So finally, a section from The Savage Detectives.
I was a relatively green translator
when I tackled this book.
Having previously translated some books
of some volumes of non-fiction by Mario Vargas
Llosa and a few other assorted novels,
it was, by far, the most difficult thing I had ever done.
And I knew how--
I knew how important it was to get it right.
I had read it on submission for the publisher
and written a report for the publisher,
and the deeper in I got, the more I'm
amazed I was that it hadn't been translated already.
At that point, it had been out in Spanish for maybe five years.
I loved it, and it is probably, still,
my favorite of Bolaño's novels.
Although, there's a lot of competition.
As you probably know, it begins in Mexico City,
with a story of two young poets, Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima,
and their search for Cesárea Tinajero, an avant-garde poet
of the previous generation.
But there's much more to it than that.
The bulk of the novel, the long middle section,
is told from the perspectives of 40-some characters,
who cross paths with either Belano or Ulises all over
the world.
And like Dalton, who is the author of a single novel called
Pobrecito Poeta Que Era Yo, which is not translated yet
and very hard to get hold of, even in Spanish,
and probably inspired The Savage Detectives,
Bolaño claimed to have met Dalton in El Salvador,
so there is a connection there between the two writers.
And also, the other connection, which you'll see here,
is that Bolaño writes scathingly and lovingly about poets
and poetry and the pursuit of literature in general.
So you'll recognize the tone.
The section that I'm going to read is from the big middle--
the long middle part.
And this is in the voice of Luis Sebastián Rosado, who
is a snotty upper crust young poet who, despite himself, is
attracted to the more streetwise group of poets
around Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima.
And so Belano and Lima's group call themselves the Visceral
Realists.
And this section that I've chosen to read here
gets deep into the weeds of Mexican and French poetry,
so it's perfect for a Center of Poetry Reading
and for all you sophisticated readers out there.
I'm sure you'll get all the references.
It's also touching and hilarious, I think,
and I hope that comes across.
It also has a long French poem in the middle of it.
I will read part of the French poem,
but I will not subject you to my French pronunciation
for the entire thing.
So this is Luis Sebastián Rosado, La Rama Dorada Coffee
Shop, Colonia Coyoacán, Mexico City, DF, April 1976.
"Monsiváis said at first, disciples
of Marinetti and Tzara, their noisy, outrageous,
overwrought poems did battle in the realm
of simple typographic arrangement,
never rising above the level of childish entertainment.
Monsi was talking about the stridentists,
but the same goes for the visceral realists.
No one paid attention to them, and they
opted for indiscriminate assault. In December of 75,
just before Christmas, I was unlucky enough to run into some
of them here at La Rama Dorada.
The owner, Don Néstor Pesqueira, will back me up.
It was extremely unpleasant.
One of them, the one in charge, was Ulises Lima.
The second was a big, fat dark guy
called Moctezuma or Cuauhtémoc.
The third went by the name Luscious Skin.
I was sitting right here, waiting
for Alberto Mora and his sister, and all of a sudden,
these three nuts surround me, sitting down,
one on each side of me.
And they say, 'Luisito, let's talk poetry.
Let's analyze the future of Mexican poetry,' something like
that.
I'm not a violent person.
And of course, I got nervous.
I thought, what are they doing here?
How did they find me?
What scores have they come to settle?
This country is a disgrace, it must be said,
and so is Mexican literature, it must also be said.
Anyway, we were talking for 20 minutes.
I have never been so annoyed by the lateness of Albertico
and his snotty sister.
And finally, we even managed to agree on several points.
When it came down to it, 90% of the time,
we hated the same things.
Of course, I always stood up for what Octavio Paz was
doing on the literary scene, and of course, they all
seemed to like--
Of course, all they seemed to like
was what they were doing themselves.
Thank goodness.
That being a lesser evil, I mean,
since it would have been worse if they had declared themselves
disciples of the peasant poets or followers of poor Rosario
Castellanos, or disciples of Jaime Sabines.
One Jaime is enough, in my opinion.
And then Alberto got here, and I was still alive.
There had been a little bit of shouting,
some unpleasant language, a certain kind of behavior
that was inappropriate in a place like La Rama Dorada.
Don Néstor Pesquiera will back me up here, but that was all.
And when Alberto arrived, I thought
I'd handled the situation well.
But then, Julia Moore comes right out
and asks them who they are and what they plan to do that night.
And the one called Luscious Skin is
quick to say that they're not doing anything,
that if she has any ideas, she should say so.
He's up for anything.
And then Julita, oblivious of the looks her brother and I are
shooting her, says we could go dancing
at Priapos, an insanely vulgar place in Colonia
de Mayo or Tepito.
I've only been there once, and I've always
done my best to forget it.
And since neither Alberto nor I can say no to Julita,
off we go in Alberto's car, with Alberto, Ulises Lima, and me
in the front seat, and Julita, Luscious Skin,
and the guy called Cuauhtémoc or Moctezuma in the back seat.
