A nice excerpt, but the "one Dennis Tedlock" does seem strange, as he's in
the anthropology department of Bernstein's university, was coeditor with
Jerry Rothenberg of Alcheringa, the central periodical of ethnopoetics,
published widely in journals in which Bernstein has also published, was
with his wife editor of American Anthropologist, and has published his own
translation of the Popol Vuh (there are, I think, four translations into
English and several in Spanish, which are widely read in Mexico and Central
America).
Is this a very old essay?
Mark
At 09:50 PM 2/23/2001 -0000, david.bircumshaw wrote:
>I've been leafing through an Bernstein's 'Close Listening' and like the
>following,
>no doubt this terain will be familiar to some, for which I beg patience, but
>others...
>
>and no doubt to there are those who could correct my little wit of this...
>
>but I'm fed up of not-saying, of negative air on the list....
>
>A study of Mayan poetics called, 'Towards a Poetics of Polyphony and
>Translatability' , by one Dennis Tedlock, and written in a very odd English,
>the sort that is peppered with academe and clumsy attempts at originality of
>phrase, that can very easily disinterest a reader, however, he does know his
>Mayans.
>The piece develops out of an account of Mayan work preserved by the Spanish
>in a sixtenth century transliteration, hence written in 'our' alphabet but
>in Mayan or 'QuichE' (shd be an accent on the 'e'). A work called 'Popol
>Vuh' or 'Council Book', from the Guatemalan highlands.
>It is a book of lessons on poetry which takes the form of a story of how the
>gods prepared the world for human beings and how human beings might have
>developed, illustrated by hypothetical poems for humans at different stages
>of development.
>>From the onset the gods wanted human beings who could speak to them (yes, we
>were born to, from, talk) but their expectations were also poetic. But they
>didn't want to hear complete sentences so much as phrases or words in
>parallel pairs. when they made the animals each species made a different
>sound but repeated the cry without variation. After four attempts the gods
>succeeded and humans appeared, four of them. When the gods ask them to talk,
>they get a poem in reply;
>
>Qitzij chik truly now
>
>kamul k'amo double thanks
>oxmul k'amo triple thanks
>
>mixojwinaqirik we've been formed
>mi pu xojchi'nik and we have mouths
>xojwachinik we have faces
>
>kojch'awik we speak
>we listen we listen
>kojta'onik we wonder
>kojsilab'ik we move
>
>thus far, the author says: 'there are rhythms here, but they are temporary
>rhythms created by alignments of syntax and meaning.... rhymes, too, in the
>broad sense... but again aligned with syntax and meaning ... the effect is
>to foreground the parts of the parallel lines that _do not_ rhyme (I like
>that) '
>
>The first sentence is not yet over:
>
>utz kaqana'o our thinking is good
>
>xketamaj naj naqaj we have the knowledge of the far and near
>mi pu xqilo nim ch'utin and we've seen the great and the small
>
>upa kaj in the sky
>upa ulew on the earth
>
>fr'inst ' mi' is the perfect aspect, 'pu' a conjunction'., then the verb
>followed by 'nim ch'utin' - ' great small' which itself links with 'naj
>naqaj' in the line before/above which is ' far near'. Does it start to come
>across? And how the monostich pegs, builds, holds up the whole, the line
>carrying the non-isometric rhythms. I'm very into this. It accords with my
>own
>experience of how poems happen, stand.
>
>The gods are alarmed and cloud the understanding of humans, so, reduced to
>mortals who can only communicate with the gods at a distance, they are left
>to the desperation of prayer.
>After a long time wandering in darkness, humans regain some of their
>understanding, becoming dreamers and diviners, learning how to use
>'instruments for seeing' such as crystals. Or books.
>
>
>david bircumshaw
>
>
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