Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Octavio Paz - This and this and this

The original is a poem entitled "Esto y esto y esto" and I like this poem. It almost reads like "the Revolution will not be televised." Instead of revolution, it is about "surrealism" and the damage it has done.

"Surrealism has been the apple of fire on the tree of syntax
"Surrealism has been the camellia of ash between the breasts of the girl possessed by the ghost of Orestes
"Surrealism has been the dish of lentils that the glance of the prodigal son transforms into the smoking feast of the cannibal king
"Surrealism has been the balm for Fierabras that erases the signs of original sin in the navel of language
"Surrealism has bee the spit on the host and the carnation of dynamite in the confessional and the open sesame to the bank vaults and the iron bars of asylums
"Surrealism has been the drunken flame that guides the steps of the sleepwalker who tiptoes along the edge of the shadow that the blade of the guillotine casts on the neck of the condemned
"Surrealism has been the burning nail in the geometer's forehead and the gust of wind at midnight that lifts the sheets from virgins.
"Surrealism has been the savage bread that cramps the belly of the Society of Jesus until it must vomit all the cats and devils it has inside
"Surrealism has been the fistful of salt that eats away the slugs of social realism
"Surrealism has been the cardboard crown on the headless critic and the viper that slips between the legs of the critic's wife
"Surrealism has been the leprosy of the Christian West and the whip of nine cords that sketches the way out toward other lands other languages and other souls across the backs of brutish and brutalizing nationalism
"Surrealism has been the speech of the child buried in every man and the sprinkling of syllables of milk on the charred bones of Giordano Bruno
"Surrealism has been the seven-league boots of those who escaped from the prisons of dialectical reason and Tom Thumb's hatchet that chops through the knots of the poisonous vines that cover the walls of the petrified revolutions of the Twentieth Century
"Surrealism has been this and this and this"

My comment: "Surrealism is the American politics of the 21st Century brought over from the 20th where Walter Cronkite, a real newsman, has been replaced by the Glenn Becks, the Sean Hannitys, and the Bill O'Reillys who only pretend to be newsmen targeting people who end up being followed, pursued, and possibly put away.

1 comment:

Parker said...

This poem is about the beauty, glory, and essential, liberating violence of surrealism. You missed the point entirely. You took it almost exactly backwards.