Borges Speaks In Riddles

Los Enigmas by Jorge Luis Borges

Yo que soy el que ahora está cantando

seré mañana el misterioso, el muerto,

el morador de un mágico y desierto

orbe sin antes ni después ni cuándo.

Así afirma la mística. Me creo

indigno del Infierno o de la Gloria,

pero nada predigo. Nuestra historia

cambia como las formas de Proteo.

¿Qué errante laberinto, qué blancura

ciega de resplandor será mi suerte,

cuando me entregue el fin de esta aventura

la curiosa experiencia de la muerte?

Quiero beber su cristalino Olvido,

ser para siempre; pero no haber sido.

***

The Enigmas (translated by John Updike)

I who am singing these lines today

Will be tomorrow the enigmatic corpse

Who dwells in a realm, magical and barren,

Without a before or an after or a when.

So say the mystics. I say I believe

Myself undeserving of Heaven or of Hell

But make no predictions. Each man’s tale

Shifts like the watery forms of Proteus.

What errant labyrinth, what blinding flash

Of splendour and glory shall become my fate

When the end of this adventure presents me with

The curious experience of death?

I want to drink its crystal-pure oblivion,

To be forever; but never to have been.

***

Notes:

Enigma – from Greek, to speak in riddles

1530 – statement which conceals a hidden meaning or known thing under obscure words or forms

1600 – anything inexplicable to the observer

Comments

From Academy to the Street, From Poetry To Prose

From academy to the street, from poetry to prose - Nicanor Parra – ‘My own antipoems use this blank verse. I’ve often been asked what an antipoem is and the most frequent response I’ve given, without realising what I was saying is – “an antipoem is quite simple a dramatic utterance”, and a dramatic utterance, we would have to add, is a Shakespearean blank verse. Or rather, it is a hendecasyllable that lengthens and shortens, and that oscillates between the academy, the street and the fairground. I’ve always worked with these elements: I’ve even managed to combine verse with eleven syllables and one with one syllable, and verses with prose. I thought it was a great invention of mine, but the Elizabethans were already working with these methods – Shakespeare used them in King Lear , where a large percentage of the work is written in prose, without us fully knowing what is verse and what is prose. This is very important: we could say that they are prosaic verses, or poetic verse’

Breaking Heads - Two Rompecabezas From Nicanor Parra

PUZZLE by Nicanor Parra I give no one the right. I love a piece of rag. I shift tombs back and forth. I shift tombs back and forth. I give no one the right. I'm a ridiculous sort In the light of the sun, The plague of soda fountains Dying of rage. I am a hopeless case, My own hairs accuse me On the bargain altar The machines give no pardons. I laugh from behind a chair, my face fills with flies. I am the one who can’t say what he means Talking in long rows of what. I stutter, With my foot touches a sort of foetus. What are these stomachs for? Who made up this mess? It's best thing is not to let on. Thinking one thing I think something else. (Translated by W.S. Merwin) Rompecabezas No doy a nadie el derecho. Adoro un trozo de trapo. Traslado tumbas de lugar. Traslado tumbas de lugar. No doy a nadie el derecho. Yo soy un tipo ridículo A los rayos del sol, Azote de las fuen

The Strange and Compelling Inner Life of Clarice Lispector

Dedication - Cuando a la casa del lenguaje se le vuela el tejado y las palabras no guarecen, yo hablo When the house of language has its roof blown off and words do not shelter, I speak - fellow Latin American writer and contemporary, Alejandra Pizarnik, "Fragmentos para dominar el silencio” (Fragments to overcome silence) --- “ALL THE WORLD BEGAN WITH A YES. ONE MOLECULE SAID YES TO ANOTHER MOLECULE and life was born. But before prehistory there was the prehistory of prehistory and there was the never and there was the yes. It was ever so. I don’t know why, but I do know that the universe never began. Make no mistake, I only achieve simplicity with enormous effort” - From The Hour Of The Star (1977) --- When I read Clarice, I’m reminded of Montaigne - "I continually observe myself, I take stock of myself, I taste myself … I roll about in myself” Maurice Merleau-Ponty described Montaigne as someone who put "a consciousness astonished

Aporetica

Search This Blog