José Lezama Lima (1910-1976) greatest of Cuban poets and a household name
among literate hispanophones, author also of the novels Paradiso and
Oppiano Licario, plus numerous essays. In 1944 founded and edited, with
José Rodríguez Feo, the journal Orígenes, which defined a generation of
poets. A founder also of the tendency, let's call it, within Latin
American poetry called neobarroco. The hallucinatory quality of a lot of
his work needed no cactus.
Mark
At 03:39 PM 1/8/2005, you wrote:
>Mark, tho I am not sure how who is fucking who, but I like this poem,
>Who is Lezama? Does he live in Yuma? Where does he grow his peyote?
>
>S
>
>
> >> And I also remember
> >> someone on this list said that it is not true that languages like Italian
> >> and Spanish need more words than Anglo-Saxon languages in general to
> express
> >> the same concept... which is not correct.
> >
> > More that different languages are more or less economical at different
> > moments. So, endings indicatiing size (in Spanish -ito or illo or even
> > itillo, small, or -ote, large) or gender and number often eliminate the
> > need for a string of adjectives. But sometimes create problems of cultural
> > difference or politics.
> >
> > Here's a translation of a poem by Lezama:
> >
> > THEY PASS THROUGH THE NIGHT
> >
> >
> > At midnight a station wagon
> > filled with musicians
> > rattles old stones
> > shot through with silver
> > like the ones I saw
> > when I entered Taxco.
> > The fat actress
> > and the scrawny romeo
> > fall by accident against the door handlepretentiousness,
> > and they tear out their hair--
> > screams and bells,
> > the flush of a cheek,
> > slide to the roar of the piss
> > of swimming horses, parasols
> > above their inflated haunches.
> > Terrestrial brown
> > and violet flashes
> > boast of the bouncing
> > that the street light once deciphered.
> > A vacant house,
> > theatrically empty,
> > invigorates the passing musicians.
> > And there beyond the car’s window
> > a covetous arm’s apostrophe lingers
> > frosted with various feathers.
> > The great hall clock chimes in,
> > bumping into the raucous laughter
> > of those musicians sunk
> > in their ball-fringed pillows.
> > Time’s tassels,
> > creative as Montecristo’s pistols
> > or the river’s deflated sperm sacs.
> > And the cock?
> > It spread its legs
> > pointed its finger
> > and crowed
> > in the glow of a cigarette.
> >
> >
> > The line "the fat actress" translates "la cómica gorda. Cómica can also
> > mean comedienne, in its sense as dramatic actress or as stand-up. But in
> > the US women who act have taken to calling themselves "actors," and
> > "comedienne" has become at best an ostentation. Little choice here--the
> > information conveyed by the translation at a minimum has to contain gender
> > and profession. What would one say, "the fat woman actor who might be
> funny?"
> >
> > Similarly, "galán enlombrizado," translated as "scrawny romeo."
> > Enlombrizado is a neologism based on "lombríz," "worm." I'm guessing that
> > it's meant to mean something like scrwny and smarmy. Galán means a
> > heartthrob (Elvis was a galán), a leading man, a lover, a boulevardier. So
> > it suggests that he plays opposite the cómica, as well as being something
> > of a player (in his own eyes) and her lover. All in the one word. Given
> > the chain of theatrical metaphor in the poem I chose "romeo." It at least
> > conveys smarminess and his sense of his own prowess. The intended comedy I
> > hoped would be contained in the picture of Jack and Mrs. Sprat that's also,
> > it seems to me, being conveyed, but only if one reads enlombrizado to
> > contain scrawny.
> >
> > Translating romance languages I often wish that English, rather than
> > eliminating the genders of most nouns ages ago and currently attempting to
> > get rid of the remainder, had gone in the other direction. Maybe it's time
> > to regender English. And while we're at it, let's restore the thee-thou
> form.
> >
> > Mark
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