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Friday, July 26th, 2013
Aprecio la observación de Pamuk en "Mario Vargas Llosa y la litaratura del tercer mundo" (ensayo de su collección Otros Colores) de como Vargas Llosa hace uso de una yuxtaposición Faulkneriana de escenarios varios y saltas en tiempo. Me intriga mucho la manera en que esas escenas se van desenrollando.
Lo que Vargas Llosa en Santuario alaba — la yuxtaposición de escenarios y las saltas en tiempo — queda aún más en evidencia en las novelas de Vargas Llosa mismo. Hace con maestrÃa uso de esa estrategia — cortando despiadosamente entre las voces, los cuentos, los diálogos — en Death in the Andes.
posted evening of July 26th, 2013: Respond
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Thursday, July 25th, 2013
por Félix Fojas
tr. Jeremy Osner
mientras escucho
el chismorreo de los
muertos me doy cuenta
de repente de que
hablan en el presente
como sean todavÃa
completamente vivos,
sanos, robustos
aguzo las orejas y
escucho fijamente
soy estupefacto
a descubrir
que cuando a nosotros
refieren --los vivos--
usan el pasado
como estuviéramos
ya largo tiempo muertos
que me hace llegar
a una conclusión perturbador:
que ser muerto o
vivo sea cuestión
de opinión y no
estado de ser
vivo, pudriendo
posted morning of July 25th, 2013: Respond
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Thursday, July 18th, 2013
por Félix Fojas
tr. Jeremy Osner
Intenté lo mejor que pudo a hacer
Pacto imperecedero con mi propia
Sombra intransigente
A no me hostigar y no seguirme
En todas partes donde voy, a
Guardar distancia cómoda,
Tal vez una milia lejos
De los altares de mi
Presencia, no sea que me presente
Para sanción legal, formada
De interdicto que la fuerce
Continuamente a someterse
Respetar a mi intimidad
Y a cambio soy receptivo a
Conceder a mi acechador
Persistente
Libertad completa todo
El mundo a vagar de Azerbayán
Hasta exótico, remoto Zanzibar.
Quedaba espantado y sorprendido
Cuando mi álter ego rasgó en pedazos
Nuestro contrato en curso
Por sus colmillos filosos y
Rechazó vehemente a signarlo
Con imprenta de lengua o
Con huella de pata, por razón
Simple de que perderÃa
Dignidad total, todo sentido
De ser, o sea me seguir
En todas partes donde quiera.
Nuestro pacto no es vinculante sino
Es un punto muerto como las fauces
Enormes abiertas del Grand Canyon
Sobrecogedoro. ¿Quo vadis,
Tú grayhound rabioso?
Con la nariz olfateas como
Varita de zahori y tus orejas
Agudas son radares
Sensibles. Y sin embargo
No puedo tu culo desnudo
Aun patear o empatar
Tu cola meneante alrededor
De tu cuello flacucho como Nudo
Gordiano y te estrangular de
Una vez por todas a tÃ
Que me más fastidias.
Los Angeles
July 16, 2013
posted evening of July 18th, 2013: Respond
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Friday, July 5th, 2013
 Today I am submitting my translation of Marta Aponte's story "1955: Lavender Mist" (edited by Scott Esposito) to the Close Approximations contest. I want to thank Marta for the story, which is magnificent, and for her readings and corrections of my translation; also to thank Scott for his invaluable suggestions which (IMO of course) have turned a good translation into a great one -- I am billing the piece as translated by me in collaboration with Scott. Very excited -- I could imagine this story being selected; and if that does not happen, as of course it may well not, I believe it will be relatively easy to find another publisher. Beautiful images abound in this story; here is one of my favorites. Señor Suárez is in the vestibule of the unfamiliar Museum of Modern Art, making his way to the exhibit whose opening he has been invited to:
Outside, the chestnut smoke was thickening, the space seeming to gain in scope what it lost in sharpness. It gave the impression of a canvas that you've covered with a layer of gray paint, in hopes that from the stillness of this interior, from the depths of this lake will burst forth some new, some unexpected creation. Something fashioned from the shards of memory, which darken and fade but are never lost; which will take you by surprise as they now took him by surprise, looking down at his orphan hands, blue and knotty. He might have fallen useless at the feet of these barbaric columns, had he not suddenly overheard someone saying the name — it was like a change of scenery coming in from the wings — of Pollock; had he not seen the two women walking, with the assurance of sturdy windmills, toward the elevator.
posted morning of July 5th, 2013: 2 responses
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Saturday, June 22nd, 2013
Un Sentido del Lugarpor Félix Fojas
tr. Jeremy Osner
Cada poema necesita
un sentido de época y lugar.
Cada poema debe existir
en el lugar nativo de su
corazón o de su pensaje
En un momento determinado y
una fecha memorable que rebosa
de cosas actuales prolongadas
como una mosca que aterriza en una fruta
o un joven mientras besa la primera:
un perro que busca a un hueso seco
o un gato aullante
que da zarpazos a una rata aterrada.
O tal vez se esculpe el poema
simplemente del aire enrarecido
y se halle simplemente a ninguna parte.
