Entrevista de Macarena Gallo en 'The Clinic'

Juan Manuel Vial : 'Apuntes del esclavo estoico', La Tercera

“El libro que estoy escribiendo no es el que quiero escribir, este libro sólo existe en virtud de uno que no existirá nunca. Beckett escribió esto: ‘atreverse a fracasar donde ningún otro se atrevió a fracasar’”. Así dice una de las entradas de este magnífico diario de vida o “cuaderno de esclavo”, que es como el autor prefiere llamarlo. Escrito con una prosa limpia y consistente, la que a veces se transforma en cuelgas de versos intencionados, Alameda tras las rejas es un relato que atrae tanto por su originalidad y contundencia literaria, como por la personalidad de quien escribe, un joven de 27 años que a pesar de que tal vez bebe más de la cuenta, y a pesar de que ha herido a varias mujeres, demuestra ser una buena persona. Lo prueban el amor que les manifiesta a la palabra justa, a su abuelita y a los perros en general.

Lejos de ser un diario en el que se consignan acciones del tipo “hoy día me levanté, fui a la universidad, almorcé charquicán, etcétera”, el de Olavarría consiste en una serie de divagaciones, meticulosamente fechadas entre septiembre de 2004 y agosto de 2005, que giran en torno a diversos temas de interés humano, más ciertas obsesiones particulares: el amor, el sexo pasajero, el suicidio, las trampas de la escritura, el peso del alcohol ingerido, algunos apuntes cinematográficos, las bondades de la lectura.

Muchas de las ideas del autor están refrendadas en palabras expresadas por hombres sabios, a quienes el narrador ha leído con dedicación e inteligencia, ofreciendo siempre una síntesis memorable entre su propia realidad y aquellos conceptos indelebles.

Algunos de los citados son los poetas César Vallejo y Jorge Reichmann, el grupo experimental Oulipo, o los pensadores griegos Heráclito y Aristófanes. El protagonista utiliza a veces la segunda o la tercera persona del singular para referirse a sí mismo. El recurso, que en sí es riesgoso, está bien manejado. El joven es un admirador de la música rock y de la poesía que es capaz de desentrañarle. Sus gustos en esta materia son intachables, y así, tipos como Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave, John Cale o el fundador de aquella grandísima banda llamada The Magnetic Fields, Stephin Merritt, van dejando huellas sonoras y ecos llamativos a lo largo de toda la obra. El acto de escribir también recibe en estas páginas la merecida atención especulativa: “Escribir nada tiene que ver con la imaginación, lo que permite escribir el libro es, en primer lugar, el libro en el interior de su escritor como búsqueda y, en segundo lugar, el propio progreso del libro”.

Hasta antes de publicar Alameda tras las rejas, Rodrigo Olavarría escribió varios libros de poesía y recibió distinciones de la Fundación Pablo Neruda y una beca de creación del Fondo del Libro y la Lectura. A la vez, ha traducido a grandes poetas, como Ezra Pound, Edgard Lee Masters, Allen Ginsberg y Sylvia Plath. Parte de esa experiencia, de esa vital experiencia, es la que adorna las páginas más bellas y sustanciosas de este libro. “A diario repito que no me importan yambos ni placeres, aun así leo y escribo estos poemas que pongo frente a mí, no veo mayor contradicción en eso, incluso es común que salga y me pierda entre calles y camas deformadas por el uso donde busco algo para lo que todavía no hay nombre o que simplemente puede designarse como nada. No me importan yambos ni placeres, pero todos los días te busco sin dejar de hacer presagios, montado sobre una bicicleta con tu nombre y otros nombres en la boca, con versos que repito de memoria y otros que se dejan caer simplemente”.

Juan Manuel Vial, La Tercera, 15 de enero, 2011.

