IX Congresso Internacional ABRALIC 2004 - Travessias

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Argentine literary canons and translation agency in the Diario de poesía: 1986-present
Lisa Rose Bradford (Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata)

The image of the translator in Argentina has largely been constructed by groups of writers who have used translation both for personal creativity and the dissemination of foreign voices. Their work, tacitly approved by society because of their figure as judges of quality expression, has been molding literary canons in Argentina as well as forming a particular mode of translation or, as I prefer to call it, translational discursive genre. 1Although literary translation is generally a poorly paid profession or a virtual act of philanthropy in Argentina , precisely because of this situation, the translator enjoys great intellectual power and freedom. Furthermore, a situation of disassociated association (see Veblen, Borges 1974a) has compelled writers not only to absorb and reutilize foreign works in their writing, but oftentimes their translations of poetry are published within their own collected works. Within this framework, the modes of translation prove key to understanding the establishment of literary canons in Argentine publishing.

The translational movements initiated by important agents such as Sur and Poesía Buenos Aires have been continued by a remarkable undertaking, Diario de poesía , which demands greater analysis because of the immense space it has constructed by means of anthologizing contemporary poetry uninterruptedly for 18 years. Due to the great predominance of U.S. poetry translated within its pages, it is particularly interesting to concentrate on this translation space in order to comprehend its mode of entrance into the contemporary canons of Argentine literature, a mode conformed by the translational positionality and the literary tastes of the poet/translators involved in this publication.

The magazine was born of the enthusiasm for poetry possessed by its editor, the poet Daniel Samoilovich. As a trimester publication with its rather unique tabloid format, the magazine has constantly included new voices, essays on poetry, reviews, translations and interesting graphics in order to intertwine "what's on the street along side the eternal quality of poetry" (Samoilovich, 2003).

Many articles have been written regarding the current Argentine tendencies espoused by this magazine, 2 characterized mainly by a rejection of the preciosity of neo-baroque or neo-romantic and the promotion of a colloquial and even political form of expression, which some have termed "neo-objectivism." Samoilovich has not denied this label and adheres to Charles Olson's idea that "form is no more than a revelation of content." 3The editorial staff has historically published poetry inspired in imagisme and "engaged" literature. 4 What is interesting to see is how this tendency finds its way into the translation modes to analyze the types of reading provoked by this publication in its anthologization of Argentine and U.S. poetry.

When asked about his stance on translation practices, the editor stated that there was no recipe, but rather that each poet and poem exacted a particular craft performed within an Argentine mode of expression. Furthermore, in the dossier on translation (10, 1988) he writes that bad translators "naturalize" when what corresponds is an extraordinary expression and become unusual and conspicuous when it has no importance. However, in Argentina there has always existed a linguistic persona for writing, a mode which avoids argentinisms that might not be understood abroad. In fact, one of the dividing waters in Argentine publication has been the use of the "vos" form instead of "tú," which in the last 50 years of narrative writing, has taken over as the proper mimetic mode. In poetry, however, one still finds resistance to the vos form, and in the translation of foreign verse, even more so. Nevertheless, in the Diario, in its motion toward an authentically Argentine forum for the dissemination of poetry, one begins to find translation with the "vos" form. For example, in the case of the translations of Anne Sexton, this form was used. In fact, the editor has said, "let the Spaniards learn to deal with it," (2003) to show a sought-for independence from the weight of tradition for which publication has bowed down to in sight of Spain as the ruler of Spanish expression. This shows a clear intention to utilize an Argentine idiom within the pages of the magazine. Further analysi, nevertheless, will demonstrate to what extent this has been possible. 5

The type of methodology in this study included a mapping both the Argentine and foreign patterns in this publication, finally focusing on the poet/translator introductions in order to the translations to delineate editorial intent. A final detailed comparative examination of the poetry in both English and Spanish to attempt to determine the reasons behind the problems and solutions revealed important information regarding the positionality of the translators.

