Alex Waterhouse-Hayward

A THOUSAND WORDS - Alex Waterhouse-Hayward's blog on pictures, plants, politics and whatever else is on his mind.

Tres Hermanas Argentinas Y El Papá

Saturday, October 05, 2013

Sofi

Agustina


Maureen

Jorge

Link to: Tres Hermanas Argentinas Y El Papá

Embates y Oscilaciones

Friday, October 04, 2013

Embates y oscilaciones

de un mar de tribulaciones

ella arrostró; y la agonía

saboreó su fantasía;

y el punzante frenesí

de la esperanza insaciable

que en pos de un deseo vuela,

no alcanza el blanco inefable;

se irrita en vano y desvela,

vuelve a devorarse a sí.

From Argentine poet Esteban Echeverría’s epic poem La Cautiva, 1837

When I first saw this particular stanza while visiting Nora Patrich and Roberto Baschetti in Buenos Aires I was blown away. There is no available translation and I would not tackle it here. It is about a white woman who is captured by Mapuche Indians.

Link to: Embates y Oscilaciones

Everything & Nothing

Thursday, October 03, 2013

Everything and Nothing (From Dreamtigers English version of El Hacedor) by J.L. Borges

Translated by Sinekov July 30, 2008

There was no one in him; behind his face (which even in the poor paintings of the period is unlike any other) and his words, which were copious, imaginative, and emotional, there was nothing but a little chill, a dream not dreamed by anyone. At first he thought everyone was like him, but the puzzled look on a friend’s face when he remarked on that emptiness told him he was mistaken and convinced him forever that an individual must not differ from his species. Occasionally he thought he would find in books the cure for his ill, and so he learned the small Latin and less Greek of which a contemporary was to speak. Later he thought that in the exercise of an elemental human rite he might well find what he sought, and he let himself be initiated by Anne Hathaway one long June afternoon. At twenty-odd he went to London. Instinctively, he had already trained himself in the habit of pretending that he was someone, so it would not be discovered that he was no one. In London he hit upon the profession to which he was predestined, that of the actor, who plays on stage at being someone else. His playacting taught him a singular happiness, perhaps the first he had known; but when the last line was applauded and the last corpse removed from the stage, the hated sense of unreality came over him again. He ceased to be Ferrex or Tamburlaine and again became a nobody. Trapped, he fell to imagining other heroes and other tragic tales. Thus, while in London’s bawdyhouses and taverns his body fulfilled its destiny as body, the soul that dwelled in it was Caesar, failing to heed the augurer’s admonition, and Juliet, detesting the lark, and Macbeth, conversing on the heath with the witches, who are also the fates. Nobody was ever as many men as that man, who like the Egyptian Proteus managed to exhaust all the possible shapes of being. At times he slipped into some corner of his work a confession, certain that it would not be deciphered; Richard affirms that in his single person he plays many parts, and Iago says with strange words, “I am not what I am.” His passages on the fundamental identity of existing, dreaming, and acting are famous.

Twenty years he persisted in that controlled hallucination, but one morning he was overcome by the surfeit and the horror of being so many kings who die by the sword and so many unhappy lovers who converge, diverge, and melodiously agonize. That same day he disposed of his theater. Before a week was out he had returned to the village of his birth, where he recovered the trees and the river of his childhood; and he did not bind them to those others his muse had celebrated, those made illustrious by mythological allusions and Latin phrases. He had to be someone; he became a retired impresario who has made his fortune and who interests himself in loans, lawsuits, and petty usury. In this character he dictated the arid final will and testament that we know, deliberately excluding from it every trace of emotion and of literature. Friends from London used to visit his retreat, and for them he would take on again the role of poet.

The story goes that, before or after he died, he found himself before God and he said: “I, who have been so many men in vain, want to be one man: myself.” The voice of God replied from a whirlwind: “Neither am I one self; I dreamed the world as you dreamed your work, my Shakespeare, and among the shapes of my dream are you, who, like me, are many persons—and none.”

