Entrevista de Martha Isabel Moia, publicada en El deseo de la palabra, Ocnos, Barcelona, 1972.
* Todos los asteriscos que aparecen hasta el final del texto hacen referencia a poemas de Alejandra Pizarnik.
M.I.M. – Hay, en tus poemas, términos que considero emblemáticos y que contribuyen a conformar tus poemas como dominios solitarios e ilícitos como las pasiones de la infancia, como el poema, como el amor, como la muerte. ¿Coincidís conmigo en que términos como jardín, bosque, palabra, silencio, errancia, viento, desgarradura y noche, son, a la vez, signos y emblemas?
A.P. – Creo que en mis poemas hay palabras que reitero sin cesar, sin tregua, sin piedad: las de la infancia, las de los miedos, las de la muerte, las de la noche de los cuerpos. 0, más exactamente, los términos que designas en tu pregunta serían signos y emblemas.
M.I.M. – Empecemos por entrar, pues, en los espacios más gratos: el jardín y el bosque.
A.P. – Una de las frases que más me obsesiona la dice la pequeña Alice en el país de las maravillas: – «Sólo vine a ver el jardín». Para Alice y para mí, el jardín sería el lugar de la cita o, dicho con las palabras de Mircea Eliade, el centro del mundo. Lo cual me sugiere esta frase: El jardín es verde en el cerebro. Frase mía que me conduce a otra siguiente de Georges Bachelard, que espero recordar fielmente: El jardín del recuerdo- sueño, perdido en un más allá del pasado verdadero.
M.I.M. – En cuanto a tu bosque, se aparece como sinónimo de silencio. Mas yo siento otros significados. Por ejemplo, tu bosque podría ser una alusión a lo prohibido, a lo oculto.
A.P. – ¿Por qué no? Pero también sugeriría la infancia, el cuerpo, la noche.
M.I.M. – ¿Entraste alguna vez en el jardín?
A.P. – Proust, al analizar los deseos, dice que los deseos no quieren analizarse sino satisfacerse, esto es: no quiero hablar del jardín, quiero verlo. Claro es que lo que digo no deja de ser pueril, pues en esta vida nunca hacemos lo que queremos. Lo cual es un motivo más para querer ver el jardín, aun si es imposible, sobre todo si es imposible.
M.I.M. – Mientras contestabas a mi pregunta, tu voz en mi memoria me dijo desde un poema tuyo: mi oficio es conjurar y exorcizar.*
A.P. – Entre otras cosas, escribo para que no suceda lo que temo; para que lo que me hiere no sea; para alejar al Malo (cf. Kafka). Se ha dicho que el poeta es el gran terapeuta. En este sentido, el quehacer poético implicaría exorcizar, conjurar y, además, reparar. Escribir un poema es reparar la herida fundamental, la desgarradura. Porque todos estamos heridos.
M.I.M. – Entre las variadas metáforas con las que configuras esta herida fundamental recuerdo, por la impresión que me causó, la que en un poema temprano te hace preguntar porla bestia caída de pasmo que se arrastra por mi sangre.* Y creo, casi con certeza, que el viento es uno de los principales autores de la herida, ya que a veces se aparece en tus escritos como el gran lastimador.*
A.P. – Tengo amor por el viento aun si, precisamente, mi imaginación suele darle formas y colores feroces. Embestida por el viento, voy por el bosque, me alejo en busca del jardín.
M.I.M. – ¿En la noche?
A.P. – Poco sé de la noche pero a ella me uno. Lo dije en un poema: Toda la noche hago la noche. Toda la noche escribo. Palabra por palabra yo escribo la noche.*
M.I.M. – En un poema de adolescencia también te unís al silencio.
A.P. – El silencio: única tentación y la más alta promesa. Pero siento que el inagotable murmullo nunca cesa de manar (Que bien sé yo do mana la fuente del lenguaje errante). Por eso me atrevo a decir que no sé si el silencio existe.
M.I.M. – En una suerte de contrapunto con tu yo que se une a la noche y aquel que se une al silencio, veo a «la extranjera»; «la silenciosa en el desierto»; «la pequeña viajera»; «mi emigrante de sí»; la que «quería entrar en el teclado para entrar adentro de la música para tener una patria». Son estas, tus otras voces, las que hablan de tu vocación de errancia, la para mí tu verdadera vocación, dicho a tu manera.