Leonardo Sanhueza: 'Alameda tras las rejas', Las Últimas Noticias

Si bien ya era conocido por diversas traducciones, entre ellas Aullido de Allen Ginsberg y Abejas de Sylvia Plath, y su nombre circulaba desde hacía tiempo en algunas antologías y revistas, el poeta Rodrigo Olavarría se mantuvo en reserva durante años, sin dar más que unas tenues pistas acerca de su trabajo literario. Alameda tras las rejas es, entonces, su primer libro, pero como lo sería el primer libro de un veterano de guerra. Escrito bajo una engañadora y variable forma de un diario de vida, plantea de entrada el problema de los géneros literarios y su relación con la experiencia. Parece preguntarse: ¿qué tiene que ver la vida diaria con los poemas que parecen poemas, con las historias que parecen historias y, en fin, con las convenciones del arte? El diario de vida, como género, ofrece una total libertad. De buenas a primeras, el libro se aparece como una expiación amorosa, pero luego, gracias a esa libertad, esa línea temática se va entramando con otras que van y vienen en el transcurso de los días: de pronto, la visita a una abuela en el sur trae la presencia de la vejez y la muerte, pero también flashbacks de la niñez y postales del paisaje; más allá, habla de sus anteojos y de lo que les pasó cuando él protagonizó una cinematográfica y absurda caída desde una ventana rota de una micro en movimiento; a pito de nada, consigna los teléfonos de Teófilo Cid y Vicente Huidobro por si el lector “llega a estar en 1940”; y un poco más allá, el autor anota sus lecturas del día, sus aforismos, sus canciones, para llegar otra vez al punto de partida: algo así como la imposibilidad del amor y la especie de combate que se libra en el libro, donde el autor se ve a sí mismo como un esclavo o, también, como un soldado en la trinchera de una guerra alegórica. “El libro que estoy escribiendo no es el que quiero escribir, este libro sólo existe en virtud de uno que no existirá nunca”, dice Olavarría. La tensión entre ambos libros, el libro utópico y el real, es justamente lo que le da movimiento a este libro insólito, brillante y maravillosamente extraño.—

Leonardo Sanhueza, Las Últimas Noticias, 3 de Noviembre de 2010.

10 + 6 Canciones para desastres aéreos.

01.- Eddie Cochran - Three Stars.
02.- Depeche Mode - Tora! Tora! Tora!
03.- Bright Eyes - At The Bottom Of Everything.
04.- Elton John - Daniel.
05.- Don McLean - American Pie.
06.- Frank Sinatra - Fly me to the Moon.
07.- E.L.O - Don't Bring Me Down.
08.- Pavement - Hit the Plane Down.
09.- Jon Bon Jovi - Blaze of Glory.
10.- Tom Petty - Freefallin'.

Bonus Tracks:

11.- Jorge Ben - Errare Humanum Est.
12.- Townes Van Zandt - Flying Shoes.
13.- Depeche Mode - Behind the Wheel.
14.- Frank Sinatra - Come Fly with Me.
15.- Los Nikis - Rumbo A Manhattan.
16.- Mauricio Redoles - El teniente Bello.

BAJAR AQUÍ.

Antígona, Sófocles. (versos 332 al 342)

Antígona, Sófocles. Versos 332 al 342, traducción de Sir Richard Jebb, 1893:

"Wonders are many, and none is more wonderful than man. This power spans the sea, even when it surges white before the gales of the south-wind, and makes a path under swells that threaten to engulf him. Earth, too, the eldest of the gods, the immortal, the unwearied, he wears away to his own ends, turning the soil with the offspring of horses as the plows weave to and fro year after year."

"Muchas son las maravillas, pero ninguna lo es más que el hombre. Su poder se extiende sobre los mares, incluso cuando este surge blanco ante el vendaval del viento sur y crea una ruta bajo las olas que amenazan tragarlo. La tierra también, la más antigua de los dioses, la inmortal, la incansable, desgasta para sus propios fines, removiendo el suelo con la progenie de los caballos mientras los arados van y vienen año tras año."

James Nichols discute a Sir Richard Jebb la traducción de la palabra deinos del primer verso, él la traduce como wonderful y Assela Alamillo (en la edición de Gredos) como asombrosas. Nichols afirma que deinos significa terrible o ingenioso. Es decir, Sófocles destaca al ser humano como el ser más lleno de recursos en el mundo, el mejor adaptado en toda la creación, si queremos. Tal vez a eso apunta Sir Richard Jebb, cuando en el verso siguiente agrega: “This power...”. Este poder identificado como ese 2% de información genética que nos distancia de los chimpancés y condena nuestra especie a la autodestrucción.

James Joyce lee un fragmento de Ulysses.

He began:

- Mr chairman, ladies and gentlemen: Great was my admiration in listening to the remarks addressed to the youth of Ireland a moment since by my learned friend. It seemed to me that I had been transported into a country far away from this country, into an age remote from this age, that I stood in ancient Egypt and that I was listening to the speech of some highpriest of that land addressed to the youthful Moses.