Honestly, I feared the worst.
These people weren't trustworthy.
Somebody told me once that they cornered Monsi in Sanborns
at the Casa Borda.
But since Monsi did agree to have coffee with them, granted
them an audience, he might say, it was partly his fault.
Because everybody knows the visceral realists are just
like the stridentists.
And everybody knows what Monsi thinks about the stridentists,
so he really couldn't complain about what happened.
And anyway, nobody or almost nobody knows what did happen.
Though, occasionally, I've been tempted to ask him,
but I haven't, not wanting to pry or open old wounds.
Still, something happened to him during his meeting
with the visceral realists.
And everybody knows it--
everybody who secretly loves or hates Monsi.
And there were all kinds of hypotheses and theories.
But anyway, that's what I was wondering,
as Alberto's car shot like lightning
or crawled like a cockroach, depending
on the traffic toward Priapos.
And in the back seat, Julita Moore
kept talking and talking and talking to the two
visceral realist bums.
I'll spare you a description of the club itself.
I swear to God, I thought we wouldn't get out of there alive.
All I'll say is that the furnishings and human specimens
adorning its interior seemed arbitrarily plucked from
Lizardi's The Mangy Parrot, Mariano Azuela's The Underdogs,
del Paso's José Trigo, the worst novels of the Onda and the worst
'50s porn.
More than one woman looked like Tongolele, who, incidentally,
I don't think was making movies in the '50s, but should have
been.
So as I was saying, we went into Priapos and sat at a table close
to the dance floor.
And as Julita danced a chacha or a bolero or a danzón--
I'm not exactly up on the annals of popular music--
Alberto and I started to talk about something.
What it was, I swear I can't remember.
And a waiter brought us a bottle of tequila or rat poison,
that we accepted without a murmur.
That's how desperate we were.
And suddenly, in less time than it takes to say otherness,
we were drunk.
And Ulises Lima was reciting a poem in French.
What in the world for?
I don't know, but he was reciting it.
I didn't realize he spoke French--
English, maybe.
I think I'd seen a translation of his somewhere of Richard
Brautigan-- terrible poet--
or John Giorno, whoever he is.
Maybe a stand in for Lima himself.
But French?
That surprised me a little.
Good enunciation, passable pronunciation, and the poem,
how to put it, sounded familiar-- very familiar.
But because of my increasing drunkenness
or the relentless boleros, I couldn't identify it.
I thought of Claudel, but none of us
can imagine Lima reciting Claudel, can we?
I thought of Baudelaire.
I thought of Catulle Mendes, some of whose texts
I translated for a university journal.
I thought of Nerval.
Ashamed as I am to admit it, those
were the names that came to mind.
In my defense, I should say that soon,
through the haze of alcohol, I asked myself
what Nerval could possibly have in common with Mendes.
And then I thought of Mallarmé.
Alberto, who must have been playing the same game,
said Baudelaire.
It wasn't Baudelaire, of course.
Here's the poem.
Let's see if you can guess."
Maybe I'll let you all guess before we get to there.
So this is just the first stanza.
There are three stanzas.
Mon triste coeur bave á la poupe,
Mon coeur couvert de caporal: ils y lancent des jets de soupe,
Mon triste coeur bave a la poupe: Sous les quolibets de la trouppe
Qui pousse un rire general, Mon triste coeur
bave a la poupe, Mon coeur couvert de caporal!
Anybody?
Yes.
Who said Rimabud?
Very nice.
"It's Rimbaud, which was a surprise, relatively speaking,
that is.
The really surprising thing, was that he recited it in French.
Anyway, I was a little angry not to have guessed it,
since I know Rimbaud's work fairly well,
but I didn't let it bother me.
Another point in common, maybe we
would make it out of that hellhole alive.
And after reciting Rimabud, Ulises Lima
told a story about Rimbaud and some war.
Which war?
I don't know, war not being a subject that interests me.
But there was something, a common theme
linking RImbaud, the poem and the war, assorted story,
I'm sure.
Although, at the time, my ears and then my eyes
were registering other assorted little stories.
I swear I'll kill Julita Moore if she drags me to another dive,
like Priapos.
Disjointed scenes in which brooding young delinquents
danced with desperate young cleaning
girls or desperate young whores in a whirl of contrast
that, I confess, heightened my drunkenness of such a thing
as possible.
Then there was a fight somewhere.
I didn't see anything.
I just heard shouts.
A pair of thugs emerged from the shadows,
dragging a guy with blood all over his face.
I remember I told Alberto that we should go,
that things could take a turn for the worse.
But Alberto was listening to Ulises Lima's story,
and he ignored me.
I remember that I watched Julita dancing
with one of Ulises's friends.
Then I remember dancing a bolero myself, with Luscious Skin,
as if it were a dream.
But still, it might have been the first time
I'd felt good all night.
In fact, it was definitely the first time
I'd felt good all night.
