venres, 11 de decembro de 2015

a balada do café triste

The town itself is dreary; not much is there except the cotton mill, the two-room houses where the workers live, a few peach trees, a church with two colored windows, and a miserable main street only a hundred yards long. On Saturdays the tenants from the from the near-by farms come in for a day of talk and trade. Otherwise the town is lonesome, sad, and like a place that is far off and estranged from all other places in the world. The nearest train stop is Society City, and the Greyhound and White Bus Lines use the Forks Falls Road which is three miles away. The winters here are short and raw, the summers white with glare and fiery hot.

If you walk along the main street on an August afternoon there is nothing whatsoever to do. The largest building, in the very center of the town, is boarded up completely and leans so fat to the right that it seems bound to collapse at any minute. The house is very old. There is about it a curious, cracked look that is very puzzling until you suddenly realize that at one time, and long ago, the right side of the front porch had been painted, and part of the wall – but the painting was left unfinished and one portion of the house is darker and dingier than the other. The building looks completely deserted. Nevertheless, on the second floor there is one window which is not boarded; sometimes in the last afternoon when the heat is at its worst a hand will slowly open the shutter and a face will look down on the town. It is a face like the terrible dim faces known in dreams – sexless and white, with two gray crossed eyes which are turned inward so sharply that they seem to be exchanging with each other one long and secret gaze of grief. The face lingers at the window for an hour or so, then the shutters are closed once more, and as likely as not there will not be another soul to be seen along the main street. These August afternoons – when your shift is finished there is absolutely nothing to do; you might as well walk down to the Forks Falls Road and listen to the chain gang.

However, here in this very town there was once a café. And this old boarded-up house was unlike any other place for many miles around. There were tables with cloths and paper napkins, colored streamers from the electric fans, great gatherings on Saturday nights. The owner of the place was Miss Amelia Evans. But the person most responsible for the success and gaiety of the place was a hunchback called Cousin Lymon. One other person had a part in the story of this café – he was the former husband of Miss Amelia, a terrible character who returned to the town after a long term in the penitentiary, caused ruin, and then went on his way again. The café has long since been closed, but it is still remembered.


The place was not always a café. Miss Amelia inherited the building from her father, and it was a store that carried mostly feed, guano, and staples such as meal and snuff. Miss Amelia was rich. In addition to the store she operated a still three miles back in the swamp, and ran out the best liquor in the country. She was a dark, tall woman with bones and muscles like a man. Her hair was cut short and brushed back from the forehead, and there was about her sunburned face a tense, haggard quality. She might have been a handsome woman if, even then, she was not slightly cross-eyed. There were those who would have courted her, but Miss Amelia cared nothing for the love of men and was a solitary person. Her marriage had been unlike any other marriage ever contracted in this country – it was a strange and dangerous marriage, lasting only for ten days, that left the whole town wondering and shocked. Except for this queer marriage, Miss Amelia had lived her life alone. Often she spent whole nights back in her shed in the swamp, dressed in overalls and gum boots, silently guarding the low fire of the still.

With all things which could be made by the hands Miss Amelia prospered. She sold chitterlings and sausage in the town near-by. On the autumn days, she ground sorghum, and the syrup from her vats was dark golden and delicately flavored. She built the brick privy behind her store in only two weeks and was skilled in carpentering. It was only with people that Miss Amelia was not at ease. People, unless they are nilly-willy or very sick, cannot be taken into the hands and changed overnight to something more worthwhile and profitable. So that the only use the Miss Amelia had for other people was to make money out of them. And in this he succeeded. Mortgages on crops and property, a sawmill, money in the bank – she was the richest woman for miles around. She would have been rich as a congressman if it were not for her one great failing, and that was her passion for lawsuits and the courts. She would involve herself in long and bitter litigation over just a trifle. It was said that if Miss Amelia so much as stumbled over a rock in the road she would glance around instinctively as though looking for something to sue about it. Aside from these lawsuits she lived a steady life and every day was much like the day that had gone before. With the exception of her ten-day marriage, nothing happened to change this until the spring of the year that Miss Amelia was thirty years old.

It was towards midnight on a soft quiet evening in April. The sky was the colour of a blue swamp iris, the moon clear and bright. The crops that spring promised well and in the past weeks the mill had run a night shift. Down by the creek the square brick factory was yellow with light, and there was the faint, steady hum of the looms. It was such a night when it is good to hear from faraway, across the dark fields, the slow song of a Negro on his way to make love. Or when it is pleasant to sit quietly and pick a guitar, or simply to rest alone and think of nothing at all. The street that evening was deserted, but Miss Amelia's store was lighted and on the porch outside there were five people. One of these was Stumpy MacPhail, a foreman with a red face and dainty, purplish hands. On the top step were two boys in overalls, the Rainey twins - both of them lanky and slow, with white hair and sleepy green eyes. The other man was Henry Macy, a shy and timid person with gentle manners and nervous ways, who sat on the edge of the bottom step. Miss Amelia herself stood leaning against the side of the open door, her feet crossed in their big swamp boots, patiently untying knots in a rope she had come across. They had not talked for a long time.

One of the twins, who had been looking down the empty road, was the first to speak. 'I see something coming,' he said.

'A calf got loose,' said his brother.

The approaching figure was still too distant to be clearly seen. The moon made dim, twisted shadows of the blossoming peach trees along the side of the road. In the air the odour of blossoms and sweet spring grass, mingled with the warm, sour smell of the near-by lagoon.

'No. It's somebody's youngun,' said Stumpy MacPhail.

Miss Amelia watched the road in silence. She had put down her rope and was fingering the straps of her overalls with her brown bony hand. She scowled, and a dark lock of hair fell down on her forehead. While they were waiting there, a dog from one of the houses down the road began a wild, hoarse howl that continued until a voice called out and hushed him. It was not until the figure was quite close, within the range of the yellow light from the porch, that they saw clearly what had come.

The man was a stranger, and it is rare that a stranger enters the town on foot at that hour. Besides, the man was a hunchback. he was scarcely more than four feet tall and he wore a ragged, rusty coat that reached only to his knees. His crooked little legs seemed too thin to carry the weight of his great warped chest and the hump that sat on his shoulders. He had a very large hear, with deep-set blue eyes and a sharp little mouth. His face was both soft and sassy - at the moment his pale skin was yellowed by dust and there were lavender shadows beneath his eyes. He carried a lopsided old suitcase which was tied with a rope.

'Evening,' said the hunchback, and he was out of breath.

Miss Amelia and the men on the porch neither answered his greeting nor spoke. They only looked at him.

'I am hunting for Miss Amelia Evans.'

The Ballad of the Sad Café
Carson McCullers
1951 Houghton Mifflin

a balada do café triste
traducido por Salomé Rodríguez Vázquez
Barbantesa

A vila en si é ben triste; non ten moito á parte da fábrica de algodón, as casas de dous cuartos onde viven os obreiros, uns poucos pexegueiros, unha igrexa con dúas vidreiras e unha miserable rúa principal de apenas cen metros de longo. Os sábados os granxeiros dos arredores chegan para parolar e facer as compras. Fóra diso, a vila é solitaria, triste, coma un lugar afastado e separado do resto do mundo. A estación de tren máis próxima é Society City, e as liñas de autobuses Greyhound e White Bus pasan pola estrada de Forks Falis, que está a tres millas. Os invernos son curtos e duros, os veráns resplandecentes de luz e dunha calor atroz.

Se un vai pola rúa principal nunha tarde de agosto non atopa nada en absoluto que facer. O edificio máis grande, no centro mesmo da vila, está completamente pechado con táboas cravadas e inclínase tanto á dereita que semella condenado a derrubarse en calquera intre. A casa é moi antiga. Ten un aire curioso e ruinoso que desconcerta ata que, de súpeto, un se dá de conta de que algún día, hai moito tempo, se pintou o lado dereito do soportal e parte da fachada; mais o traballo quedou sen rematar e unha metade da casa é máis escura e lóbrega cá outra. O edificio semella completamente abandonado. Aínda así, na segunda planta hai unha fiestra que non está apuntalada; ás veces, á tardiña, cando a calor é sufocante, vese unha man abrir as contras e un rostro que mira a rúa. É un deses terribles rostros difusos que aparecen nos soños: asexuado e pálido, con dous ollos grises birollos, tan inclinados para dentro que semellan estar intercambiando unha longa e secreta mirada apesarada. Ese rostro queda mirando pola fiestra durante unha hora; logo, as contras féchanse outra vez e o máis seguro é que non se vexa unha alma ao longo da rúa principal. Estas tardes de agosto, despois de traballar, non hai nada que facer; un podería, como moito, ir á estrada de Forks Falls e escoitar os condenados a traballos forzados.

