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Tuesday, December first, 2020
Bastó un paso para que dejáramos atrás el siniestro, letal mandato del Trueno, atrás quedó el llamado Edén. (p. 47 I§6) [A single step was sufficient for us to leave behind Thunder's sinister, lethal commandment; the place called Eden lay behind us. I am here translating mandato as commandment for the biblical voice of it; other terms that might work are mandate and precinct. I am rendering el llamado Edén as the place called Eden; so-called Eden might be right.]
At the end of Book I of Eve's writings I have some questions. Primarily I am wondering about what commandment Eve and Adam have disobeyed. In Genesis 2:16-17, YHWH explicitly mandates that Adam and Eve may eat fruits of all the trees except his special one. But in this book, Thunder does not talk to Eve and Adam, at least not in clear sentences.After Eve and Adam eat the fruit, their senses are awakened and they begin to exist in Time. They are aware of their nakedness and have access to language (explicitly connected to being-in-time). When Eve tries to take leaves from the tree to cover her nakedness, the tree angrily refuses to allow her to take them (I§3), because she has disobeyed*. But what did she disobey? I reread the opening sections but find no commandment... Also: why does the tree give Eve its seed (I§6)?
I'm interested in the connection between language and being-in-time, and in what is the nature of this tree, as distinct from the rest of Eden. I will be looking to find out more about Eden in the coming books, though Eve and Adam have left Eden I expect Eve's memory of the expulsion will play an important role.
Eve says "Eden expelled us" (and not "Thunder expelled us from Eden") but then immediately says "It stank of dead animals, all we could do was leave." (p. 46) -- It is Eve and Adam that make the choice to leave. Covering their nakedness and leaving are the first two choices they make once they have begun to exist in Time.
 * A neighboring tree, which is presumably the Tree of Life, also refuses her. She is able to take leaves and branches from a third tree, a fig tree.
posted morning of December first, 2020: Respond
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Monday, November 30th, 2020
If I were translating El Libro de Eva, I would certainly use "thou/thee" and the appropriate conjugations to translate tú and its verbs. "¡desobediciste!" -> "thou hast disobeyed!", not "you have disobeyed!". (And not "thou disobeyedest", that's just silly) (In sections written as dialogue between Eve's narrative voice and an unseen interlocutor, "you" would be more appropriate.)
posted afternoon of November 30th, 2020: Respond
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¿Que cómo era el Edén? En corto: no era como es aquí. (p. 31 I§2)
Whenever I have looked at the Eden story, the question that always bugs me is what is YHWH's intention? Why create Eden and Adam and Eve and give them a commandment in order to punish them and destroy what has been created? I never really get past this. It seems to me like God is pure intention, and if I can't understand the intention what hope do I have of believing the story...
Boullosa's approach is intriguing: Eve, Adam, Eden, (and heaven, and even angels!) but no YHWH. As noted in St. Teresa's censorious foreword, these "pages do not recognise what is most righteous, the majesty and grandeur of the Creator of all things." There is a world, and a garden of Eden, and maybe-divine Thunder which resounds within and around it, but how it came to be is not addressed. (Well not yet anyways, I'm only starting to read the book.)
Eve describes the garden and its denizens as having substance but no qualities. She and Adam have eyes, but they do not see each other, they only look up towards the heavens. They eat and are nourished, but they do not taste, do not smell, until she finds the "apple" (though she notes that things did not yet have names in Eden) -- look at this beautiful passage: The delicious fruit awakened my sense of smell. I perceived an aroma for the first time.The scent prompted me to reach with my arm, to open my hand, to take what was hanging from the branch, to bear it to my mouth. My eyes played no part: it was by way of its aroma that the fruit came to my mouth. I felt its fresh, smooth skin with my lips, with my tongue; my teeth sank into it. (p. 30-31)
What I am thinking as I read is roughly, the world outside Eden is a Chaos of unnamed perceivable qualities, Eden is organized Substance, words without referents -- by eating the "apple" Eve becomes able to perceive the world and to have intentions. This thought is very rough still, I will work on developing it as I read.
posted morning of November 30th, 2020: Respond
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Saturday, November 28th, 2020
Carmen Boullosa's Libro de Eva has some introductory materials at the front. It is presented as the transcription of a "rough manuscript", but there is no enclosing story to tell us where it was found or how we come to be reading it. There is however an introduction listing the contents; a brief letter with no attribution, bidding the reader to pass these papers along after reading them -- "Do not retain them, at the risk of your destruction" -- an unattributed note found among Eve's papers exhorting us not to allow Eve's voice to be lost to oblivion; and a prologue attributed to St. Teresa of Ávila. St. Teresa finds the document to be meaningless, putrid blasphemy; her advice is to ignore it. The book has three epigraphs -- a few lines from Joy Harjo's Perhaps the World Ends Here; from Byron's Cain; and from Eduardo Lizalde's Each Poem is its own Rough Draft (which I am in love with, and meaning to read more of his work).
