MUSEUM POETICA: TRANSLUCINE

Of Juan Carlos Bustriazo Ortiz (Santa Rosa, Argentina, 1929–2010), María Negroni has written (not without a pinch of hyperbole) that his grammar utterly maddens received norms: “It’s no exaggeration,” Negroni claims (and by claiming not to exaggerate, she does precisely that), if I say that, in Bustriazo […], the grammar maddens everything. Not a single norm is left standing” (La Nación, Buenos Aires, April 6, 2012, p. 14). Beyond the question of norms and deviations, we stand before writing tempered by the border: Santa Rosa, his native town, in the province of La Pampa (before Evita) was historically the frontier between the Argentina of Borges and that of Calfucura, in other words, the Argentina of Sarmiento and the Argentina of the indigenous Ranquel, Mapuche, Tehuelche, and a bit farther to the south, the Country of Apples. An astonishing medley of de-centered avant-garde and the late Neolithic, the poems of Bustriazo Ortiz breathe fresh air into the migratory Spanish language. Of his prolific oeuvre, which in great part remains unpublished, one can refer to the volume of selected poems Herejía bermeja (2008); there are also translations from Spanish into English on the way.

— Carmen Abaroa

A Note on the Translation

Sergio de Matteo, a member of the close circle of poets and musicians that surrounded Juan Carlos Bustriazo Ortiz in his native Santa Rosa, has argued that Bustriazo’s poetry — however “untranslatable” it may seem — invites, even anticipates, translation (“Con Lenguas de Afuera,” La Arena, January 22, 2012). True to this idea, I first encountered his poems in light of translation, inside another translation — which is to say, I first encountered them in light of, inside of, the framework of encounter — in the title essay to Poetry After the Invention of America: Don’t Light the Flower by Andres Ajens (Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2011). In that astute, canon-busting essay, Ajens traces the uncanny correspondence of Bustriazo’s “Rupestral Song” with Paul Celan’s “Einmal,” which, as Ajens notes, is “one of the rare instances when Celan conjugates the historically marked German verb vernichten, to exterminate” (Ajens 51). Bringing Bustriazo into dialogue with Celan, and with the question of the Western lyric poem after Auschwitz, Ajens offered me an occasion, and the context, to translate Bustriazo’s work. I hope that my translations over the past few years have remained attentive to that gift.

In my thinking about this work, I owe a lot to Ajens’s notion of the encounter: “encounter would occur, if it occurs at all . . . in a certain ex-perience (“trial or perilous crossing”) marked primarily by co- and inter-: the peri-petias of a non-selfsame common place, the profuse daring of language” (45). Visiting Santa Rosa in 2017, I experienced first-hand the irony that haunts the status of Bustriazo’s poetry: the profusion of his poetic output — more than seventy manuscripts! — is countered by persistent difficulties of access, challenges that make the encounter of translation uncertain (but, as Ajens says, what is an encounter without some degree of uncertainty? Would it even be an encounter at all?). Issues of access and excess are not merely realities that shape my process, I would argue; they are integral to his poetics, which took its remarkable, inordinate shape far outside the established literary spaces of the capital. There is much more to say about excess and access — but I’ll stop here, because there is so much more to say about my experience of this work in translation.

In particular: words. In Bustriazo’s poetry, words are sites of poetic — linguistic, shamanic, anthropological, and archaeological — play. The most striking feature of his poetic language is the neologism, which he conceptualizes as “mashed” roots (“las raízes machacadas”), word histories and associations worked with mortar and pestle. The fragrant, concentrated pulp of Spanish and indigenous lexemes — the product of a process both destructive and rehabilitative — is for magical use. These words are the tinder; they incite the poem then glow under its shower of sparks.

Bustriazo’s neologisms are always morphologically plausible. Both familiar and strange, they shade an uncanny music into the Spanish. For example: the invented word “piedrajos” recalls “piedra” (stone, rock) and “rajo” (from the verb “rajar,” to tear or split) — and maybe even echoes “padrazo” (a good father). I chose “tornstones,” because it was the most believable as a word (also, I liked the echo of “turnstone” and how the word almost mirrors itself around the “s”). Sometimes Bustriazo rewires parts of speech or changes declensions to make a word new. For example, “enoverado” contains the adjective “overa” (pinto color) but in participle form, with an added intensive prefix: “inpintoed”. Other neologisms derive from place names (e.g., Collón Curá and Pitral Laqua) — effectively coining toponyms. With these, it is never clear whether the semantic meaning of the word or place-reference predominates. “Pitral,” which means “flamingo” in Mapudungun, is also the name of a particular lake; either meaning, or both, could work in the line. I kept “pitral” because its sound seems so characteristically “Bustriazo” (an iamb that ends on a “l,” like another of his favorite words, “quetral”) and because no one I asked could come up with a meaning without a dictionary anyway. I could list countless examples of words that, like “pitral,” refuse to be pinned to a single signification.

