(Las partes I y II de este poema, aquí)
Debe ser abstracta
III
El poema renueva la vida para que compartamos,
por un momento, la primera idea… Satisface
la creencia de un comienzo inmaculado
y nos envía, alados con un deseo inconsciente,
hacia un fin inmaculado. Nos movemos entre estos puntos:
desde aquel candor temprano a su tardía pluralidad,
y ese candor es la gran euforia
de lo que sentimos por lo que pensamos, del pensamiento
latiendo en el corazón, como sangre recién venida,
un elixir, una excitación, una potencia pura.
El poema, a través del candor, nos devuelve ese poder
que otorga candidez a todo.
Decimos: un árabe a la noche en mi cuarto,
con su maldito jublajublajublajau,
inscribe una astronomía primitiva
a través de las claras predicciones el futuro juega
y tira sus estrellas por el suelo. Durante el día
la tórtola azul solía cantar su jublaju
y todavía la grosera iridiscencia del oceáno
aúlla juu y se eleva y aúlla juu y cae.
El sinsentido de la vida nos atraviesa con extraña relación.
IV
La primera idea no fue nuestra. Adán
en el Edén era el padre de Descartes
y Eva ventilaba el espejo de sí misma,
el de sus hijos y sus hijas. Se encontraban
en el cielo como en una vidriera; una segunda tierra;
y en la tierra misma encontraron una espacio verde—
los habitantes de un bellísimo verdor.
Pero la primera idea no era dar forma a las nubes
imitándolas. Las nubes nos precedían
hubo un centro barroso antes de que respiráramos.
Hubo un mito antes de que el mito comenzara,
venerable y articulado y completo.
De aquí surge el poema: de que vivimos en un lugar
que no es nuestro y, más aún, ni somos nosotros
y es duro, a pesar de los días majestuosos.
Somos los imitadores. Las nubes son pedagogas.
El aire no es un espejo sino un tablero de circuitos,
backstage oscuro y brillante, trágico clarosocuro
y el cómico color de la rosa, en la que
instrumentos abismales suenan como los pitidos
de los amplios significados que les añadimos.
V
El león le ruge al desierto enfurecido,
enrojece la arena con su ruido carmín,
desafía la roja vacuidad para que evolucione su pareja,
superior en pies y mandíbulas y melena,
el más ágil adversario. El elefante
corta la oscuridad de Ceylon con estruendos,
el brillo se extiende hasta las superficies de los tanques,
devastadora y aterciopelada lejanía. El oso,
lento y pesado, de color canela, gruñe en su montaña
a los truenos del verano y duerme durante la nevada invernal.
Pero tú, efebo, miras desde la ventana de tu buhardilla,
tu mansarda con su piano alquilado. Descansas
en tu cama en silencio. Aprietas el borde
de la almohada con tu mano. Te retuerces y al hacerlo
dejas escapar un sonido amargo, mudo,
aunque de voluble y muda violencia. Miras
a través de los tejados sigiloso y a la defensa
y en tu centro los señalas y se intimidan…
Estos son los niños heroicos que el tiempo alimenta
contra la primera idea — para azotar al león,
acorralar elefantes, enseñar a los osos a hacer malabares.
VI
No darse cuenta porque no es
para ser visto, ni para ser amado ni odiado porque
no debe ocurrir. El clima de Franz Hals,
retocado por vientos erizados en hirsutas nubes,
mojados por azules, más fríos por el blanco. A los que no
se debe hablar, sin un techo, sin
los primeros frutos, sin la virginidad de las aves,
la cinta marrón oscuro floja, pero no suelta.
Alegre es, alegre era, la alegre forsitia
y amarilla, el amarillo afina el azul del norte.
Sin un nombre y nada que desear,
solo imaginado pero bien imaginado.
Mi casa ha cambiado un poco bajo el sol.
La fragancia de las magnolias se aproxima,
falso toque, falsa forma, pero una falsedad ligada a la especie.
Debe ser visible o invisible,
invisible o visible o ambos:
un mirar y no mirar a los ojos.
El clima y el gigante del clima,
digamos el clima, el mero clima, el mero aire:
una abstracción ensangrentada, como el hombre por el pensamiento.
Wallace Stevens (Reading, Pennsylvania, 1879 - Hartford, Connecticut, 1955), Notes Towards a Supreme Fiction, 1942
Versión de Silvia Camerotto
It Must Be Abstract
III
The poem refreshes life so that we share, /For a moment, the first idea . . . It satisfies /Belief in an immaculate beginning /And sends us, winged by an unconscious will, /To an immaculate end. We move between these points: /From that ever-early candor to its late plural /And the candor of them is the strong exhilaration /Of what we feel from what we think, of thought /Beating in the heart, as if blood newly came, /An elixir, an excitation, a pure power. /The poem, through candor, brings back a power again /That gives a candid kind to everything. /We say: at night an Arabian in my room, /With his damned hoobla-hoobla-hoobla-how, /Inscribes a primitive astronomy /Across the unscrawled fores the future casts /And throws his stars around the floor. By day /The wood-dove used to chant his hoobla-hoo /And still the grossest iridescence of ocean /Howls hoo and rises and howls hoo and falls. /Life’s nonsense pierces us with strange relation.