In fact, next, like someone waking up,
I remember whispering into my dance partner's ear
that what we were doing would probably
offend the other dancers and spectators.
It's not clear what happened next.
Someone said something rude to me.
I was, I don't know, ready to crawl under a table
and fall asleep, or curl up on Luscious Skin's chest
and fall asleep there, too.
But someone said something rude to me,
and Luscious Skin made a motion, as if to leave me,
and turned to face the person who'd spoken.
I don't know what he said-- pansy or faggot.
I'm still not accustomed to that sort of language,
though I know I should be, but I was so drunk.
My muscles were slack, and he couldn't let go of me.
If he had, I would have fallen.
And he just shot something back from the middle
of the dance floor.
I closed my eyes, trying to remove myself
from the situation.
Luscious Skin's shoulders smelled
like sweat, a strange acidic smell,
as if he just walked away unscathed from the explosion
of a chemical plant.
And then I heard him speak, not to one person,
but to several people, more than two, at least.
And people were raising their voices.
Then I opened my eyes, my God, and what
I saw wasn't the people surrounding us, but myself.
My arm in Luscious Skin's shoulder,
my left arm around his waist, my cheek on his shoulder.
And I saw or imagined I saw the malicious looks,
the stares of born killers.
And then, rising in sheer terror above my drunkenness,
I wanted to disappear.
Oh, Earth, swallow me up.
I beg to be struck by lightning.
I wished in a word never to have been born.
How completely mortifying.
I was red with shame.
I wanted to vomit.
I had let go of Luscious Skin, and I was hardly able to stand,
realizing that I was the object of cruel mockery
and under attack at the same time.
My one consolation was that the mocker was also under attack.
It was essentially as if having been betrayed in battle.
What battles?
What wars was Ulises Lima talking about?
I was begging the angels of justice
or the angels of the apocalypse for a great wave to appear,
a great miraculous wave that would sweep both of us
away, that would sweep us all away,
that would put an end to the ridicule and injustice.
But then, through the icy lakes of my eyes,
the wrong metaphor, since it was sweltering inside Priapos.
But I can't think of any better way
to say that I was about to cry, and that
at the exact moment of about two had changed my mind,
backpedaling.
But that a distorting layer of liquid still glazed my pupils.
I saw the horrific figure of Julita Moore
appear intertwined with Cuauhtémoc or Moctezuma
or Nezahualcoyotl or whatever his name was,
and he and Luscious Skin stood up
to the people who were making trouble,
while Julita put her arm around my waist and asked me
whether those sons of bitches had done anything to me
and got me off the dance floor and out of that revolting dive.
Once we were outside, Julita led me to the car.
And in the middle of the street, I started to cry.
And when Julita helped me into the back seat,
I asked-- no, begged her to leave with me.
I wanted the three of us to go and leave the others there
with their own evil kind.
Please, Julita, I said.
And she said, for fuck's sake, Luisito,
you're spoiling my night.
Please don't start.
And then I remember that I said or shouted
or howled, what they've done to me is worse
than what they did to Monsi.
And Julita asked, what the fuck they'd done to Monsi?
She also asked which Monsi I meant.
She said Muncy or Monshe, I can't remember.
And I said Monsiváis, Julita, Monsiváis, the essayist.
And she said, oh, not seeming surprised at all.
My God, the fortitude of that woman, I thought.
And then I think I vomited, and I started to cry,
or I started to cry and then vomited in Alberto's car.
And Julita started to laugh.
And by then the others were coming out of Priapos.
I saw their shadows on the beam of a streetlight, and I thought,
what have I done?
What have I done?
And I was so ashamed that I collapsed on the seat
and curled up in a ball and pretended to be asleep.
But I could hear them talking.
Julita said something, and the visceral realists replied.
Their voices sounded cheerful, not hostile at all.
Then Alberto got in the car and said, what the fuck is this?
It stinks in here.
And then I opened my eyes and seeking his eyes
in the rear view mirror, I said, I'm sorry,
Alberto, I didn't mean to.
I feel really sick.
And then Julita got in the passenger seat and said,
my God, Alberto, open the windows.
It reeks.
And I said, do you mind, Julita?
There's no need to exaggerate.
And Julita said, Luisito, it smells like you've
been dead for a week.
And I laughed, not much, but I was already
starting to feel better.
At the end of the street, under the lighted sign for Priapos,
shadows were roving, but not toward our car.
And then Julita Moore rolled down her window
and kissed Luscious Skin and Moctezuma or Cuauhtémoc, but not
Ulises Lima, who was standing away from the car,
looking up at the sky.
And then Luscious Skin stuck his head in the window
and said, how are you, Luis?
And I don't think I even answered.
I just made a gesture as if to say, fine.
I'm fine.
And then Alberto started the Dodge,
and we headed out of Tepito with all the windows rolled down
on our way back to our own neighborhoods."
So if you want to find out what happens
between Luis Rosado and Luscious Skin, you got to read the book.
Thank you so much, everyone.
It's really been great.