A list of U.S. poets translated and published within the Diario will help define the tendencies established: John Ashbery, W.H. Auden, Olga Broumas, Charles Bukowski, Raymond Carver, Lucille Clifton, Robert Creeley, E.E. Cummings, H.D., Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinguetti, David Ferry, Judy Grahn, Susan Howe, Jack Kerouac, Denise Levertov, Katherine Mansfield, Marianne Moore, Lorine Niedecker, Frank O'Hara, Grace Paley, Ezra Pound, Carl Rakoski, Kenneth Rexroth, Adrienne Rich, Anne Sexton, Charles Simic, Wallace Stevens, Walt Whitman, Richard Wilbur, Tennessee Williams y William Carlos Williams among the more well-known. 6 The majority of these poets were translated by Daniel Samoilovich, Mirta Rosenberg, Jorge Fondebrider, Diana Bellessi y María Negroni, all established poets and translators. That a type of coterie of admiration and production should have been created among the members of the editorial staff, that has promoted a clear poetic vision of the world, is neither illogical nor unusual, and it is precisely the politics of publication, particularly of translation, that we are interested in uncovering. Our question is then, do the translation modes concord entirely with the neo-objectivism that predominates in the magazine?

Without going into a detailed analysis of the specific poems and their versions, 7 it is first clear that these poets have selected specific groups to create an influx of definite poetic tendencies such as Beat, New York School of Poetry, women's poetry and gay poetry. Furthermore, upon close examination, one finds very little use of the "vos" form, no matter how colloquial or contemporary the verse, and an inclusion of vocabulary that is not common to Argentine usage, on the one hand, and, on the other, little experimentation regarding the creation of compound terms or kennings and no instances of zero translation. We find, rather a mode a paraphrasing and disguising the expression, both extremes which make this mode of translation fall outside the dicta of objectivist poetics.

Jorge Fondebrider describes his own translational discourse as a "third idiom" (2004), located between the original and spoken Argentine Spanish. In general, the positionality of translators of U.S. poetry in the magazine is one adhering to an idea of domestication and transparency, but the "third idiom" cannot be circumscribed with one definition of the "presence of objects, episodes and actions pertaining to the more crass elements of everyday life, normal and local, direct diction , without modernista ornamentation," which forms the maxim of the type of poetry published in the magazine. 8 A "third idiom" or translational persona denies the colloquial and "direct diction," promoted by objectivism. In fact, domestication, in the case of an Argentine idiom, is difficult to achieve. Translation in Argentina is simply too influenced by the translational discursive genre that has dominated in Argentina for more than a century, and thus, the diction is sometimes foreign and the use of "vos" is still infrequent. Our original hypothesis of a new form of translation, after analyzing more than 60 issues of the magazine, therefore, does fall apart upon close analysis.

Perhaps more important in the configuration of a possible autochthonous dimension in translation and the search for transparency in the positionality of the poet/translator in the Diario is the question of the discursive genre of the lyric itself. No matter how colloquial, countercultural and indecorous the lyrical expression-supposed marks of communicative language-poetry constitutes a terrain of strangeness due to its own modality of constructing figures. In lyrical verse, perhaps the catechresis, the resistance, the power of the image, and the irony of the juxtaposition of words or lines-in short, its dependence on aporia-encourage a translation through a language as Faktur , according to the expression of Goethe, and not as Natur . Goethe, who in his conception of universal literature postulated an "infinite versability" of poetry, maintained that the taste of the masses should be molded through the integration of new and superior elements outside of colloquial usage. 9In the case of narrative, where mimeticism generally dominates with realistic dialogues, the origin and positionality of the translator are much more perceptible. One might, in fact, speak of a translational discursive genre evident particularly in Latin America since the language utilized in the translation of bestsellers and movie captions for the most part reflect the linguistic reality of no country, but rather it is the product of a neutrality imposed by the distributors who provide the entire Spanish-speaking world including the U.S. with translations into Spanish. Therefore, a translation that utilizes "vos" does not respond to reading habits generated by the conventions of a translational discursive genre that demands neutrality or an absence of marks of national identity in the translations produced. This mandate responds to the dynamics of globalization that promote the acculturation of new idioms without connecting them affectively to any local reality, thus interrupting and displacing local, regional, and national canons. 10

In this sense, and although it is an important aspect, the use of an Argentine idiom perhaps is not so significant to approach the world vision that the poet/translators of the Diario possess and advocate. Although they desire a localist expression as can be found in their own poetry, the tradition of the persona continues to dominate. This persona does not admit the constant use of vos or extreme Argentinisms, nor does it promote the use of zero translation.