His listeners held their cigarettes poised to hear, their smokes ascending in frail stalks that flowered with his speech. And let our crooked smokes. Noble words coming. Look out. Could you try your hand at it yourself?

- And it seemed to me that I heard the voice of that Egyptian highpriest raised in a tone of like haughtiness and like pride. I heard his words and their meaning was revealed to me.

FROM THE FATHERS

It was revealed to me that those things are good which yet are corrupted which neither if they were supremely good nor unless they were good could be corrupted. Ah, curse you! That's saint Augustine.

- Why will you jews not accept our culture, our religion and our language? You are a tribe of nomad herdsmen: we are a mighty people. You have no cities nor no wealth: our cities are hives of humanity and our galleys, trireme and quadrireme, laden with all manner merchandise furrow the waters of the known globe.

You have but emerged from primitive conditions: we have a literature, a priesthood, an agelong history and a polity.

Nile.

Child, man, effigy.

By the Nilebank the babemaries kneel, cradle of bulrushes: a man supple in combat: stonehorned, stonebearded, heart of stone.

- You pray to a local and obscure idol: our temples, majestic and mysterious, are the abodes of Isis and Osiris, of Horus and Ammon Ra. Yours serfdom, awe and humbleness: ours thunder and the seas. Israel is weak and few are her children: Egypt is an host and terrible are her arms. Vagrants and daylabourers are you called: the world trembles at our name.

A dumb belch of hunger cleft his speech. He lifted his voice above it boldly:

- But, ladies and gentlemen, had the youthful Moses listened to and accepted that view of life, had he bowed his head and bowed his will and bowed his spirit before that arrogant admonition he would never have brought the chosen people out of their house of bondage, nor followed the pillar of the cloud by day. He would never have spoken with the Eternal amid lightnings on Sinai's mountaintop nor ever have come down with the light of inspiration shining in his countenance and bearing in his arms the tables of the law, graven in the language of the outlaw.

Stephen Dedalus liberado.

—Look here, Cranly, he said. You have asked me what I would do and what I would not do. I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use — silence, exile, and cunning.

Cranly seized his arm and steered him round so as to lead him back towards Leeson Park. He laughed almost slyly and pressed Stephen's arm with an elder's affection.

—Cunning indeed! he said. Is it you? You poor poet, you!

*

- Mira, Cranly, dijo. Me preguntaste qué haría y qué no haría. Te voy a decir lo que haré y lo que no haré. No serviré a aquello en lo que ya no creo, aunque se llame hogar, patria o mi iglesia: e intentaré expresarme en alguna forma de vida o arte tan libremente como pueda y tan plenamente como pueda, usando como defensa las únicas armas que me permito usar – silencio, exilio y astucia.

Cranly lo tomó del brazo y lo hizo voltearse de modo para llevarlo de vuelta al parque Leeson. Se rió casi maliciosamente y apretó el brazo de Stephen con el afecto de un mayor.

- ¡Astucia, ciertamente! le dijo. ¿Eres tú? ¡Tú, pobre poeta!

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, p. 246.

Stephen piojento & enamorado.

A louse crawled over the nape of his neck and, putting his thumb and forefinger deftly beneath his loose collar, he caught it. He rolled its body, tender yet brittle as a grain of rice, between thumb and finger for an instant before he let it fall from him and wondered would it live or die. There came to his mind a curious phrase from CORNELIUS A LAPIDE which said that the lice born of human sweat were not created by God with the other animals on the sixth day. But the tickling of the skin of his neck made his mind raw and red. The life of his body, ill clad, ill fed, louse-eaten, made him close his eyelids in a sudden spasm of despair and in the darkness he saw the brittle bright bodies of lice falling from the air and turning often as they fell. Yes, and it was not darkness that fell from the air. It was brightness.

Brightness falls from the air.

He had not even remembered rightly Nash's line. All the images it had awakened were false. His mind bred vermin. His thoughts were lice born of the sweat of sloth.

He came back quickly along the colonnade towards the group of students. Well then, let her go and be damned to her! She could love some clean athlete who washed himself every morning to the waist and had black hair on his chest. Let her.

