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1982, three years before his death, the English poet Philip Larkin Talk about life in humble terms. Perhaps because he was not a particularly social person. In fact, he was stuttering. “I’m so shy. Anyone who stutters knows how distressing it is, especially in school. This means that you never do or promise anything except trying to be inconspicuous all the time. I often wondered if I was shy because I had a stutter or vice versa,” he said in an interview with The Paris Review.
In the same conversation, he recounted how his days were, far from hustle and bustle and nearer to stillness. In fact, he was celibate “by choice” although he admitted it was heartbreaking once in a while. However, he had the dynamism of a good single life: “My life is as simple as I can do it. Work all day, cook, eat, wash dishes, talk on the phone, write comments, drink, watch TV in the evening. I rarely go out. I think everyone is trying to ignore the passage of time: some do a lot of things, some live in California and next year in Japan. Or, as it happens in my case, I do the exact same thing every day and every year. “Maybe neither method works,” he added. “.
Larkin somehow carried that simplicity into his writing, completely straightforward, accessible and without tools. in his poem sad footsteps, for example, well versed: “I go back to bed groping, after urinating / I open the thick curtains and they scare me / The swift clouds, cleanse the soul.” or in afternoon: “Summer is fading / Leaves fall one by one / From the surrounding trees / The new playground.”
Larkin, who lived between 1922 and 1985, was a mainstay of English poetry in the twentieth century, Along with other related names such as TS Eliot, WH Auden, Geoffrey Hill or Denise Levertov. Today, his poetry is back in a book called Disappointments, published by Ediciones UDP, and edited and translated by three Chilean writers: Bruno Cuneo, Cristobal Gonón and Enrique Winter. In addition, it includes the full reproduction of the extensive interview given by Larkin to Art of Poetry, No. 30, from Paris Magazine, as well as an epilogue called in full lightIrish writer Seamus Heaney, 1995 Nobel Prize for Literature.
On the phone with Cult, Joannon explains Larkin’s hair characteristics: “It is very realistic and straightforward poetry of controlled emotions, and the punctuation is the same as prose. It’s a poetry frustrated by illusion, sometimes something like a luminous lyricism. Seamus Heaney said that there were flashes in his poems, certain images of light across them. This means that this mysterious and cold brain hair suddenly erupts and flickers. This contrast produces a very powerful beauty.”
The late literary critic Juan Manuel Vial also said in 2014: “Philip Larkin has written poetry that, on the surface, may seem simple, but at the same time it delves, in unexpected ways, into those who encounter it.”
If the poems are read in this Spanish translation, the reader will notice that they do not rhyme. However, in the English originals, the rhyme is present. Why is it not translated with respect to this scale? Joannon explains, “What happens is that poetry is very subtle and very precise. So, if you want to translate that by rhyme, you end up changing the meaning. This usually happens when one translates by rhyme, but the experience we had with Larkin was that it was clear He wants to say something very specific.”
Working with three parties, Joannon says, the process has been quite collaborative. “There was a first version with Ediciones UV, and there we had a clause saying that all the translated verses were approved by the three of us. That took a long time, years. There was a first version with Ediciones UV, but for this version, by UDP, we added 10 poems and we revised all the others, made adjustments, and there we decided to soften the sentence, it was enough for the two of us to like it, because if it were not, we would be there for a long time. ”
In a way, the aim of this anthology is to introduce the author who, despite his relevance to English poetry in the twentieth century; It had no such effect in Chile. Unlike other English poets, such as T.S. Eliot, Larkin did not have much influence on Chilean poetry, I only started reading it in the ’90s. Now, several people have told us that this translation introduced them to Larkin. He’s a poet who doesn’t take long to like, because he has something more directunlike Elliot who is more complex.”
the book DisappointmentsIt is already in the major national libraries.
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