Fiction Fiesta

 

We met up in Nick’s bar, The Promised Land, to discuss literature in translation with some friends, editors, writers and such luminaries from the field of literary translation as Christopher MacLehose and Boyd Tonkin, chaired by the erudite and perennially entertaining Charles Boyle. By the end of the day I had the impression that we had achieved what we set out to do: we had talked about interesting stuff in good company; we had provided a forum for our guests to listen to and discuss literature in translation, and we had introduced to a Cardiff audience – for the first time but definitely not for the last – the prodigiously talented Argentinian novelist and poet, Andrés Neuman. More than that, most of us seemed to have enjoyed ourselves.

The day began with a reading and discussion with Andrés, who led us on a merry dance through Russian Jewish migration of the early 20th century, German Romanticism, the music of Franz Schubert, European identity in the 21st Century, an hilarious impersonation of Jorge Luis Borges, and an account of a chess game with Roberto Bolaño, in which the Chilean author plied his young admirer with whisky while playing Mexican heavy metal at full volume as a way of gaining tactical advantage.

There followed a delightful reading by the poets Jorge Fondebrider and Tiffany Atkinson, their lines bouncing off the walls with a playful (and sometimes darker) exchange of ironies.

The Fiesta was made by its participants, especially our Argentinian guests, and the fine writers who made the afternoon come alive: Des Barry, Zoe Skoulding, Tristan Hughes and the superb Philip Gross.

In the end it all went swimmingly, although  afterwards I wondered – rather like a medieval adventurer returning from the Forest of Enchantments – whether it had all been a mysterious dream. But that was probably just the lack of sleep.

 

Andrés Neuman

 

 

. . . in conversation with Blanco

 

 

Jorge Fondebrider and Tiffany Atkinson

 

 

Tiffany Atkinson

 

 

Tess and Charles take a break

 

 

Jorge explains a crucial point

 

 

Los tres amigos

 

 

The whole sick crew? - Barry, Boyle, Neuman, Fondebrider, Blanco, Mulcahy, Hughes.

 

 

 

 

 

Dissolving

 

It’s always an education to read in unusual locations. The organizers of FILBA appear to be steering me towards a socially engaged role that I am not normally associated with back in the UK. But that’s fine with me. The reading last night took place in a cobbled courtyard next to a rehabilitation centre for women recently released from jail, and behind an abandoned market, a steel-girdered hangar that resembles a nineteenth century railway station. Outside, the place was covered in graffiti and creeping vines, and in the darkness a wind began to stir, causing a few paper cups to scuttle across the cobbles like the rats that you knew were there, but were sitting out the poetry reading in a nearby drain. The perennial smell of the Buenos Aires night – barbecued meat, with an overlay of almonds  – wafted by, and an engaged and enthusiastic audience sat alongside the vendors of bags, table-cloths and other artefacts made by the women prisoners.

I am posting a poem that I read last night, as well as at the Club de Traductores on Monday, because it seems to be popular here – probably due to the excellence of the translation – but which I don’t think I have ever performed back home. My Spanish reader on this occasion was the poet and journalist Jorge Aulicino. Strange how on a reading tour there is usually one piece that gets more attention than the others, for no particular reason. It is followed by the Spanish translation by Jorge Fondebrider, since Blanco’s blog has acquired an encouraging following in Argentina and Spain, perhaps because they think I am someone I am not.

 

Blanco reading with Jorge Aulicino

 

Dissolving

 

When you spoke of dissolving in my arms

I realised it was not a figure of speech

that in a sense (in any sense), you meant it

to be just so, that you would disintegrate in me,

I in you, and both of us in water. Could this be

what is meant by marriage, in which both parties

disappear entirely, leaving only ripples

on the water’s quiet surface? But marriage

was a curious fantasy for us, and who could

possibly officiate? You were promised to another,

a dark figure stalking alleyways at night,

an ever-busy debt-collector, and I knew

my thin credentials would never count for much

with your imaginary father. So I led you

to a pond instead, with lilies and an oriental bridge,

a bench named for a local shopkeeper,

the path which circumscribed the water

shaded by hydrangeas and a vast magnolia.

The place was known to me, but since

the I that remembered things was by now

already dissolving in the you that forgot things,

the memory might well have been a false one.

You walked around the pond, around my island,

diminished with each circuit, each time drawn by

the gravity of the island’s green intelligence,

around and around, while I waited, an idiot

in a drama with no plot, no foreseeable conclusion.

 

from Being in Water by Richard Gwyn, with drawings by Lluís Peñaranda

 

 

 

'Dissolving' by Lluís Peñaranda

 

 

Disolverse

 

Cuando hablaste de disolverte en mis brazos

advertí que no era una figura retórica,

que en un sentido (en todo sentido), lo decías en serio

que así fuera, desintegrarte en mí,

yo en ti, y ambos en agua. ¿Será eso

lo que se llama matrimonio, cuando ambas partes

desaparecen completamente, dejando apenas ondas

sobre la quieta superficie del agua? Pero para nosotros

el matrimonio era una curiosa fantasía, ¿y quién quizás

podría celebrarlo? A otro estabas prometida,

una figura oscura que acechaba de noche en callejones,

un cobrador de deudas siempre ocupado, y yo sabía

que mis escasas credenciales jamás servirían de mucho

con tu padre imaginario. Así que en cambio te conduje

a un estanque, con lirios y un puente oriental,

un banco bautizado con el nombre de un comerciante local,

el camino que circunscribía el agua

sombreado por hortensias y una vasta magnolia.