Así e todo, nesta mesma vila houbo unha vez un café. E aquela casa pechada non se semellaba a ningunha outra en moitas millas á redonda. Había mesas con manteis e panos de papel, ventiladores eléctricos con cintas de cores prendidas e grandes xuntanzas os sábados á noite. A propietaria do local era a señorita Amelia Evans. Pero o mérito do éxito e da animación do local era maiormente dun chepudo ao que chamaban o curmán Lymon. Hai outra persoa que participou na historia deste café: o ex-marido da señorita Amelia, un personaxe terrible que volveu á vila despois de cumprir unha longa condena no cárcere, provocou desastres, e logo marchou por onde viñera. O café leva xa moito tempo pechado, pero aínda o lembran.


Aquilo non sempre fora un café. A señorita Amelia herdara o edificio do seu pai como un almacén de penso, guano e produtos de primeira necesidade, como comestibles e tabaco. A señorita Amelia era rica. Ademais do almacén dirixía unha destilería a tres millas da vila, no pantano, e vendía o mellor alcol do condado. Era unha muller morena, alta, con osamenta e musculatura de home. Tiña o cabelo curto, peiteado para atrás, e a súa cara queimada polo sol tiña un aire tenso e consumido. Puido ser unha muller bonita se non fose un pouco birolla. Non lle faltaran pretendentes, pero á señorita Amelia traíaa sen coidado o amor dos homes; era unha persoa solitaria. O seu casamento foi unha cousa excepcional no condado: foi un matrimonio estraño e perigoso que durou só dez días e deixou toda a vila asombrada e escandalizada. A parte dese raro enlace, a señorita Amelia sempre vivira soa. Pasaba con frecuencia noites enteiras no seu alpendre do pantano, vestida cunha funda de faena e botas de goma, vixiando en silencio o lume lento da destilería.

Á señorita Amelia dábanselle ben tódolos traballos manuais. Vendía miúdos e salchichas na vila do lado. Nos días solleiros do outono plantaba sorgo, e o xarope que tiña nos toneis era dunha cor dourada escura e de delicado recendo. Construíra o retrete de ladrillo detrás do almacén en só dúas semanas e era mañosa tamén coa carpintería. Soamente coa xente non estaba a gusto. A xente, a non ser que sexa completamente parva ou estea moi enferma, non se pode coller e transformar dun día para outro en algo máis interesante e útil. Así pois, a única utilidade que a señorita Amelia vía na xente era poder sacarlle cartos. E iso dábaselle ben. Hipotecas sobre colleitas e propiedades, un serradoiro, cartos no banco, ... Era a muller máis rica en varias millas á redonda. Podería ser tan rica coma un congresista se non fose por unha gran debilidade; a súa paixón polos preitos e os tribunais. Enredábase en longos e amargos litixios por calquera minucia. Dicíase que ata cando a señorita Amelia tropezaba cunha pedra na rúa miraba decontado ao seu redor coma se buscase quen demandar. A parte dos preitos, levaba unha vida tranquila na cal os días non se diferenciaban uns dos outros. A excepción do seu matrimonio de dez días, nada aconteceu que cambiase isto, ata a primavera en que fixo trinta anos.

Eran preto das doce dunha tranquila e fresca noite de abril. O ceo estaba azul coma os lirios do pantano, a lúa clara e brillante. Esa primavera a colleita prometía, e a fábrica traballaba día e noite dende había semanas. Abaixo, onda o regato, a fábrica de ladrillo estaba iluminada e oíase o leve e constante rumor dos teares. Era unha desas noites en que dá gusto escoitar ao lonxe, a través dos campos escuros, a lenta canción dun negro que vai facer o amor. Tamén é agradable sentar tranquilamente e coller unha guitarra, ou simplemente descansar e non pensar en nada en absoluto. A rúa estaba deserta esa noite, pero había luz no almacén da señorita Amelia e fóra, no soportal, había cinco persoas. Unha delas era Stumpy MacPhail, un capataz de rostro colorado e mans delicadas e moradas. No chanzo de arriba había dous rapaces vestidos con fundas de faena, os xemelgos Rainey, ámbolos dous desgairados e lentos, de cabelo moi louro e de ollos verdes somnolentos. O outro home era Henry Macy, unha persoa tímida e retraída de maneiras delicadas e xestos nerviosos, que estaba sentado no bordo do chanzo máis baixo. A señorita Amelia estaba apoiada na porta, de pernas cruzadas e con botas de auga, desfacendo pacientemente os nós dunha corda que atopara. Levaban moito tempo calados.

Un dos xemelgos, que estivera mirando para a estrada deserta, foi o primeiro en romper o silencio.

-Aí vén algo -dixo.

-Un xato que fuxiu -dixo seu irmán.

A figura que se achegaba aínda estaba demasiado lonxe para que a visen con claridade. A lúa proxectaba as sombras difusas e tortas dos pexegueiros en flor que había ao longo da estrada. Mesturábanse no ar o aroma das flores e a herba fresca da primavera co cheiro quente e acedo da lagoa próxima.

-Non, é algún raparigo -dixo Stumpy McPhail.

A señorita Amelia miraba en silencio para a estrada. Pousara a corda e estaba enredando cos tirantes da funda de faena coa súa man morena e osuda. Engurrou o cello e un guecho de cabelo escuro caeulle sobre a fronte. Mentres estaban alí agardando, o can dunha das casas da estrada empezou a ouvear cun son salvaxe e ronco que só cesou cando un berro o mandou calar. Ata que a figura estaba bastante preto, na franxa de luz amarela do soportal, non viron con claridade o que chegara.

Era un forasteiro, e raramente un forasteiro entraba a pé na vila a aquelas horas. Ademais, o honre era un chepudo. Medía pouco máis dun metro vinte e levaba un abrigo roído que só lle chegaba aos xeonllos. As súas perniñas arqueadas semellaban demasiado delgadas para soportar o peso do seu longo peito deforme e da chepa que destacaba entre os ombros. Tiña unha cabeza mol grande, cuns ollos azuis afundidos e unha boca pequena e definida. O seu rostro semellaba ao mesmo tempo doce e descarado. Naquel momento tiña a pel amarela do po e sombras azuladas baixo os ollos. Levaba unha maleta vella toda torta atada cunha corda.

-Boas -dixo sen folgos o chepudo.

A señorita Amelia e os honres que estaban no soportal non responderon ao seu saúdo nin dixeron unha palabra. Limitáronse a ollar para el.

-Ando a buscar a señorita Amelia Evans.

xoves, 20 de agosto de 2015

diario de tradución: Ramón Buenaventura sobre Jonathan Franzen

Ramón Buenaventura
ciertadistancia.blogspot.com
é costume editorial equiparar ao tradutor co traidor. Non tanto pola raíz (latina: traduttore, traditore) como polas derivacións dunha profesión ás veces infausta. Sábeo ben o tradutor, poeta e novelista Ramón Buenaventura (Tánxer, 1940), a quen a editorial Seix-Barral confiou en 2002 a versión en castelán de The Corrections de Jonathan Franzen. Conta o escritor español que nun primeiro momento rexeitou o encargo, ao tratarse dunha obra demasiado extensa (unhas 600 páxinas) e sobre todo non dispor de tempo abondo para acometer a tarefa con seriedade.

o final da historia é coñecido e figura na páxina legal do bestseller: Buenaventura claudicou ante a insistencia e terminou por aceptar o reto. Non polos eloxios da crítica estranxeira á gran novela americana do s. XXI nin polos millóns de exemplares que avalaban daquela o último boom literario, senón por pura amizade. 'A editorial atopou a maneira de convencerme - explica o autor no 'diario de tradución' que aparece publicado no Centro Virtual Cervantes -. Neste mundo traidor e desleal non hai argumento máis resolutorio que a amizade'.

Buenaventura comprometeuse a telo listo no prazo de seis meses sen ter lido o orixinal en inglés, e xa na primeira frase do libro ('locura de un frente frío de la pradera otoñal, mientras va pasando') pudo albiscar a lea na que se metera. 'Axiña me decatei de que The Corrections me obrigaría a efectuar centos de consultas, porque era un libro exótico, un libro no que se describe unha sociedade americana que apenas concibimos en Europa e nun entorno repleto de detalles que estamos fartos de ver no cinema, pero que non temos costume de describir con palabras, ou que nos reclama o uso de temos inexistentes na nosa cultura'.

manexou neses días un ducia de dicionarios especializados (gastronomía, golf, finanzas, medicina, música, náutica, ...) para atopar a palabra precisa para a máis delirante variedade de expresións e xiros lingüísticos que caracterizan o estilo decimonónico de Franzen. 'O orixinal cubre unha gama de intereses e coñecementos verdadeiramente ampla e ben investigada polo autor'. Se non se puxo en contacto con Franzen para aclarar as dúbidas que lle ían xurdindo foi por decoro profesional. 'Nunca xamais preguntei nada a ningún autor, nin sequera a Anthony Burgess, con quen cheguei a ter confianza e cuxos textos me formularon, ás veces, dificultades de louquear.'

lembra Buenaventura que, a falta de cen páxinas para rematar o traballo, a editora española envioulle copia das respostas que Franzen lle fora dando ás consultas dos tradutores do libro noutras linguas. 'Eran cerca de 600 dúbidas, que o autor resolvía con paciencia e unha prolixidade verdadeiramente asombrosas'. O momento crítico chegou cando Seix-Barral mandou a Franzen as primeiras cento e pico páxinas traducidas ao castelán. 'A resposta do autor superou con creces as peores predicións que calquera Casandra tivera podido facer', conta Buenaventura. 'Houbo que perder o tempo en necidades como convencer ao autor de que en castelán non é un erro sintáctico poñer un adxectivo diante dun nome'.