More from El Hacedor (Dreamtigers) by Borges

Everything and Nothing (the title in El Hacedor was in English)

J.L. Borges

Nadie hubo en él; detrás de su rostro (que aun a través de las malas pinturas de la época no se parece a ningún otro) y de sus palabras, que eran copiosas, fantásticas y agitadas, no había más que un poco de frío, un sueño no soñado por alguien. Al principio creyó que todas las personas eran como él, pero la extrañeza de un compañero, con el que había empezado a comentar esa vacuidad, le reveló su error y le dejó sentir para siempre, que un individuo no debe diferir de su especie. Alguna vez pensó que en los libros hallaría remedio para su mal y así aprendió el poco latín y menos griego de que hablaría un contemporáneo; después consideró que en el ejercicio de un rito elemental de la humanidad, bien podía estar lo que buscaba y se dejó iniciar por Anne Hathaway, durante una larga siesta de junio. A los veintitantos años fue a Londres. instintivamente, ya se había adiestrado en el hábito de simular que era alguien, para que no se descubriera su condición de nadie; en Londres encontró la profesión a la que estaba predestinado, la del actor, que en un escenario, juega a ser otro, ante un concurso de personas que juegan a tomarlo por aquel otro. Las tareas histriónicas le enseñaron una felicidad singular, acaso la primera que conoció; pero aclamado el último verso y retirado de la escena el último muerto, el odiado sabor de la irrealidad recaía sobre él. Dejaba de ser Ferrex o "Tamerlán y volvía a ser nadie. Acosado, dio en imaginar otros héroes y otras fábulas trágicas. Así, mientras el cuerpo cumplía su destino de cuerpo, en lupanares y tabernas de Londres, el alma que lo habitaba era César, que desoye la admonición del augur, y Julieta, que aborrece a la alondra, y Macbeth, que conversa en el páramo con las brujas que también son las parcas. Nadie fue tantos hombres como aquel hombre, que a semejanza del egipcio Proteo pudo agotar todas las apariencias del ser. A veces, dejó en algún recodo de la obra una confesión, seguro de que no la descifrarían; Ricardo afirma que en su sola persona, hace el papel ene muchos, y Yago dice con curiosas palabras no soy lo que soy. La identidad fundamental del existir, soñar y representar le inspiró pasajes famosos.

Veinte años persistió en esa alucinación dirigida, pero una mañana le sobrecogieron el hastío y el horror de ser tantos reyes que mueren por la espada y tantos desdichados amantes que convergen, divergen y melodiosamente agonizan. Aquel mismo día resolvió la venta de su teatro. Antes de una semana había regresado al pueblo natal, donde recuperó los árboles y el río de la niñez y no los vinculó a aquellos otros que había celebrado su musa, ilustres de alusión mitológica y de voces latinas. Tenia que ser alguien; fue un empresario retirado que ha hecho fortuna y a quién le interesan los préstamos, los litigios y la pequeña usura. En ese carácter dictó el árido testamento que conocernos, del que deliberadamente excluyó todo rasgo patético o literario. Solían visitar su retiro amigos de Londres, y él retomaba para ellos el papel de poeta.

La historia agrega que, antes o después de morir, se supo frente a Dios y le dijo: Yo, que tantos hombres he sido en vano, quiero ser uno y yo. La voz de Dios le contestó desde un torbellino: Yo tampoco soy; yo soñé el mundo como tú soñaste tu obra, mi Shakespeare, y entre las formas de mi sueño estabas tú, que como yo eres muchos y nadie.

Link to: Everything & Nothing

El Hacedor

Wednesday, October 02, 2013

I took several copies (CDs) of Jorge Luis Borges’s 1967-1968 Norton Lectures on Poetry which he extemporaneously (he was almost blind by then and could not write or read notes) said in Harvard to Buenos Aires on a trip in 2013.

Just about any Argentine I know (including many members of my Argentine family) will tell you that Borges spoke almost perfect English, and not only that but also Old English. When I asked these folks if they had ever heard Borges speak in English I received no affirmative answers. And strangest of all, I only found two friends who were willing to receive my present. One of them was Roberto Baschetti, who works at the Biblioteca Nacional and took the DVD’s as my donation to the library of which Borges was its director from 1955 for 18 years (he resigned when Perón returned in 1973). The other was my very Argentine first cousin Jorge Wenceslao de Irureta Goyena.

I would perhaps guess that few, except the very old (like me) have ever read Borges in any language. This is a pity. Today I re-read for the umpteenth time his 1960 El Hacedor which has short stories, none longer that two pages, and essays and poems of the same length.

