of this femes are centered within the end words of the lines, such as “rock” and “demolished,” and in the manner of hard masculine rhymes, such as “passé” and “cassé,” other pairs have their rhymes brou feminine rhymes in English and in French. In English, the criterion for distinguishing between the two types of rhymes is the placement of the stressed syllable—a spoken trait. In French, however, feminine rhymes are those that use words ending in a silent “e” or “es.” The effect of this femes are centered within the end words of the lines, such as “rock” and “demol

P USTEBLUME - J AUFFRET

TRANS . BY

D ELANEY, J OHNSON , B OS

and pushed me in front of him with it I dodged my father sideways but Friebe I couldn’t escape: Here is your father apologize. Friebe slugged me hard in Millingen am Rhein until I apologized nose bleeding to my father who afterwards stood once again quite calmly on the piano. III He learned there what war is, he says but brought back no scars no shrapnel in the back that won’t leave him alone that would have changed him later when I came of age for the army. He brought stories of enemy contact for lively telling over beer he confessed to having been afraid which didn’t make him more conceivable to me but plainly he stood there spinning the story “Churchill said: we have slaughtered the wrong pig” and from ’47 on loved me all over again he didn’t have an amputation and didn’t not come back at all I don’t know I think I sighed with relief just the same.

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IV Er hat überlebt er kehrte als Heimkehrer heim Februar 47 es war hell und kalt die Pappelallee knüppelhart gefroren. Am Friedhof nahm er die Mütze ab er hob die Hand er grüßte von unten herauf ein schmaler älterer Mann. Als er im Haus war sah es so aus als nähme er sich eine Frau sie sahen sich an er umarmte sie sie riß sich los und weinte am Schrank. In der Nacht noch kamen Verwandte zur Begrüßung mit Eigenheimer Korn mein Vater war sofort betrunken sie haben ihn ins Bett gebracht ich trug die Schuhe hinterher. Alles fing ganz langsam wieder an die Schwierigkeiten hielten die Ehe aus vorläufig gab ich ihm keine Antwort er hatte den Krieg verloren. V Er sprach ich bin gemäßigt gab immer öfter Adenauer recht baute ein Haus kämpfte in der Familie um das letzte Wort hatte als Angestellter Erfolg erzog seine Kinder falsch mit Erfolg 73

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IV He survived he came home to his homecoming February ’47 was bright and cold the Pappelallee frozen rock-hard. In the graveyard he took his cap off he raised his hand he waved from down below a small older man when he was in the house it looked as if he was taking a wife they looked at each other he took her in his arms she tore herself away and cried against the cabinet. Later in the night relatives came to welcome him with moonshine my father was drunk instantly they brought him to bed I carried the shoes in behind. Everything began again very slowly the marriage survived the difficulties for the time being I didn’t reply he had lost the war. V He said I’ve gone moderate agreed more and more that Adenauer was right built a house fought for the last word with the family had success in the office brought his children up wrong with success P USTEBLUME , I SSUE 2

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trank gern lachte gern sah fern wurde immer gemäßigter wenn er betrunken war schämte er sich seiner Träne nicht er protestierte mit einer Herzattacke gegen die Frühschwangerschaft der Töchter aber was dabei herauskam das drückte er an sein Herz. Er stritt mit ihr wer wen überlebe sie gab ihm unrecht als sie starb.

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drank often laughed often softened while watching tv became even more moderate when he was drunk he wasn’t ashamed of his tears he protested his daughters’ early pregnancies with a heart attack but what came out of them he pressed to his heart. He fought with her over who would outlive whom she proved him wrong when she died.

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ABOUT OSWALD DE ANDRADE Oswald de Andrade's collection Pau Brasil was a sort of call-to-arms for Brazil's avant-garde in the early part of the century. It seems like the best way to describe it is one part Whitman, two parts AE Housman, or Robert Frost. de Andrade attempts to capture the spirit of modern Brazil, but his techniques celebrate the provincial. The main difficulty I had was determining and translating the meanings of his more dated colloquialisms. I am drawn to modern and contemporary Brazilian poetry, in part because of its hopefulness, something which de Andrade accomplishes with extreme grace.

POEMAS DE COLONIZACAO NEGRO FUGIDO O Jerónimo estava numa fazenda Socando pilão na cozinha Entraram Grudaram nele O pilão tombou Ele tropeçou E caiu Montaram nele

CASO A mulatinha morreu E apareceu Berrando no moinho Socando pilão

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POEMS OF COLONIZATION RUNAWAY SLAVE Jeronimo was in the barn Mashing a pestle in the kitchen They came in And fought with him The pestle tumbled He tripped And fell They jumped on him

THE CASE The little mulatta died And appeared Yowling in the mill Mashing a pestle

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O CAPOEIRA -Qué apanhá sordado? -O qué? -Qué apanhá? Pernas e cabeças na calçada

LEVANTE Contam que houve uma porção de enforcados E as caveiras espetadas nos postes De fazenda desabitada Uivam de noite No vento do mato

A ROÇA Os cem negros da fazenda Comiam feijão e angu Abóbora chicória e cambuquira Pegavam uma roda de carro Nos braços

SENHOR FEUDAL Se Pedro Segundo Vier aqui Com história Eu boto ele na cadeia

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CAPOEIRA What’d you get, soldier? What? What’d you get? Legs and heads on the sidewalk

THE RAISING They say that there were people hanged And their skulls were stuck in poles in the ground By the empty farm They howl at night The wind in the woods

THE CLEARED LAND A hundred slaves in the farm Ate beans and manoic Chicory pumpkin and cambuquira They held a cartwheel In their arms

FEUDAL MAN If Peter the Second Came here With a story I’d stick him in jail

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ABOUT ROBERTO BOLANO For the translator, Bolano is that rara avis, the mid-Atlantic Hispanic. Most Latin-Americans stick to their regional language; alas, the effort drives many to folklore. Then there are the transplants (Kundera is one) who write Spanish or Portuguese as though it were French; alas, they pine for their Nobel. And finally there are the exiles, who stuck to Spanish; fortunately. for some of them became remarkable poets (the neglected Giner de los Rios) or inventive, semi-surrealists (like Paco Ayala). Bolano is special, if not unique. First, while fecund., he is no Balzacian realist; as far as bis language is engaged, he is as much Argentine, Mexican or Chilean. Second, not being a taxonomist or politically committed, his language is without class or location; it is the naturalspeak of his time, whever, and he has a great ear..Third, if his decor is often so local that one can recognize a particular block, his mental habitat was Chile. Chile was his climate, the environment in which events will occur -- even when he is at his most Spanish. Finally, vaya con cuidado: his laguage is transparent, sprightly and terribly real. If the translator gets it right, the Reader will think Bolano's ideas, his thoughhts, his talk, his asides are the way people really think and talk, that therefore they are real and believable; alas, for Bolano's real game is Elsewhere, a country all bi's inhabit, bi-linguals especially. Kindly note that no American (no, not even Henry James) got Europe right, and Nabokov is the only European I can think of who got America right. -- K.B.

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PUTAS ASESINAS – Te vi en la televisión, Max, y me dije éste es mi tipo. – (El tipo mueve la cabeza obstinadamente, intenta resoplar, no lo consigue.) – Te vi con tu grupo. ¿Lo llamas así? Tal vez digas banda, pandilla, pero no, yo creo que lo llamas grupo, es una palabra sencilla y tú eres un hombre sencillo. Os habíais quitado las camisetas y todos exhibíais el torso desnudo, pechos jóvenes, bíceps fuertes aunque no tan musculados como quisierais, lampiños la mayoría, la verdad es que no presté mucha atención, a los pechos, a los tórax de los otros sino al tuyo algo en ti me llamó la atención, tu cara, tus ojos que miraban hacia el lugar en donde estaba la cámara (probablemente sin saber que te estaban grabando y que en nuestras casas te veíamos), unos ojos sin profundidad, distintos de los ojos que tendrás dentro de un rato, que miraban la gloria y la felicidad, los deseos saciados y la victoria, esas cosas que solo existen en el reino del futuro y que más vale no esperar pues nunca llegan. – (El tipo mueve la cabeza de izquierda a derecha. Insiste con los resoplidos, suda.) – En realidad, verte en la televisión fue como una invitación. Imagina por un instante que yo soy una princesa que espera. Una princesa impaciente. Una noche te veo, te veo porque de alguna manera te he buscado (no a ti sino al príncipe que también tú eres, y lo que representa el príncipe). Tu guapo danza con las camisetas atadas alrededor del cuello o de la cintura. Podría decirse también: enrolladas, que según los viejos más inútiles significa voluta o empedrar con rollos o cantos, pero que para mí, que soy joven e inútil, significa una prenda de vestir enrollada alrededor del cuello, del tórax de la cintura. Los viejos y yo vamos por caminos distintos, ya lo puedes apreciar. Pero no nos distraigamos de lo que de verdad nos interesa. Todos vosotros sois jóvenes, todos ofrecéis a la noche vuestros himnos, algunos, los que encabezan las marchas, 82