Buenaventura só puido resignarse. Firmara unha cláusula de aprobación e non tiña máis remedio que aguantar o tirón e obedecer os designios literarios do autor, por desatinados que estes puideran resultarlle. Ao parecer, Franzen estaba empeñado en non engadir ningunha información que non estivera contemplada no orixinal en inglés. 'PA non podía ser Pensilvania, nin se admitía explicación para ningunha sigla. Prohibido revelar en dúas palabras para que serve un medicamento que vai a tomarse un personaxe e que ninguén en España coñece. Prohibido aclarar ningunha referencia histórica 100% norteamericana totalmente indescifrable en Europa.'

content.time.com
ten dereito o autor - pregúntase Buenaventura no seu 'Diario' - a inmiscirse tanto no traballo dun tradutor? A súa resposta ten a ver con dous factores fundamentais: a distancia cultural existente entre o emisor e o receptor do texto e o coñecemento do autor do país ao que vai dirixido o seu libro. Neste punto, Buenaventura, é contundente. 'Nadie quererá discutirme que o señor Franzen é un deses escritores norteamericanos que ignora todo sobre Europa, ata extremos que sería divertido demostrar se o meu propósito fose unha análise do libro e non unha crónica da súa tradución.'

en The Corrections, Franzen fala con sumo rigor de asuntos tan dispares e disparatados como a botánica, a mercadotecnia, os automóbiles ou as froitas tropicais. E faino usando constantemente neoloxismos, combinando campos semánticos, fusionando palabras e afondando en termos (unhas veces xurídicos, outras sexuais) que non están ben tipificados en castelán. Buenaventura dedicou semanas a resolver xogos de palabras nun libro que quere ser incorrecto, publicado a mesma semana do ataque ás Torres Xemelgas e que, xunto a Freedom, lle valeu a Franzen a portada da revista Time en 2010. 'Supoño que en obras tan longas como esta, todo tradutor acaba incorrendo na desesperación. Cando un leva semanas co texto e inda lle quedan duascentas ou trescentas páxinas por diante, a tarefa semella infinita, como se fose un a pasar o resto da vida traducindo The Corrections de don Jonathan Franzen. E, francamente, hai outras cousas neste val de bágoas, non si?'.

ao final, o encargo rematouse dentro do prazo (a pesar de que Buenaventura foi o último dos tradutores en recibir as galeradas) e o libro foi celebrado en España co mesmo entusiasmo que no seu país de procedencia. Poucos lembraron a Buenaventura nas súas críticas, inda gabando moitas delas a extraordinaria riqueza do vocabulario do libro. Claro que o traduttore se despacha a gusto no seu 'Diario ...' expresando a opinión que a el, particularmente, lle merece The Corrections: 'non vale un tiesto foradado, que diría Gonzalo de Berceo.'

texto orixinal en castelán
autor BENJAMÍN G. ROSADO
publicado en elmundo, 20.agosto.2015

sábado, 1 de agosto de 2015

a voz do tradutor

www.arteinformado.com
a voz do tradutor é unha serie de preguntas sobre o papel da tradución e sobre as linguas a través do traballo de 16 artistas que centran a súa obra na investigación dos idiomas e o uso que facemos deles: inclúen?, exclúen?, que relación gardan co poder?, e coa identidade?, cal será a lingua do futuro?, cal é o valor real das linguas locais nun contexto de globalización?

a acción do tradutor presúmese como unha continua negociación de entendemento, axustando o particular ao universal e a diferenza á coincidencia.

Martin Waldmeier (Basel, 1984) reúne traballos que parten do concepto máis amplo da tradución para tratar a comunicación verbal dende perspectivas diferentes; debuxa a contorna argumental dunha serie de problemas que a linguaxe ten que afrontar sen descanso como parte dun proceso condicionado. É un arduo propósito que acerta a por enriba da mesa a través de preguntas sobre os conflitos artísticos, sociais, políticos e económicos. Inda que baixo o paraugas do pluralismo cultural, estes conflitos moitas veces se fracturan, e constitúen o guión da exposición: o dereito de autoría, a exactitude da lingua na tradución, o interese por unha lingua segundo as políticas aperturistas, o inglés como comunicación dominante, a perda de información, o idioma como medio para lexitimar políticas de exclusión ou a perda de identidade, entre outras.

o ensaio visual e lingüístico destes crea unha atmosfera máis de incertidumes que de seguridades, profesadas en textos murais, documentos e manuscritos traducidos xunto a fotografías e audiovisuais dobrados ou subtitulados en diferentes linguas. Hai unha morea de imaxes e frases que se fixan na subxectividade do espectador: 'todos os que non saben ler en castelán son estúpidos' (Luis Camnitzer) ou 'An Artist who Cannot Speak English is No Artist' (Mladen Stilinovic).

transmite (a tradución) a mensaxe íntegra dun idioma a outro ou aporta algo da lingua final? Nin sequera cando non media a subxectividade o traslado é exacto: a artista chinesa Xu Bing recolle un extracto dun libro en chinés, que traduce cun tradutor automático do chinés ao ruso e do ruso ao alemán e así ata nove idiomas para volver a traducilo ao chinés e o resultado é o mesmo que no famoso xogo ... non ten nada que ver co orixinal.

'neste mundo de globalización hai unha necesidade cada vez máis imperante de facer traducións, pero en cada tradución pérdese algo', explica Waldmeier, que aclara que a exposición ten dúas liñas de traballo: unha que pretende descubrir o papel do tradutor e darlle visibilidade e outra mostrar que pode aportar esta actividade á idea de identidade: 'a tradución non é só unha profesión, é un xeito de expresar unha realidade'.

Martin Waldmeier
www.marcovigo.com
tamén se alerta da desaparición das linguas minoritarias, 25 cada ano; esta perda e o que significa para a cultura e identidade de cada pobo centra o traballo de Susan Hiller, mentres que Nicoline van Harskamp indaga no futuro do idioma hexemónico (o inglés) e grava a persoas de diferentes nacionalidades contando as súas experiencias como anglofalantes.

Rainer Ganah documenta a súa propia aprendizaxe do chinés, que tamén centra o traballo de Sylvie Boisseau e Fran Westermeyer, que analizan as motivacións dos europeos á hora de estudar esta lingua.

Zineb Sedira analiza a preservación e a perda da identidade ligadas á transmisión oral da memoria familiar cun vídeo no que fai de tradutora da súa filla, que fala inglés, e súa nai, que entende o francés pero só fala árabe.

Dora García, coa súa 'Letter to other planets', tradución do comunicado de prensa da exposición en doce idiomas minoritarios (armenio, swahili, kurdo e quechua, entre outros) pregúntase ... a quen 'lle fala' un museo coas súas exposicións?.

na súa maioría as obras desta exposición son exercicios moi visuais e esenciais na presentación pero cunha forte carga reivindicativa e emocional sobre o propio. Inciden principalmente en cuestións relativas ao condicionante do idioma na práctica artística, que poñen no punto de mira ao inglés como lingua vehicular para a cultura global. Esta cuestión queda bastante ben resolta dende distintas ópticas nos traballos de distintos artistas. Mais tamén hai silencios, incomunicación e perda neste percorrido polo comunitario, que pespunta integración e descomposición. Un convite a ler entre liñas para descubrirnos, inventarnos e (re)construírnos.

referencias:
'los traductores y las lenguas toman la voz en el MARCO' por ÁGATHA DE SANTOS (faro de vigo, 30 MAIO 2015)
'acción y traducción' por CHUS MARTÍNEZ DOMÍNGUEZ (babelia, 01 agosto 2015, páxina 12)
dossier documental, catálogo (www.marcovigo.com)

a voz do tradutor. Marco. Vigo. ata 30 agosto 2015

domingo, 19 de xullo de 2015

Binyavanga Wainaina & Africa & homosexuality

Binyavanga Wainaina
kachifo.com
Kenneth Binyavanga Wainaina (born 18 January 1971) is a Kenyan author, journalist and winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing. In April 2014, Time magazine included Wainaina in its annual TIME 100 as one of the "Most Influential People in the World." (English wikipedia excerpt)


selected texts & excerpts:
'How to Write about Africa II: the Revenge' (Bidoun)



venres, 24 de abril de 2015

'Episode IV' Opening Crawl


A long time ago, in a galaxy far,
far away ...