A.P. – Pienso en una frase de Trakl: Es el hombre un extraño en la tierra. Creo que, de todos, el poeta es el más extranjero. Creo que la única morada posible para el poeta es la palabra.
M.I.M. – Hay un miedo tuyo que pone en peligro esa morada: el no saber nombrar lo que no existe.* Es entonces cuando te ocultás del lenguaje.
A.P. – Con una ambigüedad que quiero aclarar: me oculto del lenguaje dentro del lenguaje. Cuando algo – incluso la nada tiene un nombre, parece menos hostil. Sin embargo, existe en mí una sospecha de que lo esencial es indecible.
M.I.M. – ¿Es por esto que buscas figuras que se aparecen vivientes por obra de un lenguaje activo que las aluden?*
A.P. – Siento que los signos, las palabras, insinúan, hacen alusión. Este modo complejo de sentir el lenguaje me induce a creer que el lenguaje no puede expresar la realidad; que solamente podemos hablar de lo obvio. De allí mis deseos de hacer poemas terriblemente exactos a pesar de mi surrealismo innato y de trabajar con elementos de las sombras interiores. Es esto lo que ha caracterizado a mis poemas.
M.I.M. – Sin embargo, ahora ya no buscas esa exactitud.
A.P. – Es cierto; busco que el poema se escriba como quiera escribirse. Pero prefiero no hablar del ahora porque aún está poco escrito.
M.I.M. – El no saber nombrar* se relaciona con la preocupación por encontrar alguna frase enteramente tuya.* Tu libro Los trabajos y las noches es una respuesta significativa, ya que en él son tus voces las que hablan.
A.P. – Trabajé arduamente en esos poemas y debo decir que al configurarlos me configuré yo, y cambié. Tenía dentro de mí un ideal de poema y logré realizarlo. Sé que no me parezco a nadie (esto es una fatalidad). Ese libro me dio la felicidad de encontrar la libertad en la escritura. Fui libre, fui dueña de hacerme una forma como yo quería.
M.I.M. – Con estos miedos coexiste el de las palabras que regresan.* ¿Cuáles son?
A.P. – Es la memoria. Me sucede asistir al cortejo de las palabras que se precipitan, y me siento espectadora inerte e inerme.
M.I.M. – Vislumbro que el espejo, la otra orilla, la zona prohibida y su olvido, disponen en tu obra el miedo de ser dos,* que escapa a los límites del döppelganger para incluir a todas las que fuiste.
A.P. – Decís bien, es el miedo a todas las que en mí contienden. Hay un poema de Michaux que dice: Je suis; je parle á qui je fus et qui- je- fus me parlent. ( … ) On n’est pas seul dans sa peau.
M.I.M. – ¿Se manifiesta en algún momento especial?
A.P. – Cuando «la hija de mi voz» me traiciona.
M.I.M. – Según un poema tuyo, tu amor más hermoso fue el amor por los espejos. ¿A quién ves en ellos?
A.P. – A la otra que soy. (En verdad, tengo cierto miedo de los espejos.) En algunas ocasiones nos reunimos. Casi siempre sucede cuando escribo.
M.I.M. – Una noche en el circo recobraste un lenguaje perdido en el momento que los jinetes con antorchas en la mano galopaban en ronda feroz sobre corceles negros.* ¿Qué es ese algo semejante a los sonidos calientes para mi corazón de los cascos contra las arenas?*
A.P. – Es el lenguaje no encontrado y que me gustaría encontrar.
M.I.M. – ¿Acaso lo encontraste en la pintura?
A.P. – Me gusta pintar porque en la pintura encuentro la oportunidad de aludir en silencio a las imágenes de las sombras interiores. Además, me atrae la falta de mitomanía del lenguaje de la pintura. Trabajar con las palabras o, más específicamente, buscar mis palabras, implica una tensión que no existe al pintar.
M.I.M. – ¿Cuál es la razón de tu preferencia por «la gitana dormida» de Rousseau?
