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Saturday, April 24th, 2010
(I see other translators have rendered it "Roaming" or "Vagabond" in F and B, these may be closer to an accurate translation --  I'm leaving it "Wandering" thinking that reflects the directionless feeling I get from reading the story and trying to inhabit B's character.) In this paragraph B is thinking about how he knows the authors listed on the magazine's cover. Notice something interesting with tense, which is that the story having been told up to here in the present, here Bolaño wants to loosen the focus a little so he shifts into a mix of past tenses and actually goes so far as to alert the reader that's what's going on.
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La Revista, que aparece o aparecÃa tres veces al año por iniciativa de Marc Dachy, está editada en Bruselas, por TRANSéDITION, y tiene o tenÃa su domicilio social en la rue Henry van Zuylen, número 59. Roberto Altmann, en una época, fue un artisto famoso. ¿Quién recuerda ahora a Roberto Altmann? piensa B. Lo mismo con Carlfriedrich Claus. Pierre Guyotat fue un novelista notable. Pero notable no es sinonimo de memorable. De hecho a B le hubiera gustado ser como Guyotat, en otro tiempo, cuando B era joven y leÃa las obras de Guyotat. Ese Guyotat calvo y poderoso. Ese Guyotat dispuesto a comerse cualquiera en la oscuridad de un chambre de bonne. A Mirtha Dermisache no la recuerda, pero su nombre le suena de algo, posiblemente una mujer hermosa, una mujer elegante con casi total seguridad. Sophie Podolsky fue una poeta a la que él y su amigo L apreciaron (e incluso se podria decir que amaron) ya desde México, cuando B y L vivÃan en México y tenÃan apenas algo más de veinte años. Roland Barthes, bueno, todo el mundo sabe quién es Roland Barthes. De Dotremont tiene noticias vagas, tal vez leyó algunos poemas suyos en alguna antologÃa perdida. Brion Gysin fue el amigo de Burroughs, el que le dio la idea de los cut-up. Y finalmente Henri Lefebvre. B no conoce a Lefebvre de nada. Es el único al que no conoce de nada y su nombre, en aquella librerÃa de viejo, se ilumina de pronto como una cerilla en un cuarto oscuro. Al menos, de esa forma B lo siente. A él le gustarÃa que se hubiera iluminado como una tea. Y no en un cuarto oscuro sino en una caverna, pero lo cierto es que Lefebvre, el nombre de Lefebvre, resplandece brevemente de aquella manera y no de otra.
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The magazine, which appears (or was appearing) three times a year under the initiative of Marc Dachy, is published in Brussels, by TRANSéDITION; it has (had) its home office on rue Henry van Zuylen, number 59. Roberto Altmann, at one time he was a famous artist. Who remembers Roberto Altmann nowadays? thinks B. The same with Carlfriedrich Claus. Pierre Guyotat was a noteworthy novelist. But noteworthy is not synonymous with memorable. In fact B would have liked to be like Guyotat, in another age, when B was young and was reading Guyotat's works. This bald, powerful Guyotat. This Guyotat who was fixing something for dinner, in the darkness of a chambre de bonne. He can't place Mirtha Dermisache, but her name reminds him of something, maybe of a beautiful woman, almost certainly an elegant woman. Sophie Podolsky was a poet whom he and his friend L had appreciated, you could even say adored, way back in Mexico, when B and L were living in Mexico and were hardly over twenty years old. Roland Barthes, well good, everyone knows who Roland Barthes is. Of Dotremont he has heard vague reports; perhaps he has read some of his poems in some lost anthology. Brion Gysin was that friend of Burroughs, the one who gave him the idea of cut-ups. And then at last Henri Lefebvre. B hasn't seen Lefebvre at all. That's the only one whose name he has never seen at all; in that anticuarian bookstore, the light comes on right away, like a match struck in a dark room. Or at least, that's about how B feels. He would like if it would light his way like a torch. And not in a dark room but in a cavern -- what's for sure is that Lefebvre, the name Lefebvre, shines briefly in just that manner, not in any other. |
I am not satisfied with certain bits of this translation, most notably the sentence about Guyotat fixing something for dinner, and the last couple of clauses of the last sentence. And whether B and L are adoring Podolsky's work or the poet herself. If you notice anything that sounds off or see a way to improve the way it sounds, please mention it in comments.
