So also during this time in the 1960s Cecilia Vicuña started
having these visions of words that sort of came together
and made other words.
And she created a whole series of these palabra armas,
which contains the word palabra, word, arma, arms, más,
meaning more, labrar, meaning to work.
So it's a word that contains a lot of words within it.
We're talking over dinner how difficult
it is to translate word play or language games.
It's probably the most difficult language problem
there is to translate or the most difficult translation
problem.
But I picked a few of them that I thought I could solve.
And these are called adivinanzas or divinations or riddles.
It sort of has that double meaning.
And so, like a riddle, it begins with a question.
And then the question itself contains the answer.
I will read my translation which is
a rethinking of the original riddle in order
for it to also contain a language game within it.
[CLEARS THROAT] So it begins with an epigraph.
The word is the divination.
To divine is to ascertain the divine.
What happens when libido crashes a tea party?
Anybody want to answer that?
[LAUGHTER]
What happens when libido crashes a tea party?
Liberty.
[LAUGHTER]
What does the deceitful doorman do at night?
Anyone?
He lies dormant.
[LAUGHTER]
Right?
What airs sweetly the free reign of lovers and reign
is misspelled?
Yeah?
So you know free reign is without the G,
but here, the G is in there.
So it's the free reign of lovers in love forever.
Lovers ever foreign.
I did three of those.
She had tons of them.
[LAUGHTER]
And that's about as much as I did.
[CLEARS THROAT]