A.P. – Es el equivalente del lenguaje de los caballos en el circo. Yo quisiera llegar a escribir algo semejante a «la gitana» del Aduanero porque hay silencio y, a la vez, alusión a cosas graves y luminosas. También me conmueve singularmente la obra de Bosch, Klee, Ernst.
M.I.M. – Por último, te pregunto si alguna vez te formulaste la pregunta que se plantea Octavio Paz en el prólogo de El arco y la lira: ¿no sería mejor transformar la vida en poesía que hacer poesía con la vida?
A.P. – Respondo desde uno de mis últimos poemas: Ojalá pudiera vivir solamente en éxtasis haciendo el cuerpo del poema con mi cuerpo, rescatando cada frase con mis días y con mis semanas, infundiéndole al poema mi soplo a medida que cada letra de cada palabra haya sido sacrificada en las ceremonias del vivir*.
Texto extraído de “Prosa Completa”, Alejandra Pizarnik, págs. 311/315, ed. Lumen, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2003.
Selección: S.R.
Entrevista a Alejandra Pizarnik: “Escribo para que no suceda lo que temo”
Neil Langdon Inglis, author, editor, and translator, gives 3 question interview to Interlitq
Neil Langdon Inglis is Interlitq‘s U.S. General Editor.
Interlitq: What kindled your interest in the lives of William Tyndale and Michael Servetus (whom you profiled in the pages of Interlitq[i])?
NLI: Let me begin by saying that in my view, the individual’s contribution is always greater than the group’s. It is this individualistic spirit that led me to be one of the earliest and most dedicated champions of Interlitq.
Some 23 years ago, my reverence for individual achievement led me to the story of William Tyndale (c.1494-1536),[ii] the first published English translator of the Bible, then being commemorated at the “Let There Be Light” Exhibit at the British Library in London. At around the same time, I came across the Spaniard Michael Servetus (variously named, c.1509/11-1553),[iii] an author and theologian who discovered the pulmonary circulation of the blood. Tyndale and Servetus were persecuted for heresy and burnt at the stake.
I am not alone in my efforts to rescue these men from the shadows. After joining the William Tyndale Society[iv] in 1994, I spoke at the 1996 and 1998 William Tyndale Conferences at Hertford College, Oxford (where the TV version of «Brideshead Revisited» was filmed); and in 2000 or shortly thereafter I became chief book reviewer for the Tyndale Society Journal,[v] a twice-yearly publication comprising academic papers and Tyndale news and comment from around the globe. I took over the editorship a decade or so ago, and we never looked back. Here I will go against my chronic individualism and lavish praise upon my team, for I could not edit the magazine without the support and sagacious insights of Mary Clow, Tyndale Society President, and Dave Steele, our DTP/IT expert, who has a knack for finding superb graphics on the web. Last but not least, we encourage our contributors to fill in the gaps in the historical record for Tyndale, Servetus, and other unsung giants of the Reformation era; you cannot do these people full justice unless you have all the pieces of the historical puzzle. The incomplete picture and the accepted wisdom have done great disservice to civilization and mankind.
Honoring WT and MS is a challenge because they were modernizers with roots in late antiquity; their conceptual and spiritual framework was not ours. They defy easy categorization and were perhaps curmudgeons in their daily lives. Credit is so often taken by others: every schoolchild knows about the better-known Miles Coverdale[vi] the translator (1488-1569), and anatomist William Harvey[vii] (1578-1657). But I persevere in telling the stories of their uncredited forerunners, in the teeth of all obstacles, because I care about celebrating the achievements of others. Which brings us to Question 2!
***
Interlitq: Why are you so interested in the lives and work of your parents? Your father was Brian Inglis[viii] (1916-1993) an Irish journalist, author, and broadcaster, whose life and work you have already profiled in Interlitq. Your mother was Ruth Langdon Inglis[ix] (1927-2005), an American expatriate in London, whose books focus on child development.