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MURDEROUS WHORES –I saw you on television, Max, and I told myself this is my kind of guy. –(He moves his head obstinately, he tries to snort and doesn’t succeed.) –I saw you with your group. Do you call it that? Maybe you say band, gang, but no, I think you call it your group, it’s a simple word and you’re a simple man. You’d all taken off your t-shirts and you showed off your naked chests, strong but not quite as muscled as you’d like, smooth and hairless, the truth is I didn’t pay much attention to the muscles, except for yours, something about you caught my attention, your face, your eyes that looked towards the camera (probably without realizing that they were filming and that in our houses we were watching you), eyes without depth, different than your eyes right now, infinitely different than the eyes you’ll soon have, eyes that saw glory and happiness, satiated desires and victory, those things that only exist in the realm of the future and that aren’t worth waiting for because they never come. –(He moves his head from left to right. Snorting insistently, he sweats.) –Actually, seeing you on television was like an invitation. Imagine for a moment that I am a waiting princess. [113] An impatient princess. One night I see you, I see you because somehow I have been looking for you (not for you but the prince that is also you, and what the prince represents). Your group dances with your t-shirts tied around your necks or your waists. One could also say: rolled, which according to the most useless old people means a volute or rendered smooth or flat by means of pressure with a cylinder, but for me, because I’m young and useless, means an article of clothing rolled up around the neck, the chest, or the waist. The old people and I go our own ways, you can already see that. But let’s not get distracted from what truly matters. You’re all young, you offer up your songs to the night, some of you, those that lead P USTEBLUME , I SSUE 2

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enarbolan banderas. El locutor, un pobre diablo, se queda impresionado por el baile tribal en el que tú participas. Lo comenta con el otro locutor. Están bailando, dice su voz de palurdo, como si en nuestras casas, delante del televisor, no nos diéramos cuenta. Sí, se divierten, dice el otro locutor. Otro palurdo. A ellos, en efecto, parece divertirles vuestro baile. En realidad sólo se trata de una conga. En la primera fila son ocho o nueve. En la segunda fila son diez. En la tercera fila son siete u ocho. En la cuarta fila son quince. Todos unidos por unos colores y por ir desnudos de cintura para arriba (con las camisetas atadas o enrolladas alrededor de la cintura o en el cuello o a modo de turbante en la cabeza) y por recorrer bailando (puede que la palabra bailar sea excesiva) la zona en donde previamente os han encerrado. Vuestro baile es como un relámpago en medio de la noche de primavera. El locutor, los locutores, cansados pero aún con una chispa de entusiasmo, celebran vuestra iniciativa. Recorréis las gradas de cemento de derecha a izquierda, llegáis a las vallas metálicas y retrocedéis de izquierda a derecha. Los que encabezan cada fila portan una bandera, que puede ser la de vuestros colores o la española; el resto, incluido el que cierra la fila, agita banderas de dimensiones más reducidas o bufandas o las camisetas de las que previamente os habéis despojado. La noche es primaveral, pero aún hace frió, por lo que vuestro gesto adquiere finalmente la contundencia que deseabais y que en el fondo se merece. Después las filas se deshacen, comenzáis a entonar vuestros cantos, algunos alzáis el brazo y saludáis a la romana. ¿Sabes cuál es ese saludo? Ciertamente lo sabes y si o no lo sabes en este momento lo intuyes. Bajo la noche de mi ciudad, tú saludas en dirección a las cámaras de televisión y desde mi casa yo te veo y decido ofrecerte mi saludo, contestar a tu saludo. – (El tipo niega con la cabeza, los ojos parecen llenársele de lágrima, los hombros le tiemblan. ¿Su mirada es be amor? ¿Su cuerpo, antes que su mente, intuye lo que inevitablemente vendrá? Ambos fenómenos, el de las lágrimas y el de los temblores, pueden obedecer al esfuerzo que en ese instante realiza, vano esfuerzo, o a un sincero arrepentimiento que como una garra se prende de todos sus nervios.)

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the dances, brandish flags. The announcer, a poor devil, is impressed by your tribal dance. He discusses it with the other announcer. They’re dancing, says his hick voice, as if in our houses, in front of the television, we hadn’t realized. Yes, they’re having fun, says the other announcer. Another hick. Your dance seems to entertain them immensely. It’s actually only a conga. There are eight or nine of you in the first line. In the second line there are ten. In the third there are seven or eight. In the fourth there are fifteen. You’re all united by the colors and by the fact that you’re all naked from the waist up (with your t-shirts tied or rolled around your waists or your necks or worn turban-style on your heads) and by the way you dance all over (the word dance might be excessive) the area that had previously closed you in. Your dance is like lightning splitting the spring night. The announcer, the announcers, tired but still with a spark of enthusiasm, celebrate your initiative. You dance over the cement stands from right to left, arrive at the metal gates and return from left to right. Those leading each line carry a flag, that might be your colors or the Spanish flag; the rest, even the last one in line, wave smaller flags or scarves [114] or the t-shirts you’d stripped off. It’s a spring night, but still cold, so that your gesture finally acquires the force you were going for, that it ultimately deserves. Then the lines break apart, you start to sing your songs, some of you lift your arms in a fascist salute. Do you know that one? Of course you do and if you can’t think at the moment you can feel it. Under the night of my city, you salute in the direction of the television cameras and from my house I see you and I decide to offer you my greeting, to answer yours.

–(He shakes his head, his eyes seem to fill with tears, his shoulders tremble. Is his look one of love? Does his body, before his mind, sense what will inevitably come? Both phenomena, the tears and the trembling, could be caused by the effort he’s making, vain effort, or by a sincere repentance that seizes his nerves like a claw.)

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– Así pues, me quito la ropa, me quito las bragas, me quito el sujetador, me ducho, me pongo perfume, me pongo bragas limpias, me pongo una sujetador limpio, me pongo una blusa negra, de seda, me pongo mis mejores pantalones vaqueros, me pongo calcetines blancos, me pongo mis botas, me pongo una americana, la mejor que tengo, y salgo al jardín oscuro que tanto te gustó. Todo en menos de diez minutos. Normalmente no soy tan rápida. Digamos que ha sido tu danza la que ha acelerado mis movimientos. Mientras yo me visto, tú danzas. En alguna dimensión distinta a ésta. En otra dimensión y en otro tiempo, como un príncipe y una princesa, como la llamada ígnea de los animales que se aparean en primavera, yo me visto y tú, dentro del televisor, bailas frenéticamente, tus ojos fijos en algo que podría ser la eternidad o la llave de la eternidad si no fuera porque tus ojos, al mismo tiempo, son planos, están vaciados, nada dicen. – (El tipo asiente repetidas veces. Lo que antes eran gestos de negación o desesperación se convierten en gestos de afirmación, como si de improviso lo hubiera asaltado una idea o tuviera una nueva idea.) – Finalmente, sin tiempo para mirarme en el espejo, para comprobar el grado de perfección de mi atuendo, aunque probablemente si hubiera tenido tiempo tampoco me habría querido ver reflejada en el espejo (lo que tú y yo hacemos es secreto), dejo mi casa con sólo la luz del porche encendida, me subo a la moto y atravieso las calles en donde gente más extraña que tú y que yo se prepara para pasar un sábado divertido, un sábado a la altura de sus expectativas, es decir un sábado triste y que no llegará jamás a encarnarse en lo que fue soñado, planeado con minuciosidad, un sábado como cualquier otro, es decir un sábado peleón y agradecido, bajito de estatura y amable, vicioso y triste. Horribles adjetivos que no me cuadran, que me cuesta aceptar, pero que en última instancia siempre admito como un gesto de despedida. Y yo y mi moto atravesamos esas luces, esos preparativos cristianos, esas expectativas sin fondo, y desembocamos en la Gran Avenida del estadio, solitaria todavía, y nos detenemos bajo los arcos de los puentes de acceso, pero fíjate qué curioso, presta atención, cuando nos detenemos la sensación que siento bajo las piernas es queel mundo sigue moviéndose, como efectivamente sucede, supongo que lo 86