*

Un piojo se arrastró sobre por su nuca y, usando hábilmente sus dedos índice y pulgar bajo el cuello abierto de su camisa, lo atrapó. Enrolló su cuerpo, tierno y quebradizo como un grano de arroz, entre el dedo y el pulgar por un instante antes de dejarlo caer y se preguntó si viviría o moriría. Entonces recordó una curiosa frase de CORNELIUS A LAPIDE en la que decía que los piojos nacidos del sudor humano no fueron creados por Dios junto con los demás animales el sexto día. Pero el escozor en la piel del su cuello puso su mente en carne viva. La vida de su cuerpo, mal vestido, mal alimentado, comido por los piojos, lo hizo cerrar los párpados en un repentino espasmo de desesperación y en la oscuridad vio los quebradizos y brillantes cuerpos de piojos cayendo desde el aire y girando mientras caían. Sí, no era oscuridad lo que caía del aire, era claridad.

La claridad desciende desde el aire.

No habría recordado correctamente el verso de Nash. Todas las imágenes que había despertado eran falsas. Su mente engendraba alimañas. Sus pensamientos eran piojos nacidos del sudor de la pereza.

Volvió rápidamente entre las columnas hacia el grupo de estudiantes. Bueno, entonces, ¡déjala ir y que se vaya a la cresta! Ella podía amar un limpio atleta que se baña todas las mañanas hasta la cintura y que tiene pelos negros en el pecho, déjala.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, p. 233.

Stephen Dedalus era un tímido invitado.

The pages of his time-worn Horace never felt cold to the touch even when his own fingers were cold; they were human pages and fifty years before they had been turned by the human fingers of John Duncan Inverarity and by his brother, William Malcolm Inverarity. Yes, those were noble names on the dusky flyleaf and, even for so poor a Latinist as he, the dusky verses were as fragrant as though they had lain all those years in myrtle and lavender and vervain; but yet it wounded him to think that he would never be but a shy guest at the feast of the world's culture and that the monkish learning, in terms of which he was striving to forge out an esthetic philosophy, was held no higher by the age he lived in than the subtle and curious jargons of heraldry and falconry.

*

Las páginas de su ajado Horacio nunca se sintieron frías al tacto incluso cuando sus propios dedos estaban helados; eran páginas humanas y cincuenta años antes habían sido tocadas por los humanos dedos de John Duncan Inverarity y su hermano, William Malcolm Inverarity. Sí, eran nobles nombres en la oscura solapa del libro, incluso para un latinista tan pobre como él, los oscuros versos eran tan aromáticos como si hubiesen reposado todos esos años en lavanda, arrayán y verbena; pero aun así lo hería pensar que él nunca sería más que un tímido invitado al festín de la cultura del mundo y que su educación monacal, bajo cuyos términos luchaba por forjar una filosofía estética, no era más estimada en la época en que vivía que la sutil y curiosa jerga de la heráldica y la cetrería.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, p.180.

A new wild life was singing in his veins.

Disheartened, he raised his eyes towards the slow-drifting clouds, dappled and seaborne. They were voyaging across the deserts of the sky, a host of nomads on the march, voyaging high over Ireland, westward bound. The Europe they had come from lay out there beyond the Irish Sea, Europe of strange tongues and valleyed and woodbegirt and citadelled and of entrenched and marshalled races. He heard a confused music within him as of memories and names which he was almost conscious of but could not capture even for an instant; then the music seemed to recede, to recede, to recede, and from each receding trail of nebulous music there fell always one longdrawn calling note, piercing like a star the dusk of silence. Again! Again! Again! A voice from beyond the world was calling.

—Hello, Stephanos!

—Here comes The Dedalus!

—Ao!... Eh, give it over, Dwyer, I'm telling you, or I'll give you a stuff in the kisser for yourself... Ao!

—Good man, Towser! Duck him!

—Come along, Dedalus! Bous Stephanoumenos! Bous Stephaneforos!

—Duck him! Guzzle him now, Towser!

—Help! Help!... Ao!

He recognized their speech collectively before he distinguished their faces. The mere sight of that medley of wet nakedness chilled him to the bone. Their bodies, corpse-white or suffused with a pallid golden light or rawly tanned by the sun, gleamed with the wet of the sea. Their diving-stone, poised on its rude supports and rocking under their plunges, and the rough-hewn stones of the sloping breakwater over which they scrambled in their horseplay gleamed with cold wet lustre. The towels with which they smacked their bodies were heavy with cold seawater; and drenched with cold brine was their matted hair.

