Antologia. Sylvia Plath.

You said you would kill it this morning.

                 Do not kill it. 

Al contrario de lo que mucha gente piensa, una obra en construcción (en proceso), es decir, la obra poética o artística que es siempre una preparación para esa otra obra superior que nunca llega, sí tiene interés y validez por si misma. Son precisamente la búsqueda, los excesos y los caminos equivocados lo que otorga valor y unidad a un conjunto de poemas que de no ser representar el camino a una obra definitiva (que puede llegar o no), parecerían dispersos y sin relación.

Más o menos es lo que ocurre con Sylvia Plath. Su obra representa una búsqueda constante (paralela a su vida interior) que concluye en su gran obra póstuma, 'Ariel' y en su suicidio de despedida. En esta extraña antología de Visor, seguramente por motivos de derechos, no aparecen ninguno de los poemas de 'Ariel'. Y está bien que sea así. Porque:

Su obra queda dividida en dos caras opuestas que se necesitan para completarse. Por un lado, la búsqueda, por el otro el descubrimiento. La búsqueda, que es un proceso vital, emocional y artístico, se extiende en el tiempo y el espacio, su historia, su biografía; su descubrimiento, expresado a través de símbolos en 'Ariel', un instante, es el final del camino (para ella al menos lo fue), la muerte, y se encuentra en un nivel que no es espacio ni tiempo.

Esta antología solamente incluye la búsqueda, su vida. Resulta en ocasiones realmente compleja y difícil, pero en conjunto parece un intento de explicar intuitivamente la relación entre su entorno y su vida interior a través de la imagen mental: la metáfora como modo de comprender y relacionarse con el entorno. Un proceso vital y existencial, que termina en 'Ariel', que hasta el final no es más que una búsqueda. Y es en esa búsqueda, precisamente, donde se encuentra su valor.

Habría que hacer una mención especial al traductor y encargado de esta edición, el bueno de Jesús Pardo, quizás uno de los que más sepan de poesía en España y que además realiza un estudio previo sobre la obra de Plath realmente interesante. Pero, no sé por qué, dudo mucho que Sylvia Plaht utilizara palabras como "asómanse" y por ahí van los tiros de lo que quiero decir. Podría ponerme a buscar ejemplos, pero es tarde y me pondría nervioso y ya no podría dormir hoy. Comparar la versión original con la española solamente puede llevar la frustración y a la desesperación.

Por ser este libro claramente la peor traducción que he leído jamás no pienso poner la versión española de mis poemas preferidos. Son muy complicados de leer sus poemas, por lo general, y requieren de un inglés casi nativo, yo solamente habré entendido un 35 por ciento del total (o menos) con mucho esfuerzo, pero lo cierto es que la singularidad rítmica de Sylvia Plath y el poder de las connotaciones y sugerencias de sus imágenes (aunque lleguen incompletas) tienen un poder de trasmisión que casi supera al de los significados (Seguramente, me he excedido, pero o al menos pueden disfrutarse sin 'entenderlos' del todo):

Mushrooms

Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly


Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.

Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.

Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,

Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,

Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We

Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking

Little or nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!

We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,

Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:

We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot's in the door.

Poem for a Birthday”, Sylvia Plath, 1959

1. Who

The month of flowering’s finished. The fruit’s in,

Eaten or rotten. I am all mouth.

October’s the month for storage.

The shed’s fusty as a mummy’s stomach:

Old tools, handles and rusty tusks.

I am at home here among the dead heads.

Let me sit in a flowerpot,

The spiders won’t notice.

My heart is a stopped geranium.

If only the wind would leave my lungs alone.

Dogsbody noses the petals. They bloom upside down.

They rattle like hydrangea bushes.

Mouldering heads console me,

Nailed to the rafters yesterday:

Inmates who don’t hibernate.

Cabbageheads: wormy purple, silver-glaze,

A dressing of mule ears, mothy pelts, but green-hearted,

Their veins white as porkfat.

O the beauty of usage!

The orange pumpkins have no eyes.

These halls are full of women who think they are birds.