NLI: Ruth was a pioneering advocate for work/life balance long before the concept was invented (let alone socially acceptable). Neither work, nor motherhood alone, would have sufficed; she insisted on both. We know she resumed journalism within months of my arrival, with two major long-form assignments for U.S. publications (including “Britain’s Cautious Generation”, The New Leader (April 1963)). The latter title might have applied to Ruth: Ruth pushed boundaries but in moderation, always working within the system, and attempting to improve it from within. In particular, Ruth believed that guides to parenting, of which she wrote several (often with her longstanding publisher Peter Owen), made parenthood a happier and more productive experience for parent and child alike.
With each new Google search bringing new discoveries concerning my parents, each day is an adventure in family history. I had already inherited a passion for biography from my maternal grandmother, Laura Langdon (d. 1989). Although my father insisted he preferred evidence over personalities, his own biography of Irish revolutionary Roger Casement (originally published by Hodder & Stoughton in 1973, and soon to be reissued by Endeavour Press[x]) stands as his finest achievement. And “Casement” is anything but hagiography. I have also been helping to prepare electronic editions of Brian’s parapsychology texts for White Crow Books (including “Natural and Supernatural”[xi]).
Both Brian and Ruth adopted a distinctive and recognizable persona in their journalism; as a child biographer, one must pierce this veil. Their mask slipped infrequently. I have very few pictures of my parents in the same room together, and even in candid shots they wear the fixed expressions expected in portrait photography. Both needed alcohol to relax. My parents were from the generation that took pen in hand to write—and I cherished their letters—but the mask was present there as well. I was astonished to observe the expression of gleeful happiness on my father’s face in snapshots taking during his bucket-list trip around the world in 1991, particularly in Japan. I did not know that look.
My mother brooked no criticism of her father (US diplomat and Japanese language specialist, William Russell Langdon, d. 1963); so imagine my surprise when I came across Ruth’s pitying critique of one of her father’s foreign policy articles. These contradictions are the lifeblood of the biographer. Shortly after my mother’s death I found a photograph of Ruth in a rural setting, with a natural look of unaccustomed serenity on her face; I knew right away that this had to be a picture of my mother in her beloved Suffolk. And the sting of my grief was lessened.
My introductions to the new editions seek to make sense of Brian’s shift from respectable, family-friendly television presenter in the 1960s (All Our Yesterdays, his weekly WWII documentary with Granada, was often at #2 in the ratings) to a polemicist challenging the scientific establishment in the 1970s and 1980s. He insisted that he was the cool and rational party, not a «believer» in psi («I have studied the evidence» was his pet phrase); yet angry he most certainly was, and naively incredulous at the establishment’s reaction to his newly discovered interests. What prompted him to embrace the fringe world? Brian felt that psychics and psychical researchers had been cruelly shamed into silence by rationalist bullies. Whether the men and women Brian championed had true achievements to their name is a matter for another time. Ultimately, he was too good a historian to push his own evidence over a cliff—and his profiles of Daniel Dunglas Home[xii] (1833-1886) and Eusapia Palladino[xiii] (1854-1918) end on sour notes, of which he was perhaps not fully aware.
There was a rivalry between the two (Ruth aka «Boo» was not content to be Brian’s wife and hostess). She became a celebrity in her own right, especially during her heyday as star reporter for Nova magazine in the late 1960s. As journalists, both posed as authorities; but truth be told, they may have lacked the technical background required to grasp the fullest subtleties of their chosen subjects. In a mock common entrance exam which Brian took with other journalists for a Sunday color supplement, the examiners chastised Brian for possessing great verbal facility combined with numerical incompetence of astonishing dimensions.[xiv] «Bingles” and “Boo» could bluff when called for. Where Ruth surpassed Brian, I think, was in her post-divorce period on the features and women’s pages of the Daily Express; when instructed to whip up a column on cleaning up oil slicks in a couple of hours one Sunday afternoon, she managed to find a post-prandial oil engineer willing to talk for the record on the phone, and the requested article was delivered on time, «for the edition.»