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–So, I take off my clothes, I take off my panties, I take off my bra, I shower, I put on perfume, I put on clean panties, I put on a clean bra, I put on a black silk shirt, I put on my best jeans, I put on white socks, I put on my boots, I put on a jacket, the best I have, and I go out into the garden, because to reach the street first I have to cross that dark garden you liked so much. All in less than ten minutes. Normally I’m not so fast. Let’s say that it was your dance that accelerates my movements. While I get dressed, you dance. In another dimension. In some other dimension and some other time, like a prince and a princess, like the igneous call of animals that mate in the springtime, I dress and you, in the television, dance frenetically, your eyes fixed on something that could be eternity or the key to eternity if it wasn’t that, at the same time, your eyes are flat, they’re empty, they say nothing. [115] –(He nods repeatedly. What had been gestures of denial or desperation become gestures of affirmation, as if out of the blue an idea has assaulted him or he has a new idea.) –Finally, without time to look at myself in the mirror, to check the degree of perfection of my outfit, although probably if I’d had time I wouldn’t have wanted to see myself reflected in the mirror (what you and I do is secret), I leave my house with only the porch light on, I get on my scooter and drive through the streets where people stranger than you and I get ready for Saturday night, a Saturday night at the height of their expectations, that is, a miserable Saturday night in which one’s wildest dreams will never ever be realized, a Saturday night like any other, that is, a quarrelsome and grateful Saturday night, short of stature and friendly, depraved and sad. Horrible adjectives that don’t suit me, that I find hard to accept, but which I always use as a last resort, like a wave goodbye. And my scooter and I drive through those lights, those christian preparations, those bottomless expectations, and we come out onto Broadway in front of the stadium, still deserted, and we stop under the arches of the access ramps, but, and this is really curious, so pay attention, when we stop the sensation I feel under my legs is that the world keeps on moving, like it really does, you know, the Earth moves under my feet, under the wheels of P USTEBLUME , I SSUE 2

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sabes, la Tierra se mueve bajo mis pies, bajo las ruedas de mi moto, y por un instante, por una fracción de segundo, el encontrarte carece de importancia, te puedes marchar con tus amigos, puedes ir a emborracharte o tomar el autobús que te devolverá a tu ciudad. Pero la sensación de abandono, como si me follara un ángel, sin penetrarme pero en realidad penetrándome hasta las tripas, es breve, y justo mientras dudo o mientras la analizo sorprendida se abren las rejas y la gente comienza a salir del estadio, bandada de buitres, bandada de cuervos. – (El tipo agacha la cabeza. La alza. Sus ojos intentan componer una sonrisa. Sus músculos faciales se contraen en uno o varios espasmos que pueden significar muchas cosas: somos el uno para el otro, piensa en el futuro, la vida es maravillosa, no cometas una tontería, soy inocente, arriba España.) – Al principio, buscarte es un problema. ¿Serás igual, visto a cinco metros de distancia, que en la tele? Tu altura es un problema: no sé si eres alto o de estatura mediana (bajo no eres), tu ropa es un problema: a esa hora ya empieza a hacer frío y sobre tu torso y sobre los torsos de tus compañeros nuevamente cuelgan camisetas e incluso chaquetas; alguno sale con la bufanda enrollada (como una voluta) alrededor del cuello e incluso alguno se ha cubierto media cara con la bufanda. La luna cae vertical sobre mis pisadas en el cemento. Te busco con paciencia, aunque siento al mismo tiempo la inquietud de la princesa que contempla el marco vacío donde debiera refulgir la sonrisa del príncipe. Tus amigos son un problema elevado al cubo: son una tentación. Los veo, soy vista por ellos, soy deseada, sé que me bajarían los pantalones sin pensárselo dos veces, algunos merecen sin duda mi compañía al menos tanto como tú, pero en el último instante siempre te soy fiel. Por fin, apareces rodeado de bailarines de conga, entonando himnos cuyas letras son premonitorias de nuestro encuentro, con el rostro grave, imbuido de una importancia que sólo tú sabes sopesar, ver en su exacta dimensión; eres alto, bastante más alto que yo, y tienes los brazos largos exactamente tal como me los imaginé después de verte en la tele, y cuando te sonrío, cuando te digo hola, Max, no sabes qué decir, al principio no sabes qué decir, sólo reírte, un poco menos estentóreamente que tus camaradas, pero sólo te ríes, príncipe de la máquina del tiempo, te ríes pero ya no caminas.

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my scooter, and for an instant, for a fraction of a second, finding you is not important, you could leave with your friends, you could go get drunk or take the bus back to your city. But the sensation of abandon, as if I were being fucked by an angel, without penetrating me yet penetrating me to my very guts, is brief, and just as I begin to doubt or think to analyze it, surprised, the doors open and people begin to leave the stadium, a flock of vultures, a flock of crows. [116] –(He lowers his head. He raises it. His eyes try to compose a smile. His facial muscles contract in one or more spasms that could mean many things: we are made for each other, think about the future, life is beautiful, don’t do anything silly, I’m innocent, arriba España.) –At first, looking for you is problematic. Will you look the same five meters away as you did on TV? Your height is problematic: I don’t know if you’re tall or medium-height (you’re not short), your clothes are problematic: by now it’s already begun to get cold and you and your companions once again sport t-shirts and even jackets; one comes out with his scarf rolled around his neck, and one has even covered half his face with his scarf. The moon falls vertically on my footprints on the cement. I look for you patiently, though at the same time I feel the inquietude of a princess who contemplates the empty frame from which a prince’s smile should shine. Your friends are problematic to the extreme: they’re a temptation. I see them, I am seen by them, I am desired, I know that they would drop their pants for me without thinking twice, some without a doubt deserve my company at least as much as you, but in the end I’m always faithful to you. Finally, you appear surrounded by conga dancers, singing songs whose lyrics foretell our meeting, with a serious face, imbued with a self-importance that only you can weigh, can see in its exact dimension; you are tall, quite a bit taller than me, and you have long arms just as I imagined after seeing you on TV, and when I smile at you, when I say hello, Max, you don’t know what to say, at first you don’t know what to say, you only laugh, a little less loudly than your comrades, but you only laugh, prince from the time machine, you laugh but you stop walking.

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– (El tipo la mira, achica los ojos, trata de serenar su respiración y en la medida en que ésta se regulariza pareciera que piensa: inspirar, espirar, pensar, inspirar, espirar, pensar...) – Entonces, en lugar de decirme no soy Max, intentas seguir con tu grupo y por un momento me domina el pánico, un pánico que en la memoria se confunde más se detienen y se vuelven y me consideran con sus ojos fríos, y yo te digo Max, tenemos que hablar, y entonces tú me dices no soy Max, ése no es mi nombre, qué pasa, te estás quedando conmigo, me confundes con alguien o qué, y entonces yo te digo perdona, te pareces muchísimo a Max, y también te digo que quiero hablar contigo, de qué, pues de Max, y entonces tú te sonríes y te quedas ya definitivamente atrás, tus compañeros se van, te gritan el nombre del bar desde donde saldréis de esta ciudad, no hay pierde, dices tú, allí nos veremos, y tus camaradas se van haciendo cada vez más pequeño, yo conduzco la moto con mano firme y aprieto el acelerador a fondo, la Gran Avenida a esta hora está casi vacía, sólo la gente que vuelve del estadio, y tú detrás de mí enlazas mi cintura, siento en mi espalda tu cuerpo que se pega como un molusco a la roca, y el aire de la avenida, en efecto, es frío y denso como las olas que conmueven al molusco, tú te pegas a mí, Max, con la naturalidad de quien intuye que el mar es no sólo un elemento hostil sino un túnel del tiempo, te enrollas a mi cintura como antes tu camiseta estaba enrollada en tu cuello, pero esta vez la conga la baila el aire que entra como un torrente por el tubo estriado que es la Gran Avenida, y tú te ríes o dices algo, tal vez hayas visto entre la gente que se desliza bajo el manto de los árboles a unos amigos, tal vez sólo estás insultando a unos desconocidos, ay, Max, tú no dices adiós ni hola ni nos vemos, tú dices consignas más viejas que la sangre, pero ciertamente no más viejas que la roca a la que te agarras, feliz de sentir las olas, las corrientes submarinas de la noche, pero seguro de no ser arrastrado por ellas.

– (El tipo murmura algo ininteligible. Una especie de baba le cae por la barbilla, aunque tal vez sólo sea sudor. Su respiración, no obstante, se ha tranquilizado.) 90

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–(He looks at her, squints his eyes, he tries to calm his breathing, laboriously, as though he’s thinking: inhale, exhale, think, inhale, exhale, think…) [117] –Then, instead of saying I’m not Max, you start to follow your friends and for a moment I’m overcome with panic, a panic that in retrospect has more to do with laughter than with fear. I follow you without knowing very clearly what I’ll do next, but you and three more stop and turn and look at me with your cold eyes, and I say Max, we have to talk, and then you tell me I’m not Max, that’s not my name, what’s up, you trying to fuck with me, you’ve mistaken me for someone or what, and then I say excuse me, you look a lot like Max, and then I say I want to talk to you, about what, well about Max, and then you smile and now you’ve definitely lagged behind, your companions go on, they shout the name of the bar where they’ll meet to leave the city, no problem, you say, see you there, and your comrades get smaller and smaller, just like the stadium recedes into the distance, I drive the scooter with a steady hand, I press the accelerator hard, Broadway at this hour is almost empty, except for the people coming from the stadium, and behind me you wrap your arms about my waist, I feel your body against my back, sticking like a mollusk to the rock, and the air on the avenue is cold and dense like the waves that rock the mollusk, you stick to me, Max, with the naturalness of someone who senses that the sea is not only a hostile element but also a time-tunnel, you roll yourself about my waist as before your t-shirt was rolled on your neck, but this time the air dances the conga, air that like a torrent enters the hollow tunnel that is Broadway, and you laugh or say something, maybe you’ve seen some friends among the people who stroll by under the trees, maybe you’re only insulting some stranger, oh, Max, you don’t say goodbye nor hello nor see you, you use expressions older than time, but certainly no older than the rock to which you cling, happy to feel the waves, the submarine currents of the night, but safe from being swept away by them. [118] –(He murmurs something unintelligible. A kind of drool slips down his chin, although maybe it’s only sweat. His breathing, however, has calmed.)