It is a period of civil war.
Rebel spaceships, striking
from a hidden base, have won
their first victory against
the evil Galactic Empire.

During the battle, rebel
spies managed to steal secret
plans to the Empire's
ultimate weapon, the DEATH
STAR, an armored space
station with enough power to
destroy an entire planet.

Pursued by the Empire's
sinister agents, Princess
Leia races home aboard her
starship, custodian of the
stolen plans that can save
her people and restore
freedom to the galaxy ...

sábado, 11 de abril de 2015

Palace of Oca

xardíns do Pazo de Oca
turgalicia.com
The Ulla River, which divides La Coruña Province from that of Pontevedra, flows to the sea through a winding valley proverbial for its gentleness and fertility. Nobles of this valley in the eighteenth century were wealthy. Their zeal for domestic extension and their ability to command it are shown in the palaces (pazos) they left, huge, lonely piles of granite in which the stranger, with dull eyes and ears unkindled by memory, reads little but the musty progress of decay and feels mainly the weight of the pervasive silence into which his own footsteps and those of the wood-shod caretaker, opening doors for him, break for a moment harshly. For an appreciation of these buildings instinct with life, one must turn to the novels of Pardo Bazán and Valle-Inclán.

In Los pazos de Ulloa the palace is inhabited by a young man, the last in his line, a careless, untutored Nimrod wholly under the influence of his treacherous steward, Primitivo. We see it first as the new chaplain comes to it at evening.

‘No light shone in the vast edifice, and the great central door appeared to be closed with stone and mud. The Marquis turned towards a very low side door where at that moment appeared a stout woman holding an oil lamp. After crossing dark hallways, they penetrated into a kind of cellar with earthen floor and stone-vaulted roof which, to judge by the rows of wine pipes backed up against the walls, must have been the bodega. From here they quickly reached a spacious kitchen illuminated by the fire which burned on the hearth, licking a black pole hung from a chain. The high chimney hood was adorned with strings of sausages and blood puddings, and with an occasional ham’.

Valle-Inclán concerns himself with the life above stairs. In his Sonata de otoño the palace mistress is dying, and the Marquis of Bradomín has left his autumn shooting to be at her side.

‘Vaguely I called to mind the Palace of Brandeso which I had visited as a child with my mother. Now, years later, I was returning, summoned by the little girl with whom I had played so often in the old, flowerless garden. My spirit heavy with memories, I made my way under the sombre chestnuts, covered with dry leaves, which lined the avenue. At the end appeared the palace, all its windows closed and the panes gilded by the sun. I entered, and the great vestibule, dark and silent, resounded with my footsteps against its broad flagstones. On oaken benches polished with use sat farmers waiting to pay their yearly rent; beyond them stood old wheat chests, the lids raised. The tenants rose, murmuring respectfully, ‘A good afternoon and holy!’ and sank into their seats again. Hastily I mounted the seignorial stair with its wide treads and balustrade of rudely carved granite.

Pendellos en Lalín, 1926
foto de Ruth Matilda Anderson
‘As poor Concha had a cult for memories, she wished me to go through the palace with her, recalling that other time when she and her sisters were pale little girls who came to kiss me and lead me by the hand to play, sometimes in the tower, sometimes on the terraces, or on the balcony which overlooked the garden and the road.

‘After how many reasons had I returned to those formal parlours and family sitting rooms!’ Walnut-floored rooms, cold and silent, which kept throughout the year the smell of sour autumn apples laid on the window mouldings to ripen, parlours with old damask draperies, cloudy mirrors, and family portraits. In those chambers our footsteps echoed as though in deserted churches, and when the doors slowly opened on their ornate hinges, the darkness and silence beyond seemed to breathe out the distant perfume of other lives. In the depths of mirrors, as in an enchanted lake, the parlour stretched on and on into illusion, and the people of the portraits, those founder-bishops, sad maidens, parchment-skinned inheritors, seemed to live forgotten in a centennial peace.

‘Concha hesitated where two halls crossed in a huge, round antechamber, dismantled except for several old chests. On top of one a faint circle of light was cast by the oil taper which burned there night and day before a Christ of livid flesh and disheveled hair’.

With these images in mind we enquired for a country pazo and were told that that of Oca was generally open to visitors and easily accessible from Santiago, being only three kilometers off the route of the Orense bus. Every summer tourists went to see and photograph it, and only the summer before a troop of actors had used it for filming the country scenes of La casa de Troya.

We arose at a cold hour and set out in a heavy mist while it was still night. Shortly after crossing the Ulla River, we were put down at an intersection. It was then a little after seven. The mist continued, thick and chilling, and the tavern to which the bus driver directed us was invisible except for the black holes of its doors and windows. As we drew nearer, its gray bulk showed the white tracery of cement closing the irregular joints of granite rubble. The tavern woman, black clad, apple cheeked, eased with a bench and a barrel our waiting for the day to ripen. We should have liked her to ease it further with hot milk and coffee, but the sole item on her breakfast menu was aguardiente. That Gallegan countrymen could stand up to it was proved by the sticky, empty glasses left on the counter, but we did not command the inner fortitude required for taking liquid dynamite at that hour and keeping it down with dignity. We could better face the cold.

A little before nine the fog dispersed and we set out for the palace. Beyond a scintillating wedge of cornfield, bordered with dark, conical pines, lay the silver patch of a river. A harp of eucalyptus cut against the green and blue of near and father ridges. Presently from a narrow road, branching off the highway between deep walls of rubble, came the chirrío of a cart. Through it ran a clear, melancholy strain of song which ended in an aturuxo of such piercing timbre that it knit up the whole valley and evoked reply from another walker in the hills.

In less than an hour we had come to the pazo. Inside the crenelated outer wall we walked down a long avenue of chestnuts, the trunks of which, wound with ivy and set with moss-bedded ferns, were much leafier than their branches. Our first view was that of a crenelated tower from which a short wing turned. The main façade, low and long, faced a worn but still grassy, ‘place of honour’, which on the opposite side was bounded with rubble cottages joined into a long tenement behind a grapevine trellis. At the end rose a chapel linked to the palace with a balustrade walk upon an arched wall which bore white-flowering vines. The great centre door of the palace was closed, and the long panes above gave only dull reflections of the sky or the blank stare of wooden shutters closed within; in the lower story the wide window spaces stood black behind iron grilles. Almost immediately, from a balconied cottage opposite, came a pleasant-looking countrywoman, and before we could speak our request to see the palace, she had the key out from under her full apron. No, nobody was at home, she said; the Marquise of Camarasa, her mistress, had not lived here in years. But we might enter the palace, at least part of it, yes indeed. It was always in good order, for the Marquise, even though she did not use it, would not have it neglected.

The woman opened a narrow panel in one of the great doors and let us into a white-plastered vestibule, built in the old manner, large enough to receive a lady’s litter or a mounted horseman. Its flag-stones rang but slightly under our steps, for the farther wall opened in a great arch to the loggia and the garden. Against a side wall stood wooden benches with a certain air of the Empire in the turn of their arms and backs. To right and left opened long, unplastered chambers, roughly paved and ceiled with dark heavy beams. the left chamber, containing piles of lumber, a workbench, and a lame Chippendale chair, seemed to be a carpenter shop. in that opposite clothes were drying, and bean plants and ears of corn were heaped on the floor. the inner wall of this chamber was lined with stone bins in which high wooden doors stood open for receiving grain. holes at the bottom, where it would be drawn out, were closed with a wooden slide and a massive iron lock. Under one hole lay wooden utensils, the larger probably a trough for pouring grain into a bin, and the smaller, a measure with its rake for leveling grain precisely even.

The garden, confined between the house wings and a row of sheds and stables, was too small for mystery and age it wore with quiet grace. A low, clipped border surrounded and old stone fountain in which the gaping mouths were dry. Between the wide paths autumn lilies and modest daisies bloomed in neglected grass just out of the shade cast by glossy-crowned camellias and magnolias; there were also a few palm with short, hairy-barked trunks. Benches stood under trees and against vine-hung walls in which, looking closely, we could see small, enigmatic doors. The arched tops of eucalyptus trees rose above the farther wing, and against them appeared a great finialed chimney which must have served the manorial kitchen.

Over the loggia spread the sun porch, its whole extent faced with French windows between engaged Doric columns and behind a low balustrade. Our guide took us to it up a wide stair, and we found its windows hung with curtains of while linen trimmed with plain red borders and a central decoration or red coronet and monogram. In the table cover natural-coloured linen was combined with red wool. Prints of horses and their jockeys hung above the cane deck chairs, twenty or more, which stood facing the windows, and pictures of dogs, very like Landseer's, hung beside the tall clocks. We began her to feel the loneliness of the pazo. The clocks disagreed. The flowerpots were dry. Everything of personal interest had been carried or put away. There remained only the cold white bust of a goateed gentleman, surveying with the lacklustre gaze of pupiless eyeballs the tidy bleakness in which he had been abandoned.

