Translating myself vol.2

Habrá sido hace un año cuando vi la imagen en Instagram por primera vez. Me desconcertó. Yo comenzaba mis andares profesionales por la traducción, por fin podía responder a la pregunta "¿a qué te dedicas?;"soy traductora", contestaba. Había pasado por dudas, cavilaciones, había trazado metas, me había enfrentado al miedo, a la crítica, a las entregas y a la decepción: si bien  me había preparado en Traducción literaria, lo cierto es que el campo de trabajo no era para nada fácil y terminé traduciendo artículos para una agencia de viaje, uno que otro documento como boletas de escuela, estados bancarios y cartas de gobierno que no necesitaban sellos de traducción oficial.

Para bien o para mal estaba desempeñándome en lo que quería: en los idiomas y en escribir. Poco a poco la paciencia dio frutos y pude traducir algunos textos académicos de arte y unos poemas. Aquello me llenaba el alma, pero, una vez que concluyó esa etapa me pregunté porque traducía en realidad. Claramente, no por fama ni por fortuna. Desde mi punto de vista, los traductores hacemos un trabajo silencioso, si bien de vital importancia, siempre desprovisto de un interés personal: queremos que se entienda al otro, nosotros somos sólo el medio. Nos sentimos honrados de que alguien nos confíe sus palabras, su mensaje, eso suele ser más que suficientes: ni gracias, ni alabanzas esperamos. Es tanto así, que hasta hace poco los traductores han comenzado una especie de campaña para que legalmente, nuestro trabajo se reconozca y que, obligatoriamente, se escriba el nombre del traductor en las portadas de los libros.

Es probable que al leer un libro, muchos sabrán quién es el autor, pero pocos hojearan la contraportada, las letras pequeñas, y descubrirán a una Aurora Bernández –quien nos permitió entender a Gustave Flaubert, Jean Paul Sartre, William Sartre, Albert Camus, entre otros (y sí, todos hombres, a Aurora le tocaron otros tiempos–– o a una Gemma Rovira Ortega –sí, gracias a ella el fenómeno "Harry Potter" cruzó la barrera cultural y llegó al habla hispana––; e incluso si lo hacen, las probabilidades que sus nombres queden grabados en el imaginario colectivo son mucho menores que las de que se recuerde a les autores.

Establecido que el traductor no busca ni reconocimiento ni fama, sí puedo decir lo que, al menos yo como traductora, busco: ayudar. Ya fuese a una autora, a que su historia y su voz llegue a otras latitudes, a estudiantes que necesiten una traducción actualizada de algún académico consagrado para cursar sus materias –y de paso, tengan otra perspectiva, puesto que sí, traducir de nuevo es permitir una mirada nueva–– o, en mi humilde labor de traducir boletas de calificaciones y estados bancarios, por ejemplo, ser la diferencia entre que alguien consiga una beca, un puesto de trabajo o un préstamo qué, de una forma u otra, mejore su vida –mejora que, sin la labor de la traducción, se queda estancada por la barrera lingüística–.

Aquello sin duda me dio ánimos y paz para seguir traduciendo, sin importar el tamaño del proyecto, no obstante resonaba esa frase en mi cabeza de vez en cuando. Me parecía un reclamo, un especie de connotación negativa sobre la traducción, que, desde mi ideal, era tan noble y buena, algo que permitía la comunicación y ampliar horizontes. 

"Ojalá no tengas que pasar la vida traduciendo tu alma". Como siempre, lo tomé con humor –red flag: reírme de mi para que no lo hagan los otros– y publique algo así como: "ayyy no, no le digan eso a un traductor" o "ayy, y yo que soy traductora". Flashforward a un año después: estoy en terapia.

Entre las muchas cosas que he tratado en terapia, las relaciones abuela-madre-hija han sido un tema central. No haciendo muy larga la escena, en una de las sesiones –obvio por zoom, pues #2020– mi psicóloga me dijo: "Eloisa, tienes todo el derecho a sentirte sola, repasando lo que me haz contado, tienes una gran razón para hacerlo". Me eché a llorar, incluso ahora siento como mis ojos se humedecen: en 25 años de mi vida, sentí que por primera vez alguien validaba mis sentimientos. Yo siempre había sido la niña que lloraba mucho, la niña que nunca estaba contenta, la niña a la que le iban a dar "verdaderas razones para llorar". Si bien muchas veces, como en todas las infancias, esas eran maneras de lidiar con rabietas y/o berrinches, la niña que creció (como sus problemas) siguió escuchando esas frases innumerables veces. No solo eso: enojos, reclamos, llantos. En mi casa toda emoción que no fuera un "te quiero mucho", "estoy feliz" se significó como algo "malo" o "tabú". Me volví una persona que entonces dejó de expresar sus malestares y descontentos. Preferí callarme, jamás lloraba (para mi llorar frente a alguien, o admitir que lo hago, todavía me cuesta), jamás alzaba la voz, era esa chica a la que decían "¿Pues qué pasó para que te hicieran enojar?" o "Órale, pues ella es super tranquila, para que se enoje tiene debe estar cañón", o "Baby, yo sé que odias la confrontación pero a veces solo así se arreglan las cosas" y no, yo lo odiaba, prefería callarme aguantar, todo para no llegar a los reclamos, las peleas, lo que fuera, en mi mente era: "No, las niña malas se enojan; no, solo los tontos se enojan", etc.

