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Two Poems by Cristina Peri Rossi

2022; Duke University Press; Volume: 31; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/10418385-9669470

1938-8020

Latin American and Latino Studies

Cristina Peri Rossi was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, but has lived in Barcelona since the early 1970s, when she went into political exile. The only woman associated with the Latin American Boom, Peri Rossi has continued writing despite political repression, tenuous immigration status, and linguistic discrimination. She has published nineteen books of poetry and earned many literary prizes, most recently the 2021 Premio Cervantes.My translations focus on the theme of lesbian intimacy as it relates to queer concepts of home in exile. Peri Rossi’s portrayal of exile is woven with eroticism, affection, and affect made manifest in corporeal experience. Yet her work highlights what is in excess of the corporeal, especially what is beyond normative body/spirit and human/animal distinctions.While “Blanca” and “Fertilization” describe distinct orientations to the paranormal, both texts engage the reader in unraveling the coherence of the normal. “Blanca” was first published in Descripción de un naufragio (1975), a collection of poems using a shipwreck as an allegory for the rise of the Uruguayan dictatorship. Peri Rossi’s engagement with the visceral mystical in this poem is decidedly situated within the context of exile and transatlantic crossing. The poem highlights the disorientation of trauma and uprootedness and expresses a sense of being outside oneself, of watching the shipwrecked figure from without, and points to the psychic and spiritual impact of exile beyond the material realm.“Fertilization” takes up the visceral mystical in a very different way. First published in her most recent collection, Las replicantes (2016), the poem fractures the concept of human fertilization by employing monstrosity, emphatically focusing on queer intimacy and parthenogenesis. The act of fertilization here centers language, hymns, gesture, memory, and ritual, rather than what can be physically incorporated into the body. Moreover, the poem likens this abnormal intimacy to the Christian conception of paradise. This blasphemous use of Christian mythology to narrate lesbian intimacy echoes Peri Rossi’s early work, which was banned by the dictatorship in the 1970s. Through both poems Peri Rossi participates in a transnational tradition of lesbian feminist knowledge production that highlights the potentiality of queer intimacy and erotic power and ultimately argues for forms of relation that move against and beyond white heteropatriachy and reproductive futurity.Blanca White. Whether foam, or dove. Forever laid on a beach path land of the spirits where the sands join together and wind trembles in trees. Wind trembles and sands sing. As if the calm of the world dwelled in her body, on her skin. To have her like this, silent, white, motionless, free of time of meetings and cities. Monda. Smooth and bald like a statue, hairless but for light pubic fuzz, like a breeze where lips get caught the wind the afternoon the heat and the cry —saltwater I sipped between her legs. Impenetrable. Tossed in the air, rising and falling down her body swaying her like a reed, unable to feel unable to sigh unable to turn or respond. Wet with rain pouring endlessly on skin opening her pores like passages —where the entire sea entered. Foreign. Isolated from delightful vices of moonlit nights and disquieting vices of afternoons of lovers without clocks. Isolated from delightful vices of suspect nights that call her alone to the sea and tossed at the mercy of the waters at the mercy of seaweed and approaching fish stalking her. Settled in her home like fire in the hearth like a silent ancestor who no longer visits, like mother and daughter. And loved by me as if she alone were both the desired mother and the fervent daughter. As if she alone were both the mother I loved one summer night whose daughter I loved a lifetime. Sealed. A secret kept from me a jagged oyster that could wound my fingers my face hands voice my thoughts and dreams, closed like an urn. Like a crypt. Sacred. An untouchable goddess whose altar I visit each day with offerings —pine branches, laurel flowers, the fruits of a bounteous tree, leaving behind a trail of empty homages. Still, fixed in time like a statue, so calm she seems dead, alone, unyielding, resistant to every siege, indestructible, indifferent to loving partners, impossible, incapable of extracting her from me, and so alone that sometimes I pity her.Blanca Blanca. Si espuma, si paloma. Echada desde siempre en un acceso de la playa región de los espíritus donde se dan cita las arenas y tiembla el viento entre los árboles. Tiembla el viento y las arenas cantan. Como si toda la calma del mundo se hubiera alojado en su cuerpo, sobre su piel. Para tenerla así, muda, blanca, estacionada, aliviada del tiempo de citas y de ciudades. Monda. Lisa e imberbe como una estatua, sin más vello que una leve pelusa en el pubis, como una brisa, donde quedan atrapados los labios el viento la tarde el calor y el llanto —Agua salada que bebí entre sus piernas—. Impenetrable. Sacudida por el aire que sube y baja de su cuerpo como a un junco contoneándola, sin que ella lo sienta, sin que ella suspire, sin que ella gira o responda. Mojada por la lluvia que goteó una y otra vez sobre su piel abriéndole los poros como puertas —por donde toda mar entró—. Ajena. Aislada de los deliciosos vicios de las noches de luna y de los vicios inquietantes de los mediodías de amantes sin reloj. Aislada de los deliciosos vicios de las noches suspectas que la hallaron sola junto al mar y echada a expensas de las aguas, a expensas de las algas y de los peces que arribaban acechándola. Instalada en la casa como el fuego del hogar como un antepasado mudo que ya no viene a visitarnos, como la madre y la hija. Y amada por mí como si ella solo fuera al mismo tiempo la madre deseada la hija ardiente. Como si ella sola fuera al mismo tiempo la madre que amé una noche de estío cuya hija amé toda la vida. Lacrada. Cerrada para mí como un secreto, como la ostra de filosos labios que me hiriera los dedos la cara las manos la voz el pensamiento y los sueños, cerrada como una urna. Como una cripta. Sagrada. Inviolable como una diosa a cuyo altar yo llevara ofrendas todos los días —ramas de pinos, flores de laurel, los frutos del árbol opimo, la miel, la música, los versos— dejando, detrás, una hilera de homenajes vanos. Inmóvil, fija en el tiempo como una estatua, tan quieta que parece muerta, sólida, inquebrantable, resistente a todos los asedios, indestructible, mira indiferente amarse a las parejas, imposible, incapaz de desalojarla de mí, y tan sola, que a veces me da lástima.Fertilization I fertilized you, filled you with me flooded your empty being the vagina of your body your uterus I filled you with words and remembrances meetings and memories filled your hollows with my gestures with my jest and once you were fertilized I fled I retreated to rest a sated beast maw bloody your belly, your memory and being full you mumble and murmur still on sleepless nights you will spawn a tiny monster a being ravenous as you I won’t be there to feed you again your diet will be pathetic straw and barren bones but you will keep the memories of happiness and hymns of words and rituals an encrypted paradise we inhabit like Eve and her ovum parthenogenetic.Fecundación Te fecundé te llené de mi inundé tu ser vació como la vagina de tu cuerpo como tu útero te llené de palabras y de recuerdos de citas y memorias llené tu hueco con mis gestos con mis gestas y después de fecundarte me fui me retiré a descansar como una bestia saciada de fauces sangrientas tu vientre tu memoria y tu ser estaban llenos mascullas murmuras todavía en noches en vela engendrarás un monstruo pequeñito un ser tan hambriento como tú No estaré para volverte a alimentar tu dieta será pobre paja y huesos secos pero guardarás memorias de alegrías y de himnos de palabras y de ritos de un paraíso cifrado que habitamos como Eva y su óvulo partenogenético, Eva.I am grateful to Emily Wilson and to the participants of the 2019 Bread Loaf Translator’s Conference for their insightful and detailed comments on an earlier version of “Blanca.”