The central hall on this floor had its four corners walled off into closets with partitions boldly painted in red and yellow. Each closet was a continent; its name appeared within a cartouche on the door, Africa, Asia, Europa, America. The woman said that the hall  probably served as dormitory in days when visitors used to descend in numbers, but we preferred to think of the closets as playhouses for pale little girls and boys. Glancing into one, we found it lined with shelves on which reposed glass decanters, goblets, and odd pieces of porcelain.

Of coats of arms we had so far seen only one, a small escutcheon on the face of the tower. Now, however, after a short passage from the continental hall we found heraldry ablaze. In the drawing-room a coat of arms supported by winged lizards with barbed tails and set within a circle of shells and scrolls, all worked in high relief and painted in gilt and barbaric colours, spread heavily at the centre of the smooth white ceiling. Over the halls hung charges of the central coat and other coats, rendered in flannel appliqué on great panels (reposteros) of linen crash. The effect was unbelievably baroque. Fishes, lions, shells, pine trees, crenelated castles in read and other colours were surrounded with wreaths of brilliant yellow, while at the panel corners were set red fleurs-de-lis. The furniture was of Louis Fifteenth style, with upholstery of red damask. The principal group held the stiff pattern of the Gallegan call (visita), in which the pieces are centred round a small rug, the only one on the floor. At one side of the rug the sofa hugged the wall; opposite it stood a table, and at each end sat two armchairs accompanied by plump, poodle-like footstools.

Beyond the heraldic drawing-room lay other parlours, immense, white walled, and scantily furnished. In the farthest a French window gave on the balustraded passage upon the wall leading to the chapel gallery.

When we came down to the vestibule again, our guide's husband was driving his chariot from the farm sheds across the garden. The body of this cart was of planks, and its wheels, more open than those of Santiago, had one genuine, if much overgrown, spoke and a rim supported by two bars at right angles to the spoke. Sorry black cows drew the cart with a yoke strapped to crumpled horns which were covered with a white fleece to keep them dry. The husband, an elderly man in dark cloth and velveteen, was very amiable, and when he saw our interest in his carro chirrión, he volunteered to show his plow.

Easily, on one shoulder, he brought it from the carpenter shop and set it down in the vestibule. The Gallegan plow, like the cart, has its prototype in the miniature farmyard group of the Romans. It is made in separate pieces and can be taken apart in less time than it takes to tell. The sheath (cama), spliced with iron straps to the beam (temón), ends in a point which is channeled through an upright bar (esteva) which, in turn, is tenoned into the horizontal be (dental). These are the essential parts. The rest are refinements: the tiny iron share (rella), shaped like a mule's footprint, to put a cutting edge on the beveled bed front; the mouldboards (abeacas) angling out, one at each side of the bed, to widen the furrow and turn the earth; and the upright brace (lieira) which with its wedges (pezcuños) is channeled through the sheath and into the bed to govern the angle between sheath and bed and thereby govern the furrow depth. The plowman bears on the handle (rabela) which is pegged into the upright bar, and the beam, as in the cart, is hooked to the yoke with a stout pin.

However wide the farmer sets the angle and however earnestly he bears down, his plow never furrows the soil so deep as its best interest would require. In compensation this implement has the virtue of being easily handled. Gallegan fields, in these valleys of especial mildness and fertility, may not uncommonly have an area of less than fifty square yards. Fancy trying to get in and out of a pocket handkerchief like that with a steel plow and a tractor and to turn with them at the end of a furrow! The Gallegan farmer is wise to keep to an implement he himself can carry, over a stile or up and down a terraced and down a terraced slope, and to the wise, slow animals who so cleverly second all his moves and turns.

Crossing the 'place of honour' and passing the chapel, we came on a large, rectangular pool held within a wall of lichened stones surmounted with balls and merlons. Above the mouldy path round the pool a tangle of myrtles reached out from the shade of high eucalyptus toward the canopy of light which overhung the water. At one end, beyond a balustraded bridge, stood a mill, the hum of its stones and the wash of its paddles breaking cheerfully the stillness of this hidden Trianon. The millstones we found grinding into a wooden frame instead of to the floor as at Marín. It may have been in the chamber above that the corn shelling was going on. Before a stout wooden trough almost full of corn ears stood two girls beating alternately with short curved bats. While the ears threshed madly from one end of the trough to the other, kernels cracked from the cobs and fell through holes pierced in the trough bottom. The chamber was fragant of the apples which filled a great sack of striped ticking, and the girls seemed to enjoy their work. Laughing chatter rose, as soon as we had gone, above the rhythmic sound of beating.

A granite table and benches set for picnics on a terrace overlooking the pool offered little invitation on this chill October day. They were covered with moss which also flourished on the walls and carpeted the pavement so thick that our footsteps hardly sounded. Returning towards the plaza, we heard a rush of water, and there was the palace laundry, an open shed paved with stone and roofed with tile. A clear, constant stream flowed through a large granite tank built with beveled rims for rubbing linen. I asked the woman whether it was not hard always in all weather to wash her clothes in cold water, and she returned, astonished, in what then should she wash them?

Under her arm she carried a distaff to which, without robbing her eyes of our strange movements with the camera, she steadily applied herself. Back at the pazo we saw in a shed the yarn she had already spun, three skeins of coarse, unbleached thread made from tow, another skein slightly better in quality, and three balls of fine linen thread, bleached and lustrous. One kilogram of the fine yarn would weave four metres of plain cloth, thirty-five inches wide. The woman also showed us how the flax, rippled and retted, was cleaned with scutching. The stalks were pounded with a wooden mallet against stone, rubbed between the hands, and finally sawed and beaten with a wooden swingle against an upright wooden brake. She was very proud of her brake, scrolled from the middle down. After scutching, the fibres passed to hackling through a hatchel, a phalanx of steel teeth set into a long wooden handle, and then, pale and long, they were ready to spin.

Spindlefuls of thread (mazarocas) were wound into skeins (marañas) on a wooden reel (sarillo) with bars made slightly concave to keep the yarn from slipping. One of the bars was mounted in a tongue-and-groove joint which could be broken when a skein was to be removed. The skeins, after bleaching called meadas, were bound into balls on a horizontally turning frame (devanadeira) - two pairs of crossed arms connected with uprights which could be adjusted in sockets nearer or farther apart as the length of the skein required.

Preoccupied with these matters, we felt the camera for a moment unguarded, the precise moment in which a young pig charged the tripod. Father, I caught surveying the catastrophe with poorly disguised satisfaction. He would have the double pleasure of adjusting the bent camera and of dictating the length of time through which the adjustments should endure. The situation, he felt, was the natural consequence of our getting up so early in the morning. No good ever came of trifling, as we had lately been doing, with the delicate balance between night and day.

text taken from
Ruth Matilda Anderson Gallegan Provinces of Spain. Pontevedra and La Coruña New York: The Hispanic Society of America, 1939
chapter XIX, pages 223-234

sábado, 14 de febreiro de 2015

na zona gris

www.cbsnews.com
‘Na Zona Gris. Slavoj Žižek sobre as respostas aos asasinatos de París’

‘In the Grey Zone. Slavoj Žižek on responses to the Paris killings’

a fórmula de identificación patética ‘Eu son ...’ (ou ‘Todos somos ...’) só funciona dentro de certos límites, fóra dos cales se transforma nunha obscenidade. Podemos proclamar ‘je suis Charlie’, pero as cousas comezan a derrubarse con exemplos como ‘todos nós vivimos en Saraievo!’ ou ‘estamos todos en Gaza!’. O feito brutal de que non estamos todos en Saraievo ou Gaza é moi forte para ser encuberta por unha identificación patética. Esa identificación convértese en obscena, no caso dos Muselmänner, os mortos vivos en Auschwitz. Non se pode dicir: ‘todos somos Muselmänner!’ En Auschwitz, a deshumanización das vítimas foi tan lonxe que identificarse con elas en calquera sentido significativo é imposible. (E, na dirección oposta, tamén sería ridículo declarar solidariedade coas vítimas do 11–S, alegando que ‘todos somos de Nova York!’. Millóns dirían: ‘Si, encantaríanos ser neoiorquinos, conséguenos un visado!’)