In this blog, I place one of the stories, the very Gothic El Simulacro about a strange man who goes to the Chaco Province at the time of Eva Perón’s death, July 1952 and presides over a wake in which he places a little coffin, a blonde doll inside, on a table. He charges entry and makes those who willingly pay think that he just might be the famous widower.

The story is not very favourable to the Peróns and Borges had a very good reason to dislike them. When Perón rose to power in and was elected President in 1946 Borges was critical. Of them, the Peronists, Borges said something quite delectable:

“They are neither bad nor good, they are incorrigible.”

At the time Borges was working at the Miguel Cané Library but he resigned his post when Perón and company, taking a cue (well before the Prague Spring in 1968 when Alexander Dubček after the fall of his country to Soviet armed forces was given the job in Slovakia’s Forestry Service) was promoted to a post as inspector of poultry and rabbits at the Buenos Aires municipal market. At a dinner of the Argentine Society of Writers a speech written by Borges was read. In it was this caustic opinion on Perón and his Peronists:

"Dictatorships breed oppression, dictatorships breed servility, dictatorships breed cruelty; more loathsome still is the fact that they breed idiocy. Bellboys babbling orders, portraits of caudillos, prearranged cheers or insults, walls covered with names, unanimous ceremonies, mere discipline usurping the place of clear thinking... Fighting these sad monotonies is one of the duties of a writer. Need I remind readers of Martín Fierro or Don Segundo that individualism is an old Argentine virtue."

What is curious to me is that the then (and even now) not-too-well-known English writer, Olaf Stapledon wrote a fantastic science fiction story in 1937, The Star Maker in which a man sits under a tree during a starry night and as he thinks and dreams his mind soars into outer space and beyond. That book was translated into Spanish in 1965 (I purchased a first edition in Buenos Aires at the time, alas lost in time) which contained a prologue written by Borges. The book’s title was El Hacedor de Estrellas. Hacedor is a beautiful word in Spanish that is rarely used. And yet there is this book by Borges, published in 1960 with that evocative title, El Hacedor!

I attempted to look for an English translation of Borges's prologue to Stapledon's Star Maker but only found this:

A Dog, A Turtle & Robert E. Lee's Horse

Link to: El Hacedor

On Fading Friendship

Tuesday, October 01, 2013

Juan Manuel Sánchez - September 2013

It seems that it was not too long ago that my Spanish friend, symphonic conductor Juan Castelao told me that he kept tabs with his family in Galicia with something that he called Es-sky-pee.

Some four weeks ago I watched Nora Patrich in her home in Bella Vista in the outskirts of Buenos Aires talk with her just over a year old granddaughter who is in Gijón, Spain. Nora did go to Spain earlier this year but I wonder if her granddaughter who smiles and does all kinds of tricks for her grandmother on Skype knows the reality from the virtual image. And yet I cannot criticize this modern advancement that beats that “long distance feeling” by a mile.

For some years I had a tremendous friendship with Argentine painter Juan Manuel Sánchez and his wife Nora Patrich (also an artist) who did not live far from my Kerrisdale home. We talked every day (any hour of the day or night) and we visited frequently. We worked on all kinds of collaborative work. Best of all it was to speak my mother tongue and to discuss stuff that I could only do so with a fellow Argentine. And through Sánchez I obtained a wonderful art education. I often told him that he reminded me of a slightly paunchy Picasso.

At El Cuartito

Some 10 years ago the couple split up and went back to Buenos Aires on separate airplanes.

I was furious (!) with both of them for having ruined this nice thing we shared. I expressed most of my anger towards Patrich and for a few years I refused to answer her emails or see her when she visited Vancouver. I was awfully silly. But I never did find anybody in Vancouver as receptive as they were to work on anything at any time.

With Sánchez I kept up a pleasant relationship via Skype. I could never see him as he refused to buy a computer so I had to call him via my computer to his phone.

Every time I would call him he would ask me when I was going to visit him in Buenos Aires. This kept on for some years and by then I had decided my fight with Patrich was stupid.

So when Patrich invited me to stay at her house for three weeks when I told her I was planning to travel to Buenos Aires at the end of September I realized that my saving on the hotel made the financial arrangements of the trip a possibility.