posted afternoon of November 28th, 2020: Respond
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Sunday, November 22nd, 2020
Wondering while reading Texas -- what is gained by renaming Brownsville and Matamoros to Bruneville and Matasánchez? I guess it is meant as a marker that the book is fiction rather than history? But I don't quite see how such a marker is needed; and plenty of things in the novel have actual historical names including one of the main characters.
posted morning of November 22nd, 2020: Respond
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Saturday, November 21st, 2020
An interesting question in reading Schnee's translation of Texas is her rendering of La Grande as "Mrs. Big". It makes me think about how characters' names are rendered in this translation. There are many gringo characters with names which are a descriptive English word like Wild, Trust, Dry -- sometimes these are understood to be a proper name, sometimes a nickname, sometimes it is not clear. Mrs. Big is the only one of these whose nickname is given in Spanish in the original text*; it kind of sticks out because she is described as racist and jingoist American. It would stick out like a sore thumb if in the translation, she was called La Grande -- I wonder though what Boullosa had in mind here. I will be keeping an eye out for how descriptive names of Mexican and Black characters are rendered. The only one that is occurring to me right now, Juan Caballo (a cimmarón, an escaped slave who has crossed the Río Grande to Mexico), is rendered Juan Caballo -- makes sense although you lose a little wordplay when he is talking with a Seminole named Wild Horse. Native American characters have their descriptive names rendered in Spanish in the original and in English in the translation; my understanding of this is that in the world of the novel, the characters have descriptive names in their own languages.
 *Aha -- just spotted that Elizabeth Stealman's nickname La Floja is rendered as Mrs. Lazy in the translation, parallel to La Grande / Mrs. Big. This is a little different since Mrs. Lazy is what they call her behind her back -- I was thinking it was Mexicans calling her "La Floja" but maybe it is gringos too.
...Also Mocoso is rendered as "Snotty".
Here's an odd one -- the printer, a Mexican man named Juan Printer in the original, is named Juan Prensa in the translation. :)
(The frontspiece of the translation is a map showing a couple of key locations in the novel; Mrs. Big's Hotel is labelled "Mr. Big's Hotel". I spent a while trying to figure out why, before I realized how many typos there are in the text. Wishing Deep Vellum had more of a budget for copy editing.)
↻...done
posted morning of November 21st, 2020: Respond
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Thursday, November 19th, 2020
| JUST DO | | NOTHING |
| IT | | IS IMPOSSIBLE |
posted afternoon of November 19th, 2020: Respond
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As I make my way through the original and the translation of Texas (having read each of them through once) I'm noticing some minor differences that I just find inexplicable. For instance the Mexican character Salustio in the original (p. 55) is "Jones, a runaway slave" in the translation (p. 33). Why? I'm leaning as a tentative explanation toward the idea that Schnee translated a late pre-publication draft, and Boullosa made some final edits before the original was published which were not incorporated into the translation. No idea if that's correct or not.
 Another instance of this -- in the original we meet "otro que también se llama Blas, y no por bastardo..." in the Café Ronsard (p. 73) -- in the translation the character's name is given as "David" (p. 49) and no mention of bastardry is made, and there is no "also". The también in the original might be referring to Blas the bastard son of Gutierrez? Not sure.
↻...done
posted morning of November 19th, 2020: Respond
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Monday, November 16th, 2020
A section early in Texas consists of short paragraphs describing the events of the years between Texas being declared independent and being annexed to the US. The paragraphs are in order by year; the one for 1836 says Austin was declared the capital of Texas; skirmishes continued. That's incorrect, and in the translation this is changed to 1839 (the correct date), and the order of paragraphs is altered. (Luckily the original text did not have a paragraph for 1839, so there's no need to merge two together.) This seems like the right thing to do.
posted evening of November 16th, 2020: Respond
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A defining feature, even a tic, of the narrative voice in Texas is use of appositive phrases. Very frequently when a character is referred to it is with name + occupation, or name + some defining characteristic; e.g. we see "trapper Cruz" or "Cruz, the trapper" more often (I reckon) than just "Cruz". This is useful to me as a reader, since there are a lot of characters to keep track of; also it is cute. I wonder if it is a common feature of Boullosa's writing or just in this book -- something to keep an eye out for.
posted afternoon of November 16th, 2020: Respond
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