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Monday, November 22nd, 2010

🦋 Christ in the Desert

¹Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, ² where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry. ³ The devil said to him, "If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread."

⁴ Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Man shall not live on bread alone.'"

-- Luke 4 (NIV, 2010)

After he had walked he knew not how many hours, thirst and weariness were defeating him. He thought to himself that his destination could not be so far away now. He felt he was lost. The only thing that he could do was to let himself fall onto the sand. He sat in a lotus position, his little paper sack between his legs. As always in such difficult emotional times he commenced to pick his nose. He looked about himself: it was as if he were in the dead center of a circle composed of the horizon on all sides, a circle as if it had been traced by some celestial hand, perfect, round, endless. The silence, the solitude were of such divine purity, they moved him, they were tangible. He removed his sandals. He wanted to take communion with the land.

He sat there, listening, for a long time.

Evening's flame lit the horizon. Red. Impressive. Overwhelming. It made him think of dusk, of Golgotha. His surroundings swam before his eyes into a great ring of fire. "The fiery ring of a lion-tamer," he said. He sensed suddenly, and with divine clarity, that the lion-tamer was God; he, the lion, tamed. That his master was ordering him to jump. Yes; to jump. Highest glory to the Eternal Father!

He jumped.

He closed his eyes and jumped.

-- The art of resurrection ch. 4

Update: ...And also SFAM is getting in on the Messianic action.

posted evening of November 22nd, 2010: Respond
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Sunday, November 21st, 2010

🦋 Resurrection

In the midst of that curious crowd, the Christ of Elqui was not silent. On the contrary: with the purple taffeta of his cape broiling under the sun he stood, he turned toward the dead man. An absent, almost translucent look was on his face, like someone who is looking at a mirage in the desert. He seemed to be struggling with a deep-seated psychic dilemma. After an instant which seemed an eternity, with a histrionic wave, he looked away from the dead man; he raised both arms above his head and opened his mouth to speak, bearing infinite pain in the inflections of his voice:

— I am sorry, my brothers, but I can do nothing; the sublime art of resurrection belongs exclusively to God the Father.

But the miners had not come to hear rejection, rejection wrapped up in the celophane of pretty phrases. Surrounding him, their wiry beards almost touching him, they pleaded, they demanded, they begged him in the name of God Most Holy, o Lord Christ, at least try it. That it will cost him nothing to try. That all he need do is to place his blessed hands over the body of their friend — as they have seen him do for the infirm among them, all these days — and to recite a few ave marias or a pater noster. Or whatever he might find to say. He must know better than them which things one must say to the ancient one on high, to convince him. And who knows, perhaps God in his moment will understand, and take pity on their comrade, the best among strong working men, who has left in this vale of tears a widow, still young, and a crowd of seven little kids, imagine it, o Lord, seven children, evenly spaced, all still quite young.

— This poor kid Lazarus, his body here with us — cried one of them, turning to the deceased, laying his arms in a cross over his chest — you could say he is a countryman of yours, sir, for just like you, as we have read of you, he was born in a village of Coquimbo province.

The Christ of Elqui lifted his gaze to the eastern sky. For a moment he appeared fascinated by a far-off flock of birds, flying in slow circles above the gravel plain, flying over the dusty cement of the salitrera. Pulling at his bushy beard, thinking and rethinking what he was going to say, he spoke in an apologetic tone:

— We all know where we were born, o my brothers, but not where our bones will lie buried.

The gentle, brutal good humor of the narrator's relationship with his characters and his scenes-- the switch for instance to second person when the miners address the Christ of Elqui and then quickly back to third, so there is some confusion about where the focus should lie, turns the reader's head, makes him wipe his forehead in disbelief.

posted evening of November 21st, 2010: Respond
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Wednesday, November 17th, 2010

🦋 Salitrera

posted evening of November 17th, 2010: Respond
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Sunday, November 14th, 2010

🦋 Santiago

A new story from Jorge López, a walk through his neighborhood in Santiago.

It all happened in Providencia

by Jorge López

On the metro, at Manuel Montt station. An old woman is having trouble trying to get off, unable to find a handhold anywhere. The train brakes and the woman steadies herself against me. I hold her up, I give her my hand. Hold on, I say. She grips my hand firmly and smiles at me. Thank you, you’re very kind. I hold her up and help her move up until she’s able to get to the exit. She again thanks me. Have a good day, I say. You too, young man.

That’s all it would have been, one event in the course of the day, if it weren’t for a voice -- grave, reproachful -- inside the train car as the doors closed.

-- That lady’s too old to be fooling anybody.