Via use of the internet I obtained three Argentine models willing to work with Patrich, Sánchez and me. There was a wrinkle when I informed Sánchez. In the end he said he would allow his ex-wife to visit and work in his studio once.

I knew that Patrich had a new partner, the sweet librarian Juan Boschetti. I also knew that Sánchez had a younger girlfriend (an artist) with whom they shared a Woody Allen type of relationship as Ruth (that’s her name) kept living in her house. I knew that there was a level of possessive jealousy involved. But I planned accordingly and even found that one of the models, Roxana was willing to return to Sánchez’s studio once or twice a month to pose for him in exchange for the odd sketch.

I traveled to Argentina with lots of hopes and plenty of cameras, two film and one brand-new digital.

I visited Sánchez and after our first abrazo it felt like old times until I broached the subject of bringing Patrich. That was a no. When I then pared down the idea of just the two of us working with Roxana that became a no, too.

I saw Sánchez twice. The first time we had pizza and moscato at the round-the-corner El Cuartito and he met my first cousin Jorge Wenceslao. Ruth dropped in for a few minutes. After that Sanchez refused all my overtures of going to his studio with a model to work together. I suggested we work in another artist’s studio (a friend of Sanchez). That was a no.

On my third week I felt quite depressed in Buenos Aires and I gave Sanchez a call. I told him over the phone that I was saying goodbye and that I was disappointed that we had not worked together. He took this with aplomb and did not question my motives.

I understand that an 83 year-old man who has a relationship with a woman in a large city and that lives alone in a small studio/apartment has a lot to lose especially if he might sacrifice all that for an artistic and collaborative fling with a friend (me). And yet something in me makes me think that is the last I will see of the man as I will perhaps not return to Buenos Aires and both of us are not spring chickens.

I feel remorse for not having properly said goodbye to him.

But that damn Skype and all those promises that came my way from the man have been hard to forget.

It seems that every time something like this happens I go back to Harold Bloom who wrote in How To Read and Why (2000)

"We read not only because we cannot know enough people, but because friendship is so vulnerable, so likely to diminish or disappear, overcome by space, time, imperfect sympathies, and all the sorrows of familial and passional life."

Link to: On Fading Friendship

Argentine Diarrhea - Lost In Translation

Monday, September 30, 2013

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner - President República Argentina

For years I have formulated in my mind a pet theory on why countries like France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Latin American countries and few countries that speak romance languages in Eastern Europe invariably lost the military conflicts they began.

It has all to do with the very fact that these countries all speak languages that had their origin in ancient Rome. Ultimately those ancient Romans lost out to civilizations (or entities that lacked civilization) that spoke un-romantic verbiage.

The romance languages all feature the Subjunctive Mood. It is a mood of uncertainty. Americans and even the British avoid the infrequent appearance of it. Thus, “I wish I were in Dixie (as I am certainly not whoever might be singing that line),” becomes “I wish I was in Dixie.” That Future Subjunctive is excised and things become a predictable as a constant present. That uncertain future is transformed most comfortably into one of definite possibility.

The Subjunctive Mood is one of uncertainty, and the most uncertain of all uncertainties is the Future Subjunctive.

Consider, “When in Rome do as Romans do.” In Spanish it is far more complex. The very idea of anybody finding themselves in Rome is left as indefinite possibility. En el país que fueres has lo que vieres.” It virtually defies translation but is means something like, “In that country that you might just find yourself in some future you may perhaps do as others do might do.”

Successful generals fronting successful armies fight on certainties. If possible these generals choose their place of battle and twist the situation to favour them. You cannot run an army on just possibilities.

There is the Mexican joke of the general that sends a soldier to the front to report on the numbers of the attacking army. The soldier returns and says, “My general I saw about a thousand and one of the enemy.” The general, incredulous at the lack of logic in his soldier’s statement, orders him to clarify it. “Mi general,” the soldier replies, “I saw one attacking soldier and perhaps a thousand behind him.”

And so, the French had their Waterloo and their 5 de Mayo against the Mexicans at Puebla. The less said about the Italians in WWII the better.

Of late I have been giving more thought to the vagaries of language and how language affects us without our complete awareness.

Consider someone like CNN’s Wolf Blitzer interviewing President Barrack H. Obama. They might sit close to each other perhaps with the small interruption of a coffee table. Blitzer would address Obama as Mr. President and might just continue with a, “What did you mean bb… in your last statement, sir.” The sir would be marked.