–¿Es que por qué me hicieron llegar a ese límite?– le contaba a la psicóloga, recordando una de las pocas veces me atreví a alzar la voz en casa, a lo que le siguió llorar, peleas, en fin, lo peor del mundo para  mí –Yo sí expresaba que quería un cambio y no lo veía, y lo volvía a expresar, y seguían sin hacerme caso, sin "oírme", pro eso ese día me puse a gritar; pero sí me preguntas, lo que me dolió más fue me hicieran llegar a eso, más que lo que me molestaba.

–Bueno, a veces expresando nuestro enojo es la única forma de que nos escuchen, no es un sentimiento que debería hacerte sentir mal ni culpable.

Yo tomaba un respiro y me cuestionaba: ¿enojarme no es malo?

– Tampoco es malo que estés enojada por todo lo que te ha pasado, y más porque parece que nunca ha habido nadie que te entienda como tú necesitas ser entendida.

–No, pero ya sabes qué dicen, "cada cabeza es un mundo", si yo quisiera que todos me entendieran nunca lo lograría, no creo que sea su culpa no entenderme.

–Mira, Elo, tal vez sea cierto, ¿pero te das cuenta qué presente lo tienes tú? Tú, por lo que me has contado, eres una persona que siempre busca entender al otro, que tras ese entendimiento quiere justificar las acciones de los demás, incluso si esas acciones te han hecho daño ¿Y sabes qué? Cuéntame,  ¿quién te ha querido entender a ti?, ¿cuándo, al contar algo personal, no te haz sentido regañada, reprochada, corregida?, ¿cuándo alguien te ha aceptado así sin más? Por lo que me dices, no parece que alguien se empeñe tanto en entenderte tanto como tú entenderlos. Es como si tú hubieses aprendido a hablar su idioma, a entenderlos, pero ellos no se interesaran por aprender el tuyo.

– Que chistoso lo que dices, yo soy traductora...

En ese momento no pude terminar la frase y me solté a llorar.

Aquella sesión no solo me confirmo que, si soy una persona reservada con mis emociones y muestras de afecto no es porque sea Capricornio, sino por toda esta rara dinámica familiar donde "es mejor no decir nada y así nadie se molesta", o "yo me aguanto mis malestar para no incomodar a otros"; sino también que la mente (el alma, el inconsciente, whatever), encuentra maneras de curarse a sí misma.

Las pláticas con mi terapeuta han sido muy largas, he podido hablar de temas que nunca he hablado con nadie más y he aprendido (estoy aprendiendo) a perdonarme, a no sentirme culpable por sentir, a dejar de poner a los demás antes que a mi, que, de hecho, no es malo ponerme a mi primero antes que a los demás porque solo así puedo dar lo mejor de mi, y sobre todo, me voy conociendo más a mi misma.

Honestamente, no sé si los caminos que elegimos en la vida son maneras en las que curamos heridas. Una profesora me lo dijo un día, ella tenía 70 años. No sé si eso cuenta de algo. No sé si decir "soy traductora", si empeñarme en recalcar qué importante es la labor del traductor, de cómo las traducciones son esenciales para entender que hay algo más allá de nuestros puntos de vista eran maneras de decir "alguien por favor interésese en comprenderme a mí, alguien por favor aprenda a hablar mi idioma".

No se si todos los traductores (y tal vez los estudiantes de otros idiomas) somos unos incomprendidos, o gente que de niñes tuvimos extraños ejemplos de comunicación interpersonal. Como sea, creo que ahora sé porque esa frase provocaba algo en mí. Creo que también voy comprendiendo que, simplemente, hay personas a las que no les interesa hablar nuestro idioma y que, en ese caso, seria mejor desistir pues llega a ser desgastante traducir el alma. También estoy volviendo a hablar mi idioma, pues pasé mucho tiempo invertida en aprender el de otros que, siento que algunas cosas he olvidado: estoy llorando lo que no he llorado en años, también estoy aprendiendo a amar sin miedo, como no lo he hecho en tanto tiempo.

P.d. actualmente estoy aprendiendo Macedonio, por cuestiones personales; y claro: hablo español, inglés y japonés. Estoy pensando en fundar una casa editorial para publicar de textos de mujeres inglesas que no han sido traducidas, just a thought.

