No Variations (Argentinian Literature Series)
Read No Variations (Argentinian Literature Series) Online
Authors: Darren Koolman Luis Chitarroni
THE
NO
VARIATIONS:
JOURNAL OF AN UNFINISHED NOVEL
Luis Chitarroni
Translated and with a preface by Darren Koolman
Contents
“The writer doesn’t really want to write
,
he wants to be; and in order to truly be
,
he must face up to the difficult challenge of not writing at all …”
Nicasio Urlihrt, the first name we encounter in
The No Variations
, and the writer to whom the quotation above is attributed, can never truly
be
, at least in the legal or corporeal sense, unless, that is, he rearranges the letters of his name and starts calling himself Luis Chitarroni. But Urlihrt is only one among a multitude of fictive entities the author of this so-called diary has created to do his scribbling for him, so that he can face up to the truly difficult challenge of
being
Luis Chitarroni.
Although largely unknown in the English-speaking world, in South America he’s long been recognized as a prominent editor, literary critic, and author of exceptionally weird books. The first of these,
Siluetas
(Silhouettes), published in 1992, is a collection of satirical biographies of writers, both real and fictitious, that had previously appeared in the aptly named Argentine literary journal
Babel
. More ambitious in scope, his 1997 follow-up,
El Carapálida
(The Paleface), is perhaps the only book he’s yet written that can properly be described as a “novel.” Set in an elementary school in Argentina in the early seventies, it is in fact a pasquinade on the bourgeois pretentions and puerile rivalries among Buenos Aires writers and intellectuals at that time. For his next work, Chitarroni planned to write a hybrid of the preceding two. This “novel” would feature many of the “characters” from
Siluetas
, portraying them as members of a high-minded literary circle calling itself
Agraphia
and producing a journal of the same name to which its pompously erudite contributors would be required to submit their stories and poems pseudonymously. Chitarroni would of course be the “sole actual contributor” to this journal, all the pseudonyms being his own, for he wanted to lampoon the literary preciosity and cliqueism he observed first-hand among the self-applauding Argentine literati, and parody their common tendency of concealing a lack of originality beneath a veil of impenetrable difficulty. In order to do this, his “novel” would therefore itself be impenetrably difficult, the difference being that it would mock itself in its own making, laugh at itself, and encourage the reader to laugh along with it.
Of course, this novel was never written. Instead, in 2007, after ten years of planning, Chitarroni presented for publication a book entitled
Peripecias del no
, subtitled “Diary of an Unfinished Novel”—an
omnium gatherum
of obscure references, cryptic anagrams, parenthetical remarks, indecipherable aide-mémoire, overblown critical extracts, imperfectly-wrought poems, bewildering drafts of unfinished stories, characters with unpronounceable names … everything, in other words, a reader might expect to find in the diary of an impenetrably difficult unfinished novel, the result being a book that seems to resist all acts of interpretation—be it reading or translating—a book that, according to one Spanish reviewer, reads like a roman à clef that’s been passed through a shredder.
As the translator of these shreddings, I was of course confronted with more difficulties than I’d have space to outline in a preface. The trouble it took to translate the title, for example, certainly augured what I was to encounter on every page of the text. The literal meaning of
Peripecias del no
is “Peripeties of No,” but while the title works great in Spanish, in English, it is inkhorn. Next, I considered “The Adventures of No,” which was definitely an improvement, but “pulpy” qualities aside, this seemed a little offhand, and didn’t fully capture the several senses of the Spanish word
peripecias
. So, after deliberating on many other less satisfactory options, everyone concerned finally agreed on “The No Variations”: “variations” is hardly an adequate rendering of
peripecias
, admittedly, but this did seem the best English language title for what was, in essence, a self-negating book—a book in which stories, poems, snatches of incomplete dialogue, critical extracts, biographical sketches, etc. are variously written and then rejected with a curt and peremptory “NO.” Translating the subheading, “Diary of an Unfinished Novel,” was less troublesome, except that, initially, it made me suspect Chitarroni was playing a kind of literary prank, especially on those readers and critics who love a difficult book. It was as if he were inviting serious readings of what was only a series of haphazard notes for a novel he had neither the time nor talent to complete, and, being unwilling to face up to the loss of time and effort, he’d submitted this aborted embryo for the scrutiny of demented anatomists, cryptographers, and cruciverbalists. This is, of course, decidedly not the case, as the reader will discover, although in an interview with
La voz
, Chitarroni did candidly and unabashedly admit that
Peripecias
was “the diary of someone who’s probably lost his ability to ever again write clearly and coherently.” This confession proved more than a little disconcerting to me, as it seemed to require that I ignore the editor inside me and purposely translate the book in the spirit of this diarist.
