A Pira

Este é o poema que Hemingway escreveu em homenagem à sua colega de metiê e de copo, Dorothy Parker. Parece que à época deste poema os dois haviam se conhecido na Espanha e posteriormente se desentendido provavelmente por divergências em relação ao país. Na verdade as divergências são políticas, estéticas e culturais, e a Espanha serviu de catalizador pro rompimento. “Papa” Hemingway era um sujeito bronco e gostava de sê-lo. Parker era uma intelectual novaiorquina não muito chegada nas tragédias e contradições da realidade. Hemingway por sua vez parecia alimentar-se justamente disso. O que transparece no poema todo é que Hemingway não tolerava as frescuras da senhorita Parker e achava ridículos seus dramas e auto-comiserações. No poema Hemingway contrapõe situações de verdadeiro desespero que ele testemunhou na Espanha e conclui ironicamente que a formação de uma poetisa trágica (Parker) foi feita somente por observação. Enfim, um lance meio Cobain X Vedder.

O poema foi recitado por um Hemingway provavelmente baleado, numa festinha da CENA literária. Dorothy Parker não estava presente, mas dizem que o constrangimento foi geral e amizades foram encerradas por causa do tom da peça. Alusões às tentativas de suicídio da escritora e de seu recem-realizado aborto não agradaram muito a platéia. Com este poema, creio que Hemingway introduz o joselitismo na poesia ocidental.

To a tragic Poetess

Nothing in her life became her like her almost leaving of it.

 

Oh thou who with a razor blade

a new one to avoid infection

Slit both thy wrists

the scars defy detection

Who over-veronaled to try and peek

into the shade

Of that undistant country from whose bourne

no traveller returns who hasn’t been there.

But always vomited in time

and bound your wrists up

To tell how you could see his little hands

already formed

You’d waited months too long

that was the trouble.

But you loved dogs and other people’s children

and hated Spain where they are cruel to donkeys.

Hoping the bulls would kill the matadors.

The national tune of Spain was Tea for Two

you said and don’t let anyone say Spain to you -

You’d seen it with the Seldes

One jew, his wife and a consumptive

you sneered your way around

through Aragon, Castille and Andalucia.

Spaniards pinched

the Jewish cheeks of your plump ass

in holy week in Seville

forgetful of our Lord and of His passion.

Returned, your ass intact, to Paris

to write more poems for the New Yorker.

To sit one day in the Luticia

and joke about a funeral passing in the rain

It gave no pain

because you did not know the people.

To celebrate in borrowed cadence

your former gnaw and and itch for Charley

who went away and left you not so flat behind him

And it performed so late those little hands

those well formed little hands

And were there little feet and had

the testicles descended?

While in Malaga the street lights in the fog

outside the hospital

A boy named Litri

returning from death’s other kingdom to discover

They’d taken off his leg without his permission

Having promised it was only to clean the wound

The leg gone at the hip

suffered a crise of desespoir

desesperado

Knowing before he died of gaseous gangrene

he’d never fight again

It mattered greatly.

He died desesperado in his bed as did Maera

Althought Marea slipped from bed

to die upon the floor

Curled up under the bed

the tubes in his chest broken

His face quite happy

considering he drowned in mucous

He thinking in delirium he was a boy again and voyaging

under the seats in third class coaches

his fighting cape rolled up to make a pillow.

And old man named Valentin Mazarga

climbed in his eightieth year the tower of Miguelete

and was, the Valencian paper said,

destroyed completely on the pavement.

His grand daughter had said he was a bother

and he was getting old.

A boy named Jaime Noain

exploded in his mouth for love

a three inch stick of dynamite

And lived, unknowing, to become

the chief attraction of a troupe

of horrors

who visit all the fairs in Catalonia.

Fifteen a day they average in the papers

The suicides of sunny Spain

the column headed LOS DESESPERADOS

A separate heading sometimes, AHOGADOS

or, The Drowned Ones.

Thus tragic poetess are made

by observation.

Aproveitem e fiquem com dois catálogos virtuais de um leilão que pôs à venda primeiras edições e edições autografadas dessa galerinha toda:

- Were you ever interested in the so-called “underground” american cinema, either in its politically-minded directors (Kramer, Di Antonio ) or the more explicitly avant-garde New York names (Warhol, Ander, Mekas, Markopoulos)?

SK- Well, I haven’t really seen any good underground movies. I mean, one of the problems with movies is that it does require some degree of technical ability to keep the film from looking foolish. And most underground films are poorly made. But I wouldn’t call, for instance, “Girlfriends” an underground movie, that was really just a low-budget professional film. I certainly haven’t seen any underground films that I thought were important or particularly interesting. I mean, they are rather interesting in a way because people are doing things that no one would ever think of doing. But I couldn’t say that they are very stimulating or important in creating new ideas that are going to be taken up by other people.