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– Y así, indemnes, llegamos a mi casa en las afueras. Te sacas el casco, te tocas los huevos, me pasas una mano por los hombros. Tu gesto esconde una dosis insospechada de ternura y de timidez. Pero tus ojos no son todavía lo suficientemente tiernos ni tímidos. Te gusta mi casa. Te gustan mis cuadros. Me preguntas por las figuras que en ellos aparecen. El príncipe y la princesa, te contesto. Parecen los Reyes Católicos, dices. Sí, en alguna ocasión a mí también se me ha ocurrido pensarlo, unos Reyes Católicos que se espían en un perpetuo sobresalto, en un perpetuo hieratismo, pero para mí, para la que yo soy al menos durante quince horas diarias, son un príncipe y una princesa, los novios que atraviesan los años y que son heridos, asaeteados, los que pierden los caballos durante la cacería e incluso los que nunca han tenido caballos y huyen a pie, sostenidos por sus ojos, por una voluntad imbécil que algunos llaman bondad y otros natural buen talante, como si la naturaleza pudiera ser adjetivada, buena o mala, salvaje o doméstica, la naturaleza es la naturaleza, Max, desengáñate, y estará siempre ahí, como un misterio irremediable, y no me refiero a los bosques que se queman sino a las neuronas que se queman y al lado izquierdo o al lado derecho del cerebro que se quema en un incendio de siglos y siglos. Pero tú, ánima bendita, encuentras hermosa mi casa y encima preguntas si estoy sola y luego te sorprendes de que me ría. ¿Crees que si no estuviera sola te habría invitado a venir? ¿Crees que si no estuviera sola hubiera recorrido la ciudad de una punta a la otra en mi moto, contigo a mi espalda, como un molusco pegado a una roca mientras mi cabeza (o mi mascarón de proa) se hunde en el tiempo en el empeño único de traerte sano y salvo a este refugio, la roca verdadera, la que mágicamente se eleva desde sus raíces y emerge? Y de una manera práctica: ¿crees que habría llevado un casco de repuesto, un casco que vela tu rostro de las miradas indiscretas, si mi intención no hubiera sido traerte aquí, a mi más pura soledad? – (El tipo agacha la cabeza, asiente, sus ojos recorren las paredes del cuarto hasta el ultimo resquicio. Una vez más, su transpiración vuelve a manar como un río caprichoso, ¿una falla en el tiempo?, y las cejas se ven inundadas de gotas que penden, amenazantes, sobre sus ojos.)

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–And thus, unharmed, we arrive at my house in the suburbs. You take off your helmet, you adjust your crotch, you throw your arm about my shoulders. Your gesture conceals an unexpected dose of tenderness and shyness. But your eyes are still not sufficiently tender or shy. You like my house. You like my paintings. You ask me about the figures that appear in them. The prince and the princess, I reply. They look like Ferdinand and Isabella, you say. Yes, at some point it had also occurred to me, the Catholic Kings at the remotest borders of the kingdom, the Catholic Kings caught perpetually startled, perpetually hieratical, but to me, the me that I am at least fifteen hours a day, they are a prince and a princess, a couple, who traverse the years and are wounded, shot full of arrows, who lose their horses during the hunt, or else never even had horses and flee on foot, sustained by their eyes, by an idiotic will that some call goodness and others call a natural willingness, as if nature could be qualified, good or bad, wild or domestic, nature is nature, Max, open your eyes, it will always be there, like an irremediable mystery, and I don’t mean the forests that burn, but the neurons that burn and on the left side or the right side of the brain they burn in a fire that lasts centuries and centuries. But you, blessed soul, you find my house beautiful and you even ask if I’m alone and then you’re surprised when I laugh. Do you think if I weren’t alone I’d have invited you here? Do you think if I weren’t alone I’d have driven all over the city on my scooter, with you behind me, like a mollusk stuck to a rock while my head (or my figurehead) plunges into time with the sole purpose of bringing you healthy and unharmed to this refuge, the true rock, the rock [119] that magically rises up from its roots and emerges? And in practical terms: do you think I’d have brought an extra helmet, a helmet that veils your face from indiscreet stares, if I didn’t intend to bring you here to my purest solitude? –(He lowers his head, nods, his eyes roaming every last crack in the walls of the room. Once again, his breathing begins to flow like a capricious river— a flaw in time?—and his eyebrows are inundated with drops that hang, menacing, above his eyes.)

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– Tú no sabes nada de pintura, Max, pero intuyo que sabes mucho de soledad. Te gustan mis Reyes Católicos, te gusta la cerveza, te gusta tu patria, te gusta el respeto, te gusta tu equipo de fútbol, te gustan tus amigos o compañeros o camaradas, la banda o grupo o pandilla, el pelotón que no conocías, y no te gusta el desorden, no te gustan los negros, no te gustan los maricas, no te gusta que te falten al respeto, no te gusta que te quiten el sitio. En fin, son tantas las cosas que no te gustan que en el fondo te pareces a mí. Nos acercamos, tú y yo, desde los extremos del túnel, y aunque lo único que vemos son nuestras siluetas seguimos caminando resueltamente hacia nuestro encuentro. En la mitad del túnel por fin podrán nuestros brazos entrelazarse, y aunque allí la oscuridad es tan grande que no podremos contemplar nuestros rostros, sé que avanzaremos sin temor y que nos tocaremos la cara (tú lo primero que me tocarás será el culo, pero eso también es parte de tu deseo de conocer mi rostro), palparemos nuestros ojos y pronunciaremos acaso una o dos palabras de reconocimiento. Entonces me daré cuenta (entonces podría darme cuenta) de que no sabes nada de pintura, pero sí de soledad, que es casi lo mismo. Algún día nos encontraremos en el medio de ese túnel, Max, y yo palparé tu cara, tu nariz, tus labios, que suelen expresar mejor que nadie tu estupidez, tus ojos vaciados, los pliegues minúsculos que se forman en tus mejillas cuando sonríes, la falsa dureza de tu rostro cuando te pones serio, cuando cantas tus himnos, esos himnos que no comprendes, tu mentón que a veces parece una piedra pero que más a menudo, supongo, parece una hortaliza, ese mentón tuyo tan típico, Max (tan típico, tan arquetípico que ahora pienso que es él quien te ha traído, quien te ha perdido). Y entonces tú y yo podremos volver a hablar, o hablaremos por primera vez, pero hasta entonces deberemos revolcarnos, quitarnos nuestras ropas y enrollarlas en nuestros cuellos o en los cuellos de los muertos. Esos que viven en la voluta inmóvil. – (El tipo llora, también pareciera que intenta hablar, pero en realidad son hipidos, espasmos provocados por el llanto los que mueven sus mejillas, sus pómulos, el lugar donde se adivinan los labios.)

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–You don’t know anything about painting, Max, but I sense you know a lot about solitude. You like my Catholic Kings, you like beer, you like your fatherland, you like respect, you like your soccer team, you like your friends or companions or comrades, the band or group or gang, the crowd that saw you linger behind talking with a hot chick you don’t know, and you don’t like disorder, you don’t like blacks, you don’t like fags, you don’t like it when they don’t respect you, you don’t like it when they take your seat. Actually, you don’t like so many things that deep down you’re like me. We approach each other, you and I, from the ends of the tunnel, and although we can only see our silhouettes we keep walking resolutely to the encounter. In the middle of the tunnel our arms will finally entwine, and although the darkness there is so deep we won’t be able to see our expressions, I know we’ll press forward without fear and we’ll touch each other’s faces (the first thing you touch is my ass, but that’s also part of your desire to know my face), we’ll feel each other’s eyes and maybe pronounce one or two words of recognition. Then I’ll realize (then I’d be able to realize) that you don’t know a thing about painting, but much about solitude, which is almost the same. Some day we will find ourselves in the middle of this tunnel, Max, and I will touch your face, your nose, your lips, which usually express your stupidity more than [120] anything else, your empty eyes, the tiny dimples that form in your cheeks when you smile, the false hardness of your face when you get serious, when you sing your songs, those songs you don’t understand, your chin that sometimes seems like a rock but more often, I suppose, seems like a vegetable, that typical chin of yours, Max (so typical, so archetypical that now I think it’s what brought you here, it is what ruined you). And then you and I will be able to speak again, or we will speak for the first time, but until then we should fool around, rip off our clothes and roll them around our necks or around the necks of the dead. Those that live in the unmoving spiral. –(He weeps, it also seems as though he tries to speak, but it’s actually a hiccup, a spasm provoked by the sobs that move his cheeks, his cheekbones, the place where his lips might be.)