The formula of pathetic identification ‘I am …’ (or ‘We are all …’) only functions within certain limits, beyond which it turns into obscenity. We can proclaim ‘Je suis Charlie,’ but things start to crumble with examples like ‘We all live in Sarajevo!’ or ‘We are all in Gaza!’ The brutal fact that we are not all in Sarajevo or Gaza is too strong to be covered up by a pathetic identification. Such identification becomes obscene in the case of Muselmänner, the living dead in Auschwitz. It is not possible to say: ‘We are all Muselmänner!’ In Auschwitz, the dehumanisation of victims went so far that identifying with them in any meaningful sense is impossible. (And, in the opposite direction, it would also be ridiculous to declare solidarity with the victims of 9/11 by claiming ‘We are all New Yorkers!’ Millions would say: ‘Yes, we would love to be New Yorkers, give us a visa!’)

o mesmo vale para os asasinatos do mes pasado: era relativamente doado identificarse cos xornalistas de Charlie Hebdo, pero sería moito máis difícil anunciar: ‘Somos todos de Baga!’ (Para quen non o saiba: Baga é unha pequena cidade no NE de Nixeria, onde Boko Haram executou a dúas mil persoas). ‘Boko Haram’ pódese traducir por ‘a educación occidental está prohibida’, especialmente a mulleres. Como explicar o estraño feito dun movemento sociopolítico masivo cuxo obxectivo principal é a regulación xerárquica da relación entre os sexos? Por que os musulmáns, que foron, sen dúbida, expostos á explotación, dominación e outros aspectos destrutivos e humillantes do colonialismo, atacan, na súa resposta, o mellor (para nós, polo menos) do legado occidental, a nosa crenza na igualdade e nas liberdades individuais, incluíndo a liberdade de mofarse de todas as autoridades? Unha resposta é que o seu obxectivo está ben escollido: o Occidente liberal resulta tan insoportable non só porque practica a explotación e dominación violenta, senón que presenta esa realidade brutal baixo o disfrace de seu oposto: liberdade, igualdade e democracia.

The same goes for the killings last month: it was relatively easy to identify with the Charlie Hebdo journalists, but it would have been much more difficult to announce: ‘We are all from Baga!’ (For those who don’t know: Baga is a small town in the north-east of Nigeria where Boko Haram executed two thousand people). The name ‘Boko Haram’ can be roughly translated as ‘Western education is forbidden,’ specifically the education of women. How to account for the weird fact of a massive sociopolitical movement whose main aim is the hierarchic regulation of the relationship between the sexes? Why do Muslims who were undoubtedly exposed to exploitation, domination and other destructive and humiliating aspects of colonialism, target in their response the best part (for us, at least) of the Western legacy, our egalitarianism and personal freedoms, including the freedom to mock all authorities? One answer is that their target is well chosen: the liberal West is so unbearable because it not only practises exploitation and violent domination, but presents this brutal reality in the guise of its opposite: freedom, equality and democracy.

volvendo ao espectáculo dos grandes políticos de todo o mundo da man en solidariedade coas vítimas dos asasinatos en París, desde Cameron a Lavrov, desde Netanyahu a Abbas: se existiu algunha vez unha foto da falsidade hipócrita, foi esa. Un cidadán anónimo interpretou a ‘Oda á Alegría’ de Beethoven, o himno non oficial da Unión Europea, mentres a procesión pasaba baixo a súa fiestra, engadindo un toque de kitsch política ao noxento espectáculo representado polos máximos responsables da desorde en que estamos. Se o ministro de Exteriores ruso, Sergei Lavrov, se unise a unha marcha semellante en Moscova, onde foron asasinados ducias de xornalistas, sería inmediatamente detido. E o espectáculo foi unha representación, literalmente: as imaxes mostradas nos medios daban a impresión de que a ringleira de líderes políticos ía precedida dunha gran multitude camiñando ao longo dunha avenida. Pero tirouse outra foto da escena desde arriba, mostrando claramente que detrás dos políticos había só un centenar de persoas e un enorme espazo baleiro, escoltados pola policía, por detrás e arredor deles. O verdadeiro xesto ‘Charlie Hebdo’ sería  publicar na súa primeira páxina unha gran caricatura que se mofase dese acontecemento, nun ton brutal e carente de gusto.

Back to the spectacle of big political names from all around the world holding hands in solidarity with the victims of the Paris killings, from Cameron to Lavrov, from Netanyahu to Abbas: if there was ever an image of hypocritical falsity, this was it. An anonymous citizen played Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’, the unofficial anthem of the European Union, as the procession passed under his window, adding a touch of political kitsch to the disgusting spectacle staged by the people most responsible for the mess we are in. If the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, were to join such a march in Moscow, where dozens of journalists have been murdered, he would be arrested immediately. And the spectacle was literally staged: the pictures shown in the media gave the impression that the line of political leaders was at the front of a large crowd walking along an avenue. But another photo was taken of the entire scene from above, clearly showing that behind the politicians there were only a hundred or so people and a lot of empty space, patrolled by police, behind and around them. The true Charlie Hebdo gesture would have been to publish on its front page a big caricature brutally and tastelessly mocking this event.

xunto aos banners co lema ‘Je suis Charlie!’ había outros con aquilo de ‘Je suis flic’. A unidade nacional celebrada e posta en escena mediante grandes reunións públicas non era só a unidade do pobo, incluíndo grupos étnicos, clases e relixións mais tamén a unidade do pobo coas forzas da orde e control – non só a policía, mais tamén o CRS (un dos lemas de maio de 1968 foi ‘CRS-SS’), o servizo secreto e todo o aparato de seguridade do Estado. Non hai lugar para Snowden ou Manning neste novo universo. ‘O resentimento contra a policía non é o que era, excepto entre os mozos pobres de orixe árabe ou africana,’ escribiu Jacques-Alain Miller o mes pasado. ‘Algo, sen dúbida, nunca antes visto na historia de Francia’. En resumo, os ataques terroristas lograron o imposible: conciliar a xeración de 68 co seu arqui-inimigo en algo así como unha versión popular á francesa da ‘Patriot Act’, coa xente ofrecéndose para exercer funcións de vixilancia.

As well as the banners saying ‘Je suis Charlie!’ there were others that said ‘Je suis flic!’ The national unity celebrated and enacted in large public gatherings was not just the unity of the people, reaching across ethnic groups, classes and religions, but also the unification of the people with the forces of order and control – not only the police but also the CRS (one of the slogans of May 1968 was ‘CRS-SS’), the secret service and the entire state security apparatus. There is no place for Snowden or Manning in this new universe. ‘Resentment against the police is no longer what it was, except among poor youth of Arab or African origins,’ Jacques-Alain Miller wrote last month. ‘A thing undoubtedly never seen in the history of France.’ In short, the terrorist attacks achieved the impossible: to reconcile the generation of 68 with its arch enemy in something like a French popular version of the Patriot Act, with people offering themselves up to surveillance.

os momentos de éxtase nas manifestacións de París foron un triunfo da ideoloxía: uniron a xente contra un inimigo cuxa presenza fascinante momentaneamente extingue todo antagonismo. Ao público ofrecéuselle unha escolla deprimente: ou es flic ou terrorista. Pero como encaixa o humor irreverente de Charlie Hebdo? Para responder a esta pregunta, necesitamos ter presente a interconexión entre o Decálogo e dos dereitos humanos, que, como argumentaron Kenneth Reinhard e Julia Reinhard Lupton, son, en definitiva, dereitos para violar os Dez Mandamentos. O dereito á vida privada equivale ao dereito de cometer adulterio. O dereito á propiedade ao dereito de roubar (explotar outros). O dereito á liberdade de expresión ao dereito de falsa testemuña. O dereito de portar armas ao dereito de matar. O dereito á liberdade de crenza relixiosa ao dereito de adorar falsos deuses. Por suposto, os dereitos humanos non condonan directamente a violación dos Mandamentos, pero manteñen aberta unha zona gris marxinal que se supón fóra do alcance do poder (relixioso ou secular). Nesta zona de sombra podo violar os mandamentos, e se o poder pescuda nel, e me pilla cos pantalóns noso pés, podo berrar: ‘atentan contra os meus dereitos humanos básicos’. A cuestión é que é estruturalmente imposible, para o poder, trazar unha liña clara de separación e evitar só o uso indebido dun dereito humano sen infrinxir o uso adecuado, é dicir, o uso que non viole os Mandamentos.

The ecstatic moments of the Paris demonstrations were a triumph of ideology: they united the people against an enemy whose fascinating presence momentarily obliterates all antagonisms. The public was offered a depressing choice: you are either a flic or a terrorist. But how does the irreverent humour of Charlie Hebdo fit in? To answer this question, we need to bear in mind the interconnection between the Decalogue and human rights, which, as Kenneth Reinhard and Julia Reinhard Lupton have argued, are ultimately rights to violate the Ten Commandments. The right to privacy is a right to commit adultery. The right to own property is a right to steal (to exploit others). The right to freedom of expression is a right to bear false witness. The right to bear arms is a right to kill. The right to freedom of religious belief is a right to worship false gods. Of course, human rights do not directly condone the violation of the Commandments, but they keep open a marginal grey zone that is supposed to be out of the reach of (religious or secular) power. In this shady zone I can violate the commandments, and if the power probes into it, catching me with my pants down, I can cry: ‘Assault on my basic human rights!’ The point is that it is structurally impossible, for the power, to draw a clear line of separation and prevent only the misuse of a human right without infringing on its proper use, i.e. the use that does not violate the Commandments.