 One thought running through my head as I go over this passage, is how Bolaño can write using bits of his experience, and I don't necessarily need to label the writing a form of memoir -- I have a habit of thinking of The Savage Detectives as if it were, or were in parts, a work of autobiography -- the bit about Sophie Podolsky references a bit of Bolaño's experience, and also a bit of Belano's experience, and I don't really see any need to untangle which is which.
posted evening of April 24th, 2010: Respond
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Friday, April 23rd, 2010
Bolaño spends a lot of his time in these stories talking about other authors. A long, climactic scene in "Days of 1978" is spent explicating the plot of Andrei Rublev; a central point of interest in "Wandering in France and Belgium" is the cryptic writing of Henri Lefebvre (whom I hadn't heard of before reading this story but who appears oddly not to be the same as the Henri Lefebvre whom I can find via Google -- his dates of birth and death and his life story and (afaict) work are all distinct. Seems very strange to reference a name, a name "B does not know from anywhere" and which gets B interested in deciphering his scribblings, and then have it be a different person from the historical owner of that name... (Lefebvre is supposed to have contributed a piece to an issue of Luna Park which also contains writing by Sophie Podolsky, Brion Gysin, Roland Barthes, Roberto Altmann.):
The second day, after finishing a novel in which the murderer lived in a retirement home (although this retirement home seemed more like Carroll's looking glass), he makes the rounds of the anticuarian bookstores; he finds one on the rue de Vieux Colmbier and here he finds an old issue of Luna Park, number 2, a monograph devoted  to graphics and typography, with texts and pictures (and after all, text is a picture and the reverse as well) by Roberto Altmann, Frédéric Baal, Roland Barthes, Jacques Colonne, Carlfriedrich Claus, Mirtha Dermisache, Christian Dotremont, Pierre Guyotat, Brion Gysin, Henri Lefebvre and Sophie Podolsky.
And then a page is given over to describing B's acquaintance with the work of each of these authors except Lefebvre... It seems very unlike what I am used to. Not complaining, not at all.
Further... The issue Bolaño is referencing is the actual Luna Park #2, which features actual logograms by an actual Lefebvre. If the biographical information Bolaño gives is accurate (and it's hard for me to see how it wouldn't be), this is just a different person with the same name as the Lefebvre profiled in the Wikipædia article linked above.
posted evening of April 23rd, 2010: Respond
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Monday, April 19th, 2010
 Today I read a comment to the effect that Bolaño's style in Nazi Literature in the Americas was influenced heavily by Borges and by J.R. Wilcock. Well Borges of course, think I; but whose is this other name? ...Turns out he is a very intriguing Argentine author from the mid-20th C. (who spent much of his life in Italy, and it looks like much of his writing is in Italian). Also he was a civil engineer, like my father, and like Oswaldo. Here is a story of his I found online, the story of Yahweh's messenger looking for work in the ages when Yahweh no longer speaks to His creations -- powerful stuff!
El ángelpor J.R. Wilcock
El ángel Elzevar está desocupado, lo único que sabe hacer es llevar mensajes pero ya no hay más mensajes que llevar, y entonces el ángel da vueltas revisando en la basura del gran basurero municipal en busca de restos de comida y sobras de fruta: algo tiene que comer. De noche, hizo la prueba de recorrer la orilla del rÃo en calidad de prostituto todo servicio, y de hecho sabe hacer muchas cosas y su condición angélica lo exime de cualquier escrúpulo moral; pero la mayorÃa de las veces el encuentro termina mal, por ejemplo cuando el cliente, antes o después, descubre que Elzevar no tiene sexo: por lo que parece, en ciertas ocupaciones el sexo es particularmente requerido, e incluso indispensable. Para aplacar al desilusionado cliente, Elzevar le muestra un poco cómo vuela, primero a la derecha, después a la izquierda, después le pasa sobre la cabeza y le desordena los cabellos como una brisa ligera; pero los clientes de la orilla del rÃo exigen algo más concreto que una normal exhibición de levitación; uno le mordió el tobillo en pleno vuelo, otro calvo con peluca lo llamó sodomita y un tercero lo denunció a la policÃa, basándose en un artÃculo del Código Penal que prohÃbe exaltar la seducción y otros dos artÃculos del Código de Navegación Aérea relativos al vuelo urbano sin documentos. Después de lo cual Elzevar tuvo que mudarse a otro recodo del rÃo, peligrosamente frecuentado por familias y pescadores con cañas, incluso de noche.