Sobre poesía china y el espíritu (Shen) de las cosas (zhonguo wenshi dongxi de shen)

Tal vez para acercarnos a la poesía china debemos comenzar por entender sus principios y su cosmovisión. La cultura china, regida por el concepto del Tao*, busca en sus poemas lo espontáneo y natural, busca reflejar lo que ellos llamaron la verdadera naturaleza de las cosas.
Aquí, claro, debemos cuestionarnos qué es “lo verdadero”. Si bien, hay tantas respuestas como poetas en el mundo, lo que podemos notar en la poesía es, no tanto la verdad, sino la búsqueda o interpretaciones de dicha verdad. Por ejemplo, revisemos el poema Vuelven los caballos de un autor anónimo.

Vuelven los caballos.

En sus cascos traen perfumes

de flores que pisaron.

En primer lugar, tenemos la imagen del desplazamiento de los animales, tan sólo la palabra ‘vuelven’ ya sugiere cierta melancolía: ¿Acaso terminaron un viaje largo? ¿Vuelven de una aventura o más bien, de un mundano día más de labores sobre la tierra? ¿Volver implica calma, o, por ejemplo, derrota? ¿Triunfo y paz? ¿o regresan con malas noticias? El lector no puede saber eso, sin embargo, al no haber una sugerencia de que vuelvan con frenesí ni emoción, podemos asumir que se trata de una caminata suave y tranquila al haber concluido su jornada.
En la calma del animal el poeta busca expresar la “verdad” de la naturaleza, lo que Yan Yu (1180-1235) define como shen (“espíritu”): un estado de paz, de comprensión de la vida tras el frenesí de la aventura o de las labores cotidianas, estado que se alcanza en calma contemplativa. Sin embargo, más intrigante que la imagen del animal, es el uso de las flores. Una flor que han pisado es una flor muerta. Así, vida y muerte se entrelazan en la calma de un regreso. ¿A dónde se vuelve? ¿A dónde se va? Más que respuestas, el poeta busca una reflexión sobre la fragilidad de la vida, fragilidad a la que no está exenta ni el majestuoso caballo, ni la persona que lea estas líneas. Las flores, entonces, encierra belleza y futilidad, en cualquier momento convertidas en polvo bajo los pies de un descuidado e indiferente caballo. No obstante, y tras la muerte de estas flores, hay una permanencia. Queda el perfume, en este caso, la esencia de la flor. Así, el poeta se acerca al principio del feng (‘viento’) del que habla Liu Xie, el alma de las flores.
Mas esta reflexión no puede existir sin un conocimiento previo del mundo: el poeta sin duda ha observado esta escena en la vida real en algún punto de su vida, y tras la meditación, puede condensar en tres líneas sus pensamientos sobre la vida, la muerte, lo frágil y lo bello. En este punto, se cumple el principio del shi yuan qing, “La emoción estimulada por el contacto con la vida exterior, se ve impulsada a expresarse”. Como menciona González, el poema “manifiesta la belleza más íntima de un paisaje, su atmósfera poética siempre rica y variada [...] Se trata de un pasaje comunicador de flujo, indirecto e inmediato” (130). Esta es una poesía libre de restricciones político-morales, centrada en una estetización impersonalizada de la vida en búsqueda de reflejar la realidad esencial.

Lady Guoguo's Spring Outing by Zhang Xuan, la copia por un pintor de la dinastía Song

____________
*Para el pensamiento taoísta del Yijing, como en la obra del pensador Zhuang Zi, el concepto de literatura se define como manifestación del Tao, principio amoral que rige el mundo. Asimismo, en el primer capítulo del Wenxin dialong del autor Liu Xie, "En el Tao, el origen", Xie hace remontar el origen de todas las cosas al Tao, principio universal, inmanente y trascendente. Por ello, la literatura, cuyo origen es el Tao, posee un estatus de significación cósmica.

On Hang Kang's The Fruit of My Woman

I have to write. Today I don’t feel like I need to but rather that I have to. I owe it to myself. I didn’t know if I should write this on the pages of my diary. Pen and paper, always best. But then i thought my thoughts could be going rather fast and my hand is not as quick as my finger. So i stick to the digital paper. A google doc. And it is fine, that is not the point of all of this anyways. 

I read Hang Kang’s latest short story (or at least the latest translated) while i’m texting my boyfriend. He is something. I don’t even know how, nor want to, describe him. But for my own sake I’ll try.

He is tall and skinny. A small nose that I love. And a smile I like more than I don’t. I really like the shape of his teeth. He has just turned 26 and yet sometimes I feel he has the skin of a teenager, but that does not bother me. He has the prettiest heart, I keep saying and saying. To tell you why I came to that conclusion would be too much, but he does.

