Mario Vargas Llosa
2010 NOBEL PRIZE WINNER FOR LITERATURE
The greatest contribution of literature to human progress is perhaps to remind us that the world is badly made; and that those who pretend to the contrary, the powerful and the lucky, are lying; and that the world can be improved, and made more like the worlds that our imagination and our language are able to create.Mario Vargas Llosa [1a]
His impassioned defense of the irreducibility of literature’s worth for the health of our intellectual and moral consciousness is exhilarating to read. This article on the ‘premature obituary of the book’ will serve as an affirmative text for those readers who believe in the singularity of literature’s inspiring truths in serving our hearts and minds. Read below;
K a t a (K a t i c a) K U L A V K O V A (b. 1951), PhD. She is a poet, theoretician of literature and literary essayist. Professor of Theory of Literature and Literary Hermeneutics at the Department of General and Comparative Literature on the Faculty of Philology, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje. Her poetry has been translated into many languages and represented in books, anthologies and selections of contemporary Macedonian poetry. She is a member of the Macedonian Academy of Arts and Sciences, Chair of the Translation and Linguistic Rights Committee of P.E.N. International, Editor in Chief of the international multilingual P.E.N E-CollectionDIVERSITY (www.diversity.org.mk), founder of the comparatist E-Review Mirage (www.mirage.com.mk). Memberships: Macedonian P.E.N. Centre, World Comparatists Association, European Association of Culture (Venice), World Haiku Association.
The poems below are from her collection 'Time Difference"
SEQUENCE OF TENSES
Versify me quietly, you say
from the other side of the pronouns
the verbs are reflexive, then unreflexive
choose with whom and how
you'll make the tenses agree
and change over (for one night)
the nouns and adjectives, in gender and number.
Do not exclude the first, infamous
dehydrated person singular, yet
can you be personal
and speak in someone else's name?
To have the correct
elevated melancholy
avoid it, in the formal sense of the word.
In poems the symbols hum, they are wise and passionate
lusting one after another
- promiscuity of ideas -
but meta-bullets are not senseless
the lines are secret emotional associations.
You are not satisfied
with travelling in a known direction
you want to pronounce nostalgia
without being conventional:
a patriotic illness, for example
"erotcism is nostalgia for the native land"
(you are born and you finish there)
it has a warm, juicy ground
and it reacts to touch, it drizzles
and loses its mind, legally and illegally
I am not always in the I-form
I is: you am: he are...
from the other side of the pronouns
the verbs are reflexive, then unreflexive
choose with whom and how
you'll make the tenses agree
and change over (for one night)
the nouns and adjectives, in gender and number.
Do not exclude the first, infamous
dehydrated person singular, yet
can you be personal
and speak in someone else's name?
To have the correct
elevated melancholy
avoid it, in the formal sense of the word.
In poems the symbols hum, they are wise and passionate
lusting one after another
- promiscuity of ideas -
but meta-bullets are not senseless
the lines are secret emotional associations.
You are not satisfied
with travelling in a known direction
you want to pronounce nostalgia
without being conventional:
a patriotic illness, for example
"erotcism is nostalgia for the native land"
(you are born and you finish there)
it has a warm, juicy ground
and it reacts to touch, it drizzles
and loses its mind, legally and illegally
I am not always in the I-form
I is: you am: he are...
Translated by Ilija Casule and Thomas Shapcott
LIVING TOGETHER
She didn't get to turn her back on a man
like a sign of respect and understanding
no man complained
about the way she sleeps
about the night decor
or the flashes of lightning and the signals for help
she didn't have space to get bored with her life
she finished everything on time
not only out of fear that the idea
of the great and only love will come true
but also because of her duties and women
skilful in defacing the future
or with the blessing of the unrepeatable
- as one of her friends put it
that is, those who are above it all.
She was obsessed by the crystal and magnetic
shrieks of Mars and Venus, not
the meagre reproach of living together
- all those public, family and religious holidays!
No-one thinks him ill-humoured when he says
"I've put up with her all these years and I'm fed up
with the mother of my children". Nobody
became father of her children. But
she got involved with everyone
in a revelation of sorts: blood and flesh, beauty
that had the zeal of a novice and a champion.
And she left everyone without exception
with the same excuse: curiosity must be maintained
and freedom must have a description and a flavour.
There is a power void in making love
despite the rhythm of passion and magic.
There is the beginning of the world.Translated by Ilija Casule and Thomas Shapcott
like a sign of respect and understanding
no man complained
about the way she sleeps
about the night decor
or the flashes of lightning and the signals for help
she didn't have space to get bored with her life
she finished everything on time
not only out of fear that the idea
of the great and only love will come true
but also because of her duties and women
skilful in defacing the future
or with the blessing of the unrepeatable
- as one of her friends put it
that is, those who are above it all.
She was obsessed by the crystal and magnetic
shrieks of Mars and Venus, not
the meagre reproach of living together
- all those public, family and religious holidays!
No-one thinks him ill-humoured when he says
"I've put up with her all these years and I'm fed up
with the mother of my children". Nobody
became father of her children. But
she got involved with everyone
in a revelation of sorts: blood and flesh, beauty
that had the zeal of a novice and a champion.
And she left everyone without exception
with the same excuse: curiosity must be maintained
and freedom must have a description and a flavour.
There is a power void in making love
despite the rhythm of passion and magic.
There is the beginning of the world.