IV
The first idea was not our own. Adam /In Eden was the father of Descartes /And Eve made air the mirror of herself, /Of her sons and of her daughters. They found themselves /In heaven as in a glass; a second earth; /And in the earth itself they found a green– /The inhabitants of a very varnished green. /But the first idea was not to shape the clouds /In imitation. The clouds preceded us /There was a muddy center before we breathed. /There was a myth before the myth began, /Venerable and articulate and complete. /From this the poem springs: that we live in a place /That is not our own and, much more, not ourselves /And hard it is in spite of blazoned days. /We are the mimics. Clouds are pedagogues. /The air is not a mirror but bare board, /Coulisse bright-dark, tragic chiaroscuro /And comic color of the rose, in which /Abysmal instruments make sounds like pips /Of the sweeping meanings that we add to them.
V
The lion roars at the enraging desert, /Reddens the sand with his red-colored noise, /Defies red emptiness to evolve his match, /Master by foot and jaws and by the mane, /Most supple challenger. The elephant /Breaches the darkness of Ceylon with blares, /The glitter-goes on surfaces of tanks, /Shattering velvetest far-away. The bear, /The ponderous cinnamon, snarls in his mountain /At summer thunder and sleeps through winter snow. /But you, ephebe, look from your attic window, /Your mansard with a rented piano. You lie /In silence upon your bed. You clutch the corner /Of the pillow in your hand. You writhe and press /A bitter utterance from your writhing, dumb, /Yet voluble dumb violence. You look /Across the roofs as sigil and as ward /And in your centre mark them and are cowed . . . /These are the heroic children whom time breeds /Against the first idea – to lash the lion, /Caparison elephants, teach bears to juggle.
VI
Not to be realized because not to /Be seen, not to be loved nor hated because /Not to be realized. Weather by Franz Hals, /Brushed up by brushy winds in brushy clouds, /Wetted by blue, colder for white. Not to /Be spoken to, without a roof, without /First fruits, without the virginal of birds, /The dark-brown ceinture loosened, not relinquished. /Gay is, gay was, the gay forsythia /And yellow, yellow thins the Northern blue. /Without a name and nothing to be desired, /If only imagined but imagined well. /My house has changed a little in the sun. /The fragrance of the magnolias comes close, /False flick, false form, but falseness close to kin. It must be visible, or invisible, /Invisible or visible or both: /A seeing and unseeing in the eye. /The weather and the giant of the weather, /Say the weather, the mere weather, the mere air: /An abstraction blooded, as a man by thought.
Ilustración: La urraca, 1868, Claude Monet
It Must Be Abstract
III
The poem refreshes life so that we share, /For a moment, the first idea . . . It satisfies /Belief in an immaculate beginning /And sends us, winged by an unconscious will, /To an immaculate end. We move between these points: /From that ever-early candor to its late plural /And the candor of them is the strong exhilaration /Of what we feel from what we think, of thought /Beating in the heart, as if blood newly came, /An elixir, an excitation, a pure power. /The poem, through candor, brings back a power again /That gives a candid kind to everything. /We say: at night an Arabian in my room, /With his damned hoobla-hoobla-hoobla-how, /Inscribes a primitive astronomy /Across the unscrawled fores the future casts /And throws his stars around the floor. By day /The wood-dove used to chant his hoobla-hoo /And still the grossest iridescence of ocean /Howls hoo and rises and howls hoo and falls. /Life’s nonsense pierces us with strange relation.
IV
The first idea was not our own. Adam /In Eden was the father of Descartes /And Eve made air the mirror of herself, /Of her sons and of her daughters. They found themselves /In heaven as in a glass; a second earth; /And in the earth itself they found a green– /The inhabitants of a very varnished green. /But the first idea was not to shape the clouds /In imitation. The clouds preceded us /There was a muddy center before we breathed. /There was a myth before the myth began, /Venerable and articulate and complete. /From this the poem springs: that we live in a place /That is not our own and, much more, not ourselves /And hard it is in spite of blazoned days. /We are the mimics. Clouds are pedagogues. /The air is not a mirror but bare board, /Coulisse bright-dark, tragic chiaroscuro /And comic color of the rose, in which /Abysmal instruments make sounds like pips /Of the sweeping meanings that we add to them.
V
The lion roars at the enraging desert, /Reddens the sand with his red-colored noise, /Defies red emptiness to evolve his match, /Master by foot and jaws and by the mane, /Most supple challenger. The elephant /Breaches the darkness of Ceylon with blares, /The glitter-goes on surfaces of tanks, /Shattering velvetest far-away. The bear, /The ponderous cinnamon, snarls in his mountain /At summer thunder and sleeps through winter snow. /But you, ephebe, look from your attic window, /Your mansard with a rented piano. You lie /In silence upon your bed. You clutch the corner /Of the pillow in your hand. You writhe and press /A bitter utterance from your writhing, dumb, /Yet voluble dumb violence. You look /Across the roofs as sigil and as ward /And in your centre mark them and are cowed . . . /These are the heroic children whom time breeds /Against the first idea – to lash the lion, /Caparison elephants, teach bears to juggle.
VI
Not to be realized because not to /Be seen, not to be loved nor hated because /Not to be realized. Weather by Franz Hals, /Brushed up by brushy winds in brushy clouds, /Wetted by blue, colder for white. Not to /Be spoken to, without a roof, without /First fruits, without the virginal of birds, /The dark-brown ceinture loosened, not relinquished. /Gay is, gay was, the gay forsythia /And yellow, yellow thins the Northern blue. /Without a name and nothing to be desired, /If only imagined but imagined well. /My house has changed a little in the sun. /The fragrance of the magnolias comes close, /False flick, false form, but falseness close to kin. It must be visible, or invisible, /Invisible or visible or both: /A seeing and unseeing in the eye. /The weather and the giant of the weather, /Say the weather, the mere weather, the mere air: /An abstraction blooded, as a man by thought.
Ilustración: La urraca, 1868, Claude Monet
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