If he loves me, I don’t know. When I met him I was just bored. And I was too afraid when things started getting more serious. At the end of the day I was the one preaching the free-spirit tale in my group of friends. I was supposed to leave the country. I was going to China. But then a virus came and everything had to stop.Traveling, parties, work… even love. We’ve been secluded in our homes, I’ve only seen him twice since everything started, and it has been more like sneaking out than actually going to see him ‘cause I’ve done it behind my brother’s back ––who is too worried about this virus and does not want me to leave the house. i get it, but i also need to be with him or it is not bearable. However, I feel like twice in two months, only for a few hours, is not exactly ‘being together’ nor breaking the social distancing norms.

Last time I saw him we only had sex and barely talked. But it is ok, talking is what we’ve been mostly doing since our relationship has been reduced to facebook calls and texting. Before that we used to go here and there every weekend. Not too many since all this apocalyptic pandemic started a month after we met. I thought, then, that our relationship was going to die. I was afraid: What if we cannot talk? I love talking. I rarely do it. I mean, about things I actually care: like poems and languages and literary theory. 

sometimes talking with people is reduced to their relationships or non-important stuff. I had a friend to whom I could talk, but I did not physically liked him, so there’s that.

Him, I like him. I see him and feel like the luckiest to have him. The shape of his jaw, the way his hair falls down over his forehead, his eyes, the color of his skin, his little sparkling kind eyes. It is not all but it is something I love. His face, his body.

His smell. I like his smell. I’m getting used to it. It is a different smell. There has been smells, smells I’ve loved. His is fine. My heart does feel warmth when thinking of it. 

But when it all started I was just bored and horny, but perfectly fine on my own. Reading Soseki and Tanizaki, and daydreaming with Japan, even Korea. Learning everything about history, philosophy: reading all I could written by Eco and Bloom. That was happiness.

However at the core of all that was my wish of having a family. A husband and kids. Life in a flat, afternoons of being a mom. And I wonder if at the end it was all about that. Finding someone, falling in love, becoming a mother. I’ve read what i’ve wrote when I was 19 going on 20. I was honest:

En fin. Sobre fantasear con el futuro, a lo que iba es que soy una chica –fuerte e independiente– pero también quiero amor, y quiero casarme y tal vez tener hijos, o no, pero quiero tener a alguien...porque ¿por qué no?

I don’t KNOW what I really meant with all that, but I think about Jo March’s speech in Little Women by Greta Gerwig: 

Women, they have minds and they have souls as well as just hearts. And they've got ambition and they've got talent as well as just beauty, and I'm so sick of people saying that love is just all a woman is fit for. I'm so sick of it! But... I am so lonely.

Maybe I was feeling lonely… but rather...maybe I wanted to share, maybe I wanted a kiss that felt more meaningful than the ones given on drunken nights and dark alleyways before fucking and then disappearing. Maybe I was sick of having to disappear. I wanted to know that maybe it was not impossible to be loved and to love someone, whatever love means. Because at 25 I’m sure I won’t love the way I did before. It would be too immature. The magic of that love was precisely ignorance and lack of experience, what Blake calls innocence.

But as time passed and my heart learnt maybe it became too aloof. I’m trying my best, really. 

Being your own person, as a woman, has a price too high to pay. That is what mom taught me. Mothers. Such a figure for daughters. We do not wish to kill them (in the freudian sense of the words) but we are afraid of becoming like them. Like a loop. Never ending generations of submission and self-resignation. Sacrifices. Losing one self to give and give. “Eres madre antes que mujer”, how many times i didn’t hear that. Like you lose all your rights. Of that I am afraid. And I am not saying I will become one now or in a year or two. I don’t know if I’m really getting married, of course I don’t. I want to and I wish to, but it is not just that. The thing is that having a relationship made me think of everything that was not there when I was single. All the potentialities of life. And all the sacrifices too.

In Hang Kang’s tale a man tells a rather singular story. Kafkaesque as a nightmarish metamorphosis happens. A woman gets married. She doesn’t even have a name. How sad! She is only ‘my wife’. The narrator retells how it all happened:

But it wasn’t because of our marriage that she quit her job. It was only after she quit, not long after, in fact, that I’d talked of marriage concretely. She’d taken out all the money she had – whatever she’d put aside from her monthly salary and pension allowance, plus any extra from part-time work at weekends – and was planning on leaving the country. 

As soon as I read those lines I had that feeling, the ‘this is a sign’ feeling, or, the ‘everything is connected, nothing happens just because, nothing is casual’ feeling. Because I guess I’m in a crucial point in my life. At 25, still so young, almost a child. I cannot help myself, how could I help other, I think. Isn’t it just natural wanting all those adventures, the rush of adrenaline of traveling and suffering, loving and discovering as well as losing?The thing is, here, that I’ve traveled and suffered, and loved and lost.