Consider that in English you might say:

Please come.

Please come here, sir.

Will you please step this way, madam?

Or if a friend you might say: Hey! Come over here!

It is difficult to conceive rudeness or familiarity in those statements unless you shouted them or simply said, “Get your ass over here!”

In Spanish like in French we have two options:

There is the formal:

Venga señor.

Or the informal

Ven.

The situation becomes more complex in Argentine Spanish (perhaps borrowed from Italian immigrants) which gives you the further choice of:

Vení.

Venite para acá.

The informality of that third method of ordering people around has a sense of intimacy unknown (and what would I know of this if nothing) in other languages).

With Jorge Rial

In English with the advent of the World Wide Web we tried to give the impression of intimacy by stating: “Visit us at our website.” Or “Browse our website.” The word visit seems to inject an intimacy impossible to achieve in even in the most prurient of porn sites. We cannot visit because we are alone.

All the above is my introduction to the shock of finding myself watching a TV interview in which Jorge Rial and Hernan Brienza, journalists, separately talked at length in two-part interviews (separated by a week in which a cliffhanger question by one of the journalists had to wait for a whole week!) with Argentine president Cristina Kirchner.

The President, was immediately called Cristina and the formal Spanish tense was used. The interviews were very intimate and pleasant. Kirchner is a good talker and both journalists did not press for uncomfortable moments with uncomfortable questions.

Once I became used to the level of cheerful intimacies almost as if Kirchner were having a conversation at the breakfast table with her deceased husband and former Argentine president, Nestor Kirchner, I found myself enjoying the charla (chat). To my horror Cristina (I want to write here Kirchner not Cristina) was asked about names that had been used to insult her in the past. She mentioned “yegua” (a female horse) with all the connotations to be read in a mare in heat waiting for the stallion. But worse of all she said, “I have been called a puta.” Now puta is an extremely nasty version of the English for whore.

Can you imagine President Obama stating during an interview with a lessened in effect “I have been called a son of a bitch.”?

For years before Nixon went public and stated, “I am not a crook,” I used to emphatically say that the difference in how Latin Americans perceived politicians and how North Americans did was that the former expected politicians to be dishonest while the latter were always surprised, even disappointed to find out that they were.

But because of language, the use of the English language, even those who abhor Prime Minister Harper would never resort to anything worse than, “He is an S.O.B.,”and would probably do so in the intimacy of friends and never in public.

Argentina used to be run by patrician politicians, the Catholic Church, the oligarch land-owners and the Military establishment.

Thanks to the Malvinas war and the terrible and bloody campaign by the army in disappearing political activists in the 70s the military establishment seems to be in a sort of bearish hibernation. Conscription was eliminated by President Saul Menem. You do not see their military uniforms and most officers and non-commissioned officers dress in civies on the street. The Ministery or later Secretary of War became the less offensive Ministry of Defence.

While the present Argentine pope is as popular on the street as Messi the church no longer holds the might it once did.

As I see it power in Argentina lies in a sort of unofficial sharing by the moneyed oligarchies, many politicians are from that sector, and powerful politicians with fingers in all kinds of important infrastructure. Between these two powers lie the struggling middle class and a vast, increasing in size, lower class.

Many of the lower class have moved from the provinces in search of non-existent jobs in the sprawling Buenos Aires. They live in shanty towns called villas miserias by Argentines.

One of my moneyed relatives, a patrician, a very well educated lawyer with manners (most of the time) and very white, upon seeing me said to me in Spanish, “You are a friend of that chimpanzee. Luckily he is neither a Jew nor a homosexual.” He was of course referring to my liking of the American President.

I was absolutely speechless but in a few days I began to understand the level of vitriol that Argentines have for politicians in the opposite side of their preferred political spectrum.

As a boy my father used to take me to the Argentine and Buenos Aires version of Vancouver’s PNE. It is called La Rural and it is housed in the leafy area of Palermo, close to the botanical garden and the Zoo. It is right by the statue of Garibaldi. I will never forget seeing those huge Simmental bulls walking slowly, side to side, like bull elephants, with their huge testicles almost dragging and sweeping the hay floor.

