Anteparadise, A Bilingual edition

Notes

NOTES Devotion, p. ix. Diamela Eltit, teacher and novelist, is the major source of inspiration for Purgatorio and Anteparaiso, Zurita's first two books. The beaches of Chile V, p. 15 "En esa desesperada" (in his despair) is a typical construction throughout this book. Zurita's consistent use of the nominalized adjective in the feminine form-desesperada, rather than the noun desespero-constitutes a break from traditional poetic diction in Spanish, and he is extremely inventive in his varied use of this form. Similar instances of this particular usage are, on p. 27, "la iluminada de estos sueiios" (the illumination of these dreams) rather than iluminaci6n, and "esas lloradas" (those tears) rather than esos llantos, p. 33. Most frequently Zurita uses the evocative and ambiguous form found in the last verse of "The Sparkling Beaches." By using "la bautizada bendita" (the blessed baptism) rather than "el bautismo bendito," p. 19, Zurita suggests a number of feminine nouns with the self-contained modifier "baptized"; la patria (homeland or country), la libertad (freedom), la prometida (fiancee), and so on. The same is true of la constelada que pidieron," which I translate "the star they asked for" (p. 25), but the nominalized adjective la constelada carries within it the modifier "starry" or "star-spangled," along with the nouns (country, liberty , fiancee, etc.) mentioned above. In most instances I have rendered this by pinning the meaning down to the noun "country," preceded by the adjective, as in la revivida (the revived country, p. 37), la reverdecida (this country green again, p. 133), la enverdecida (this country green again, p. 137), la renacida (the country reborn, p. 141), and so on. The same kind of ambiguity applies to the "woman" addressed in many poems of Pastoral , as well as to the elusive possessive adjective sulsus (his, her, your, its, their), which is used so effectively in poems such as the series entitled "The Duce's Cordilleras." All these structures, as well as the distortions and breaks in Zurita's syntax, tend to give his language a connotation of a kind of delirium in which it becomes senseless to speak of masculine or feminine gender, of possession and attribution, as if he were speaking in 213 214 NOTES a state of ecstasy or rapture, where the most important thing is the power and purity of the images. The beaches of Chile XIV, p. 37 Aurtitico (auratic) is a neologism based on the noun "aura," and I have rendered it literally. Cordilleras III, p. 61 The opening text attributed to an Aymani Indian song is apocryphal. Cordilleras V, p. 65 The opening text attributed to the Quiche (an Indian language and a people of Guatemala) is supposed to be a child's voice. Zurita says that he recalls something similar to this passage in the Popoh Yuh (the sacred book of the Quiche, based on oral traditions). "Esas voladas" (the demented mountains) is a nominalized adjective agreeing with montaiws or cordilleras; the word volado also means delirious , high, or intoxicated, as well as demented. The Duce's cordilleras, p. 71 "Those mountains to the west" (there are none to the west of Santiago) are the Duce's troops. The sense of isolation and imprisonment suggested by this recurrent image is at once eerie and overwhelming. The sky holes II, p. 79 The first text is a figurative rendering of Gen. 2.1 ("Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them"). Ojos del Salado, p. 91 Lying between the provinces of Catamarca, in Argentina, and Atacama, in the Andean sector of northern Chile, Ojos del Salado is the highest (6,908 meters) extinct volcano in the world. The literal meaning of Ojos del Salado is "headsprings of the Salado [River]." NOTES In the following two poems, Huascaran (elevation 6,780 meters) is a mountain located in the Cordillera Blanca of the Peruvian Andes, in the province of Ancash, and Aconcagua (elevation 6,959 meters), located in the Argentine province of Mendoza, is the highest mountain in the Western Hemisphere. The valleys of the malquerida, p. 111 In Spanish, "la malquerida" is a woman loved by someone whose love is misguided, misplaced, or improper (e.g., love for a prostitute or incestuous love), or by someone who does not deserve the affections of the woman loved. La Malquerida (1913) is also a play written by Jacinto Benavente . The Spanish gozandose (enjoying...