He stood still in deference to their calls and parried their banter with easy words. How characterless they looked: Shuley without his deep unbuttoned collar, Ennis without his scarlet belt with the snaky clasp, and Connolly without his Norfolk coat with the flapless side-pockets! It was a pain to see them, and a sword-like pain to see the signs of adolescence that made repellent their pitiable nakedness. Perhaps they had taken refuge in number and noise from the secret dread in their souls. But he, apart from them and in silence, remembered in what dread he stood of the mystery of his own body.

—Stephanos Dedalos! Bous Stephanoumenos! Bous Stephaneforos!

Their banter was not new to him and now it flattered his mild proud sovereignty. Now, as never before, his strange name seemed to him a prophecy. So timeless seemed the grey warm air, so fluid and impersonal his own mood, that all ages were as one to him. A moment before the ghost of the ancient kingdom of the Danes had looked forth through the vesture of the hazewrapped City. Now, at the name of the fabulous artificer, he seemed to hear the noise of dim waves and to see a winged form flying above the waves and slowly climbing the air. What did it mean? Was it a quaint device opening a page of some medieval book of prophecies and symbols, a hawk-like man flying sunward above the sea, a prophecy of the end he had been born to serve and had been following through the mists of childhood and boyhood, a symbol of the artist forging anew in his workshop out of the sluggish matter of the earth a new soaring impalpable imperishable being?

His heart trembled; his breath came faster and a wild spirit passed over his limbs as though he was soaring sunward. His heart trembled in an ecstasy of fear and his soul was in flight. His soul was soaring in an air beyond the world and the body he knew was purified in a breath and delivered of incertitude and made radiant and commingled with the element of the spirit. An ecstasy of flight made radiant his eyes and wild his breath and tremulous and wild and radiant his windswept limbs.

—One! Two!... Look out!

—Oh, Cripes, I'm drownded!

—One! Two! Three and away!

—The next! The next!

—One!... UK!

—Stephaneforos!

His throat ached with a desire to cry aloud, the cry of a hawk or eagle on high, to cry piercingly of his deliverance to the winds. This was the call of life to his soul not the dull gross voice of the world of duties and despair, not the inhuman voice that had called him to the pale service of the altar. An instant of wild flight had delivered him and the cry of triumph which his lips withheld cleft his brain.

—Stephaneforos!

What were they now but cerements shaken from the body of death—the fear he had walked in night and day, the incertitude that had ringed him round, the shame that had abased him within and without—cerements, the linens of the grave?

His soul had arisen from the grave of boyhood, spurning her grave-clothes. Yes! Yes! Yes! He would create proudly out of the freedom and power of his soul, as the great artificer whose name he bore, a living thing, new and soaring and beautiful, impalpable, imperishable.

He started up nervously from the stone-block for he could no longer quench the flame in his blood. He felt his cheeks aflame and his throat throbbing with song. There was a lust of wandering in his feet that burned to set out for the ends of the earth. On! On! his heart seemed to cry. Evening would deepen above the sea, night fall upon the plains, dawn glimmer before the wanderer and show him strange fields and hills and faces. Where?

He looked northward towards Howth. The sea had fallen below the line of seawrack on the shallow side of the breakwater and already the tide was running out fast along the foreshore. Already one long oval bank of sand lay warm and dry amid the wavelets. Here and there warm isles of sand gleamed above the shallow tide and about the isles and around the long bank and amid the shallow currents of the beach were lightclad figures, wading and delving.

In a few moments he was barefoot, his stockings folded in his pockets and his canvas shoes dangling by their knotted laces over his shoulders and, picking a pointed salt-eaten stick out of the jetsam among the rocks, he clambered down the slope of the breakwater.

There was a long rivulet in the strand and, as he waded slowly up its course, he wondered at the endless drift of seaweed. Emerald and black and russet and olive, it moved beneath the current, swaying and turning. The water of the rivulet was dark with endless drift and mirrored the high-drifting clouds. The clouds were drifting above him silently and silently the seatangle was drifting below him and the grey warm air was still and a new wild life was singing in his veins.

Where was his boyhood now? Where was the soul that had hung back from her destiny, to brood alone upon the shame of her wounds and in her house of squalor and subterfuge to queen it in faded cerements and in wreaths that withered at the touch? Or where was he?

He was alone. He was unheeded, happy and near to the wild heart of life. He was alone and young and wilful and wildhearted, alone amid a waste of wild air and brackish waters and the sea-harvest of shells and tangle and veiled grey sunlight and gayclad lightclad figures of children and girls and voices childish and girlish in the air.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, p.167.