Scarecrow & Other Anomalies (11 page)

In music, pleonasm is called variation.

Flaubert’s prose distills a sweat so cold that we are obliged to change our undershirts unless we can warm up with his personal letters.

The Cubists made the mistake of believing that an apple was a theme less literary and more frugal than the buttocks of Madame Recamier.

The silence of El Greco’s pictures is an ascetic, Maeterlinckian silence that fascinates the painted characters, twists their mouths, makes their eyes go crazy and diaphanizes their noses.

Wagner is not to be admired because at some time he may have bored us, but despite the fact that at some time he may have bored us.

Even though the fountain pen may reminisce about the lachrymatorium, not even crocodiles have the right to confuse tears with ink.

The Greek Venuses have a pulse of forty-seven. Spanish Virgin Mothers, one hundred and three.

We aspire to be that which we authentically are, but while we think we are achieving our goal, we are invaded by the satiety of feeling full of ourselves.

We strive not to plagiarize ourselves, to be always distinctive, to renew ourselves with each poem but, at the same time as our scant or fruitful output is formed and tended, we must recognize that throughout our existence we are writing a single, unique poem.

There comes a time when we aspire to write something worse.

THE MANIFESTO OF
MARTIN FIERRO

OPPOSING the hippopotamic impermeability of an “honorable public”;

Opposing the funereal solemnity of the curator and the professor, which mummifies whatever it touches;

Opposing the book of prescriptions, which inspires the lucubrations of our “finest” minds and their evident infatuation with ANACHRONISM and MIMETISM;

Opposing the absurd compulsion to bolster our intellectual nationalism, pumping up empty values that deflate like balloons at the first pinch;

Opposing the inability to contemplate life without scaling the shelves of libraries;

And, above all, opposing the quaking dread of being in the wrong that paralyzes even the impetuous passion of youth, now more weak-kneed than any retired bureaucrat;

MARTIN FIERRO
feels the indispensable need to define himself and to call upon those who may be capable of perceiving that we are in the presence of a NEW sensibility and a NEW understanding, one that, as it reconnects us with ourselves, enables us to discover unsuspected panoramas and new means and forms of expression.

MARTIN FIERRO
accepts the consequences and responsibilities of locating himself, because he knows that his good health depends on it. Instructed by his predecessors, his anatomy, the meridian in which he travels, he consults the barometer and the calendar before stepping out on the street with all his senses fully alive and his mentality primed to greet the present day.

MARTIN FIERRO
knows that “everything is new under the sun” if everything is seen with up-to-date eyes and is expressed with a contemporary accent.

MARTIN FIERRO
, accordingly, takes more pleasure in a transatlantic liner than in a Renaissance palace and maintains that a good
Hispano-Suiza
car is a WORK OF ART much more perfect than an armchair from the epoch of Louis XV.

MARTIN FIERRO
sees the architectonic merit in an
Innovation
trunk, sees a lesson of synthesis in a
Marconigram
, sees mental organization in a rotary printing press, without denying himself the amenity—found in most homes—of a photo album, turning the leaves from time to time to take a trip into the past... or to laugh at his old collar and cravat.

MARTIN FIERRO
believes in the importance of the intellectual contribution of America, heretofore fettered by an unsnipped umbilical cord. Yet while we emphasize and popularize, besides other intellectual manifestations, the independence movement initiated in our idiom by Rubén Darío, it doesn’t mean that we have to renounce, much less pretend not to know, that every morning we brush with Swedish toothpaste, wash with English soap and dry off with French towels.

MARTIN FIERRO
has faith in our phonetics, our vision, our manners, our hearing, our capacity for digestion and assimilation.

MARTIN FIERRO
, the artist, rubs his eyes continually in order to brush away the twin cobwebs of habit and routine stubbornly clinging to their corners. He surrenders to each new lover a new virginity, and let the excesses of today be distinct and apart from the excesses of yesterday and tomorrow! For him this is the true saintliness of the creator! There are not many saints!
MARTIN FIERRO
, the critic, knows that a locomotive is not comparable to an apple, and the fact that everyone compares locomotives with apples and some opt for the locomotive, and others for the apple, confirms for him the suspicion that there are many more dimwits than is commonly believed. The dimwit is the one who exclaims “Wow!” and believes he’s said all there is to say. The dimwit is the one who needs to ignite himself with glittery things and is not satisfied unless the glitter rubs off on him. The dimwit is the one who has flattened hands like the pans of a scale and who judges everything by its weight. There are plenty of dimwits!