The mark of the translator always exists, nevertheless, and, therefore, apart from the considerations about the congruence between the canons promoted by the poetry published in the magazine, it is also important to observe the influence the personal style of each poet in his/her translations. In the case of the five poet/translators in focus in this study, Bellessi, Negroni, Rosenberg, Samoilovich and Fondebrider, more than an invasion of personal style in the versions published, one observes that the virtues of their own styles become an advantage in the translations of the poets they have selected.

For example, Bellessi´s poetry is characterized by her defiant voice and sensual exploration of lesbian desire, and these facets also become evident in her translations of Clifton , Broumas and Rexroth's heteronym, Marichiko. In the case of Rosenberg , her invention of rhythm and musicality, which avoids strangeness but is not entirely colloquial, facilitates the creation of a Spanish voice for Anne Sexton. Furthermore, the questionable translation of "guijarro" for the word "pebble" also appears in her own poetry, which bespeaks the linguistic cross-fertilization between her translation work and her own poetry. Negroni's poem "Islandia" also attests to her interest in the different modes of feminine lyrical representation such as thos of Howe, Paley, and Niedecker because this poem contains two distinct voices, one heir to the masculine, epic tone and the other an accent containing ancient and modern scenes expressed in a flow of metaphors and impressions. Furthermore, Samoilovich's neo-objectivism with his technique for "painting minute cultural, natural scenes based on allusion" (2004) permits him to have broad expressive liberty and a faith in the allusive image, which gives him excellent access to the poetry of Carver and Ashbery, for example. The contributions made by Fondebrider coincide with his comparatist perspective regarding the function of translation in general and in this literary magazine in particular. Convinced that this type of translation activity has as an objective to "fill in the gaps" (2004), he has encouraged a broader comprehension of foreign poetry in relation to Argentine production. His introductions to his and others' selections reveals his enormous cultural background; in addition, his sensitivity to the world of jazz and Anglo-American poetry enable him to produce impeccable translations of poets such as Charles Bukowski.

These personal marks become united with the general strangeness of lyrical expression. Moreover, the "infinite versability" of poetry, which depends also on its anthologization attests to the fact that this process of contextualization further exacerbates the protean movement of this verse. The function of literary magazines is after all to "promote reading habits, offer samples, a field of experimentation, and, at times-when clashes occur among different points of view regarding literary conceptions-a battleground," as Fondebrider has commented (Nº19, winter 1991: 33). Without a doubt, one can conclude that the compendium generated by the Diario de Poesía , with its multicultural weavings, was born and grew in this fashion. The Diario has proved a fertile Pampean soil in which this battle will leave its heroic songs of a new poetry read in Argentina where it has been forming new, young poets for the past 18 years. 11

The words pronounced by Samoilovich during our interview last year provided the beginnings of a clear hypothesis about a new movement of anthologization in Argentina , that the Diario would forge a new poetic discourse, including a new translational discourse thanks to the localist positionality of the editor and the economic liberty the magazine has enjoyed. He was looking to "create a favorable and enthusiastic atmosphere for the reading of our own poetry, and test its limits [.] to extend ourselves to read poetry without closure, but rather with aperture" (2003). With its rather unique editorial format, this magazine pursues and upholds the disassociated association of the Argentine writer, with the intention of "filling gaps" by means of an original comparatist vision that forms its universalistic anthologization. This implies a manipulation regarding the selection of poets and the texts to be translated; the introductions, essays, and reviews; and the vestiges of personal style of each poet/translator in the published versions. In the case of Diario de poesía , the selection of poets reveals the staff's interest in intertwining Beat and women's poetry in particular, and, in general, a marginal, revolutionary, and for the most part, objectivist modes of expression, mixing it with Argentine poetry to accompany and fortify the experimental field the magazine has constructed.

