Pizarnik’s El infierno musical
To keep this in retrospect, in 1971, a year after I was born, Carole King's "It's Too Late" was on the Pop Charts, as well George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord" and Three Dog Night's "Joy To The World." Movies, such as Brian's Song, A Clockwork Orange, Dirty Harry and The French Connection, were in circulation. Idi Amin would come to power in Uganda in January. Lt. William Calley will be found guilty of murdering twenty-two Vietnamese civilians at My Lai 4 in March. In April “Papa Doc” Duvalier, dictator in Haiti for 14 years, dies. Between September-October the Third World Women’s Alliance is expanded to include non-Black Third World women. All of this was happening and in Buenos Aires Alejandra Pizarnik will publish her El infierno musical just a year before her death.
This is not the complete poem, however, just a splattering. A taste. Poverty being what it is I see I must head off to work. There are adult diapers to be changed. Staffing shortages.1 Head nurses with short tempers. One cannot translate all day, I suppose.
| Signos Alejandra Pizarnik |
Signs translated by ZJC |
|---|---|
|
Todo hace el amor con el silencio. |
Let everything make love to the silence. |
| La palabra que sana Alejandra Pizarnik |
The Word That Cures translated by ZJC |
|---|---|
|
Esperando que un mundo sea desenterrado por el lenguaje, alguien canta el lugar en que se forma el silencio. Luego comprobará que no porque se muestre furioso existe el mar, ni tampoco el mundo. Por eso cada palabra dice lo que dice y además más y otra cosa. |
Hoping that a world might be unearthed by a language, somebody begins to sing the place where silence is formed. Soon she will confirm that the sea does not exist simply because it is frenzied, nor does the world. For that reason each word says only what says it says and in addition one more other thing as well. |
| El deseo de la palabra Alejandra Pizarnik |
Desire of the Word translated by ZJC |
|---|---|
|
La noche, de nuevo la noche, la magistral sapiencia de lo oscuro, el cálido roce de la muerte, un instante de éxtasis para mí, heredera de todo jardín prohibido. Pasos y voces del lado sombrío del jardín. Risas en el interior de las paredes. No vayas a creer que están vivos. No vayas a creer que no están vivos. En cualquier momento la fisura en la pared y el súbito desbandarse de las niñas que fui. Caen niñas de papel de variados colores. ¿Hablan los colores? ¿Hablan las imágenes de papel? Solamente hablan las doradas y de ésas no hay ninguna por aquí. Voy entre muros que se acercan, que se juntan. Toda la noche hasta la aurora salmodiaba: “Si no vino es porque no vino”. Pregunto. ¿A quién? Dice que pregunta, quiere saber a quién pregunta. Tú ya no hablas con nadie. Extranjera a muerte está muriéndose. Otro es el lenguaje de los agonizantes. He malgastado el don de transfigurar a los prohibidos (los siento respirar adentro de las paredes). Imposible narrar mi día, mi vía. Pero contempla absolutamente sola la desnudez de estos muros. Ninguna flor crece ni crecerá del milagro. A pan y agua toda la vida. En la cima de la alegría he declarado acerca de una música jamás oída. ¿Y qué? 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. |
Night, once again nighttime, the superbly command of darkness, the feverish rubbing of death, for me an moment of delirium, I am the heiress of all scandalous gardens. On the shady side of the garden come steps and voices. Inside the walls laughter. You will not even understand they are living. You will not even understand they are living. At any moment the rift in the wall and the sudden scattering of the girls I once was. Falling paper girls of varied colors. Do they utter out colors? Do paper images speak? Only the golden ones utter and there are no golden ones here. I go in-between walls that close in on one another, that come together. All night until daybreak my hymn: If she does not arrive it is because she did not want to arrive. I question. Who? She says that she is questioning, she wants to know who is she questioning. You no longer speak to anybody. A dying alien at the point of death. This language of the dying must be another. I have wasted this art of transforming the forbidden bodies (I feel their lifeblood inside the walls). It is beyond me to relate my days, my ways. But exactly alone she thinks about the nudity of these walls. No flower growing, nothing will miraculously grow. All of this life is made from bread and water. At the height of joy I uttered a music never heard. And so what? If I could live in nothing but delirium, making a body of a poem within my body, befriending each phrase with my days, with my weeks, injecting the poem with my lifeblood so that each letter of each word can be sacrificed for the ceremonies of the living. |
| El infierno musical Alejandra Pizarnik |
The Infernal Music translated by ZJC |
|---|---|
|
Golpean con soles |
They hammer with suns |
- We have been told never to use the term "working short" when someone calls in sick, we are simply "challenged." We have been "challenged" for a long time [back]