The light at the corner of Guardia Vieja and 11 de Septiembre is red; a few pedestrians are waiting to cross. I’m watching, my earphones on, a bit cut off from the world. In the few seconds of silence between the end of one song and the beginning of the next, I overhear a bit of conversation between two of them, perhaps a mother and her daughter.

-- Well, it was just that poor-person smell!

The way poverty smells. It hurts me, it moves me to hear that; what moves me the most is that I recognize it, I see its reflection in myself. I too have spoken of the odor “of poor people,” always doing an embarrassed double-take, I who work with poor people, it has nothing to do with poverty.

I’m walking along Providencia, Galería Drugstore is one of those over-designed, over-priced shops. One of the customers is saying to the woman at the counter:

-- You know, I have to make so many adjustments when I come by here, I live up in La Dehesa, I never come down here...

I leave the store quickly, almost automatically.

Night is falling on a rainy day. A man on the sidewalk, a drunkard, a homeless man I’m sure, sheltered by the eaves of the Portal Lyon. It’s not unusual to see homeless around here. Today it is cold, and he is not even covered by the customary cardboard boxes. I move a bit closer and notice the smell of spilt wine. So drunk he cannot stand up, I guess. But it’s not the ordinary box wine. Shards of glass are glittering on the sidewalk, I step carefully trying to avoid them. Did he throw the bottle down after he drank the last drops? Did somebody smash the bottle against him? I don’t see any blood, he appears to be conscious, sitting, doesn’t seem to be hurt. I don’t ask him what happened, just go on my way, don’t get involved.

I’m as much to blame as anyone, only thinking of how to get home without getting wet, the few more blocks remaining, perhaps the McDonald’s on my street will still be open.

At what point did we lose our solidarity, our understanding? We shut ourselves off so coarsely from the world. When did this moment come?

posted afternoon of November 14th, 2010: 3 responses
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Tuesday, November 9th, 2010

🦋 More exhortations

Another Saramago epigraph from El libro de los consejos -- at the front of his Small Memories is the line, "Déjate llevar por el niño que fuiste/(roughly) Allow the child you were to carry you." The first time I've been able to find a lead suggesting affirmatively that these quotations are actual quotations from somewhere else, not invented by Saramago -- this line takes me to Juan Pedro Villa-Isaza's blog Casi un objeto, which gives some context for it:

Mientras no alcances la verdad, no podrás corregirla. Pero si no la corriges, no la alcanzarás. Mientras tanto, no te resignes.*

Déjate llevar por el niño que fuiste.

As long as you do not know the truth, you will not be able to alter it. But if you do not alter it, you will never be able to reach it. Still, do not resign yourself.

Allow the child you were to carry you.

(Also, Googling for the original Portuguese rendering of this quote "Deixa-te levar pela criança que foste" leads me to a 2006 interview with Saramago, where he talks about his life and his writing process.)

..."llevar/levar" can also mean "to lead" -- indeed that appears to be the primary meaning in Portuguese; a better rendering of this line might be "Let yourself be led by the child you were."

*... and now I am remembering that this line is the epigraph for The History of the Siege of Lisbon... and am back to thinking the whole thing is Saramago's invention.

posted evening of November 9th, 2010: 2 responses
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Thursday, October 28th, 2010

🦋 Composición y traducción

Versos sin sentido

por Jeremy Osner

Esas palabras se dicen a mí mismo
Como los ecos que vibranse entre las nubes
Pero también debéis escuchar, escuchad
al voz de vuestra Diosa propia.
Cuando vos sentís familiar me decid.
Vamos mañana tal vez al paisaje de nuestras ilusiones
o a una ruina postapocalíptica similar, nos
desaparezcase la iglesia, la iglesia de los padres, la iglesia de ayer.

from Criminal

by José Cárdenas Peña

If only it were just the scream
the water's scream,
the rolling stone
abandoned, with no place to lay its head
against the storm.
If only it were just
the wound, corrosive wound,
the nameless passage,
flow of dead time:
the soft procession of the hours,
sentinels of fear.
If only it were the handful of herb
the herb which mates with blood
winnowed through memory
now it can say:
it is over,
the statue, the labyrinth,
angel's shadow, world which never is.

But behind this silent
anguished nostalgia,
behind you yourself
o wounded shadow who calls me,
swells the violence
the destruction over cliffs
over conquered ragged armies, ashes, dust.
And still I know the damage,
in this moment of my hapless lineage;
this ghost or god who from my birthplace
from my rubble rises up
this dove of the final flood,
and around me your words
your tongues of fire
baptismal conch
pouring out on your mirror of drunkenness
handful of naked salt
of biblical questions:
the mud, the signal, seed of man
your voice, your name, your sorrow;
the shape of just one tear
wept out for the dead
for fallen moorish idols
blood which teaches me to feel,
who cannot catch it, fend it off
as the sky fends off his luminous abyss,
the sea her piscene stigmata.
...

posted evening of October 28th, 2010: Respond
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Friday, October 22nd, 2010

🦋 These Precious Evenings

Here is a poem by a Mexican poet named José Cárdenas Peña, "Los contados días".