MARTIN FIERRO
values only the dimwits and the bright wits who are truly dimwitted or truly bright and who don’t try in the least to switch sides.

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MARTIN FIERRO
?

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MARTIN FIERRO
!

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MARTIN FIERRO
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OLIVERIO GIRONDO BIBLIOGRAPHY

[1]
Veinte poemas para ser leídos en el tranvía
(Paris: Coulouma & Buenos Aires: H. Barthélemy, 1922), illustrated by the author, no page numbers. Republished 1925, 1966.

[2]
Calcomanías
(Madrid: Editorial Calpe, 1925), no page numbers. Republished 1966 with [1] & [3].

[3]
Espantapájaros (Al alcance de todos)
(Buenos Aires: Editorial Proa, 1932), cover painting by José Bonomi, no page numbers. Republished 1966 with [1] & [2].

[4]
Interlunio
(Buenos Aires: Editorial Sur, 1937), no page numbers.

[5]
Persuasión de los días
(Buenos Aires: Editorial Losada, 1942), 185 pages.

[6]
Campo nuestro
(Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1946), 46 pp.

[7]
En la masmédula
(Buenos Aires: Editorial Losada, 1954), 56 pp. Republished 1956, 1963.

[8] Arthur Rimbaud,
Una temporada en el infierno
(Buenos Aires: Compañia General Fabril Editora, 1959), translated by Oliverio Girondo & Enrique Molina, 77 pp.

[9]
Obras completas
(Buenos Aires: Editorial Losada, 1968), ed. & with an introduction by Enrique Molina, 487 pp. Contains [1] - [7], plus “Membretes” and the article “Pintura moderna.”

[10] Jorge Schwartz, ed.,
Homenaje a Girondo
(Buenos Aires: Ediciones Corregidor, 1987), 347 pp. Contains some previously unpublished pieces and numerous tributes and miscellanea, including “Manifiesto de Martín Fierro.”

[11]
Obra completa
(Madrid: Galaxia Gutenberg, 1999), coordinated by Raúl Antelo, with textological, critical and memoiric essays, xc, 798 pp. A beautiful edition containing all the above texts, save the manifesto and correspondence.

[12] Voice recording. Oliverio Girondo recorded the poems of his last collection,
En la masmédula
, on a 33 rpm vinyl disc at an unknown date for the series “Palabra en el tiempo,” directed by Arturo Cuadrado & Carlos Mazzanti. The recording can be heard on the Internet at http://www.cervantesvirtual.com. Type the author’s name in the “Busqueda” window or go directly to http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/ FichaAutor.html?Ref=3730&PO=1&portal=O

NOTES

Espantapájaros / Scarecrow

Translated from number [3] above; consultations made with [9] and [11].

Malabarist
—”Fui metodista, malabarista, monogamista” (chapter 4). A
malabarist
is a juggler or thief, but is here translated “mountebank” to maintain the alliteration of the original. Many choices in the translation are based on such considerations. In point of fact, a mountebank—an entertainer hired to attract a crowd to a quack or sideshow—might juggle on occasion.

Calabrians
—”Ni un conventillo de calabreses malcasados...” (chapter 11). Calabrians are natives of Calabria, Italy.

Gasometers
—”... los gasómetros...” (chapter 13). Gasometers were large storage tanks for gasoline; the term was also used for a device attached to cars to save gas during shortages.

Poemas / Poems

The selections are all taken from
Persuasión de los días
(Persuasion of Days), using the texts printed in [9]. Consultation was made with [11].

─
Exvoto / Devotion
refers to a bygone custom of flirting and courtship. Young women, finely dressed and accompanied by matrons or other girls, would stoll down the street in the evening, and men would circle in as if accidentally and toss out romantic or provocative remarks close to their ear.

─
Otro nocturno / Another Nocturne
refers to the so-called “apache”—a ladies man, somewhere between lothario and pimp, who controls his woman with proud disdain; the type was made famous by the classical dance form with a dominating, abusive man and a submissive, clasping woman, both usually dressed in black.