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– Como dicen los gángsters, no es nada personal, Max. Por supuesto, en esa aseveración hay algo de verdad y algo de mentira. Siempre es algo personal. Hemos llegado indemnes a través de un túnel del tiempo porque es algo personal. Te he elegido a ti porque es algo personal. Por descontado, nunca antes te había visto. Personalmente nunca hiciste nada contra mí. Esto te lo digo para tu tranquilidad espiritual. Nunca me violaste. Nunca violaste a nadie que yo conociera. Puede incluso que nunca hayas violado a nadie. No es algo personal. Tal vez yo esté enferma. Tal vez todo es producto de una pesadilla que no soñamos ni tú ni yo, aunque te duela, aunque el dolor sea real y personal. Sospecho, sin embargo, que el fin no será personal. El fin, la extinción, el gusto con el que todo esto se acaba irremediablemente. Y aún más, personal o impersonalmente, tú y yo volveremos a entrar en mi casa, a contemplar mis cuadros (el príncipe y la princesa), a beber cervezas, a desnudarnos, yo volveré a sentir tus manos que recorren con torpeza mi espalda, mi culo, mi entrepierna, buscando tal vez mi clítoris, pero sin saber dónde se encuentra exactamente, volveré a desnudarte, a coger tu polla con mis dos manos y a decirte que la tienes muy grande cuando en realidad no la tienes muy grande, Max, y eso deberías haberlo sabido, y volveré a metérmela en la boca y a chupártela como probablemente nadie te la había chupado, y luego te desnudaré y dejaré que tú me desnudes, una de tus manos ocupada en mis botones, la otra sosteniendo un vaso de whisky, y te miraré a los ojos, esos ojos que vi en la televisión (y que volveré a soñar) y que hicieron que fuera a ti a quien eligiera, y volveré a repetirme que no es nada personal, volveré a decirte, a decirle a tu recuerdo nauseabundo y eléctrico que no es nada personal, y aun entonces tendré mis dudas, tendré frío como ahora tengo frío, intentaré recordar todas tus palabras, hasta las más insignificantes, y no podré hallar en ellas consuelo. – (El tipo vuelve a sacudir la cabeza con gestos de afirmación. ¿Qué intenta decir? Imposible saberlo. Su cuerpo, mejor dicho sus piernas, experimentan un fenómeno curioso: por momentos un sudor tan abundante y espeso como el de la frente las cubren, sobre todo por la cara interna, por momentos pareciera que tiene frío y la piel, desde las ingles hasta las rodillas, adquiere une textura áspera, si no al tacto sí a la vista.) 96

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–As gangsters always say, it’s nothing personal, Max. Of course, this assertion has some truth to it and some falsehood. It’s always something personal. We have arrived unscathed through a time-tunnel because it’s something personal. Needless to say, I’d never seen you before. Personally you never did anything to hurt me. I’m telling you this for your own peace of mind. You never raped me. You never raped anyone that I know. It could be that you’ve never even raped anyone at all. It’s nothing personal. Maybe I’m sick. Maybe it’s all part of a nightmare dreamed by neither you nor I, although it hurts you, although the pain is real and personal. I suspect, however, that the end will not be personal. That is, the extinction, the gesture with which all this ends irremediably. And what’s more, personally or impersonally, you and I will enter my house again, to contemplate my paintings (the prince and the princess), to drink beers, to tear off our clothes, I will again feel your hands running clumsily over my back, my ass, [121] between my legs, maybe searching for my clitoris, but without knowing where it is exactly, I will again undress you, take your dick in my two hands and tell you how big you are when actually it’s not very big, Max, you should have known that, and I will again put it in my mouth and blow you like you’ve probably never been blown before, and then I will undress you and I will let you undress me, one of your hands occupied with my buttons, the other holding a glass of whiskey, and I will gaze into your eyes, those eyes that I saw on television (and which I will dream of again) that made me choose you, and I will repeat that it’s nothing personal, I will tell you over and over, tell your nauseating, electric memory that it’s nothing personal, and even then I’ll have my doubts, I will be shivering with cold like I am now, I will try to remember all your words, even the most insignificant ones, and I won’t be able to find comfort in them. –(He shakes his head again, affirmatively.

What is he getting at?

Impossible to tell. His body, or rather, his legs, undergo a curious phenomenon: sometimes they are covered with sweat, as copious and thick as that on his forehead, sometimes it’s as if he’s cold and his skin, from his groin to his knees, acquires a rough texture, if not to the touch then to the eye.)

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– Tus palabras, lo reconozco, han sido amables. Temo, sin embargo, que no has pensado suficientemente bien lo que decías. Y menos aún lo que yo decía. Escucha siempre con atención, Max, las palabras que dicen las mujeres mientras son folladas. Si no hablan, bien, entonces no tienes nada que escuchar y probablemente no tendrás nada que pensar, pero si hablan, aunque sólo sea un murmullo, escucha sus palabras y piensa en ellas, piensa en su significado, piensa en la que dicen y en lo que no dicen, intenta comprender qué es lo que en realidad quieren decir. Las mujeres son putas asesinas, Max, son monos ateridos de frío que contemplan el horizonte desde un árbol enfermo, son princesas que te buscan en la oscuridad, llorando, indagando las palabras que nunca podrán decir. En el equívoco vivimos y planeamos nuestros ciclos de vide. Para tus amigos, Max, en ese estadio que ahora se comprime en tu memoria como el símbolo de la pesadilla, yo sólo fui una buscona extraña, un estadio dentro del estadio, al que algunos llegan después de bailar una conga con la camiseta enrollada en la cintura o en el cuello. Para ti yo fui una princesa en la Gran Avenida fragmentada ahora por el viento y el miedo (de tal modo que la avenida en tu cabeza ahora es el túnel del tiempo), el trofeo particular después de una noche mágica colectiva. Para la policía seré una página en blanco. Nadie comprenderá jamás mis palabras de amor. Tú, Max, ¿recuerdas algo de lo que dije mientras me la metías? – (El tipo mueve la cabeza, la señal es claramente afirmativa, sus ojos húmedos dicen que sí, sus hombros tensos, su vientre, sus piernas que no dejan de moverse mientras ella no lo mira, tratando de desatarse, su yugular que palpita.) – ¿Recuerdas que dije el viento? ¿Recuerdas que dije las calles subterráneas? ¿Recuerdas que dije tú eres la fotografía? No, en realidad no lo recuerdas. Tú bebías demasiado y estabas demasiado ocupado con mis tetas y con mi culo. Y no entendiste nada, de lo contrario habrías salido corriendo a la primera oportunidad. Eso ahora te gustaría, ¿verdad, Max? Tu imagen, tu otro yo corriendo por el jardín de mi casa, saltando la verja, alejándote calle arriba a grandes zancadas, como un atleta de mil quinientos metros, a medio vestir aún, tarareando alguno e tus himnos para infundirte valor, y luego, tras veinte minutos de 98

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–Your words, I admit, have been friendly. I fear, however, that you didn’t think much about what you said. And even less about what I said. Always listen attentively, Max, to the words women say while they’re being fucked. If they don’t say anything, well, then you won’t have to listen and probably won’t have anything to think about, but if they talk, even if it’s only a murmur, listen to their words and think about them, think about their meaning, think about what they say and what they don’t say, try to understand what it is they really want to say. Women are murderous whores, [122] Max, they are monkeys, stiff with cold, that contemplate the horizon from the branches of a sick tree, they are princesses that search you out in the darkness, weeping, scrutinizing the words they will never be able to say. We live and plan out our life cycles in ambiguity. For your friends, Max, in that stadium that now solidifies in your memory like a nightmare symbol, I was only a strange seeker, a stadium inside the stadium, to which some arrive after dancing the conga with a rolledup t-shirt around their waist or their neck. For you I was a princess on Broadway, now fragmented by wind and fear (such that the Broadway in your head is now a time-tunnel), a personal trophy after a night of collective magic. For the police I will be a blank page. No one will ever understand my words of love. You, Max, do you remember anything I said while you were fucking me? –(He moves his head, the sign is clearly affirmative, his damp eyes say yes, his tense shoulders, his stomach, his legs that don’t stop moving when she’s not looking at him, trying to untie himself, his throbbing jugular.) –Do you remember that I said the wind? Do you remember that I said the subterranean streets? Do you remember that I said you are the photograph? No, you really don’t remember. You drank too much and you were too busy with my tits and my ass. And you didn’t understand a thing, or else you would have taken off running the first chance you got. You’d like that now, wouldn’t you, Max? Your image, your other you running through the garden, jumping the fence, disappearing up the street with great strides, like a 1500-meter runner, half-dressed even, humming one of your songs to yourself for courage, and P USTEBLUME , I SSUE 2 99