Estos inconvenientes, natural consecuencia de su desocupación temporaria, no pueden realmente preocupar a un ángel. Para comenzar los ángeles son inmortales, y son pocos los mortales que pueden decir lo mismo. En cuanto a la falta de mensajes, un dÃa u otro tendrá que terminar. Nuevos emisores se están alistando, y los potenciales receptores por cierto no escasean. Ya en el pasado le sucedió estar sin trabajo por perÃodos más o menos largos, sin hacer nada. Basura de comer nunca le ha faltado; es verdad que la prostitución angélica ya no es lo que era , pero de cualquier forma, hasta que esté listo el nuevo mensaje, hay que seguir en contacto con los hombres. Mientras tanto Elzevar siempre puede encontrar trabajo en un circo, en tanto lamentablemente muchas cosas cambiaron desde que existe la televisión. Si el Gran Silencio durase mucho, otros caminos interesantes y poco recorridos se le abren: por ejemplo el cine underground, la aplicación de antiparasitarios, la manutención de computadoras, la limpieza de ascensores y los desfiles masculinos de moda.
| | The Angelby J.R. Wilcock
The angel Elzevar is unemployed -- the only thing he knows how to do is carry messages, but there aren't any more messages for him to carry, so the angel wanders through the garbage in the great municipal garbage dump, in search of food scraps and vegetable trimmings: he needs something to eat. At night, he tries his luck along the river's bank, offering his services as a prostitute; for to tell the truth, there are many things he can do, and his angelic status exempts him from any moral scruple; but the majority of these encounters end poorly, for example when the client discovers (sooner or later) that Elzevar has no genitals: as it appears, in certain occupations genitals are a particular requirement, even indispensable. In order to placate the disillusioned client, Elzevar demonstrates for him how he can fly, a bit on the right, a bit on the left, then passing over his head and toussling his hair like a soft breeze; but the clients on the river's bank are looking for something more concrete than a simple exhibition of levitation -- one bites his ankle as he is flying over, another, a bald man wearing a wig, calls him a faggot; a third denounces him to the police, basing his accusation on an article of the Penal Code which prohibits solicitation, and also on two articles of the Code of Navigation relating to unlicensed flight in urban areas. After that, Elzevar has to move around the bend of the river, to an area dangerously thick with families and fishermen, even at night.
These inconveniences, the natural consequence of his temporary unemployment, are no real distraction for an angel. To begin with, angels are immortal; there are few mortals who can say as much. And as far as the drought of messages goes, one day or another that will be over. New transmissions are readying themselves, and potential recipients are hardly in short supply. It's happened in the past now and then, that he's been without work for however long a time, and it hasn't affected him. He's never been lacking for trash to eat. It's true that angelic prostitution is not what it once was; but somehow or another, until the next message is ready, he has to remain in contact with people. Elzevar could always find work in a circus, though here too, lamentably, much has changed since the invention of television. If the Great Silence lasts too long, other avenues could open, interesting and little explored: for example the underground cinema, the application of static suppressors, computer maintenance, cleaning of elevators, male modeling.
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Note: I don't know about "Elzevar" ("El-Zephar"?), likely this is the name of a particular angel but I'm not familiar enough with the Christian pantheon to know which one it would be or how to render it in English. Scanning Paradise Lost is not turning anything up... And is "The Great Silence" used to refer to the post-Mosaic times in which God no longer sends angels to communicate his wishes or commands to humanity? Wilcock's capitalizing that made me think he is referring to a term that is in use. "Solicitation" is a pure guess at a tranlation of "exaltar la seducción".
 Update: Look at that, Wilcock translated Jack Kerouac into Spanish! Interesting... Is this book Desolation Angels?
posted evening of April 19th, 2010: 1 response
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Saturday, April 17th, 2010
Last month's issue of Words Without Borders has newly-translated poetry by a Chilean poet and an Argentine: "Tales of Autumn in Gerona" is Erica Mena's translation of Bolaño's "Prosa del otoño en Gerona," excerpted from the forthcoming Tres (which Bolaño considered to be one of his best books); and "Roosters and Bones" is Elizabeth Polli's translation of "Gallos y huesos," by Sergio Chejfec. And, well, lots more too -- Words Without Borders is consistently full of interesting stuff.