To study the presence and the modes of translation in the space of U.S. poetry in the Diario , we have sought to understand how, through these translations, the magazine has left a substantial inscription in Argentine letters. Returning, however, to this concept of objectivism in the writing of poetry, the domestication of expression, belonging to the "crass everyday life" of "direct diction" may reign in the poets' own expression for the most part, but in their translations, we observe that the expression attempts to be natural, but because of obstacles related to culture and musicality, on the one hand, and, on the other, to a long translation tradition regarding the anti-identity of its discursive genre, the expression becomes strange, non-Argentine. Therefore, there is no excessive expansion of language, nor is there a great localization of the expression as an objectivist policy would maintain. In reality, the voice of the poet/translator in Diario de poesía has not established a new Argentine tradition in its translation of U.S. poetry since the translational persona has continued to dominate. Nevertheless, the very selection of foreign poets and the critical introductions of their prefaces has enriched, interlocked, and projected important images of U.S. poetry in this noteworthy editorial enterprise.

REFERENCES:

Aguirre Osvaldo (1994). "Dossier Joaquín Giannuzzi", Diario de poesía , invierno, p. 26.

Bellesi, Diana (1997): "Género y traducción", en: Lisa Bradford (comp.): Traducción como cultura. Rosario: Viterbo, pp.93-97.

Borges, Jorge Luis (1974a). "El escritor argentino y la tradición", in: Obras completas . Buenos Aires: Emecé, pp.267-274.

Borges, Jorge Luis (1974b). "Los traductores de las 1001 noches", in: Obras completas . Buenos Aires: Emecé, pp.397-413.

Bellessi, Diana (1999). Interview done by Lisa Bradford December 10, 1999 .

Berman, Antoine (1992). The Experience of the Foreign. New York : State University of New York Press.

Bradford, Lisa (1990). "A Generation of Castaways: A Study of the Translation Process in Four Argentine Poets of the 1970s." Doctoral Dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1990.

Bradford, Lisa (comp) (1997). Traducción como cultura . Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo.

Bradford, Lisa (comp) (2001). La cultura de los géneros . Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo.

Bradford, Lisa (en prensa). "The Globalization of Translation: Rhetoric and Reality", in Brisset, Anne y Paul St. Pierre (eds.): Translation and Globalization. Cross-Cultural Communication in the New World Order . Ottawa : University of Ottawa Press,

Deleuze, Gilles y Félix Guattari (1986 [1975]). Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature. Traducción: Dana Polan. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Fonderbrider, Jorge (2004). Interview by Lisa Bradford, May, 1, 2004 .

Iriarte, Fabián O. (2003). "Anatomía del fascículo: La colección Los Grandes Poetas de CEAL", en: Puntos de partida puntos de llegada. Actas de las terceras Jornadas de Investigación del Departamento de Letras . Mar del Plata: Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata 2003, pp.352-356,

Iriarte, Fabián, O, Mallo, Alfonso y Aldana, Fabiola (2001). "Tres hipótesis de la lectura sobre el Diario de Poesía " , en: Porrúa, Ana La escritura y los críticos , Mar del Plata: Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata, pp.55-63.

Kovadloff, Santiago (1982). Una cultura de catacumbas . Buenos Aires: Botella al mar.

Lafforgue, Jorge (2003). Interview done by Lisa Bradford on September, 26, 2003 .

Maunás, Delia (1995). Boris Spivacow : Memoria de un sueño argentino . Buenos Aires: Ediciones Colihue.

Porrúa, Ana (2001). "Juan Gelman: voces menores y territorios poéticos", in Bradford, Lisa (comp): La cultura de los géneros . Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo, pp.15-34.

Porrúa, Ana (2003). "Estos viejos aires nuevos: poesía argentina de los '90", en: Actas de las III Jornadas del Departamento de Letras . (Mar del Plata: Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata , pp.209-215.

Pratt. Mary Louise (1992): Imperial Eyes. Travel Writing and Transculturation . London . New York: Routedge.

Rubio, Alejandro (1994) "Dossier: Joaquín Giannuzzi", Diario de poesía , Invierno, p. 16.