Interlunio / Lunarlude

Translated from [9] with reference to [11]. This story provided much of the material for the film,
The Dark Side of the Heart
(1994). Director Eliseo Subiela, however, gave it quite a different slant.

Barrès
—”Sólo un hombre capaz de usar un ala de cuervo sobre la frente, como Barrès...” Auguste Maurice Barrès (1862-1923) was French philosopher, statesman and novelist, noted for his nationalism. Evidently he wore a terrible toupee.

Prosa-Poemas / Prose Poems

The selections are all taken from
Veinte poemas para ser leídos en el tranvía
(Twenty Poems For Reading on the Streetcar), using the texts printed in [9] and with reference to [11].

Membretes / Memoranda

Selections come from the larger collection printed in [9]. Additional
membretes
are found in [10] and [11], but are not sampled here.

Récamier
—”... las nalgas de madame Recamier” (page 172). Jeanne Françoise Récamier (1777-1849) was a celebrated hostess in French society; at age 15 she married a rich old baker and thereafter held a literary and political salon.

Manifiesto de “Martín Fierro” / The Manifesto of
Martín Fierro

Printed in the journal
Martín Fierro
No.4, 15 May 1924, reprinted in [10], but not in [9] or [11]. The journal took the name of the hero (and title) of Latin America’s first great epic poem, written in 1872 by José Hernández. The epic extols the freedom, simplicity and integrity of the gaucho—the cowboy of Argentina’s pampas—and sets these virtues against the artificiality of modern life. At the same time the journal (and manifesto) affirmed the central position for Argentine letters of Rubén Darío (1867-1916), the great Nicaraguan poet and a founder of modernism in Latin American literature.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

OLIVERIO GIRONDO
(1891-1967) was born into a wealthy family in Buenos Aires. He studied for law, but did not practice it, preferring to experiment in literature. His chief publications are
Veinte poemas para ser leídos en la tranvía
(Twenty Poems To Be Read on the Streetcar, 1922),
Calcomanías
(Decals, 1925),
Espanatapájaros
(Scarecrow, 1932),
Interlunio
(Lunarlude, 1937),
Persuación de los días
(Persuasion of the Days, 1942) and
Campo nuestro
(Our Countryside, 1946), the last two being collections of poetry. This iconoclastic body of work is well represented in the present translation. His last book is the untranslatable
En la másmedula
(Into the Moremarrow, 1954), poetry at the far reaches of the mind. Girondo travelled widely and associated with avant-garde writers in Europe and Latin America. He founded the journal
Martín Fierro
in 1923, which ran for twenty-six years. At its close, he established the Martín Fierro Award to support young writers. He and wife Norah Lange hosted a literary salon in the capital and presided as patrons of Argentine arts and letters until 1964, when he was injured in a car accident. A generous man, Oliverio Girondo greatly benefitted the cause of imaginative literature in Argentina. Citation of his works in the film
The Dark Side of the Heart
(1994) created a sensation in Argentina and brought him belated world fame.

GILBERT ALTER-GILBERT
is a translator, critic and literary explorer. Among his translations are
The Mirror of Lida Sal: Tales Based on Mayan Myths & Guatemalan Legends
by Miguel Angel Asturias (Latin American Literary Review Press, 1997);
Manifestos Manifest
, from the French, by Vicente Huidobro (Sun & Moon Press, 1999); and
Strange Forces: The Fantastic Tales of Leopoldo Lugones
(Latin American Literary Review, 2001). He is the editor of
Life and Limb: Selected Tales of Peril, Predicament and Dire Distress
(Hi Jinx Press, 1996) and has several other anthologies in the offing. He writes art criticism and essays in literary esoterica, and serves as a consultant for Xenos Books. His planned translation with Xenos,
On a Locomotive & other runaway stories
by Massimo Bontempelli, ran off the rails. California born and bred, Alter-Gilbert ventures far and wide, usually in a foreign automobile, but continues to reside in the Golden State, where he maintains one of the most distinctive private collections of literary memorabilia on the Pacific Coast. A master of disguises, he delights in making unexpected appearances and unnoticed disappearances, leaving behind magnetic mummies and historic illustrations of the seven vices.