carrera, exhausto, en el bar donde te esperan los miembros de tu grupo o banda o peña o brigada o pandilla o como se llame, llegar y beber una jarra de cerveza, decir chavales no tenéis idea de lo que me ha ocurrido, han intentado matarme, une jodida puta del extrarradio de la ciudad, de las afueras de la ciudad y del tiempo, une puta del más allá que me vio en la tele (¡salimos en la tele!) y que me llevó en su moto y que me la chupó y que me ofreció su culo y que me dijo palabras que al principio me sonaron misteriosas pero que luego entendí, o mejor dicho sentí, une puta que me dijo palabras que sentí con el hígado y con los huevos y que al principio me parecieron inocentes o cachondas o producto de mi lanza que le llegaba hasta las entrañas, pero que luego ya no me parecieron tan inocentes, chavales, os lo voy a explicar, ella no paraba de murmurar o susurrar mientras la cabalgaba, ¿normal, no?, pero no era normal, no tenía nada de normal, una puta que susurra mientras se la follan, y entonces yo escuché lo que decía, chavales, camaradas, escuché sus putas palabras que se abrían paso como una barca en un mar de testosterona, y entonces fue como si ese mar de testosterona, ese mar de semen se estremeciera ante una voz sobrenatural, y el mar se encogió, se replegó en sí mismo, el mar desapareció, chavales, y todo el océano se quedó sin mar, toda la costa sin mar, sólo piedras y montañas, precipicios, cordilleras, fosas oscuras y húmedas de miedo, y sobre esa nada la barca siguió navegando y yo la vi con mis dos ojos, con mis tres ojos, y dije no pasa nada, no pasa nada, cariño, cagado de miedo, fosilizado de miedo, y luego me levanté intentando que no se me notara, que no se me notara el cangueli, y dije que iba al baño a desaguar el canario, a jiñar un ratito, y ella me miró como si hubiera recitado a John Donne, chavales, como si hubiera recitado a Ovidio, y yo retrocedí sin dejar de mirarla, sin dejar de mirar la barca que avanzaba inconmovible por un mar de nada y de electricidad, como si el planeta Tierra estuviera naciendo otra vez y sólo yo estuviera allí para dar fe del nacimiento, ¿pero dar fe a quién, chavales?, a las estrellas, supongo, y cuando me vi en el pasillo fuera del alcance de su mirada, de su deseo, en vez de abrir la puerta del baño me deslicé hasta la puerta de la calle y atravesé el jardín rezando y salté la tapia y me puse a correr calle arriba como el último atleta de Maratón, el que no trae noticias de victoria sino de derrota, el que 100

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then, twenty minutes later, exhausted, in the bar where the members of your group or band or circle or squad or gang or whatever it’s called are waiting for you, arriving and drinking a glass of beer, saying guys you have no idea what just happened to me, [123] they tried to kill me, a fucking whore from the outskirts of the city, from the suburbs, from time, a crazy bitch from the afterlife that saw me on TV (we got on TV!) and brought me on her scooter and gave me a blow job and offered me up her pussy and told me words that at first sounded mysterious but then I understood, or rather, felt, a whore who whispered words to me that I felt in my gut and my balls, words that at first seemed simply horny, innocent enough, words inspired by my dick inside of her, by my dick filling her up completely, words which suddenly didn’t seem so innocent, guys, let me explain, she didn’t stop murmuring or whispering as I rode her— normal, right?—but it wasn’t normal, it wasn’t remotely normal, a bitch who whispers while you fuck her, and then I listened to what she was saying, I listened to her fucking words that pressed forth like a boat on a sea of testosterone, and then it was as if that sea of testosterone, that sea of semen shuddered before a supernatural voice, and the sea shrank, withdrew into itself, the sea disappeared, and all the ocean bed was left without sea, all the coast without a sea, only rocks and mountains, precipices, ranges, ditches dark and damp with fear, and over this nothingness the boat kept navigating, pushing onward, and I saw it with my own two eyes, my three eyes, and I said it’s ok, it’s ok, baby, scared shitless, fossilized with fear, and then I got up hoping she wouldn’t notice, that she wouldn’t notice the fear, and I said I was going to the bathroom to take a piss, to take a shit, and she looked at me as though I had recited John Donne, as if I had quoted Ovid, and I backed away without letting my eyes off her, without letting my eyes off that boat that advanced implacable over a sea of nothing and electricity, as if planet Earth was being born again and only I was there to witness the birth—to bear witness to whom?—to the stars I suppose, and when I found myself in the hall beyond the reach of her gaze, [124] of her desire, instead of opening the bathroom door I slipped out the street door and crossed the garden praying and jumped the fence and sprinted up the street like the last runner in the Marathon, the one P USTEBLUME , I SSUE 2

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no es escuchado ni celebrado ni nadie le tiende un cuenco de agua, pero que llega vivo, chavales, y que además comprende la lección: en ese castillo no entraré, esa senda no la recorreré, esas tierras no atravesaré. Aunque me señalen con el dedo. Aunque todo esté en mi contra. – (El tipo mueve la cabeza afirmativamente. Está claro que quiere dar a entender su conformidad. El rostro, debido al esfuerzo, se le enrojece notablemente, las venas se hinchan, los ojos se le desorbitan.) – Pero tú no escuchaste mis palabras, no supiste discernir de mis gemidos aquellas palabras, las últimas, que acaso te hubieran salvado. Te escogí bien. La televisión no miente, ésa es su única virtud (ésa y las viejas películas que dan de madrugada), y tu rostro, junto a la valla metálica, después de la conga aplaudida unánimemente, me anticipaba (me apresuraba) el desenlace inevitable. Te he traído en mi moto, te he desnudado, te he dejado inconsciente, te he atado de manos y de pies a una vieja silla, te he puesto un esparadrapo en la boca no porque tema que tus gritos alerten a nadie sino porque no deseo escuchar tus palabras de súplica, tus lamentables balbuceos de perdón, tu débil garantía de que tú no eres así, de que todo era un juego, de que estoy equivocada. Posiblemente estoy equivocada. Posiblemente todo sea un juego. Posiblemente tú no seas así. Pero es que nadie es así, Max. Yo tampoco era así. Por supuesto, no te voy a hablar de mi dolor, un dolor que tú no has provocado, al contrario, tú has provocado un orgasmo. Has sido el príncipe perdido que ha provocado un orgasmo, puedes sentirte satisfecho. Y yo te di la oportunidad de escapar, pero tú fuiste también el príncipe sordo. Ahora ya es tarde, está amaneciendo, debes de tener las piernas entumecidas, acalambradas, tus muñecas están hincadas, no deberías haberte movido tanto, cuando empezamos te lo advertí, Max, esto es inevitable. Acéptalo de la mejor manera que puedas. Ahora no es hora de llorar ni de recordar congas, amenazas, palizas, es hora de mirar dentro de ti y tratar de comprender que a veces uno se marcha inesperadamente. Estás desnudo en mi cámara de los horrores, Max, y tus ojos siguen el movimiento pendular de mi navaja, como si ésta fuera un reloj o el cuco de un reloj de pared. Cierra los ojos, Max, no hace falta que sigas mirando, cierra los ojos 102

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that doesn’t bear news of victory but of defeat, the one that isn’t noticed or celebrated and no one holds a cup of water out to him, but he arrives alive, and what’s more, he’s learned his lesson: I will not enter that castle, I will not follow that path, I will not cross those lands. Even if they beckon to me. Even if the whole world is up against me. –(He moves his head in agreement. It is clear he wants to make known his approval. His face, with the effort, reddens noticeably, the veins become swollen, his eyes bulge.) –But you didn’t listen to me, you couldn’t distinguish from my moans those words, the last ones, that maybe would have saved you. I chose you well. Television doesn’t lie, that is its only virtue (that and the old movies they show in the early hours of the morning), and your face, next to the metal gates, after the unanimously applauded conga, anticipated, even hastened the inevitable ending. I have brought you here on my scooter, I’ve undressed you, I’ve left you unconscious, I’ve bound you hands and feet to an old chair, I’ve covered your mouth with surgical tape not for fear that your shouts would alert anyone but because I don’t want to hear your pleading words, your pitiful babbling apologies, your lame declarations that you aren’t like that, that it was all a game, that I’m mistaken. Maybe I am mistaken. Maybe it was all a game. Maybe you aren’t like that. But no one’s like that, Max. I wasn’t like that. Of course, I’m not going to tell you about my pain, pain that you didn’t cause, on the contrary, you caused an orgasm. You were the lost prince that made me orgasm, you should be proud of yourself. And I gave you a chance to escape, but you were also the deaf prince. Now it’s too late, it’s growing light, [125] you must have numb, cramped legs, your wrists are swollen, you shouldn’t have moved about so much, when we began I warned you, Max, this is inevitable. Accept it the best way you can. It’s too late to cry or to remember congas, threats, beatings, you must look inside yourself and try to understand that sometimes one goes unexpectedly. You’re naked in my chamber of horrors, Max, and your eyes follow the pendular movements of my Swiss army knife, as if it were a watch on a chain or the little bird in a cuckoo clock. Close your eyes, Max, you don’t need to keep watching, close your eyes and think as hard as you can about P USTEBLUME , I SSUE 2

