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 handle–pretentiousness,
> 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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