This neologistic diction, resonant but not-quite-graspable, suggests possibility even as it testifies to (personal) loss and (colonial) erasure. In a more palpable sense, it makes the language feel more concrete, more tactile. I like to think of Bustriazo’s words as stones — to borrow another of his own metaphors. Words are things, lost and found, layered and fired over long histories, lost and found. Just one more example: “marillosa,” which I have rendered here as “amberine.” Marillosa calls up “sea” (mar) and “marvellous” (maravillosa, with a dropped middle), and yellow (“amarillo”; one can read “marillosa” as something like “ellowful”). I swung between “marellous” and “ellowful,” but landed on “ambarine.” “Amber” and “amarillo” share the Arabic root anbari (yellow, amber-colored); also, “marine” is faintly audible in “mbarine.” But again, I chose “ambarine” because it sounds almost plausible, if still doubtful, like “marillosa” in Spanish. I believe that, in the space of Bustriazo’s poetics, the sea can become one layer of a stone.

In short, aside from trying to honor the uncanny familiarity of the sounds, I did not follow a single strategy for the neologisms: everything really depends in these poems. I have kept some words in Mapudungun, and even in Spanish, because to translate seemed to overdetermine them — and to entirely miss the point, which I took to be their concrete, musical, unknowable quality. Bustriazo’s inherently cross-lingual poetry seems to welcome such a risk. And more generally, I have addressed every word on a case-by-case basis. I usually object to applying “consistency” as a rule when I translate (i.e., making every instance of the same word the same in the translation). The same word is never the same in a different line of poetry, and this is true even for basic nouns. For example, sometimes I translate “piedra” as rock, and sometimes as “stone.” Sometimes, I find, it’s more of a rock, and sometimes it’s more of a stone. Meaning shifts with the context of the line, and even with its music — which is paramount in these poems. Here, inconsistency, as a principle, is crucial. Bustriazo’s poetry in every way resists translation’s impulses to standardize language, to clarify and resolve its uncertainties — which is why it fascinates me.

There are exceptions to this approach. Several key words repeat throughout Bustriazo’s work and, in their repetition, take on an almost materialistic, talismanic quality. They include “penca” (“stalk,” which usually occurs as a nickname for himself), “yesca” (“kindling” or “tinder,” a word that he frequently stretches into other forms, like “inkindling”), and “quetral” (the Mapundungun word for “fire,” literally and as a concept rich with symbolic associations). These words are encoded with such a mind-boggling complex of associations — local, personal, and symbolic — that I hesitate to alter them at all (in fact, I don’t even translate “quetral”). My translation process has involved research into the religion, symbology, and culture of the Ranquel people and of La Pampa, and I hope to make choices infused with my growing awareness of this context, along with my interest and respect. And I hope to share my research in the paratext to a book-length collection of translations.

I’ll end by elaborating on Sergio de Matteo’s point: Bustriazo’s poetry resists — and, yes, anticipates — translation. On one hand, it is so minutely crafted as to feel almost intractable. To translate a word demands intense, studious attention to fixed layers of meaning (word history, etymology, provenance, etc.). The line demands word-for-word construction — if not a given spacing constraint, or ending letter (!) — as meaning accrues horizontally, and visually, and often arises in the placement of adjacent words. And yet, on the other hand, the poems are propulsive, intuitive, incantatory. They assert freedoms and transgress conventional “sense-making” at every turn. Just like a translation, Bustriazo’s poetry shatters and rebuilds context from the ground up.

That is where I have tried to situate myself in this process — at the place where constraint explodes into freedom. Working word-for-word, by the light of several dictionaries, I obsessed over intricacies: breaking and combining words to produce Bustriazo-like divisions/multiplications of resonance, aligning like sounds vertically in the poem, inventing Bustriazo-like words to translate a normative word in Spanish (e.g., “perfumation”), and other small but significant feats, in my effort to honor the poetics as well as the poem.