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y piensa con todas tus fuerzas en algo bonito… – (El tipo en vez de cerrar los ojos los abre con desesperación y todos sus músculos se disparan en un último esfuerzo: su impulso es tan violento que la silla a la que está fuertemente atado cae con él al suelo. Se golpea la cabeza y la cadera, pierde el control del esfínter y no retiene la orina, sufre espasmos, el polvo y la suciedad de las baldosas se adhieren a su cuerpo mojado.) – No te voy a levantar, Max, estás bien así. Mantén los ojos abiertos o ciérralos, es igual, piensa en algo bonito o no pienses en nada. Está amaneciendo pero para el caso lo mismo daría que estuviera anocheciendo. Tú eres el príncipe y llegas en la mejor hora. Eres bienvenido no importa cómo vengas ni de dónde vengas, si te ha traído una moto o has llegado por tu propio pie, si sabes lo que te aguarda o lo ignoras, si aplaciste mediante engaños o a sabiendas de que te enfrentabas con tu destino. Tu rostro, que hasta hace poco sólo era capaz de expresar estupidez o rabia u odio, ahora se recompone y sabe expresar aquello que sólo es posible adivinar en el interior de un túnel, en donde confluyen y se mezclan el tiempo físico y el tiempo verbal. Avanzas resuelto por los pasillos de mi palacio deteniéndote apenas los segundos necesarios para contemplar las pinturas de los Reyes Católicos, para beber un vaso de agua cristalina, para tocar con la yema de los dedos el azoque de los espejos. El castillo está silencioso sólo, pero en el fondo sabes que no estás solo. Dejas atrás tu mano levantada, tu torso desnudo, tu camiseta enrollada alrededor de la cintura, tus himnos guerreros que evocan la pureza y el futuro. Este castillo es tu montaña, que tendrás que escalar y conocer con todas tus fuerzas pues después ya no habrá nada, la montaña y su ascensión te costarán el precio más pisó la Tierra. habrá nada, la montaña y su ascensión te costarán el precio más pisó la Tierra. Despójate del miedo y del arrepentimiento, Max, pues ya estás dentro del castillo y aquí sólo existe el movimiento que ineluctablemente te llevará a mis brazos. Ahora estás en el castillo y oyes sin volverte las puertas que se cierran. Avanzas en medio del sueño por pasillos y salas de piedra desnuda. ¿Qué armas llevas, Max? Sólo tu soledad. Sabes que en algún lugar te estoy esperando. Sabes que yo también estoy desnuda. Por momentos sientes mis lágrimas ves el fluir de mis lágrimas por la piedra oscura y crees que ya me has encontrado, pero la 104

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something beautiful… –(He, instead of closing his eyes, opens them desperately and all his muscles twitch with a last effort: the impulse is so violent that the chair he’s tied to falls with him to the floor. He hits his head and his side, loses control of his bowels and can’t hold in his urine, he suffers violent spasms, the dust and filthiness of the tiles stick to his wet body.) –I’m not going to pick you up, Max, you’re fine right there. Keep your eyes open or closed, it doesn’t matter, think about something beautiful or don’t think at all. It’s getting to be morning but it wouldn’t matter either if night were falling. You are the prince and you arrive at the right time. You are welcome no matter how you come or when you come, if you’ve been brought on a scooter or if you walked here yourself, whether you know what awaits you or not, whether you were tricked into coming here or came fully aware that here you would face your destiny. Your face, which until recently was only capable of expressing stupidity or rage or hate, now recomposes itself and can express that which only can be glimpsed inside the tunnel, where physical time and verbal time converge and become one. You move, determined, through the halls of my palace hardly pausing long enough to contemplate the paintings of the Catholic Kings, [126] to drink a glass of crystalline water, to touch the quicksilver mirrors with the tip of your finger. The castle only looks silent, Max. Sometimes you think that you’re alone, but deep down you know that you’re not alone at all. You leave behind your raised hand, your naked chest, your t-shirt rolled about your waist, your warrior songs that evoke purity and the future. This castle is your mountain, which you must use every last effort to scale and to understand because beyond it there will be nothing, the mountain and the ascent will cost you the highest price you could possibly pay. Think about what you’re leaving behind, what you could leave, what you should have left and think too about chance, which is the vilest criminal that ever set foot on earth. Relinquish fear and repentance, Max, because you’re already inside the castle and here all that exists is the movement that brings you ineluctably to my embrace. Now you’re inside the castle and you hear without looking back the doors that close behind you. You move through the dream P USTEBLUME , I SSUE 2

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habitación está vacía y eso te desconsuela y al mismo tiempo te enardece. Sigue subiendo, Max. La siguiente habitación está sucia y no parece la de un castillo. Hay un viejo televisor que no funciona y un catre con dos colchones. llora en alguna parte. Ves dibujos infantiles, ropa vieja cubierta de moho, sangre seca y polvo. Abres otra puerta. Llamas a alguien. Le dices que no llore. Sobre el polvo del pasillo van quedando tus pisadas. Por momentos crees que las lágrimas gotean del techo. No tiene importancia. Para el caso lo mismo daría que brotaran de la punta de tu polla. Por momentos todas las habitaciones parecen la misma habitación estragada por el tiempo. Si miras el techo creerás ver una estrella o un cometa o un reloj de cuco surcando el espacio que dista de los labios del príncipe a los de la princesa. Por momentos todo vuelve a ser como siempre. El castillo es oscuro, enorme, frío, y tú estás solo. Pero sabes que hay otra persona escondida en alguna parte, sientes sus lágrimas, sientes su desnudez. En sus brazos te aguarda la paz, el calor, y en esa esperanza avanzas, sorteas cajas llenas de recuerdos que nadie volverá a mirar, maletas con ropa vieja que alguien olvidó o no quiso tirar a la basura, y de vez en cuando la llamas, a tu princesa, ¿dónde estás?, dices con el cuerpo aterido de frío, haciendo castañetear los dientes, justo en medio del túnel, sonriendo en la oscuridad, tal vez por primera vez sin miedo, sin ánimo de provocar miedo, animoso, exultante, lleno de vida, tanteando en la oscuridad, abriendo puertas, cruzando pasillos que te acercan a las lágrimas, en la oscuridad, guiándote únicamente por la necesidad que tu cuerpo tiene de otro cuerpo, cayendo y levantándote, y por fin llegas a la cámara central, y por fin me ves y gritas. Yo estoy quieta y no sé de qué naturaleza es tu grito. Sólo sé que por fin nos hemos encontrado, y que tú eres el príncipe vehemente y yo soy la princesa inclemente.

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down hallways and through rooms of naked rock. Do you have any weapons, Max? Only your solitude. You know that somewhere I am waiting for you. You know that I too am naked. Sometimes you feel my tears, you see the flowing of my tears over the dark rock and you think you’ve found me, but the room is empty and this fills you with despair but also with a burning passion. Go on, Max. The next room is dirty and doesn’t seem to belong to a castle. There is an old television that doesn’t work and a cot with two cushions. Someone cries somewhere. You see childish drawings, old clothes covered in mold, dried blood and dust. You open another door. You call out to someone. You tell them not to cry. You leave your footprints in the dust of the hall. Sometimes you think that the tears fall in drops from the ceiling. It doesn’t matter. It would make no difference if they fell from the tip of your dick. Sometimes all the rooms seem to be the same room, devastated by time. If you look at the ceiling you will think you see a star or a comet or a [127] cuckoo clock cleaving the space between the lips of the prince and the lips of the princess. Sometimes everything goes back to normal. The castle is dark, enormous, cold, and you are alone. But you know there’s another person hidden somewhere, you feel their tears, you feel their nakedness. In their embrace peace awaits, and heat, and with this hope you move forward, negotiating around boxes full of mementos that no one will ever look at, suitcases of old clothes that someone forgot or couldn’t throw out, and every so often you call out to your princess, where are you?, you say, your body stiff with cold, teeth chattering, in the middle of the tunnel, smiling in the darkness, perhaps for the first time without fear, incapable of fear, spirited, exultant, full of life, feeling your way in the darkness, opening doors, crossing halls that lead you closer to the tears, in the darkness, guided solely by the need that your body feels for another body, falling and pulling yourself up, and finally you come to the central chamber, and finally you see me and you cry out. I am still and I cannot guess the nature of your cry. I only know that finally we’ve found each other, and you are the vehement prince and I am the inclement princess.