é nesta zona gris á que pertence o humor brutal de Charlie Hebdo. A revista botou a andar en 1970 como sucesora de Hara-Kiri, unha revista proscrita por mofarse da morte do xeneral de Gaulle. Logo de que a carta dun lector acusara a Hara-Kiri de ser ‘burda e desagradable’ (‘bête et méchant’), a frase foi adoptada como lema oficial da revista e fíxose de uso cotiá. Sería máis apropiado para os miles que se manifestaron en París proclamar ‘Je suis bête et méchant’ en lugar do simple ‘Je suis Charlie’.

It is in this grey zone that the brutal humour of Charlie Hebdo belongs. The magazine began in 1970 as a successor to Hara-Kiri, a magazine banned for mocking the death of General de Gaulle. After an early reader’s letter accused Hara-Kiri of being ‘dumb and nasty’ (‘bête et méchant’), the phrase was adopted as the magazine’s official slogan and made it into everyday language. It would have been more appropriate for the thousands marching in Paris to proclaim ‘Je suis bête et méchant’ than the flat Je suis Charlie.’

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refrescante en ocasións, a postura do Charlie Hebdo ‘bête et méchant’ está limitada polo feito de que a risa por si non é liberadora, mais fondamente ambigua. Na visión popular da Grecia Antiga, hai un contraste entre os solemnes aristocráticas espartanos e os alegres demócratas atenienses. Pero os espartanos, que se compracían da súa gravidade, puxeron a risa no centro da súa ideoloxía e práctica: recoñeceron a risa comunal como un poder que axudou a aumentar a gloria do estado. A risa espartana – a burla brutal dun inimigo ou escravo humillado, burlándose do seu medo e dor desde unha posición de poder – atopou eco nos discursos de Stalin, cando se mofou do pánico e a confusión dos ‘traidores’; e sobrevive até hoxe. (De feito, hai que distinguila doutro tipo de risa dos que están no poder, a do escarnio cínico que demostra que non toman en serio a súa propia ideoloxía). O problema co humor de Charlie Hebdo non é que foi lonxe de máis na súa irreverencia senón que era un exceso inofensivo que encaixaba no funcionamento cínico e hexemónico da ideoloxía nas nosas sociedades. Non representaba ameaza algunha aos instalados no poder; só fixo o seu exercicio do poder máis tolerable.

Refreshing as it could be in some situations, Charlie Hebdo’s ‘bête et méchant’ stance is constrained by the fact that laughter is not in itself liberating, but deeply ambiguous. In the popular view of Ancient Greece, there is a contrast between the solemn aristocratic Spartans and the merry democratic Athenians. But the Spartans, who prided themselves on their severity, placed laughter at the centre of their ideology and practice: they recognised communal laughter as a power that helped to increase the glory of the state. Spartan laughter – the brutal mockery of a humiliated enemy or slave, making fun of their fear and pain from a position of power – found an echo in Stalin’s speeches, when he scoffed at the panic and confusion of ‘traitors’, and survives today. (Incidentally, it is to be distinguished from another kind of laughter of those in power, the cynical derision that shows they don’t take their own ideology seriously). The problem with Charlie Hebdo’s humour is not that it went too far in its irreverence, but that it was a harmless excess perfectly fitting the hegemonic cynical functioning of ideology in our societies. It posed no threat whatsoever to those in power; it merely made their exercise of power more tolerable.

nas sociedades liberais e seculares de Occidente, o poder do Estado protexe as liberdades públicas, pero intervén no espazo privado – cando hai unha sospeita de abuso de menores, por exemplo. Pero, como escribe Talal Asad en é laica a crítica? A blasfemia, as inxurias e liberdade de expresión (2009), ‘as intrusións no espazo doméstico, a rotura dos dominios ‘privados’, non se admite na lei islámica, aínda que a conformidade no comportamento ‘público’ pode ser moito máis rigorosa ... para a comunidade, o que importa é a práctica social do suxeito musulmán – incluíndo a publicación verbal – e non os seus pensamentos internos, sexan os que sexan’. O Corán di: ‘Deixade ter fe a quen desexe, e ao que desexe rexeitala’. Pero, en verbas de Asad, ‘este dereito a pensar o que se desexe non … inclúe o dereito de expresar as súas crenzas relixiosas ou morais publicamente coa intención de converter a xente a un falso compromiso’. É por iso que, para os musulmáns, ‘é imposible de permanecer en silencio ante unha blasfemia ... a blasfemia non é nin ‘liberdade de expresión’, nin o reto dunha nova realidade, mais algo que busca perturbar unha relación viva’. Desde o punto de vista liberal occidental, hai un problema con ambos termos deste nin – nin: e se a liberdade de expresión debe incluír actos que poidan perturbar unha relación viva? E se unha ‘nova realidade’ ten o mesmo efecto perturbador? E se unha nova conciencia ética fai parecer inxusta unha relación viva?

In Western liberal-secular societies, state power protects public freedoms but intervenes in private space – when there is a suspicion of child abuse, for example. But as Talal Asad writes in Is Critique Secular? Blasphemy, Injury and Free Speech (2009), ‘intrusions into domestic space, the breaching of “private” domains, is disallowed in Islamic law, although conformity in “public” behaviour may be much stricter … for the community, what matters is the Muslim subject’s social practice – including verbal publication – not her internal thoughts, whatever they may be.’ The Quran says: ‘Let him who wills have faith, and him who wills reject it.’ But, in Asad’s words, this ‘right to think whatever one wishes does not … include the right to express one’s religious or moral beliefs publicly with the intention of converting people to a false commitment’. This is why, for Muslims, ‘it is impossible to remain silent when confronted with blasphemy … blasphemy is neither “freedom of speech” nor the challenge of a new truth but something that seeks to disrupt a living relationship.’ From the Western liberal standpoint, there is a problem with both terms of this neither/nor: what if freedom of speech should include acts that may disrupt a living relationship? And what if a ‘new truth’ has the same disruptive effect? What if a new ethical awareness makes a living relationship appear unjust?

se, para os musulmáns, non é só ‘imposible de permanecer en silencio ante unha blasfemia’, mais tamén imposible permanecer inactivos –e a presión para facer algo pode incluír actos violentos e asasinatos–, entón a primeira cousa que facer é situar esa actitude no seu contexto contemporáneo. O mesmo vale para o movemento cristián anti-aborto, que tamén cre que é ‘imposible permanecer en silencio ante a morte de centos de miles de fetos todos os anos’, unha masacre que comparan ao Holocausto. É aquí que comeza a verdadeira tolerancia: a tolerancia do que experimentamos como imposible-de-soportar (‘l'impossible-a-supporter’, como di Lacan), e, a este nivel a esquerda liberal está próxima ao fundamentalismo relixioso coa súa propia lista de cousas ante as que é ‘imposible permanecer en silencio’: o sexismo, o racismo e outras formas de intolerancia. Que sucedería se unha revista fixera humor abertamente co Holocausto? Hai unha contradición na postura liberal de esquerda: a posición libertaria de ironía universal e burla, satirizando a todas as autoridades, espirituais e políticas (a posición incorporada en Charlie Hebdo), tende a escorregar no seu oposto, unha sensibilidade maior á dor e humillación do outro.

If, for Muslims, it is not only ‘impossible to remain silent when confronted with blasphemy’ but also impossible to remain inactive – and the pressure to do something may include violent and murderous acts – then the first thing to do is to locate this attitude in its contemporary context. The same holds for the Christian anti-abortion movement, who also find it ‘impossible to remain silent’ in the face of the deaths of hundreds of thousands of foetuses every year, a slaughter they compare to the Holocaust. It is here that true tolerance begins: the tolerance of what we experience as impossible-to-bear (l’impossible-a-supporter’, as Lacan put it), and at this level the liberal left comes close to religious fundamentalism with its own list of things it’s ‘impossible to remain silent when confronted with’: sexism, racism and other forms of intolerance. What would happen if a magazine openly made fun of the Holocaust? There is a contradiction in the left-liberal stance: the libertarian position of universal irony and mockery, making fun of all authorities, spiritual and political (the position embodied in Charlie Hebdo), tends to slip into its opposite, a heightened sensitivity to the other’s pain and humiliation.

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é por mor desa contradición que a maioría das reaccións de esquerda ante os asasinatos de París seguiu un esquema deplorable e predicible: sospeitaron, de maneira correcta, que hai un grave erro no espectáculo do consenso liberal e a solidariedade coas vítimas, pero tomou un rumbo errado coa condena dos asasinatos; despois de longas e aburridas disquisicións. O temor a ser, ao condenar claramente os asasinatos, dalgún xeito culpables de islamofobia, é política e eticamente correcto. Non hai nada islamofóbico na condena dos asasinatos de París, do mesmo xeito que non hai nada de antisemita na condena do tratamento dos palestinos que leva a cabo Israel.

