Translator Catherine Hammond on Olvido García Valdés

(We've just published the April 2011 edition of TWO LINES Online, our online version of our TWO LINES series of translation anthologies. To recognize the work we've gathered for TWO LINES Online, we've asked the translators to provide short introductions to the works. This one comes from Catherine Hammond, who has translated an untitled poem by the Spanish poet Olvido García Valdés.)

In 2007, Olvido García Valdés won Spain’s highest award in poetry, the Premio Nacional for Y todos estábamos vivos / And We Are All Alive. García Valdés published seven prior books of poetry, several of which also won important prizes in Spain. These translations are primarily from a section of that book called “Sombra a sombra” / “Shadow to Shadow.” These are shadows that come from viewing life as if already dead, a recurring theme. In one of these poems she writes “como si todos /hubiéramos ya muerto, /vestidos o acolchados para un film, /vistos de lejos” in translation “as if we all /were dead right now, /dressed or padded up for a film, /seen from a distance.” Many of the poems in this section have a noir feeling, the city at night, often enough in the rain; details are difficult to discern. [Editor’s note: García Valdés does not use titles, but does indicate the beginning of a poem by using a bold font.]

Sparse, yet incisive use of detail works at the core of this poetry. García Valdés speaks of a supresión de elipsis. This suppression of ellipsis or intentional exclusion of an element, often grammatical, works in such a way we cannot directly ascertain basic narrative elements in her work. Her poetry gains much of its power from what she leaves out. Personal details are nearly nonexistent. We rarely know anything about the viewpoint character of a poem. Gender, age, physical appearance, none of those seems to be available to the reader. The entire book begins in the middle of a sentence with no implied subject beyond a verb in the third person singular. The exclusionary nature of content and context are central, according to the poet, to the work. She was very firm in our conversations by email and later when we met in Madrid that even gendered pronouns such as he or she would expose too much information to the reader.

To understand this suppression of ellipsis, perhaps it is helpful to look at the poet’s background a little. García Valdés was born in Asturias in 1950 and grew up in Franco-era Spain. This region had sided with the Nationalists during the Spanish Civil War. When Fernando Franco gained control of the government, he punished Asturias economically and politically. He downgraded the area from an autonomous region to the "Province of Oviedo" in 1936, which it remained until 1977 when, after Franco’s death and the return to democracy, it regained its former name and status. At any rate, García Valdés came from this region. She grew up in a time when there was danger in speaking out. Even after Franco’s death, there seemed to be a consensus of silence, that is, people did not speak much about the restraints previously imposed by the Fascist government. While I know it is impossible to make generalizations about the effects of growing up under a dictatorship, I think one possibility could be that a person might come to speak between the lines, as it were, and if a poet, find profound expression in the white spaces of the poem. This whiteness, its light, and its constant reference to what it means to be human, constantly interplay with the dark, with shadow, and with death in these stark, minimalist poems.