El lugar me resultaba conocido, pero desde que el yo

que recordaba cosas para entonces ya estaba

disolviéndose en el tú que se olvidaba cosas,

el recuerdo bien podría haber sido falso.

Caminaste alrededor del estanque, alrededor de mi isla,

disminuida con cada vuelta, cada vez atraída

por la gravedad de la inteligencia verde de la isla,

una y otra vez, mientras yo esperaba, un idiota

en un drama sin argumento, sin previsible conclusión.

_

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Joaquín O. Giannuzzi

Illustration of Giannuzzi by Soledad Calés

 

Having written about illness in various media over recent years – principally as a so-called academic and the writer of a memoir, The Vagabond’s Breakfast, I am alert to the ways that other writers approach the subject, and am usually interested in what they have to say (so long as their writing does not launch into tedious new-age rage at the incompetence of ‘Western’ medicine, or degrade itself by spurious claims to the kind of quackery familiar to devotees of certain ‘wellness’ manuals).

I have recently been translating the poetry of the Argentinian Joaquín O. Giannuzzi, whose work is sadly neglected in the English-speaking world, and discover that illness – while by no means a limitation – is a recurring theme in his poems. This is something that is hard to do without falling prey to over-familiar tropes and accusations of self-pity. He approaches the topic as he approaches all his subject matter, with a lugubrious humour, with pathos, and with painful accuracy. I am posting three of his poems to mark my departure for his homeland later today. The original Spanish (which I have not reproduced here) is from the Poesía Completa, edited by Jorge Fondebrider, and published by Sibilina (Seville).

 

For Some Reason

I bought coffee, cigarettes, matches.

I smoked, I drank

and faithful to my personal rhetoric

put my feet on the table.

Fifty years old with the certainty of the damned.

Like almost everyone I messed up

without making too much noise;

yawning at nightfall I muttered my disappointment,

and spat on my shadow before going to bed.

This was all the response that I could offer to a world

that claimed from me a character that possibly

didn’t suit me.

Or maybe something else is at stake. Perhaps

there was a different plan for me

in some potential lottery

and my number was lost.

Perhaps no one settles on a strictly private destiny.

Perhaps the tide of history settles it for one and all.

This much remains to me:

a fragment of life that tired me out in advance,

a poem paralyzed halfway towards

an unknown resolution;

dregs of coffee in the cup

that for some reason

I never dared drain to the last drop.

 

On the Other Side

Someone has died on the other side of the wall.

At intervals there is a voice, hemmed in by sobbing.

I am the nearest neighbour and I feel

slightly responsible: blame

always finds an outlet.

In the rest of the building

no one seems to have noticed. They talk,

they laugh, they switch on televisions, they devour

every last scrap of meat and every song. If they knew

what had happened so close by, the thought

of death wouldn’t be sufficient

to alter the cardiac rhythm of the

building’s occupants.

They would push the deceased into the future

and their indifference would have its logic:

after all, no one dies any more than anyone else.

 

Intensive Care

In the bed opposite

the man woke up snoring

his open mouth set

in desperate conviction.

The serum was dripping

into his veins. From my belly

sprouted two plastic tubes

in which a pink foam bubbled

as if it were the definitive language

of my entrails. To one side

someone coughed up

the last of his viscera.

A springtime branch swayed

behind the window’s glass

flaunting the life owed us

in exchange for the disorders

that laid waste to our pale bones.

Everything seemed suspended

between universal infirmity

and the opportunities offered to death.

In the corridor a nurse fluttered by

and we followed her with eyes intent on

laying bare the fermented secret

of our clinical notes:

but we didn’t manage to reach

her distant and weary heart.

 

 

 

Cartoneros of Buenos Aires

It is not my intention to post a load of poems on this blog, but I am currently working on translations of the Argentinian poet Joaquín O. Giannuzzi (1924-2004). None of his work, as far as I know, has yet been published in English. This poem reminded me of the cartoneros of Buenos Aires, an impoverished, nocturnal tribe who make a meagre living by collecting and selling discarded cardboard and other rubbish left out on the street.

Incidentally, as Jorge Fondebrider has pointed out, the poem was written 30 years before the cartoneros became an everyday sight, but the ideas in the poem linked to my own memories of them, so I added the images.

GARBAGE AT DAYBREAK

At dawn today, out in the street

possessed by a kind

of sociological curiosity

I rummaged with a stick in the surreal world

of garbage bins.

I realized that things don’t die but are murdered.

I saw outraged papers, fruit peel, glass

of an unknown colour, strange and tortured metals,

rags, bones, dust, inexplicable substances

that rejected life. My attention was caught by

a doll’s torso, with a dark stain,

a sort of rosy meadow death.

It seems that culture consists in

the thorough tormenting of matter

and pushing it through an implacable intestine.

Almost a comfort to reflect that not even this excrement

is obliged to abandon the planet.