It is because of this contradiction that most left-wing reactions to the Paris killings followed a predictable, deplorable pattern: they correctly suspected that something is deeply wrong in the spectacle of liberal consensus and solidarity with the victims, but took a wrong turn when they were able to condemn the killings only after long and boring qualifications. The fear that, by clearly condemning the killing, we will somehow be guilty of Islamophobia, is politically and ethically wrong. There is nothing Islamophobic in condemning the Paris killings, in the same way that there is nothing anti-Semitic in condemning Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.

en canto á noción de que temos que contextualizar e ‘comprender’ os asasinatos de París, tamén é totalmente enganosa. En Frankenstein, Mary Shelley fai que o monstro fale por si mesmo. A súa elección expresa a actitude liberal de liberdade de expresión na súa forma máis radical: deben ser escoitados os puntos de vista de todos. En Frankenstein, o monstro está totalmente subxectivizado: o asasino monstruoso revélase como un individuo profundamente ferido e desesperado, ansioso por atopar compaña e amor. Hai, con todo, un límite claro a este procedemento: canto máis sei e ‘entendo’ sobre Hitler, máis imperdoable me parece.

As for the notion that we should contextualise and ‘understand’ the Paris killings, it is also totally misleading. In Frankenstein, Mary Shelley allows the monster to speak for himself. Her choice expresses the liberal attitude to freedom of speech at its most radical: everyone’s point of view should be heard. In Frankenstein, the monster is fully subjectivised: the monstrous murderer reveals himself to be a deeply hurt and desperate individual, yearning for company and love. There is, however, a clear limit to this procedure: the more I know about and ‘understand’ Hitler, the more unforgiveable he seems.

o que tamén significa isto é que, cando se trata o conflito israelo-palestino, debémonos ater aos estándares crueis e fríos: debemos resistir incondicionalmente a tentación de ‘comprender’ o antisemitismo árabe (onde realmente o atopemos) como unha reacción ‘natural’ á triste situación dos palestinos, ou a ‘entender’ as medidas israelís como unha reacción ‘natural’ á memoria do Holocausto. Non debe haber ‘comprensión’ para o feito de que en moitos países árabes Hitler aínda é considerado un heroe, e os nenos na escola primaria son educados con mitos antisemitas, como que os xudeus usan o sangue de nenos para facer sacrificios rituais. Afirmar que este antisemitismo articula, nun modo desprazado, a resistencia contra o capitalismo, non o xustifica de ningunha maneira (o mesmo vale para o antisemitismo nazi: el tamén tirou a súa enerxía da resistencia anti-capitalista). O desprazamento non é aquí unha operación secundaria, mais o xesto fundamental da mistificación ideolóxica. O que implica esta afirmación é a idea de que, a longo prazo, a única forma de combater o antisemitismo non é predicar a tolerancia liberal, mais articular o motivo anticapitalista subxacente de forma directa, non-desprazada.

What this also means is that, when approaching the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we should stick to ruthless and cold standards: we should unconditionally resist the temptation to ‘understand’ Arabic anti-Semitism (where we really encounter it) as a ‘natural’ reaction to the sad plight of the Palestinians, or to ‘understand’ Israeli measures as a ‘natural’ reaction to the memory of the Holocaust. There should be no ‘understanding’ for the fact that in many Arab countries Hitler is still considered a hero, and children at primary school are taught anti-Semitic myths, such as that Jews use the blood of children for sacrificial purposes. To claim that this anti-Semitism articulates, in a displaced mode, resistance against capitalism in no way justifies it (the same goes for Nazi anti-Semitism: it too drew its energy from anti-capitalist resistance). Displacement is not here a secondary operation, but the fundamental gesture of ideological mystification. What this claim does involve is the idea that, in the long term, the only way to fight anti-Semitism is not to preach liberal tolerance, but to articulate the underlying anti-capitalist motive in a direct, non-displaced way.

as actuais accións das Forzas de Defensa de Israel en Cisxordania non deben ser xulgadas en función do Holocausto; as profanacións de sinagogas en Francia e noutros países de Europa non deben ser xulgadas como unha reacción inadecuada, pero comprensible, ante o que Israel está facendo en Cisxordania. Cando calquera protesta pública contra Israel é categoricamente denunciada como unha expresión de antisemitismo –é dicir, cando a sombra do Holocausto é permanentemente evocada para neutralizar calquera crítica as operación militares e políticas israelís– non é suficiente insistir na diferenza entre o antisemitismo e as críticas ás políticas particulares do estado de Israel; hai que dar un paso adiante e dicir que é o Estado de Israel quen, neste caso, está profanando a memoria das vítimas do Holocausto, instrumentalizándoas como unha forma de lexitimar medidas políticas no presente. E isto significa que se debe rexeitar categoricamente a noción de calquera conexión lóxica ou política entre o Holocausto e as actuais tensións entre israelís e palestinos. Son dous fenómenos ben diferentes: un deles é parte da historia europea de resistencia dereitista á dinámica da modernización; o outro é un dos últimos capítulos da historia da colonización.

The present actions of the Israel Defence Forces in the West Bank should not be judged against the background of the Holocaust; the desecration of synagogues in France and elsewhere in Europe should not be judged as an inappropriate but understandable reaction to what Israel is doing in the West Bank. When any public protest against Israel is flatly denounced as an expression of anti-Semitism – that is to say, when the shadow of the Holocaust is permanently evoked in order to neutralise any criticism of Israeli military and political operations – it is not enough to insist on the difference between anti-Semitism and criticism of particular policies of the state of Israel; one should go a step further and say that it is the state of Israel which, in this case, is desecrating the memory of Holocaust victims, instrumentalising them as a way to legitimise political measures in the present. What this means is that one should flatly reject the notion of any logical or political link between the Holocaust and current Israeli-Palestinian tensions. They are two thoroughly different phenomena: one of them is part of the European history of rightist resistance to the dynamics of modernisation; the other is one of the last chapters in the history of colonisation.

o aumento do antisemitismo en Europa é innegable. Cando, por exemplo, a agresiva  minoría musulmá de Malmö acosa xudeus para que teñan medo de andar polas rúas en traxes tradicionais, debe ser clara e inequivocamente condenada. A loita contra o antisemitismo e a loita contra a islamofobia deben ser vistas como dous aspectos da mesma loita.

The growth of anti-Semitism in Europe is undeniable. When, for example, the aggressive Muslim minority in Malmö harasses Jews so they are afraid to walk the streets in traditional dress, it should be clearly and unambiguously condemned. The struggle against anti-Semitism and the struggle against Islamophobia should be viewed as two aspects of the same struggle.

nunha pasaxe memorable de Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered (2001), Ruth Klüger describe unha conversa con ‘algúns doutorandos’ en Alemaña:

In a memorable passage in Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered (2001), Ruth Klüger describes a conversation with ‘some advanced PhD candidates’ in Germany:

alguén relata como en Xerusalén coñeceu un vello xudeu húngaro sobrevivente de Auschwitz, e aínda así este home maldicía os árabes e desprezábaos a todos. ‘Como alguén que vén de Auschwitz pode falar así?’, pregúntase. Entro en escena e argumento, quizais de xeito máis acalorado do debido. Que esperaba? Auschwitz non era ningunha institución de ensino ... Non aprendías nada alí, e menos de todo humanidade e tolerancia. Absolutamente nada bo saíu dos campos de concentración, escóitome dicir, alzando a voz, e ela espera unha catarse, unha purga, o tipo de cousas que vas buscar ao teatro? Foron as institucións máis inútiles e sen sentido que se poida imaxinar.

One reports how in Jerusalem he made the acquaintance of an old Hungarian Jew who was a survivor of Auschwitz, and yet this man cursed the Arabs and held them all in contempt. How can someone who comes from Auschwitz talk like that? the German asks. I get into the act and argue, perhaps more hotly than need be. What did he expect? Auschwitz was no instructional institution … You learned nothing there, and least of all humanity and tolerance. Absolutely nothing good came out of the concentration camps, I hear myself saying, with my voice rising, and he expects catharsis, purgation, the sort of thing you go to the theatre for? They were the most useless, pointless establishments imaginable.

temos de abandonar a idea de que hai algo emancipatorio en experiencias extremas, que nos permiten abrir os ollos á verdade suprema dunha situación. Esta quizais sexa a lección máis deprimente do terror.

We have to abandon the idea that there is something emancipatory in extreme experiences, that they enable us to open our eyes to the ultimate truth of a situation. This, perhaps, is the most depressive lesson of terror.

LRB, 5 de febreiro de 2015
tradución mala por @xindiriz