This wandering groping
like I'm walking into ruins:
this turning my face to the wind
without expecting a response from the wind;
instinctive phrasing, to live and to hope
without contact:
this clamour to God,
this doubt and this love, this blasphemy;

this dread of being lonely,
of the death that is not death;
it hurts me, hurts like a wound,
like my own native land,
like an angel's wing --
like my crime, like her bleak silence...

And when at last I scream Here! Here I am!,
so cleaves in two my naked, naked heart.

(I posted the original of this poem in the comments to a LanguageHat entry about free verse and memorization.)

posted evening of October 22nd, 2010: Respond
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Thursday, October 21st, 2010

🦋 Another opening

Saramago seems almost to be picking at a linguistic scab in his consciousness in these first few sentences of "Chair", the first story in An Object, Almost. If I'm understanding right the chair he is talking about is to some approximation the government of Salazar, though I'm not sure how explicit he makes that.

The chair begins to fall, to come down, to capsize, but not, in the strictest sense of the term, to come unleashed. Speaking strictly, coming unleashed means losing one's bonds. And of course, one can't say that a chair is chained or in bonds, if it had for instance a couple of lateral arm rests, you would say the armrests of the chair are falling, not that they have been unleashed. But truthfully, storms can be unleashed, I would say, or better I remember having said, so as not to fall into my own traps: if cloudbursts can be unleashed, which is just another way of saying the same thing, could not, in short, chairs likewise be unleashed, even without having bonds? As at least a poetic liberty? At least as the simple artifice which proclaims itself style, voice? Let's accept that chairs can come unleashed, even if it ultimately proves preferable that they should only fall, should capsize, should come down.

I finished a couple of revisions of "Ebb-tide" and sent a copy of it to the editor who accepted my translation of "Requiem" -- I'm starting to fantasize about publishing a translation of this collection of stories, not sure if that means I have to learn Portuguese or if it's legit to translate from the Spanish translation -- what I have done so far sounds very nice to my ear so I am sticking to the Spanish for now.

posted evening of October 21st, 2010: Respond
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Tuesday, October 19th, 2010

🦋 First sentence

In one beginning, for everything must have a beginning, even in the case where this beginning is the same as that terminal point from which it cannot, ultimately, be broken, and to say "cannot" is not the same as saying "will not" or "need not", it is the extremity of not being able, for if this breaking could take place, we know that the whole universe would crumble into its component bits, the universe is a fragile construction, it cannot bear interruption, in one beginning, then, four paths were laid out.

It's interesting to read Saramago talking about two cycles of his work, the narrative novels and the more allegorical novels he wrote after moving to the Canary Islands -- it makes a lot of sense to me that he named this book as the root source of the allegorical stories, I can hear Blindness and The Cave in it. I think Death With Interruptions will be worth rereading with this story in mind.

(It occurs to me that "the extremity of not being possible" or "of impossibility" might be better English. I kind of like the sound of "the extremity of not being able". The Spanish is "el extremo no poder".)

posted evening of October 19th, 2010: 1 response
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Saturday, October 9th, 2010

🦋 Untranslated Saramago

Here is a list of Saramago's works which I believe (based on the English and Spanish Wikipædia pages) have never been translated into English, in reverse chronological order. (I am not including his last novel Cain because I believe this is in the process of being translated by Margaret Jull Costa and will be published next year. I am not including his plays or his opera.)

• Cadernos de Lanzarote vol. 2 (2001): memoir
• A maior flor do mundo (2001): children's fiction (and magnificently animated (in Spanish translation) by Juan Pablo Etcheverry)
• Cadernos de Lanzarote (1997): memoir
• Levantado do chão (1980): historical fiction
• Poética dos cinco sentidos: O ouvido (1979): short stories (Update -- Poética dos cinco sentidos is a collection, Saramago has one story in it called "O ouvido".)
• Objecto quase (1978): short stories
• Os apontamentos (1976): columns
• O ano de 1993 (1975): poetry (Horácio Costa terms the contents of this book "fragments of prose-poetry")
• As opiniões que o DL teve (1974): columns
• O bagagem do viajante (1973): columns
• Deste mundo e do outro (1971): columns
• Provavelmente alegria (1970): poetry
• Os poemas possíveis (1966): poetry
• Terra do pecado (1947): novel

posted afternoon of October 9th, 2010: 2 responses
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