— Michelle Gil-Montero

Bordona
Pasa Niebla con el pelo suelto

Bass Drone
Fog passes with its hair down

Bordona
Pasa Niebla con el pelo recogido

Bass Drone
Fog passes with its hair tied

Bordona
“—Vamos al Jardín Colorado…”
—“El Jardín Colorado!...Donsde esta el Jardín Colorado? …
No me contestó el jinete…

(Soñando)

Bass Drone
“—Let’s go to Jardín Colorado…”
—“Jardín Colorado!...where is Jardín Colorado? …
The rider didn’t answer…

(Dreamed)

*With help from friends: Mari is the Ranquel word for the number ten, and marimari is a greeting. Saladino is a reference to the Salado river. For the Mapuche and others, chenchen may refer to a mythical serpent who came down from the wenumapu (the above, the heavens).

Bordona
“Siento una milonga enconada, Juan, este
Cantor, siento un viento ladino…”

Bass Drone
“I feel an ardent milonga, Juan, this
Cantor, I feel a cunning wind …”

Gualichos: Ancestral spirits, in Mapuche, Ranquel, Pampa, and Tehuelche belief systems.

Bordona
“…ay…, esta enorme, terrible, mesa mía…”

Bordona
“…ay…, this, my enormous, terrible, table …”

Bordona
“…juan, la niebla en un carro, 
geologías…”

Bass Drone
“…juan, the fog in a cart, 
geologies…”

balada arcaica  

ya te vas vegetal tornasolada no me prendas la flor del exterminio fulgimiento del agua de los ojos no me prendas la flor del exterminio hinchamiento del cielo qué potencias no me prendas la flor del exterminio qué hinchadura del mundo taza turbia no me prendas la flor del exterminio con el hijo salido de tu entraña no me prendas la flor del exterminio con el ala punteada de tu ángel no me prendas la flor del exterminio con arcillas que vuelan soberanas no me prendas la flor del exterminio en olor de adiós que me espeluza no me prendas la flor del exterminio con tu boca antañera tras tu boca no me prendas la flor del exterminio en amor de tu sombra sonadora no me prendas la flor del exterminio!

[de Canción rupestre (1972)]

archaic ballad 

now you are leaving vegetal iridescent don’t light the flower of extermination for me water glimmering in your eyes don’t light the flower of extermination for me what swelling in the sky pure power don’t light the flower of extermination for me swell of the world turbid cup don’t light the flower of extermination for me with the child of your entrails don’t light the flower of extermination for me with your plucked seraph wing don’t light the flower of extermination for me with clay pigeons soaring sovereign don’t light the flower of extermination for me in the insufflation of goodbye chilling my skin don’t light the flower of extermination for me with your weary mouth don’t light the flower of extermination for me for love of your resounding shadow don’t light the flower of extermination for me!

canción rupestre  

llovía Dios en la noche resplandosa granazón de los tiempos llovían salmor y la piedra al galope de la una eras vos y era yo dos cerros blancos espinazo del cielo enentreabrido eras barro alumbrante llovían sapos oh amasijo de labios y de fiebres la caverna cantada por los pájaros el altar de la vida llovían ojos llovía luz y temblor llovían pantanos llovía azul corazones ruiseñores llovían almas y cuerpos dibujados llovía un ser como tigre llovían cuernos llovían músicas grandes hachas cántaros llovían manos de piedras con hollines manos rojas y amor color sagrado nos tornamos en piedra en lo llovido en abrazo de piedra nos tallamos en rayón de la piedra que sabía nos hallaron divinos imantados!

[de Canción rupestre (1972)]

rupestral song 

it rained God in the night radiant scatter of eras it rained psalmbrine and stone to the gallop of the moon you were you and I two white hills with the sky inspining us you were luminous mud it rained toads oh jumble of lips and fevers the cave crooned by birds the altar of life it rained eyes it rained light and tremor it rained bogs it rained blue hearts nightingales it rained souls and penciled figures it rained a creature like a tiger it rained horns it rained musics massive axes buckets it rained stone hands blacked with soot red hands and love splattered with sacral color we turned to stone to runoff hugged by stone we carved our way into the knowing stone they found us magnetized divine!