posted evening of April 17th, 2010: Respond
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On re-reading, I find the last third of "Last Evenings on Earth" confusing. It seems like there is supposed to be some confusion, like that's the point of it -- the title suggests (and B seems to be worried) that B and his father die in Acapulco; but I'm pretty sure (though the ending is totally open) that's not what is going to happen, rather it's some element of their relationship that is dying. Bolaño sets this up at the beginning of the final section of the story when he says, There are things you can say and things that can't be said, B thinks, depressed. From this moment on, he knows that he is approaching the disaster. ... And here ends the parenthesis, here end the forty-eight hours of grace, when B and his father have visited the bars of Acapulco, have slept on the beach, worn out, have eaten and even laughed; here begins an icy period, a period seemingly normal but dominated by some frozen gods (gods who otherwise never interfere with the heat which reigns in Acapulco), a few hours which in another time, perhaps when he was a teenager, B would have called boredom, but nowadays he would never use that term; more likely disaster, a peculiar sort of disaster, a disaster which on top of everything else will distance B from his father -- the price they have to pay to live.
-- there's a lot strange about this paragraph -- why is this "the price they have to pay to live"? -- but I'm primarily interested in the notion that B is being further distanced from his father here. The theme of the whole trip seems to have been B distancing himself from his father; at the end they seem if anything a little closer than over the course of the trip. Look at the penultimate paragraph of the story: B thinks of Gui Rosey, who disappeared from the planet without leaving a trace, docile as a lamb while the Nazi's hymns rose up to a blood-red sky, and sees himself as Gui Rosey, a Gui Rosey buried in some vacant lot in Acapulco, disappeared forever, but then he hears his father, who is making some accusation to the ex-clavadista, and he realizes that unlike Gui Rosey, he is not alone. This has the feeling of an important moment for B, the moment where he grows closer to his father (and given the barroom-brawl setting, it must be said there is a lot of potential for this to be corny) -- but the moment has been set up as one of further alienation. So I come away from the story not sure what to make of it -- B's defining characteristic is his passivity, his father's might be his boorishness or it might be his cool-headedness "when it counts." I feel for B and hope he has a better time on his next vacation...
posted evening of April 17th, 2010: Respond
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 The high frequency in "Last Evenings on Earth" of the word clavadista (diver) makes me think about Bolaño's poem Resurrection: "Poetry slips into the dream/
like a dead diver/
into the eye of God." The word translated as "diver" here is buzo; I wonder what the distinction is. Is clavadista specifically a "cliff diver"? Is buzo a deep-sea diver?
Update: Yes, I think (based on Google image results) that it's a distinction between clavadista="an athlete who jumps gracefully into the water" and buzo="an explorer who wears a scuba suit and pokes around underwater" -- the fact that both of these are "diver" in English is coincidental, it's not part of the source material. Actually this makes the imagery in "Resurrection" a lot easier to understand.
posted afternoon of April 17th, 2010: Respond
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Friday, April 16th, 2010
In "Last Evenings on Earth," there's some ambiguity about the nature of the book B is reading. It's identified as a book of French Surrealist poetry with pictures and brief bios of the authors; but the long paragraph about Gui Rosey's disappearance reads like a summary of the book, and the book being summarized sounds more like Savage Detectives than like a brief biographical sketch. Perhaps what is being summarized is what's going on in B's imagination as he reads...
posted evening of April 16th, 2010: Respond
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Saturday, April 10th, 2010
We're back from vacation! Pictures soon. I have a whole lot of new reading material on hand... While we were in Modesto I visited my childhood hangout Yesterday's Books (it seemed so much smaller...) and got a cheap copy of Paradise Lost, which Mark (on Good Friday!) convinced me I ought to read. It certainly is easy to read -- not sure how much I am getting out of it, but it rolls in through my eyes quite easily. In San Francisco we visited Ellen's old friend Maryam, who gave us copies of her new book Returning to Iran -- a look at events there from an expatriate's eye. Reading the first few pieces I am interested and looking forward to the rest.
Also in SF, I visited Libros Latinos on Mission and 17th, and picked up a bunch of books. They are a used book store specializing in Spanish and Portuguese lit with (seemingly) an academic target market. Definitely worth dropping in if you are in the area, a beautiful selection. I got:
- Prólogos con un prólogo de prólogos by Borges -- forewords that he has written for a wide variety of books, published in 1974. Cervantes, Whitman, Swedenborg, MartÃn Fierro, Ray Bradbury(!), his own translation of Kafka...
- MartÃn Fierro -- no idea if I will ever actually get to the point of understanding this, it seemed like a nice book to have on hand while I'm trying to understand Borges.
