Walter Cassara:
a nationality test ghost
(full version in the print edition)
Argentina 200 years of poetry anthology
Editorial Alfaguara Jorge Monteleone
[...] Judging by its length and its abundance index of names, this book could have been the census Argentine poets most comprehensive and updated has been published to date. However, it is not, could not be in any way, even in purely demographic terms, and that the period should cover the first hundred years took a few sheets, and the considerable range of population poetry that affects the last five decades of the twentieth century was not surveyed, for reasons not wholly clear. Jorge Monteleone wrote in a preliminary note, "from 1810, taking as the starting generation romantic poets include even born until 1959." And then, to justify the pruning, a motif that vaguely argues is not in any way critical, but possible: the "generation of 90"-here is awarded en masse to all authors born after '59- and "has had a wide circulation."
Again, I'm not good at calculations, but even someone as obtuse as I noted immediately that in the "hundred years" there is at least a quarter century he has been spared the reader. Surely no compilation work could include, humanely and in a single volume, a cycle as large as this anthology aims to present, but the "cut", touted as critical thinking does not work: besides the energy ad , regardless of their fortuitous "popular" poetry written by the new generations is essential when an idea, if only approximate, of the whole, and not because she has a leading role (in fact, is too close in the time to understand its significance), but because without it, if I remember correctly, the "hundred years" are planted in the hundred and sixty.
Thus, calculating the population density or the number of rosettes spread, turning the calendar pages backward or forward, everything seems to inevitably become a single, ubiquitous era, and in one generation and ubiquitous. In other words, the Sixties, with all its metaphorical and ideological history and poetry in Argentina-are in this book spine where they lie, without doubt, the most solid of the critical approach and the most interesting part of the selected pieces. To prove sufficient to note that the texts and authors that stand out are those that address any topic related directly or indirectly, to the historical record or the tangle of politics. Needless to say that the rest of the pages illustrating the periphery of the central corpus, by way of informative displays, and to meet briefly with the obligatory patriotic confetti.
Not surprisingly, therefore, also the nineteenth century is seen here just a few mummified specimens, beginning with the national anthem transcription-is presented as a sad parade of heroes, a model of the Billiken unlikely that exhorts us to school pomp. It is not unusual, either, that even the heroism of our effigies glacial May or Thin pale faced the sixties zoom compiler, and all other possible routes, the other "constellations reading" insinuate themselves in the preface, last one way or another, in remote nebulae. In this regard, it should be read in detail under "Poetry, history and politics" to understand how Monteleone able to focus on a literary landscape as vast and varied with a telescope so subjective, how it works to overcome the huge gap between, for example, Martin Fierro sestinas gaming Antonio Porchia aphoristic, lyrical purist or Henry's exasperated Banchs of verbal miasma Perlongher Nestor Corpses.
To start, reverse the order of the triad (poetry, history and politics), because what is more evident here is that the first term has no specific jurisdiction, does not operate by itself, but it is only a satellite to serve the other two components of the equation. This is understandable, perhaps, as a mark of the period, as in this chapter examines the situation of poetry in the sixties, deeply involved with the history and politics. Instead, it is not easy to understand that Monteleone, a critic otherwise notable and highly skilled in the art skip can not be subsumed, not even restricted to the above-decade in the history of poetry or politics unbounded, if only in a succinct manner, the complex mediations and numerous theoretical problems arising from linearly brewing for these series. To give an example, when he proposes to examine the "Conjectural Poem" by Borges in direct correlation with the work of Leonid Lamborghini as the dubious sieve Peronism and anti-Peronism, anthologist has not only taken a big leap in time, through above the specific context in which both works were produced, but also-and this is the worst-renders the historicity of the poetic act itself to sketch two lines that cross ideological tension, no doubt, much of Argentina's history, but we do not know how far they can be useful - true-even when evolving to take stock of our poetry.
Borges Referring to the text above, the reviewer says that "the fair seems poetic description of another national hero, but the poem was political. Written in 1943 against the nationalist currents that prevailed in the military government then slip a few years later in its ideological sense as a criticism of rising Peronism. " After roughly confronting the sectarian approach Borges patrician populist look reinventing patentizaría gaucho, "a few years later," the author of legs at the source. Note that these "few years" there is a considerable item of time of not less than thirty years. Note that we are again, though perhaps never left there in the mid-sixties, where Borges has been, long ago, well behind our modern poetry, turning its base of port "nineteenth century" as an archetype safe Platonic or an egregious inspector of poultry and poultry. Note that to give this chronological swerve so adventurous and make two writers discuss a magnitude so uneven, completely unrelated to each other and distant in time, Monteleone had to push the needle to the zero degree diachronic, discard any type of periodization and distortion, therefore, materials and authors selected for the benefit of reading maneuvering comes as a disturbing frisson nouveau, but in the background is a critical widget (another) that masks its epistemological bankruptcy rented vocabulary sociology or political science, in all its many local slang.
However, in circumstances martingales as prone to all kinds as is often the ephemeris homelands, not worth asking whether the explanation of poetic history that gives us Monteleone is unbiased or biased, when entangled with certain esoteric jargon or move the pieces to fit institutional chronology, the important thing is that in their analysis, which gives more importance to the ideological affiliations of the links or literary genealogies, the important thing is not the poetry but the social situations that are intended to represent or recreate. Thus, the poetic act has been designed according to the assembly from a historiographical and critical vision which seeks to document, vintage in time, albeit with a somewhat vague chronological order, which refers only to the date of birth of the authors, the Race, we Milieu et le Moment (as Hippolyte Taine yellow formula), in a sort of crossing the Andes typographical sanmartiniano peplum or variegated, white and blue glitter which expands, by osmosis, to all the authors compiled, and ends up blocking all other possible routes of access to the texts.
short, in the canon that projects this anthology, the main voices are those that underpin it, in one way or another, the milestones of our collective history, or rather, the milestones of a particular and partial interpretation of Argentina's history of the last two centuries. Naturally, the other voices, though not out of tune, have lost their distinctive grace notes, are secondary and evaporated, without remedy, in the register of mass coral. The same applies to the poems, which have been deprived of their real context and to articulate its own function, perhaps reluctantly, "the symbolic form of a national community." However, the contradiction is that the "symbolic", which has been extracted with forceps Monteleone History and implements, ecumenically, the poetic discourse, does not translate into the facts of a collective identity, let alone in a koine or in a language common, but rather the opposite: what you hear, sometimes on the merits and others in the foreground, is a schizophrenic song where they spend condors, gauchos, warlords, immigrants, revolutions, coups, etc., and pass all ideas, many ideas hollow, disembodied and foolish ideas rather pointless as idols, mock precarious phantom tests nationality, kneaded into a quagmire whimsical, depending on agreements or disagreements of the time.
Charles Simic says, "ideological criticism is always fixed and static. Have their 'real position' from which he never moves. It is like insisting that all paintings must be viewed from a distance three meters, and only from these three meters. " As a scholar and tends to warm eulogy, as does not express any sympathy or antipathy, it is not easy to see if his criticism is ideological Monteleone itself, or if, on the contrary, only a rough mouth in confluent and mixed hegemonic discourse distinct discourses antagonists that float in the air at the time. At first glance, the abundance and the plurality of materials collected here would seem to belie this assumption. However, I think that makes Monteleone ideological criticism in one of its most pernicious varieties, one that comes disguised as a teaching intentions or informative, it is assumed that as a mere channel of political correctness, never makes omissions loud, never garners adversaries nor allies, since it declines to make positive or negative judgments, but not make systematic inferences as to equate poetry and history in a most natural order.