Brian, too, did interviews (his colloquy with Anthony Eden, Lord Avon, has not survived, although we know that Clarissa Eden prepared lamb cutlets, followed by raspberries picked fresh from the garden). Ruth as a reporter could adopt a disarming grandmotherly approach (another mask, if you will), that drew quotable comments from unlikely sources. Certain interview subjects (TV actors Bernard Cribbins and Gordon Jackson) resisted her charm and had little to say, whilst others (Roald Dahl) were opinionated but rude. Diana Dors bailed my mother out on one occasion when Ruth had to hurry to find a female celebrity willing to talk on the record about her personal experience with menstruation (other celebrities had slammed down the receiver). Mario Montessori (son of educator Maria) enthralled a posse of youngsters Ruth had brought out to the country for the occasion, including one young Master Neil Inglis, captured for posterity by an Observer cameraman. Always an expert relationship-builder, Ruth knew that once a source’s name was in her contact book (the envy of Fleet Street), she could call that person again, in the knowledge that the source would be well-disposed toward her.
As successful authors, Brian and Ruth were often called upon to critique newcomers’ work, a task they sometimes enjoyed but often hated, especially when tact was of the essence. As editor of The Spectator in the early 1960s, Brian groomed the young Bernard Levin; later, Brian gave strong and well-deserved encouragement to lady novelist Lionel Shriver, during their brief friendship in the last six months of his life. Ruth and Brian disagreed over their mutual friend Irish novelist Jennifer Johnston (Ruth was proved right in the end). When U.S. poetess Ann Sexton made her fateful visit to the city she would notoriously dub «Swinging London», Ruth made promotional calls all over town to publicize her friend’s arrival. The telephone was my mother’s Internet.
***
Interlitq: As a well-regarded translator, you have made a point of speaking to undergraduate and post-graduate students on careers in languages. What themes do you emphasize in your presentations?
NLI: You will discern some common themes in my answers to all three of your questions; a commitment to the highest standards, respect for the written word, devotion to reading and research. In my speeches to the younger generation I emphasize that teamwork is important, but ultimately final responsibility is the individual’s alone; avoid working for middlemen. Direct clients provide precious feedback, indispensable for the development of one’s own expertise, and higher incomes allow for discretionary time. With room to breathe, you can plot your next move, your future strategy. Strive at all times for excellence in penmanship and subject-matter proficiency. Be authoritative, and prepare translations that are credible in the eyes of specialists. Above all, steer clear of the trolls and naysayers who are common in the translator blogosphere. They preach a shabby gentility, more shabby than genteel. Seek out success stories rather than failures. Let quality be your watchword, and everything else will follow.
[i] http://interlitq.org/staff/neil_langdon_inglis/bio.php
[ii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Tyndale
[iii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Servetus
[iv] http://www.tyndale.org/
[v] http://www.tyndale.org/journals.htm#tsj
[vi] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myles_Coverdale
[vii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Harvey
[viii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Inglis
[ix] www.ruthlangdoninglis.com
[x] www.endeavourpress.com
[xi] http://whitecrowbooks.com/books/page/natural_and_supernatural_a_history_of_the_paranormal_from_the_earliest_time/
[xii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Dunglas_Home
[xiii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusapia_Palladino
[xiv] http://www.gettyimages.dk/detail/news-photo/group-of-celebrities-prepare-to-take-the-common-entrance-news-photo/104525557#group-of-celebrities-prepare-to-take-the-common-entrance-exam-for-picture-id104525557
Jill Dawson, UK author, gives 3 question interview to Interlitq
Interlitq publishes Glenna Luschei's poem, "The Fabulous Planet Uranus"
To mark the 83rd birthday today, 11th February, of Glenna Luschei, the U.S. author and editor and a Vice-President of Interlitq, the review publishes Luschei’s poem:
The Fabulous Planet Uranus
for my birthday February 11
Like me, Uranus takes eighty-four years to circle the sun.
We’re just now winding up, off to a rocky start
on the next orbit. I won’t last that ride
but we’re stocking up on provisions anyway.
Like me, Uranus lies sideways on its axis.
I can never get it right but am fortunate to be singled out
for this quirky ride. I don’t mind sharing my birthday
with others. Thomas Edison, for one, also intent
on incandescence, and Burt Reynolds.
Uranus, cold, blue and windy, you are the God
of the sky. You are the reason I skate on ice.
Isobel Murray Imrie (25.03.1933-05.06.2016) née Isobel Murray Macfarlane, only child of Douglas Cecil Macfarlane and Christina Murray, and mother of Peter Robertson, has died in Perth, Scotland, aged 83.