- Putas asesinos by Bolaño
- The black sheep and other fables by Augusto Monterroso (who will be the first author Bolaño has hipped me to) -- these are pleasant little fables about (mainly) animals. The blurbs on the back, from GarcÃa Márquez, Carlos Fuentes, and Isaac Asimov(!), might be the most compelling pull-quotes I've ever seen.
- I did not buy, because of the price, Borges Laberintos DruÄmelić, which is "The Immortal" and "The Circular Ruins" illustrated with stunning color plates of the paintings of Zdravko DruÄmelić -- if you're looking to buy me a present, look no further.
- The steep markdown which Libros Latinos offers on cash transactions meant I still had enough money in my pocket to stop at Nueva LibrerÃa México down the street and get a copy of Don Quixote.
...Arrived home lugging a big bag of books (Ellen and Sylvia also did some book shopping on the trip), and found on my doorstep a book I had ordered a while back from a used-book seller, Raul Galvez' From the Ashen Land of the Virgin: conversations with Bioy Casares, Borges, Denevi, Etchecopar, Ocampo, Orozco, Sabato. My shelves are full!
posted evening of April 10th, 2010: 2 responses
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Wednesday, January 20th, 2010
So here is something I find frustrating about La sombra del viento -- it is seeming to me like way too much time is given over to Daniel's longings for female companionship. I understand that he's an 18-year-old kid, and one who has never kissed a girl, and he's going to be spending a lot of time thinking about that -- I can identify quite easily with that head -- but it just seems lamely cartoonish when every woman he interacts with is described in superlative terms as the most beautiful woman he's ever seen. Particularly annoying when he presents himself as such an ingenu, it seems like there are very labored descriptions of the beauty of women's faces and how he wants to kiss them but no acknowledgement of anything else. GarcÃa Madero's constant harping on his virginity in part I of The Savage Detectives could get annoying certainly but at least he was up front about what he wanted.
Le hablé de mi primera visita al Cementario de los Libros Olvidados y de la noche que pasé leyendo La Sombra del Viento. Le hablé de mi encuentro con el hombre sin rostro y de aquella carta firmada por Penélope Aldaya que llevaba siempre conmigo sin saber por qué. Le hablé de cómo nunca habÃa llegado a besar a Clara Barceló, ni a nadie, y de cómo me habÃan temblado las manos al sentir el roce do los labios de Nuria Monfort en la piel apenas unas horas atrás.I told her about my first visit to the Graveyard of Forgotten Books and about the night which I had spent reading The Shadow of the Wind. I told her about my encounter with the faceless man and about that card bearing Penelope Aldaya's signature which I kept with me always, without knowing why. I told her how I had never gotten to kiss Clara Barceló, nor anybody, and how my hands had trembled brushing against the lips of Nuria Monfort just a few hours before.
See I can't quite picture him relating these particular details of his saga to Bea, the current object of his infatuation, as he's telling her about the mystery of Carax.
posted evening of January 20th, 2010: Respond
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Saturday, December 26th, 2009
It's 1976 and the revolution has been defeated
but we've yet to find out.
We are 22, 23 years old.
Mario Santiago and I walk down a black and white street.
At the end of the street, in a neighborhood straight out of a fifties film, sits the house of DarÃo Galicia's parents.
It's the year 1976 and they've trepanned DarÃo Galicia's skull.
Another thing I spent a lot of mental energy on while reading The Savage Detectives, was on wondering how closely the events being narrated corresponded to actual events in the lives of Bolaño and his crowd. For example the poem "Visit to the Convalescent" from The Romantic Dogs narrates a visit Roberto and Mario Santiago make to the house of their friend, DarÃo Galicia, after he has surgery for an aneurysm. It reads like memoir, like something that really happened... In The Savage Detectives, Angélica Font tells the story of Ernesto San Epiphanio's convalescence and eventual death following his brain surgery at the end of 1977, by which time Arturo is in Barcelona and Ulises either in Europe or Israel, I'm not sure which, but in no position to visit Ernesto. So as I'm reading I'm wondering what changes have been made and what the reasoning is... Is Ernesto's character based on DarÃo? Or is Bolaño just using an event from DarÃo's life to tell a story that is much more about Angélica than about Ernesto, a relatively minor character? From poking around with Google it's clear that much of the broad framework of the story is true to life -- it would be interesting to learn where the story diverges from life.
posted afternoon of December 26th, 2009: Respond
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