Utrecht, London, Beijing, Seoul, Tokyo. I’ve been the lucky one. But at the end always on my own. I wonder why I crave for more? Why loneliness attracts me so much. I wonder if happiness is indeed within oneself and surrounded my paintings and books and coffee, why not sharing all that? Why do I picture my self best in a flat in a foreign country without long-life friends, without my parents or my siblings. 

‘I want to go and get some new blood in my veins,’ she said. This was the evening of the day when she’d finally given her letter of resignation to her immediate superior. She told me she wanted to transfuse the bad blood that was clotting up her veins like cysts and flush out her tired old lungs with fresh air. Living and dying freely had been her dream ever since she was a child, she said; she’d been putting it off because the time wasn’t right, but now she felt that she’d saved up enough to make her dream a reality. She planned to pick a country, stay there for six months or so, then move on somewhere else, and so on. ‘I want to do it before I die, you know,’ she said, and gave a low chuckle. ‘I want to see the very edge of the world. To get as far away as possible, bit by bit.’

I’ve been there, I know it is not easy. And I’ve come back and always think back and feel ‘how happy I was! How lucky I am to have had my life!’ and I want to keep adding those memories, like an addict. Like suddenly hugs and kisses and talking are not enough. Because it seems like it is not, like there is something else I want but I cannot name it because I am not sure of what it is: maybe making something for myself? Maybe not having it so easy? But that is quite hypocrite of me to say since I am writing from the comfort of my room, in pajamas, with coffee, in a flat my dad bought for me and since I haven’t had to leave my home and comfort the world outside because everything is falling apart. Everything is falling apart but I am safe and life is safe for me. Too safe. What am I doing then, I think? Why do I want to leave? I had a picture of my life: in Tokyo, learning languages, then doing a master, then if everything went well becoming an interpreter. It was a good plan and a safe plan and it gave me a sense of purpose. I was happy and excited and it was a goal, a big goal. Here what do I have? Truly: nothing. 

In this plan, too, was the possibility of finding love and marriage and children. Then it would have felt like I accomplished something. And like somehow it was something that happened and not what I wanted to happen. Because I wanted someone and wanted love. To be loved.

But in the end, instead of setting out for the world’s edge, my wife poured all her meagre funds into the deposit for this flat and our wedding costs. She’d explained this all to me in a single short sentence, saying she’d done it ‘because it’s not like I can part from you’. How real had been this dream of hers, this dream of freedom? Considering that she’d been able to relinquish it so easily, I assumed not very. The whole thing must have been nothing more than an unrealistic, romantic delusion, and the plans she’d made no more feasible than those a child might concoct for travelling to the moon. In the end, she must have realised all this by herself, and I felt vaguely moved and proud to think that I must have been the one who’d prompted this belated realisation.

That is the thing: how can we be sure we are loved? I have felt adored. Once again a safe standing point: what can go wrong if you are seen somehow like a goddess and not a mere human being. Does he adore me? I wonder. Is he willing to cross the sea for me, like others? Because if he isn’t, if I won’t be the center of his life then for me it would be too much a sacrifice. And yet, who would want me to be the center of his life? I won’t be daddy's girl for everyone. I’ll be a mere mortal. Who will want to share with me? Such a plain and simple girl. All I have are my adventures and without them I have nothing. Only a couple books I’ve read, pages of ink, and a weird love for flowers. 

I am a simpleton, really.

That does not mean I do not deserve love. I learnt to love me and fell in love with me. That is another thing: I don’t wanna lose myself, the loose sense of self I achieved after all: the stories, the trauma, the pain and finally the renaissance of my soul. And to give that up!

Hang Kang writes this story where the wife ––then a girl–– wants to travel, and how she does not to marry. Why she married him? because she felt she could not part from him! What a feeling, what a tragedy! And after a few years of sex and caresses she becomes quiet, too quiet, because truly that was all there was!: “but when I saw my wife standing with her cheek pressed against the glass door to the balcony, her narrow shoulders drooping like wilted cabbage leaves as she stared down at the speeding cars, my heart sank. She was so still, only the incredibly faint sound of her breathing confirmed she was still alive”.

Are we sacrificing ourselves for that? Our romantic dreams and longings for safety! For things like finding someone! And the girl, the wife, she becomes a plant! 

“This flowerpot is too cramped, its walls too hard. Shooting pains at the tips of my roots. Mother, I will die before winter comes. And I doubt that I will bloom again in this world”.

The only time in the whole tale when we hear her thoughts is to know her pain, to know how she feels cramped, limited, trapped. Being trapped is not being at home because there is a virus outsided, is being at home knowing you could have make another choice.

Why for girls life always seem like sacrificing something. Despite what Ursula K. Le Guin writes in The Fisherman’s Daughter, I still feel you gotta give up something, while guys do not. They don’t even ask themselves, wonder, stop and think. A woman will renounce a thing. And if they do not see that, what a waste.