This is a dull school.

I am a root, a stone, an owl pellet,

Without dreams of any sort.

Mother, you are the one mouth

I would be a tongue to. Mother of otherness

Eat me. Wastebasket gaper, shadow of doorways.

I said: I must remember this, being small.

There were such enormous flowers,

Purple and red mouths, utterly lovely.

The hoops of blackberry stems made me cry.

Now they light me up like an electric bulb.

For weeks I can remember nothing at all.

Poem for a Birthday”, Sylvia Plath, 1959

1. Who

The month of flowering’s finished. The fruit’s in,

Eaten or rotten. I am all mouth.

October’s the month for storage.

The shed’s fusty as a mummy’s stomach:

Old tools, handles and rusty tusks.

I am at home here among the dead heads.

Let me sit in a flowerpot,

The spiders won’t notice.

My heart is a stopped geranium.

If only the wind would leave my lungs alone.

Dogsbody noses the petals. They bloom upside down.

They rattle like hydrangea bushes.

Mouldering heads console me,

Nailed to the rafters yesterday:

Inmates who don’t hibernate.

Cabbageheads: wormy purple, silver-glaze,

A dressing of mule ears, mothy pelts, but green-hearted,

Their veins white as porkfat.

O the beauty of usage!

The orange pumpkins have no eyes.

These halls are full of women who think they are birds.

This is a dull school.

I am a root, a stone, an owl pellet,

Without dreams of any sort.

Mother, you are the one mouth

I would be a tongue to. Mother of otherness

Eat me. Wastebasket gaper, shadow of doorways.

I said: I must remember this, being small.

There were such enormous flowers,

Purple and red mouths, utterly lovely.

The hoops of blackberry stems made me cry.

Now they light me up like an electric bulb.

For weeks I can remember nothing at all.

Pheasant

You said you would kill it this morning.

Do not kill it. It startles me still,
The jut of that odd, dark head, pacing

Through the uncut grass on the elm's hill.
It is something to own a pheasant,
Or just to be visited at all.

I am not mystical: it isn't
As if I thought it had a spirit.
It is simply in its element.

That gives it a kingliness, a right.
The print of its big foot last winter,
The trail-track, on the snow in our court

The wonder of it, in that pallor,
Through crosshatch of sparrow and starling.
Is it its rareness, then? It is rare.

But a dozen would be worth having,
A hundred, on that hill-green and red,
Crossing and recrossing: a fine thing!

It is such a good shape, so vivid.
It's a little cornucopia.
It unclaps, brown as a leaf, and loud,

Settles in the elm, and is easy.
It was sunning in the narcissi.
I trespass stupidly. Let be, let be.

Love Letter

Not easy to state the change you made.
If I'm alive now, then I was dead,
Though, like a stone, unbothered by it,
Staying put according to habit.
You didn't just tow me an inch, no-
Nor leave me to set my small bald eye
Skyward again, without hope, of course,
Of apprehending blueness, or stars.

That wasn't it. I slept, say: a snake
Masked among black rocks as a black rock
In the white hiatus of winter-
Like my neighbors, taking no pleasure
In the million perfectly-chisled
Cheeks alighting each moment to melt
My cheeks of basalt. They turned to tears,
Angels weeping over dull natures,
But didn't convince me. Those tears froze.
Each dead head had a visor of ice.

And I slept on like a bent finger.
The first thing I was was sheer air
And the locked drops rising in dew
Limpid as spirits. Many stones lay
Dense and expressionless round about.
I didn't know what to make of it.
I shone, mice-scaled, and unfolded
To pour myself out like a fluid
Among bird feet and the stems of plants.
I wasn't fooled. I knew you at once.

Tree and stone glittered, without shadows.
My finger-length grew lucent as glass.
I started to bud like a March twig:
An arm and a leg, and arm, a leg.
From stone to cloud, so I ascended.
Now I resemble a sort of god
Floating through the air in my soul-shift
Pure as a pane of ice. It's a gift.





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Aquí un poco de publicidad si me permitís.



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