Sarlo, Beatriz (1998). "Tres postales argentinas. Entrevista de Graciela Speranza". Clarín (Suplemento cultural), 09.04.1998, p.16.

Samoilovich, Daniel (1988). "Dossier Traducción", Diario de poesía , Nº 10, primavera, p. 24.

Samoilovich, Daniel (1990). ""Dossier El estado de las coasas", Diario de poesía, Nº 14, verano, p. 18.

Samoilovich, Daniel (2003). Entrevista realizada el 9 de septiembre por Lisa Bradford.

Samoilovich, Daniel (2004). Banda hispânica http://www.secrel.com.br/jpoesia/bhargentina.htm 20.02.2004.

Venuti, Lawrence (1995). The Translator's Invisibility . London , New York : Routledge.

Willson, Patricia (1997). "Traductores en Sur : teoría y práctica", in Bradford, Lisa, Traducción como cultura , pp.133-140.

See "Los discursos de la traducción" in Bradford, La cultura de los géneros.

Daniel García Helder, "El neobarroco en la Argentina", en Diario de poesía, Nº 4, otoño de 1987. 24-25: Santiago Kovadloff, "Balance y perspectivas" ( Xul ), Nº 1, 1980; Daniel Samoilovich, "Barroco y neobarroco", in the dossier "El estado de las cosas, Diario de poesía, Nº 14, verano 1990, 18; Ana Porrúa, "Una polémica a media voz ; objetivistas y neobarrocos en el Diario de poesía , Boletín del Centro de estudios de teoría y crítica literaria , Rosario: Universidad Nacional de Rosario, (en prensa);

Charles Olson "Projective Verse" in Human Universe, 1951, NY: Grove Press, http://www.poetspath.com/transmisions/messsages/olson.html ll.6.2004.

Notice the translations of Levertov, Niedecker, and Creeley y Pound: all political and/or objectivist... In # 36, verano 1995, there is an issue dedicated to poetry and politics with Levertov's essay, "Al filo de la oscuridad ¿Qué es la poesía política?"

The utilization of "vos" in translation is key. In my own experience in translations workshops the members have always found this usage "indecorous." In fact, there is a long history of normalization through language politics from the Real Academia Española, and in the '50s and '60s, "vos" was not taught in schools, and in movies, the "tú" form was always used as a sign of erudition and class.

"Pop" poets such as Tom Waits and Laurie Anderson have also been translated and published.

See Bradford, "La voz del Poet/traductor en el Diario de poesía, Argentina 1986-presente, Estudios, (en prensa, 2005).

"presencia de objetos, episodios y acciones pertenecientes a la más crasa vida cotidiana, normal y local; dicción directa, sin adornos modernistas" (Rubio N°30, invierno 1994: 16),

"Versability" is a neologism coined by Goethe that points toward the versatility and versionability of verse. (Berman, 1992: 86).

It is, indeed, difficult to categorize the positionality of Argentine translation canons within the current theoretical dichotomy of foreignizing or domesticating. As the prominent Argentine critic, Beatriz Sarlo, has recently commented, "[i]t is just that now we import books in the material sense. They are no longer translated by Pepe Bianco, Pezzoni, Victoria Ocampo or Borges, but rather they arrive in containers and go from there to the bookstores. What we do effectively maintain is that Argentine vocation for being contemporaries of contemporaneity." (in Sarlo, 1998) By this we understand that Argentines are poachers, but their game is already transgenic. One could actually characterize the particular translation discursive genre in present Argentine production as one of anti-identity: in its failure to reflect the linguistic reality of any Spanish-speaking country, the language that is utilized in the publication of bestsellers and in subtitling generally responds to a neutrality imposed by distributors that attend to Spain, Latin American, and the Latino community in the U.S. Though many of the translations from Spain do reproduce the ideology of invisibility with regard to the Iberian public, paradoxically, to the rest of the Spanish-speaking world , this language proves visible, heteroglossic, and even "deterritorialized," but "normal" due to its ubiquity.

Sergio Raimundo, a young poet from Bahía Blanca , has, in fact stated how much this publication has influenced his work, and as a professor of U.S. literature, he does utilize these groups of poets in his syllabus.