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Disciplation
- University of Ottawa Press
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Jorge Etcheverry 89 Disciplation Unquestionably it was a free, avant-garde, poetic act, in book format, with photos and drawings, prose texts, verse, graphics, diagrams, including descriptions of events, friends’ conversations in cafés, a family party. I almost couldn’t believe it and examined the drawing again, which was not very detailed, fortunately, but well done. After all this time of what I would call a deep and sometimes almost vital interest in all forms of the arts, I automatically notice these things. The naked woman positioned backwards, kneeling on the chair with her arms over the back, was the mother who, according to the caption written in the margin by hand, found relief for her lower back pain with an hour of coitus from behind, supposedly by one or several of the male members of her family. More than half a century has passed since the inrushes of the erotic into literature and poetry, but that friend, the author of the notebook, or handcrafted book, seemed to have been absent from the world of everyday,orofallthoseyears.Atthepresenttimethereisalmost no form of eroticism that is not generously documented by multimedia files on the web. Among this hodgepodge that in certain details and from a literary point of view is not without merit, with texts that in general harmonize with or allude to the illustrations, photos and abundant graphic material, I take special notice of the three deaths that the author describes or qualifies as surrealistic acts. The one who lovingly put together this handcrafted book is a friend of mine who, after not having seen me for years, suddenly got in touch and gave me the book, watching from behind the thick lenses of his glasses with something akin to anxiety. A certain familiarity assails me in some paragraphs, and I finally realize that it’s as if I had written them. Or very like it. In any event, in that torrent of paragraphs, verses, dialogues, aphorisms, phrases and expressions, there very occasionally appear things written almost in my style. Finally, overcoming an innate modesty that some of my friends think has prevented the recognition that should, according to them, be my due—but which people closer to me attribute to fatigue, negligence or foolishness—I have to admit that it has Cloudburst 90 been “greatly influenced by my writing.” The poetic quality of the text does not succeed in masking the precision of the details of the murders, nor does it hide the identity of the victims who not long ago appeared for several days in the local and national media, which is already significant. In his not very expressive but intense way, this friend has always recognized or tried to recognize me as that avant-garde author who was missing from our generation, and it seems that he got carried away, as happens in many cases not only to individuals but to entire nations that get carried away by fads or ideologies from more prestigious places, which they exaggerate and even deform. Neruda was not really going to kill a nun with a blow to the ear or frighten a notary with a cut lily, nor do I believe that Breton knew how to shoot a revolver; these are things that were written, and that are now expressed bursting with ketchup on the small screen or displayed in popular dance music, with abundant female victims. But now I have to look for somewhere to hide the book. Since it’s a public holiday I go to my workplace thinking of a way to prevent my (ex-)friend from contacting me again; I imagine that these concerns must have hampered Ho Chi Minh when he was trying to sneak away from Pol Pot through one of the slum streets in those western metropolises that shelter the same refugees that one day will convert them to ashes. I enter with my personal key and once in the basement I douse the book with gasoline and set fire to it, and this is how I unintentionally burn down the school where I teach. Translated by Christel Kopp ...