But to conclude, ‘cause I’ve written more than I intended, I’ll tell you my tale ––and interestingly, the girl in this story is also called Tale and she is one of my best friends. 

Back in 2017 I went to China. Because I was half in love with a boy and half in love with the idea of traveling and getting to know different cultures. The trip was a roller coaster. Some days were awesome and other days sucked. But overall, at the end, I loved it. It was really hard for me to come back to Mexico, and I loved it all so much that I found a job in China ––the one cancelled because of the virus––. One of the friends I made there was Tale. Now I can say that with her I made some of the nicest memories. And after years now, of knowing each other, I’ve seen how a great woman she is! So talented and full of creativity, and with such a way to see life that I am so glad we are friends, what Anne of Green Gables would call kindred spirits! One of our convos. was about postponing the trip (and our meeting) because of this virus, and about life and love. Me, confused as always, just told her that I wanted to be free with her. “Let’s be free together”. At the end the boy for whom I traveled is not that important in this story, not any boy for that matter, but what I discovered because I followed my heart: That I won an awesome person in my life, maybe a soulmate. That love is cool, but friendship…what the thinkers wrote about it:

Why wasn’t friendship as good as a relationship? Why wasn’t it even better? It was two people who remained together, day after day, bound not by sex or physical attraction or money or children or property, but only by the shared agreement to keep going, the mutual dedication to a union that could never be codified. Friendship was witnessing another’s slow drip of miseries, and long bouts of boredom, and occasional triumphs. It was feeling honored by the privilege of getting to be present for another person’s most dismal moments.

And David Whyte wrote: “the ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self, the ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another”. So even when my friendship with Tale is (or was, who knows) like a pair of intersecting lines, just together for a brief period of our lives, and forever living in our memories as the two crazy twenty something girls discovering life for the first time, it is one of the most precious things I have. It is a kind of love too, maybe platonic. Who says you cannot be in love with your friends? 

Anyways, what I am trying to say is that adventures gave me life, a sense of accomplishment at an early age, of independence, of being my own person, of being able to do my own thing. That’s what I love of adventures, of traveling, of my lonesome ways. It’s the most palpable way of knowing I truly love myself, that I can rely on myself, that I will never abandon me. 

With romantic love, however, there is always the possibility of this endings and of suffering. I already suffered I don’t want to suffer again, I tell to myself. And yet, now there is a window to the future, that may or may not be open: a life I want, not as carefree as the traveling one, but one of compromise and maturity.

Am I afraid because I still feel like a child? Because I dread the possibility of ending like a Nora in Et dukkehjem? Kang’s translator comments: “[the story] still reflects damaging gender norms, dismissing his wife’s longing for a different life as romantic idealism, typically feminine, while taking pride in what he considers his own steady realism”. And that is why she becomes a plant. because she is so easily dismissed. 

I don’t want to be dismissed.

But about the boy of this tale. If he loves me or not time will tell. If I can let down all my walls will be a matter of time too. He is tall and gentle, and we’ve been together just for a brief period of time. I don’t even know if he knows me, if I know him. But I like his soul. I hope he likes mine just as well. What shakes my world is the way he came into my life, when I was not looking for anything, when I was about to leave.

Some people call it destiny. At the end love is trying to understand another. If he tries, if the conversations keep going and I feel like he does not dismiss me, maybe then I won’t want to run away.

De Sartre y qué es la literatura

Escribo porque tengo que escribir y me adelanto a Sartre, quien pregunta ¿por qué escribimos?
Eco decía "porque me gusta". Ambas, respuestas individualistas que tal vez molestaran al francés: comprometido, apasionado, volcado de lleno en la idea de que el arte debe servir a la sociedad antes que a la inversa. A caso Eco y yo compartimos esa mentalidad burguesa dieciochesca sobre la que Marx escribió en la Introducción a Grundrisse (1857) y que describió como perteneciente a "las imaginaciones desprovistas de fantasía que produjeron las robinsonadas del siglo XVIII".
Los escritores, como individuos solitarios, nos agrupamos (aunque eso sí, no por voluntad propia) y fundamos la literatura y entonces no somos un resultado histórico, sino punto de partida e la historia ––malamente entendidos de nuestra verdadera naturaleza, de seres sociales productos y no generadores.
Sartre, sin embargo, no es ni como yo ni como Eco ––pretensión mía colocarme junto a ese señor, a quien, sin su permiso, he referido como mi amigo (passed away) en varias ocasiones irl––. Sartre, en la desgracia de la segunda guerra mundial, no pudo sino comprender que la literatura es dependiente de la sociedad, y que como producto social afecta a los individuos. He ahí su preocupación y su intención al querer revisar las nociones de una "literatura comprometida". No obstante, Sartre ––buen filosofo que era––no pudo errar y por tanto intentó mediar entre el arte, la belleza y el compromiso. Despreció, bien sûr, al arte por el arte. Dan ganas de decir "un verdadero genio hubiese visto más allá de su tiempo, hubiese comprendido que el sentimiento de compromiso era ilusión, resultado de la desgracia y el horror del nazismo, de los fascismo. Yo no escribo sobre la muerte, la injusticia, ni de las mujeres violadas––no son mi fin, si aparecen es porque son mi realidad, pero no porque quiera comprometerme con tal o cual postura." Sin embargo, para Sartre y Marx, no puedo escapar de comprometerme, de ser participe pues, de crear e influir y por tanto, al escribir debería haber un compromiso consciente. Ya si lo hago o no es mi decisión, pero ese es otro asunto. Aquí lo que quiero escribir es que, esté o no de acuerdo con todo lo que dijo Jean Paul*, hay dos pasajes que al menos, me han conmovido como persona que escribió alguna vez, que sigue intentando escribir de vez en cuando:

1) la función del escritor consiste en que nadie pueda ignorar el mundo y que nadie pueda ante el mundo decirse inocente [...] Todo esto no impide que haya la manera de escribir. No se es escritor por haber decidido decir ciertas cosas sino por haber decidido decirlas de cierta manera, y el estilo, desde luego, representa el valor de la prosa. Pero debe pasar inadvertido. Ya que las palabras son transparentes y que la mirada las atraviesa, sería absurdo meter entre ellas cristales esmerilados. La belleza no es aquí más que una fuerza dulce e imperceptible. En un cuadro, se manifiesta enseguida, pero en un libro se oculta, actúa por persuasión, como el encanto de una voz o de un rostro, no presiona, hace inclinarse inadvertidamente y se cree ceder ante los argumentos cuando se es requerido por un encanto que no se ve. La etiqueta de la misa no es la fe; dispone y ordena la fe. La armonía de las palabras, su belleza y el equilibrio de las frases disponen las pasiones del lector sin que este lo advierta. (63) -- Una nota rápida: me gusta pensar en todo lo que Joyce nos dijo con sus silencios. Y claro, en las cuestiones que plantea la teoría de la recepción y Wolfgang Iser.

Después, Sartre se pregunta ¿qué es un mensaje? y compara a un cementerio y a una biblioteca; dice: "Los muertos están ahí" (65).

2) Un sollozo completamente desnudo no es bonito: molesta. Un buen razonamiento molesta también, como Stendhal lo había advertido. Pero un razonamiento que oculte un sollozo es precisamente lo que buscamos. El razonamiento quita a las lágrimas lo que tienen de vergonzoso; las lágrimas, al revelar su origen pasional, quitan  al razonamiento lo que tiene de agresivo [...] Tal es, pues, la literatura "verdadera", "pura": una subjetividad que se entrega con la forma de lo objetivo, un discurso tan curiosamente dispuesto que equivale a un silencio, un pensamiento que se discute a sí mismo, una Razón que no es más que la máscara de la sinrazón, un Eterno que da a entender que no es más que un momento de la Historia, un momento histórico que, por las interioridades que revela, remite de pronto al hombre eterno, una enseñanza perpetua, pero que se efectúa contra las voluntades expresas de los que enseñan. El mensaje es, en fin de cuentas, un alma hecha objeto. Un alma... (69).

Simon de Beauvoir y yo tenemos en común que Jean Paul Sartre nos hace llorar.

*O lo que su traductora dice que dijo, que es Aurora Bernández.

female writers, female writing.

Well, well it's been a while since I don't discuss™ literature here. Ah, it's incredible how much this blog has changed, and today I'm writing in English, I just feel like it, I miss writing academic essays in English so much... it's been a year or more since I don't write an essay and I feel I'm forgetting how to do it, how to arrange words to sound professional™ and how to be a literary person -- if such a thing exists.

But to the point. I'm two chapters away from finishing my thesis. I mean, it's written, but I need to rEvIsE and correct every little mistake until it is suitable to be considered a real aCaDemIc wOrk so I can get my dEgREe.

The thing is, I decided to write about Ann Radcliffe, she was the first woman to publish gothic fiction and gain respect from the critics. She was also one of the first women to be admired/mentioned/and recognized as an influence by the "fathers" of literature. (Victor Hugo, Whitman, to mention some). Keats called her "Mother Radcliffe". But along the way I've read so many feminist criticism and so many points of view and basically the history of women trying to be recognized as artists, from 1750, passing through the victorian female revolution and the first wave of feminism, the second wave, the 90's and the present day views (since I'm taking part in a course of Japanese feminism with lots of young women like me)... well, the lesson learned is that feminism has many ways to be manifested and that respect is the key if we want to progress as women, as a social group different from men.

That last part is quite heavy and would require so many paragraphs, so I will try to stick to the matter that concerns me: women and literature.

