Cipango
by Tomás
Harris. Translated by Daniel
Shapiro. Lewisburg: Bucknell
University Press, 2010. 321 pp.
It is a very unusual
thing to see the publishing of
a translation of a long, obscure and difficult volume of poetry. It can
only be
a labor of love between poet and translator that lead to the creation
of
exemplary bilingual editions of poetry. As we know, poetry neither
translates
nor sells well. Moreover, the case seems even more surprising upon
considering
the difficult situation of independent and university presses,
struggling to
keep afloat on a digital current while bringing necessary texts to
light. These
are reasons enough to applaud the publishing of Tomás Harris' Cipango in English translation. In
addition, Cipango, originally
published in 1992, is an ambitious, key book by a Chilean poet writing
during
Pinochet's dictatorship. It allows the reader to delve obliquely into
the
ominous atmosphere of Chile under military rule, what Enrique Lihn
called the
"coto de caza" in which
every "citizen" could be prey.
Much like other poets
writing under circumstances of
strict censorship -Raúl Zurita, Elvira Hernández, Diego Maqueira,
Carmen
Berenguer, Clemente Riedemann, Rosabetty Muñoz, José Angel Cuevas- Harris
creates shifting worlds with indirect references, allowing
a subtle, coded language to emerge. Cipango, one of the Eastern
territories in
Columbus' diaries, provides the framework for a volume that envisions
an
Admiral out of time and place, returning five hundred years later for a
nightmarish journey to the shores of Concepción, a city in a land
under siege. Cipango explores urban marginality as a
metaphor for the making of a new country. The instauration of
authoritarianism
and neoliberalism taking place in social and political realms is seen
from the
perspective of marginal subjects located away from all centers. Their
multiple
voices wander through an imaginary Concepción and through its
impoverished
neighborhoods and locales --streets and dark corners, bars, nightclubs,
wastelands, hotels. Following Lihn's motto, Harris' poetry is a
"situated
poetry", tied to history and contingent realities. Unlike more naive
forms
of protest poetry, it is also committed to experimentation with
conventions and
language. Along with the tenuous and
insistent frame of Columbus' journey told by the Admiral himself, we
have
several other speakers: the "I" of the poet, a lover, a generational
"we", the crewmembers in Columbus' vessel, and impersonal voices of
past and present chronicles. These varied voices shuffle a myriad of
cultural
references, spanning from Chilean poetry, XVIth Century sources,
Melville,
Nerval, Lautréamont, Mayakovsky,
Jean Genet, B and vampire movies, 80's
American film, Mesoamerican mythology, etc. What
conveys coherence and unity to
these disparate intertexts is the construction of elaborate charged
landscapes,
presented as simulacra, representations, theaters, -in sum, dream-like
projections
seen and exhibited as such- which in turn reveal and multiply the
conscience of
speakers traveling through the nightmares of the present and history.
In
landscapes seen as theaters, "a voice offstage said truth is in the
image
/ a voice offstage said truth is in the eye." (53) In this manner, Cipango commits to the uncontained
displaying of images, always exhibiting them as being generated by a
particular
subject's eye. An atmosphere of despair and confusion also provides a
common
thread for sequences of poems, insisting on making a series of
phantasmagoric
landscapes visible. Cipango seeks out
relief from terror and oppression through hallucinations, dreams, the
remoteness of the past, excesses of the body, and artificial paradises.
In a short review, it
is difficult to convey the
tone of a long poem with its own all-encompassing and complex vision.
Let me
briefly comment on a fragment from "Metempsychosis" to illustrate Cipango's intent; its need to deal with
history, its uncontained imagery, its
tenuous
visionary call:
Although
we may have related this already
it's worth the trouble of
repeating
so it lingers in memory;
those were years of war to
the death
in Concepción
and since the city was
becoming a
paradise
the rites of expulsion
came;
with picks and drills they
tore out
the paving stones
like rotten teeth,
tumors of corrupted
imagination;
[...]
we were collapsing
as it was written
in the prohibition;
[...]
but we will return, from
the border,
when this whole city
is a border,
in its mothers, in its
daughters,
in its diocese;
[...]
they said blue rats nested
deep
in our homes,
that blue rats will cover
the city;
all those white lies
for the benefit
of the Nation. (279)
Connecting Colonial
references to the present, the
poem is situated both during the Conquista
and in contemporary times. With the sweeping movements of its
collective voice,
it alludes to Concepción's history as a
frontier city in the wars of attrition
between Spaniards and the Mapuche, and to its place as a site of
utopian
leftist politics from the 60's on which was severely repressed during
military
rule. The poem creates a continuity in how
the effects
of violence are felt by social and intimate bodies in urban vacant
spaces. The
apocalyptic imagery recalls León Portilla's Visión
de los vencidos' diction, transmuted to present-day Concepción. A
foundational manu militari is
destroying passions and bodies in order to establish a new, orderly
Nation, a
Nation based on lies. In response, the visionary language announces a
partial
overcoming of horror that will take place upon returning from the
city's
borders ("márgenes"
in the
Spanish). With eschatological overtones, the complex weaving of
"Metempsychosis" speaks about reincarnations of history and bodies.
Daniel Shapiro's
translation renders the volume's
diction with precision and vivacity. The challenge of juggling the many
registers and languages which compound Harris' book --everyday speech,
colloquialisms, and visionary and archaic languages-- is handled with
authority. Cipango's poetic voice,
which Shapiro characterizes in his "Introduction" as "dark, obsessive,
and rhythmic",
sounds right and forceful in English. In sum, this is a welcome volume
that
places an important work in the hands of the English poetry reader.
Also, its
bilingual en face format will allow for circulation among Spanish
speakers
beyond its obscure 1992 and 1996 Chilean editions.
Hunter
College, City University
of New York
Bibliography
(1). León
Portilla, Miguel, ed. Visión
de los vencidos; relaciones indígenas de la conquista. Introducciones,
selección y
notas: Miguel Leon-Portilla; versión de
textos nahuas: çngel Ma. Garibay
K. México:
UNAM, 1959.