Jorge Rial

I have no idea if testicles (huevos, testículos, cojones in Spanish) have any bearing with ultimate insults in the Spanish language. If you are easily offended by language leave this page now.

The worst of all possible insults in Spain is”

Me cago en Dios, or I shit on God.

The Argentine version sounds much more offensive but is less controversial religiously.

Me cago en la concha de tu madre (or more intimate and direct, tu hermana, or sister) which translates to I shit on your mother’s cunt.

A paler version, which you can almost utter in the company of casual friends is

La concha de la lora (is it understood that one is to shit on a female parrot’s cunt?). This statement is said when one wants to say wow!

But the most often used insult in Argentina involves balls, bolas and Pelotas. If someone is an idiot you call him “boludo”. If he really is stupid then you up the ante with “pelotudo”. I have no idea if the origin of this is that lumbering bull in la Rural. Doughnut holes (much larger in Argentina) are either called "bolas de fraile", monk's balls or "suspiros de monjas" a nun's sigh.

If you are from the struggling left any politician serving the oligarchs is a “boludo,”or “pelotudo.” If this politician is deemed to not only be stupid but also intelligently using his position to better himself then he is a “pelotudo, hijo de puta.” And the same level of insult goes in the opposite direction.

Had you visited Argentina in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s or now you would get the same answer to this question, “How are things?”

“Es un pais de mierda." It is a country of shit. We have never been worse. Our politicians are hijos de putas.”

And on a final note there is a particularly Argentine expression that begins with:

Me cago de (I shit)

Nos cagamos de (We shit)

By: risa (laughter) frío (cold), calor (heat), hambre (hunger) and you name it.

I find the expression offensive to my Vancouver sensitive ears and I can only surmise that my erstwhile fellow citizens suffer from a collective but figurative diarrhea.

Link to: Argentine Diarrhea - Lost In Translation

Alfonsina Storni

Sunday, September 29, 2013

VOY A DORMIR ( Alfonsina Storni , May 29, 1892 – October 25, 1938)

Dientes de flores, cofia de rocío,

manos de hierbas, tú, nodriza fina,

tenme prestas las sábanas terrosas

y el edredón de musgos escardados.

Voy a dormir, nodriza mía, acuéstame.

Ponme una lámpara a la cabecera;

una constelación; la que te guste;

todas son buenas; bájala un poquito.

Déjame sola: oyes romper los brotes...

te acuna un pie celeste desde arriba

y un pájaro te traza unos compases

para que olvides... Gracias. Ah, un encargo:

si él llama nuevamente por teléfono

le dices que no insista, que he salido...

Teeth of flowers, hairnet of dew,
hands of herbs, you, perfect wet nurse,
prepare the earthly sheets for me
and the down quilt of weeded moss

I am going to sleep, my nurse, put me to bed.
Set a lamp at my headboard;
a constellation; whatever you like;
all are good: lower it a bit.

Leave me alone: you hear the buds breaking through . .
a celestial foot rocks you from above
and a bird traces a pattern for you

so you'll forget . . . Thank you. Oh, one request:
if he telephones again
tell him not to keep trying for I have left . . .

Alfonsina Storni

A year and a half after her friend Quiroga committed suicide in 1937, and haunted by solitude and breast cancer, Storni sent her last poem, Voy a dormir ("I'm going to sleep") to La Nación newspaper in October 1938. Around 1:00 AM on Tuesday the 25th, Alfonsina left her room and headed towards the sea at La Perla beach in Mar del Plata, Argentina. Later that morning two workers found her body washed up on the beach. Although her biographers hold that she jumped into the water from a breakwater, popular legend is that she slowly walked out to sea until she drowned.

Her obituary, published in La Nación on October 26, 1938 included the above poem that some think was dedicated to her only son, Alejandro who was 26 years old.

When I contacted Argentine model Roxana via email from Vancouver she indicated that she would pose for Nora Patrich and for me. She suggested we do something on modernist poet (Swiss born) Alfonsina Storni.

Because Storni had committed suicide by walking into the sea in Mar del Plata I saw a parallel with Hamlet's Ophelia. We took the picture in Nora Patrich's empty swimming pool (she was cleaning it). A nearby and very large clump of calla lilies (Zantedeschia aethiopica) fit right in with our photograph.

Link to: Alfonsina Storni