Las hermanas Brontë, por Branwell Brontë

For some reason we cannot say "writers" when talking about women. We say women writers or female writers -- which, in today's world is even problematic since the discussion about gender is so broad. But the thing is, why this difference between "writer" (implying is a man) and "female writer"? A woman who writes. What an alien image. Almost as a mistake, so we have to clarify. It is a woman, she happens to write. But women writers have been there, since Cavendish and Bhen, and Woolf and Rand and even Munro and Yoshimoto. And women have had their voices, their way of understanding the world. From here I think about the female "tradition". Byron had Milton, Milton had Shakespeare, Shakespeare had Chaucer, Chaucer knew that the first word was pronounced by God and this God was a male. So apparently men could always look back onto something and find someone. Women on the other had did not take part in this cultural history. So from where did women write? We surely had our history and stories, because when Jesus was a baby, Maria sang him lullabies (she might had even made up some). And like Maria, all the Mothers from all over the world made up stories for their children, and the first narrative we knew was the 'once upon a time' from the lips of the woman that bare us life.

The story of our lives, the narratives in our minds, couldn't possibly exist without our mothers' help. But because women have been seen as "less" or "not worthy" this other side of the story/history is not taken into account. And we've been told that tale so many times we believed it was true.
"Women don't have a voice", "women don't know how to tell a story" and so, Gilbert and Gubar asked the question... when a woman looks back in order to write, what does she find? the male word? will women ever be able to write their own words, instead of written the words male have been using over and over to tale the story of humanity?

It's confusing, and it's not that easy. So, for long, women tried to be recognized as valid, as worthy as men in the field of writing. We wanted to belong to this club of Great Minds, to the Canon, to become a Classic. Always fighting to be at the same level as men, as recognized as them, as free as them. And in many ways we've failed. The prove is that equality is still discussed and thought since it's so difficult to feel it in our everyday's life.

So women wanted to be part of this canon as a way of saying "see, I can be as good as you, write as much as you... even with kids and home duties" and "my stories are worth it, just as much as yours".

Still, women are outnumbered by men for so much. So after all, after revising all there is, after reading Reeve, Drace, Heywood, Wollstonecraft, I discovered something -- maybe a bit romantic and as way of survival in a world that oppresses my word and erases me from history.
I realized that women have this other world, different from men. Yes, and that world can be found in fiction, novels, movies, comics... a world where we dream, where we live in equality or somehow defeat inequality. From Gothic romances to the chinese Danmei, through other stuff like the loneliness Yoshimoto presents or the dailiness of life Woolf writes about.

We have our way to understand the world, our way of confronting nature -- maybe not to conquer a country but to protect our children, as Betty Flander does in Jacob’s Room. Mothers, I think of mothers and how different they are from fathers, and how pure and unique that love is, and that it is something that belong to us and that males won't ever understand. We have our little secrets, our everyday rituals, things they won't be able to take away from us, like the pleasure of giving food to a baby from our own body or blood spilling through our legs and enduring a pain, our pain, and realizing the strength it takes, the strength that comes from it.

Along the way I've discovered that indeed being a woman is something like magic, and maybe too marvelous, so marvelous men cannot take it, because what have they to offer? a sperm and anger. Women give love, women nourish, women can fight, and learn and write... And we write what we see, the way we see it. Even in a prison, like a gothic castle... we found ghosts, and thrilling love, and pain and tears, always pain and tears, and the possibility, the ability to be happy through all that.
That was a characteristic of us as women. Maybe that's why men make wars. To understand, to experience that which nature didn't put in them. Because we need pain to grow, to become strong, to understand how much we are able to endure and still go on.

But of course, somehow, they put barriers and walls and erased us from their history and wrote philosophic treaties where they discuss why women can't think or learn, and we believed and we forgot. And it has taken us a long while to rediscover us... it was not only Shakespeare or the Graveyard poets, it was Aphra Bhen and the Female Gothic, and our mother saying "Once upon a time, in a far, far away land..." So I think it is time to recognize that, to stop being angry --- because yes, we've been angry, we are angry and with reasons; and to start looking into our history, our so-called tradition, because there is one, and just realize that if anything, now, in this moment of life, in this century, we are free. Free from the expectations of a canon, of the word of the 'father'. We are not sons, we don't have an Oedipus complex and we don't want to kill anyone. We search our mothers, our oppressed mothers, and once we find them, we embrace them, we follow the tradition, we keep telling the stories and adding details to what happens in that far, far away land.

We, as women who write, as writers, have a land of and for our own. It's time to stop caring so much about concepts the patriarchal victorians made up, like "serious literature" or "canonic works". It's time to be more free, to let our voices be higher, to scream even if we make others angry, angrier. That's what they have to deal with, and they'll have to solve it somehow. But for us, now, the concern is saying "I'm here and this is my story, and this is what I think, and it's here whether you want to read it or not." And just write and think all we've been through, how far we've come and how far we can still go.

Mary Shelley