Tenga siempre en cuenta que
El lector medio tiene miedo
de explorar a un pueblo
fantasma
y prefiere siempre oler
la aroma de alguna flor salvaje,
el sabor jugoso de una naranja,
o la lluvia de la primavera que se moje
y sus hojas verdes que hagan rumores
y bailen en las brisas.
posted evening of June 22nd, 2013: 1 response
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Thursday, June 13th, 2013
A few lines from Marta Aponte Alsina's "Glen Island (1900)" . A prayer to Expeditus, the patron saint of urgent causes:
The days do not have 24 hours -- what you do today you will atone tomorrow, what today you seek will be bestowed on you tomorrow -- sometimes it will not even be your turn. The only speedy saint is San Expedito. ....
Do not envy the lion his mane, nor the untamed colt
his skull; nor yet the brawny
hippopotamus his enormous loin
Who prunes the bushy branches of the Baobab,
Roars at the wind.
posted evening of June 13th, 2013: 2 responses
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Tuesday, June 11th, 2013
Heaven is what I cannot reach!
The apple on the tree,
Provided it do hopeless hang,
That "heaven" is, to me.
The color on the cruising cloud,
The interdicted ground
Behind the hill, the house behind, --
There Paradise is found!
Kind of an interesting problem -- when an English work is quoted in translation in a Spanish text I'm translating, I normally would quote from the original in my translation, if it's available -- doing anything else seems a bit perverse.
But the situation in "Versos pedestres (1915)" ("A Few Prosaic Lines (1915)"), from La casa de la loca, is a bit unusual. At the end of the story, the narrator writes out her translation of the 8 lines above ("which my handwriting, as erratic as my writing, transforms into 9") on a piece of cardboard. To quote from the original would be not to acknowledge the story. The original would be out of place here.
Lo que no alcanzo es el Cielo.
La fruta que el árbol
ofrece sin esperanza
el Cielo es para mÃ.
El color que en la nube vagabunda pasa
el suelo a mis plantas prohibido
detrás de los montes,
más alla de la casa,
¡Me espera el ParaÃso!
Cannot ignore the original either of course; it has an important role in the story. But the back-translation should sound like the translation, not like the original. (And is it a "good translation"? I'm not sure -- I don't think I get the same sense from reading it as I get from the original; but I have never been very good at understanding Emily Dickinson's poetry. So am probably not the best judge.)
posted evening of June 11th, 2013: 1 response
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Monday, June 10th, 2013
 My latest translation project is the story "Lavender Mist (1955)", from La casa de la loca. An exciting project, and I'm close to finished with it; I'm planning to submit this story to Asymptote journal's Close Approximations contest.
This book is another that I bought on the strength of its cover illustration -- Rafael Trelles' painting "El suceso inesperado" (The Unexpected Event) pulled me right in. Contents:
- "The Madwoman's House (1915)" -- Rosario Diaz, widow of the author Alejandro Tapia y Rivera, works on an unfinished story of her husband's.
- "Glen Island (1900)"
- "Black House (1904)"
- "A Few Prosaic Lines (1915)" -- a woman sews clothing to support her family and writes (and translates!) poetry on pieces of a cardboard box.
- "Lavender Mist (1955)" -- Salvador Suárez visits the MoMA.
- "Birds of the Soul (1963)" -- After he was released from prison, Nathan Leopold ended his days as a birdwatcher in the Caribbean. Here he writes about the Paloma Sabanera (Columba Inornata Wetmorei), the final entry in his Checklist of Birds of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
- "Coconut Milk (1988)" -- A sort of repulsively smug New Yorker named Thomas Smith describes his travails in attempting to reproduce a recipe from Puerto Rican Desserts: An Illustrated Cooking Tour of our New Possession by Rose Kilmer (1900), given him by his uncle William.
- "The Poison Pen (1999)" -- Nurse Belisa Weaver, daughter of an Irish man and a Puerto Rican woman and mother of an estranged son, tries to make some money for her retirement by connecting couples seeking to adopt with pregnant young women.
- "The Green Man's Interlude (20--)"
The final section of the book is "Fragments of a Novel" about a young man who kidnaps people to steal their experiences. Tantalizingly pretty but very difficult to follow.
posted evening of June 10th, 2013: Respond
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Sunday, May 26th, 2013
-- Compadre, usted es un bárbaro, pinta como tuviera un ojo en la luna y el otro in Marte. Su pintura no me gusta, pero me ha hecho llorar y las lágrimas son la sangre del alma.
Salvador Suárez to Jackson Pollock (from "Lavender Mist" by Marta Aponte Alsina)
posted evening of May 26th, 2013: 1 response
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Sunday, May 12th, 2013
I was complaining to a friend recently about how the New Yorker had printed its translation of "The Prefiguration of Lalo Cura" split up into paragraphs where the original was a single paragraph, and he did not really get where I was coming from -- if it was more readable in paragraphs, isn't that the way to go? As I'm reading the first sentence of Queen Isabel was singing rancheras, I'm wondering why it seems so important to me that this block be preserved as a single sentence, thinking I ought to justify that somehow. If it's more readable broken up, why not break it up? In the flow of a book or story I do not slavishly follow the syntactic boundaries in the source text -- well perhaps I err a bit on the side of slavishly following them; still. There are certainly points where a period in English seems like the correct translation of a comma or a y in Spanish. But these long paragraphs and long sentences in Spanish seem to me to fill more than a syntactic role; they are communicating a rhythm and pacing which splitting them up has a tendency to spoil. And not only in Spanish -- being a single paragraph seems to me like a fundamental quality of (for instance) "Ein Landarzt"; it pulls the reader insistently into the driving rhythm of the story, will not let go.
posted evening of May 12th, 2013: Respond
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