Besides the difficult prose, the many obscure allusions and references made me seriously consider including annotations on every page. But once I’d translated the first ten pages, I figured that even a partially annotated edition would triple the length of the book. Moreover, since the Spanish edition is bereft of a single merciful gloss for the reader, I was happy to disburden myself of the task, adducing the convenient excuse that readers shouldn’t be deprived of the pleasure of uncovering for themselves the innumerable “buried keys” in the text. After all, readers today are lucky they live in an age when technology allows them to carry a million libraries in their pockets—a million electronic Virgils to guide them out of darkness into light. And, besides, I didn’t want to encroach on Chitarroni’s plans for a possible “sequel” to
Peripecias
, which he envisions will consist entirely of annotations to
Peripecias
, then another of annotations to these annotations, and so on, ad infinitum. Of the writing of books there is no end.
Despite frequently availing myself of my electronic Virgil, however, there were other challenges not even an Internet search engine could help me resolve, such as how to translate Chitarroni’s Spanish imitations of great English language writers such as Henry James and Sir Thomas Browne. Of course, Chitarroni wasn’t imitating James or Browne directly, but only their Spanish-language translators. The equivalent task would be if someone were to write an imitation in English of an English translation of Cervantes and submit it to a magazine or journal as an imitation of Cervantes himself. But, being only the English-language translator of Chitarroni, I had the unfortunate task of having, as it were, to back-translate an imitation of a translation—an exercise not unlike something a contributor to
Agraphia
might attempt. So, in both diction and syntax, I had to find the balance between outright parody and plausible imitation.
The greatest difficulty I faced, however, is one that plagues every literary translator: how to render seemingly untranslatable elements like slang, wordplay, etc. For example, when I asked Chitarroni to explain his use of the name “Falduto,” he said it was supposed to suggest a henpecked man, or a man dominated by women. It is derived from the River Plate slang word
pollerudo
, but incorporates the more familiar Spanish word
falda
instead of the colloquial
rioplatense
term,
pollera
. Furthermore, “Falduto” was meant to suggest a similar word,
falluto
, which means a “discreditable, hypocritical man.” After scouring every available lexicon, I finally thought it best to simply keep the original “Falduto” and explain its inclusion
here
, instead of providing an inadequate rendering of so peculiar a word. In general, though, I always strived to capture in English the various ambiguities of style and substance of the original, and avoid lazily settling on prosaic or banal compromises.
All in all, as strange as
The No Variations
will seem to readers, it’s not a book without precedent: in Spanish, for example, Mario Levrero’s
La novella luminosa
(The Luminous Novel), also makes use of the personal diary form to address the failure to write a novel; and in English, Cyril Connolly’s
The Unquiet Grave
—written under the pseudonym “Palinurus”—is another fragmentary hodgepodge of quotation, allusion, personal reflection, and so forth. Although, admittedly, neither of these two books is as challenging as
The No Variations
, I nonetheless resolved not to condescend to the reader by providing too many explanations or oversimplifications—to lead her as a toddler by the hand, as it were—for I believe it is an error peculiar to many writers today that they often underestimate the diligence and perspicacity with which readers will endeavor to unlock a challenging text. Moreover, I think the continued popularity of so-called “difficult” novels attests that while the aesthetic of difficulty is often an end in itself among affected writers, discerning readers know that not every difficult book should be dismissed as affected simply for being difficult. Having now read
The No Variations
several times in the course of translating and editing, I was continually amused by its author’s mock affectations, moved by his corybantic delight in language, and, despite the difficulty, I believe it has that quality proper to all fine literature, which Tertullian first noted of scripture:
semper habet aliquid relegentibus
, however frequently we read it, we shall always meet with something new.
I express my sincere gratitude to the author, Luis Chitarroni, for providing answers to my many “prayers” during the course of the translation, and for being so kind as to compliment the final result for its occasional “improvements” upon the original: he is a subtle god, but certainly not malicious. I also thank Jeremy M. Davies and the editorial staff at Dalkey Archive Press for their extraordinary insight in helping me to render faithfully into English this difficult though deeply rewarding text.
Darren Koolman, 2013
T
HE NAMES
are the same ones that were around back in 1986, or possibly earlier (I can even recall an embarrassing note in some publication—I can’t remember which—referring to them as “The Shanghai Group”). Nicasio Urlihrt, Hilarión Curtis—anagrams. Oliverio Lester. Inés Maspero. Cora Estrugamou.
Strong names, weighty even, although admittedly less so than the ones I used in my novel
El Carápalida
(The Paleface). Calvino notwithstanding, there won’t be any lightness here.
Weighty, yes, grave even: like the leaden spirit of Enrique Luis Revol (I once defended him in a note on contemporary writers—although it was with little conviction, and only for the sake of argument). Must retrieve the book. Didn’t lend it to anyone. Probably moldering away on the back-shelf of some library.