no quiero que esta oda se me muera

qué buscabas en estos fachinales mi peñón amarillo mis isletas
mis claveles hundidos mis granates entremedio mis plumas salonegras
qué te dieron mi hombre desnochido mi mujer soterrada en la tiniebla
no me cruzan los vinos ni los diablos y tu pelo azabacha mi vihuela
tu copón de canela victoriosa destapado entre músicas morenas
yo te espero en las noches en tumulto en pendón de mi cuerpo entre culebras
de la cueva sabrosa de la noche con mi vivo calel oh mi verbena
qué llevaste de mí qué lambedero de las lunas bramosas mi secreta 
te saliste de añil hortensia rara bailaderos del puma verde guerra 
yo te espero en raigón y en hechicero en morada canción en potro y yegua

(caída de la tarde, 16.)

I don’t want this ode to die on me 

what were you after in these marshes my yellow crag my islets
my buried carnations my garnets in the thick my saltblack feathers
what did they give you my nightstollen man my woman stashed in darkness
they don’t cross me not wines not devils and your hair my jetblack vihuela
your pyx of victorious cinnamon left open among so much swarthy music 
I wait for you in nights in the tumult in the banner of my body among snakes 
from the delicious cave of the night with my living calel oh my verbena
what did you take from me what saltlick of howlful moons my secretive 
you departed from indigo odd hortensia dancehalls of the green puma the war 
I’ll wait for you at the stump and enchanter at the purple song at the colt and mare!

(evening falling, 16.)

Calel: Mapundungun word for mountain, cf. the site Lihué Calel.

oda enmarañada, antes de terminar  
las letras de tu nombre 

ay la flor del chañar no te la comas no le comas el sacro amarillito 
redondeles floridos y no quiero que me vaya de aquí sin un estribo 
no te robes la brama ni precioso el franjeado color del regocijo 
corazón te recalcas entre flores se te amala el talon entreteñido 
se te duerme el cencerro del boliche la botella pintada el estallido 
ni las flores del humo en entreabuelo no le apagues la luna a los delirios 
ni este órdago sumo no cortejes no le comas el sueño los vestidos 
ay el beso de piedra de malvona no te lleves la gracia del bramido 
los adobes del cielo el monte oliente ni sus ojos de mora moliditos 
ay su cuello tendido no lo comas ni la entraña sagrada ni los hígados!

muddled ode, before finishing 
the letters of your name 

ah the flower of the chañar do not eat of it do not eat its sacral yellow 
florid roundels and I don’t want to be leaved here without a stirrup  
don’t help yourself to its roar or lovely the rayed hue of its rejoice     
heart you hammer in the flowers it heckles you your intainted heel 
it nods off on you the bell of the tavern the painted bottle the crash      
nor the ingrandfathered flowers of smoke don’t dampen deliriums of their moon
nor this all-or-nothing bet don’t flirt with it don’t eat its dream its dresses 
ah its kiss of stone of mallow do not run off with the grace of its roar
its adobes in the sky its musky mound or its eyes of mashed blackberry 
ah its long neck do not eat it not even the sacred innards or the livers!

Tercera Palabra

Dónde errarás, Antonio tan Bustriazo? 
Dónde, fatal espectro, Comisario
de Territorios Nacionales? Calmo, 
te pienso calmo en tu gran paz, callado, 
tu gesto asi, de labios apretados. 
Y Juan Bautista y su caballodiablo?
Lo buscarás?, se buscarán airados?
Dónde errarás, Miguel Antonio? Parco, 
rápido hablar, tu fuerza eran tus manos. 
Tu sombra vi, tu bulto oscuronado
en tu momento de morir Bustriazo, 
tu nube ya, tu forma de apagado. 

Te dejo aquí, errante y capturado, 
gema o carbón, o flauta o espantajo. 

[from Libro de Ghenpín (1977)]

Third Word 

Where do you wander, Antonioh-so-
Bustriazo? Where, deadly specter, Comisario
of National Territories? I see you
in your endless peace, wordless,
as you always were, tight-lipped. 
And Juan Bautista and his hell-horse?
Will you hunt him down? Hound him mad? 
Where do you wander, Miguel Antonio? Clipped, 
grim, all your strength in your hands. 
I saw your shadow, your black bulk  
at the hour of your death, Bustriazo, 
your cloud, your snuffed form. 

There I’ll leave you, errant, caught, 
gem or coal, flute or fright.