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DUTCH TREAT: THE JOYS OF POETRY FROM THE NETHERLANDS For some, the Netherlands conjures up tulip fields and windmills. For others, a haven for soft drugs and regulated red light districts. In terms of cultural legacy, we think primarily of art: Rembrandt, Van Gogh and Mondrian. Where does this leave Dutch literature? It may come as a surprise to most English-speakers that the Netherlands has a rich, historic literary tradition. Erasmus is certainly the most widely recognized Dutch writer and thinker. Rembrandt’s contemporary, the playwright and poet Joost van den Vondel, was widely considered the finest Dutch writer from the 17th century, or any era. Just before the British poet John Milton completed Paradise Lost, Vondel composed Lucifer, his own epic poem about the battle between Lucifer and the archangels. Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft and Constantijn Huygens were also significant poets of the 17th century. Skipping ahead a century or so, the 1880s gave rise to a significant literary movement in the Netherlands: the Tachtigers (literally, ’80-ers). Several Tachtigers, including Willem Kloos and Frederik van Eeden, founded the journal De Nieuwe Gids (“The New Guide”) in which these poets advocated that content should match style and that hierarchical authority had no place in art. Martinus Nijhoff came to the scene slightly after the Tachtigers, and unlike the latter, he favored simple language over clever wordplay. Although Nijhoff wrote sonnets, he used accessible, everyday language rather than heightened, ‘poetic’ diction. His sonnet “De moeder de vrouw” (translated here as “Mother woman”) is a good example of this fresh simplicity applied to a structured poetic form. The subject matter, too – a bridge, a canal, and a boat – describes a commonplace Dutch scene.

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Almost a century later, Gerrit Komrij, Dutch poet, writer and playwright (and Dutch Poet Laureate from 2000 – 2004), composed a tongue-in-cheek parody of Nijhoff ’s “De moeder de vrouw” entitled “Het water de stank” (translated here as “Water stench”). In this poem, Komrij copies Nijhoff ’s elegantly simple sonnet form and rhyme scheme. While Nijhoff describes a transcendent experience sitting by the side of a canal and watching a boat sail by – which triggers associations of the speaker’s mother and sublime redemption – Komrij takes the reader under the bridge to a place of filth and putrefaction. Here, an oil tanker crashes, metaphorically giving birth to a foul oil slick. It seems as if Komrij has taken the sublime imagery of motherhood from Nijhoff ’s poem and has debased it, revealing the less than idyllic world beneath what appears to be a charming canal scene. Essentially, Komrij provides a post-industrial look at how what had been pristine in Nijhoff ’s time had been transformed into a polluted cesspool by the late 20th century. In translating these two poems I have attempted to remain true to both the original structure and meaning. While I have dispensed with the rhyme of the original, I have attempted to keep the sonnet form intact, for the most part, and have retained the original pentameter and stanza division. While translating from Dutch requires some alterations in word order, I have attempted to capture the general structure of the original. In translating from Dutch, one also has to take into account the vast Dutch lexicon and the abundance of compound nouns. While in Dutch it is normal to string several nouns together to create new, innovative compound nouns, this is not possible in English. Unfortunately, some of the delightful wordplay also gets lost in translation. Komrij comically rhymes Bommel, the name of the town in Nijhoff ’s poem, with the word rommel – literally a mess or a jumble. I chose to translate rommel as “clutter”, capturing the sense – but not the humorous rhyme – of the original. The final note of Komrij’s poem echoes this light touch. Life is reduced to parody. Rather than an actual cigar butt, the last image of the poem is that of a trick cigar – a discarded item from a joke store, which, nonetheless, could ignite with disastrous consequences. Like Nijhoff and Komrij, I have kept the diction simple in an attempt to recreate the ‘sfeer’, or atmosphere, of P USTEBLUME , I SSUE 2

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the original poems. I have also included translations of two poems by the contemporary Dutch writer Eva Gerlach. This is a pseudonym used by Margaret Dijkstra. Before her identity was revealed, however, some believed ‘Eva Gerlach’ was a pseudonym for Komrij. Gerlach won the prestigious P.C. Hooft Prize for Poetry in 2000. Again, I have attempted to convey the unusual and evocative imagery of the original poems in my translations.

DE MOEDER DE VROW Ik ging naar Bommel om de brug te zien. Ik zag de nieuwe brug. Twee overzijden die elkaar vroeger schenen te vermijden, worden weer buren. Een minuut of tien dat ik daar lag, in 't gras, mijn thee gedronken, mijn hoofd vol van het landschap wijd en zijd laat mij daar midden uit de oneindigheid een stem vernemen dat mijn oren klonken. Het was een vrouw. Het schip dat zij bevoer kwam langzaam stroomaf door de brug gevaren. Zij was alleen aan dek, zij stond bij 't roer, en wat zij zong hoorde ik dat psalmen waren. O, dacht ik, o, dat daar mijn moeder voer. Prijs God, zong zij, Zijn hand zal u bewaren.

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MOTHER WOMAN I went off to Bommel to see the bridge. I saw the new bridge. Two opposing sides that once seemed to avoid one another were neighbors again. Ten minutes or so I lay in the grass, having drunk my tea, my head full of the landscape, far and wide. There in that boundlessness I let myself learn a voice that resounded in my ears. It was a woman. The ship that she sailed passed slowly downstream under the bridge. She stood alone on deck, steering the helm, and the songs she sung I took to be psalms. O, I thought, O if my mother were there. Praise God, she sang, His hand will guide you home.

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HET WATER DE STANK Er was veel rommel op de brug te zien. Ik zag onder de brug. Naar alle zijden leek zich de vuile troep daar te verspreiden. De lucht was zurig. Een minuut of tien dat ik daar stond, in 't gas, mijn kleren stonken, mijn neus toonde verwantschap met wit krijt laat mij daar midden in de smerigheid een knal vernemen dat mijn oren klonken. Asjemenou. Het tankschip dat daar voer spleet langzaam open, alsof het moest baren. Het baarde een olievlek, met veel rumoer, en wat ik rook wist ik dat walmen waren. O, dacht ik, o, hier helpt geen mallemoer. Ons lot ligt in de hand van klapsigaren.

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WATER STENCH There was a great clutter up on the bridge. I looked under the bridge. In all directions the grime-sodden waste seemed to spread itself. The air was sour. Ten minutes or so I stood there, in the gas, my clothes stinking. My nose showed a fellowship with white chalk. There in the middle of the corruption a crack resounded crisply in my ears. Golly. The oil tanker sailing there split slowly open, as if bearing child. It bore an oil stain with such uproar, and what I smelled I knew were fumes of smoke. O, I thought, it’s all gone to the dogs now; our fate lies in the hands of trick cigars.

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WIT Kijken naar hem was beter dan hem aanraken. Beter dan zijn huid te voelen was hem zo zien dat hij niet verschilde van ochtendblad, laken of ander kreukbaar oppervlak, hoe dat zich overal vouwde over hem, je zijn bloed ingepakt zag en hij daardoorheen leefde alsof het niets was dat hij het had, zoveel huid, die aan 1 stuk door losliet en groeide op hem en hoe zijn hoofd hetzelfde was als zijn benen of ballen, oksels, schemerend tussen haren het wit dat pantser voor moest stellen maar je kon het met je nagel openmaken.

LIEVELINGSDIEREN Tussen de stenen hollen de platte, brede pissebedden omlaag naar het donker. Vergeten toen het nog koud was te kijken: hoe overwintert een dier dat zo lijkt op herinnering, zo afvalkleurig, met zijn hoofd naar binnen en doodstil bij de minste aanraking. Ik weet een kind dat van ze houdt, het streelt hun dadelijk verstijvende stofjassen, draagt ze tussen twee handen de kamer door. O! zachte pootjes hebben ze, mag ik ze niet houden in een kistje met onderaan glas? Daar kijk ik de hele tijd naar, daar zing ik dan voor. 114

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WHITE Looking at him was better than touching him. Better than feeling his skin was seeing that he was no different from the morning paper, a sheet, or any other creasing surface, how it folded over him, you saw his blood packed in, and he lived through this as if it was nothing, so much skin: one piece peeled off, grown on him, and how his head was the same as his legs or balls, armpits, between hairs the white of that armor shimmered, but you could rip it open with your nail.

FAVORITE ANIMAL Between the stones, the flat, wide woodlice scurry in the dark. We forgot then how cold it was to look: how an animal so strongly linked to memory hibernates: garbage-colored, head tucked in, and dead-still at the slightest touch. I know of a child who loves them, who strokes their quickly stiffening dustcoats, carries them through the room in two hands. Oh, such soft feet! Can’t I keep them in a glass-bottomed box? That’s something I’ll watch forever; something I’ll sing for. P USTEBLUME , I SSUE 2

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