Toward a Poetry and Poetics of the Americas (28)

Three Poems by Jorge Eduardo Eielson (Peru, 1924–2006) with commentaries

Translations from Spanish by David Shook

 

from 4 SEASONS

 

take this rectangle of paper in spring at a temperature of 17 degrees over zero and read it calmly

 

 

 

take this rectangle of paper in summer at a temperature of 40 degrees in the shade and fan yourself hard

 

 

 

 

take this rectangle of paper in fall at a temperature of 12 degrees over zero and write a poem

 

 

 

 

take this rectangle of paper in winter at 7 degrees below zero and burn it in the chimney

 

 

MUTILATED POEM (1949)

 

you appear………………………………………….

…………………………………………….…and disappear

…………………water shouting like obelisks

signaling the end of…………………………………………..

………………………………………..abysses

……………..lake

of disappeared species………………sand……………….

………………………………………………………...…last line

of fire……………………………………..

……………………

……………………………………………

and far away…………………………………………….just into view

…………………….the hungry wolf and the eclipse pass by

you appear……………………….

………………………………………..and disappear

igneous magnitude……………..

……………………………….. ………………..

 

 

from ROOM IN ROME

Alongside the Tiber, Putrefaction Twinkles Gloriously

 

here i am gathering

words again

words still

lines arranged single file

that brilliantly announce

the nauseating demise

of love

with exquisite fluorescence

thousands and thousands

of words written

in a water-closet

while yellow

briefs and stockings hang

from the flaming sky

of rome

how can i write

and write calmly

in the shade

of an impassive cupola

of a smiling

statue

and not wind up screaming

through the hideous neighborhoods

of rome

and lick a drunkard’s sores

disfigure my face

with broken bottles

and then sleep on the sidewalk

in the warm excrement

of a streetwalker or a beggar

i could fill pages

and even worse pages

tell heinous stories

speak despicable things

that I have never known

my shame is just a cloak

of words

a delicate veil of gold

that covers me every day

without pity

but if one day

one instant by the tiber

without a sound

or a whistle

or a cloud

or even a fly

at the bank of the river

with just

a cigarette

a match

and a chair

in so much summer

a sob rises up inside me

oh wonder!

like a mountain

or a mosquito that appears

each century at the zenith

that day

i swear to you

i will hurl the entire universe

into the basket

love will be reborn

between my parched lips

and in these sleeping lines

that will no longer be lines

but gunshots 

 

COMMENTARY

 

source: (1 and 2) Jorge Eduardo Eielson, Birdwatching: The Visual Poems, trans. David Shook (Suxinenepihli Editions, 2015). (3) Jorge Eduardo Eielson, Room in Rome, trans. David Shook (Cardboard House Press, 2019).

where does the ma/n want to go with his cane that / breaks always bre/aks on turning the cor/ner / lead limbs before stairs / that rise daily / from so fragile an egg / and return to the egg / so fragile (Jorge Eduardo Eielson, Valle Giuglia, trans. David Shook).

 

(1) Writes Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa: “[Jorge Eduardo Eielson had] an open, curious and voracious spirit that would lead him, not content with cultivating a single genre, to jump from poetry to painting, theater, novel, events (he called them ‘performances’ and ‘actions’), to installation works and even to the circus (he said to Martha Canfield — very seriously — that he considered himself an ‘acrobat’ and ‘a clown’). He was interested in everything: archeology, science, religions, and, since the late 1950s, principally in Zen Buddhism. He participated in some way in all the post-war intellectual and artistic European trends but he never belonged to any group or sect, always defending his independence and isolation, and preserving, even in the most exhibitionist periods of his career (like when he ‘placed’ invisible poems on spaceships or on public monuments) a discreet and secret distance from what he did. … Eielson showed throughout his life an indifference to success and a tough seriousness in everything that he undertook as an artist, even in those humorous taunts. His contempt for fame was such that — for many years — his poetry was almost impossible to find and read, for lack of accessible editions.” (trans. Javier Taboada).

 

(2) “Room in Rome counterposes the temporal and spatial expansiveness of Rome with a transient, walled-in room. It is from this knotted perspective that Eielson … rearranges coordinates of time, space, and language, blurring the dividing lines between the Roman/the Peruvian, the ancient/the contemporary, the national/the personal, the awe-inspiring/the agonizing. Indeed, the metaphor of the knot permeates readings of Eielson’s written poetry, drawing a parallel to the poet’s quipus of the late 1950s–installations of knotted fabrics that reimagined the ancient Andean knot-based information system.” (Olivia Lot, “Slipknots: Jorge Eduardo Eielson’s Room in Rome,” Reading in Translation, Feb 3, 2020).

 

(3) As originally published, each line of “4 Seasons” appears on a separate page; to indicate that, our edition uses long vertical spaces.

 

N.B. A biographical note by David Shook: “Jorge Eduardo Eielson (1924–2006) was born in Lima, Peru. As a high school student he was taught by renowned novelist and anthropologist José María Arguedas, who influenced his interest in the Pre-Columbian precedents of conceptual art. In 1945 Eielson won Peru’s National Poetry Prize, before moving to Italy in 1948, where he lived until his death in 2006. In addition to his work as a poet, es­sayist, and novelist, Eielson was a highly lauded painter and sculptor who showed his work internationally.”