SURVIVE THE JUDGEMENT OF TIME (from EL PUNT AVUI)
/The following piece (translated here through Google translate), on Melcion Meteu’s translation of Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, appeared in Barcelona’s El Punt Avui.
CULTURE
BARCELONA - april 17, 2020 2.00 h
Survive the judgment of time
Century Books publishes 'Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror', a masterpiece by John Ashbery - three years ago - in a translation by the poet Melcion Mateu
An image from the 1970’s, when Ashbery published Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.
DAVID CASTILLO - BARCELONA
In an in-depth interview with Melcion Mateu in this journal eighteen years ago, the American poet John Ashbery described his famous book Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror., 1975: "It opened a new period in the sense that it was my first book to receive considerable attention, but I am not sure in what sense it is different from previous or later works, with the exception of the poem which it gives the title, which has become my best-known work and has an essay style, a formal tone that is sufficiently different from anything I have written before or after. " Although diverging from the opinion of critics, he had considered it one of the most important American books of poetry in the second half of the 20th century - influential critic Harold Bloom hailed him as a masterpiece and able to survive To the severe judgments of the times, Ashbery ended his comment in that interview by saying, "It's not one of my favorite poems, whatever it is."
Monument of poetry, Self-portrait in a convex mirror , after many vicissitudes, comes to us in Catalan through Melcion Mateu, great poet, and from the Girona-based publishing label Empordà, Llibres del Segle. It is an event because Matthew has made his way through the desert by knocking on many publishing houses, which have been rejected! Who can understand that a masterpiece translated by one of the best Catalan poets today has been discarded for commercial reasons by publishers, explaining exactly where our canon is, and our subject. It should be remembered that Melcion Mateu had already translated Some trees for Editions 62 at the beginning of the century. That was a 1956 book, a cover letter, that would open one of the most interesting contemporary works.
In full edition, with a foreword by Melcion and essay in the form of a militant epilogue by Eloy Fernández Porta, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror is a kaleidoscopic reading of the Parmigianino's picture, from which he takes the title. In the opening remarks, Melcion Mateu observes that "the publication of Self - portrait in a convex mirror(1975) earned Ashbery the most prestigious awards - the Poetry Pulitzer and the National Book Award, among others - and placed his poetry at a prominent place on the literary scene, which he continues to occupy today. Pride does not save you from controversy: some admire its immense expressive ability, others reject it as a mere verbal exercise, as free as impenetrable. However, Ashbery has been and is a beloved poet for younger generations, and has been considered by the most diverse critics - from Harold Bloom to Charles Bernstein, to mention two extremes - a monster the size of an Ezra Pound, a Wallace Stevens or a TS Eliot, with a playful, politically aura aura than the high modernistsAmericans. " Born in Rochester, northern New York, and the son of a farmer, he had received privileged education at top private universities - Yale, Harvard - before going to Paris for almost a decade as a critic. of art. In recent years, he has been sharing his time in an apartment in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan and an upstate house in Hudson on the shores of the eponymous river that ends just off Central New York Island.
Melcion Mateu synthesizes the poet's intentions and reception for the reader, who is often transformed by reading, and whose translator and great connoisseur of the master has perfectly grasped: " Self-portrait in a convex mirror is and is not a representative poem of John Ashbery's Poetry. You could talk of two books in one: the pieces - short and not so brief - in the first part and the long final poem that gives the whole title. Undoubtedly, the initial thirty-four poems are most representative of Ashberian poetry: a way of transforming itself again and again and incorporating a multitude of styles, amalgamation and collage of surrealism, symbolism, romanticism and more or less gross realism. Cultured and scholarly references coexist with folklore, film, comic strips and kitsch; dialogues and vulgar registers are juxtaposed with the refined diction of a neo-romantic landscape; the broad scenarios of American nature mix with urban life; the voices of anonymous characters are interspersed with those of a lyrical self or a second person that can be singular or plural (the English you ). Ashbery's is a poetry that at times may seem good to read - in its close tone, at times warm - but which is often difficult to understand, to grasp in its verbal richness, its universe of references, its unpredictable turns and its complexity. ”