From Viaje maravilloso del señor Nic-Nac al planeta Marte by Eduardo Ladislao Holmberg
Translated from Spanish by Ana Lucía Alonso and sam smiley
This was published in Argentina, in serial form in the Buenos Aires Newpaper El Nacional
beginning in November of 1875. We will release it chapter by chapter on
this blog, and eventually on PDF. Rachel Haywood Ferrera provides some
excellent background on this story in English, in her book The Emergence of Latin American Science Fiction. We are translating right now from an edition offered in Spanish by the Biblioteca National in Buenos Aires.
To start from the beginning, you can take this link to: http://sciamremix.blogspot.com/2013/08/eng-chapter-1-preoccupations-of-author.html
Chapter 4: The Whirlwind
Free! Free!
I feel it, and I understand it, but I understand it and feel it with all the senses of the soul, whose strength develops as I walk away from the center of my prior mortal actions.
The night rotates around the Earth, resembling a spoke of a wheel. The continents and the seas are enveloped a moment within the shadow, to appear after, palpitating with life and light.
With life! With light!
What is the life of the Earth, compared with the life of the spirit in the ether?
What is the light over the seas, next to these luminous atoms that sparkle around me, and which are not but many other spirits, members of the universal soul?
Its immense whirlwind drags me far from the world in which I have lived; but although I have almost already the gift of omniscience, I ignore completely where the cloud of spirits flies, between whose lights floats mine.
Dizzying torrent, its strength alone is computable by the group.
My liberty is not yet complete, because I still am not essentially detached from the earthly bonds. The emotional connections are retained dimly, although as I move away, they are now losing their primitive strength, and the moment will arrive in which, completely deprived of them, I feel all the glory of the supreme freedom of the souls.
Where are you going, my spirit, dragged by the ethereal whirlwind?
I move away...I move away without ceasing.
The whirlwind turns, undulates, overflows, fluctuates, and moves away. And with it, the spirits are moved away, fluctuate, overflow, undulate, and turn, to resemble a mist of light dragged by a divine breath.
We have crossed the confines of the world, there, where the air ends which is breathed by mortals. And the ether, the space without limits, opens itself to my senses, to my image spirit, already free of earthly affections.
And the whirlwind turns, undulates, overflows, fluctuates, and moves away, and with that the spirits move away, fluctuate, overflow, undulate, and turn, appearing as a luminous dust, and animated, propelled to infinity through the voice of eternity.
A blog of art, science, and literature that explores the question: What is a 'scientific american'?
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
Saturday, October 26, 2013
(ENG) Chapter 3: First Consequences of the Experiment
From Viaje maravilloso del señor Nic-Nac al planeta Marte by Eduardo Ladislao Holmberg
Translated from Spanish by Ana Lucía Alonso and sam smiley
This was published in Argentina, in serial form in the Buenos Aires Newpaper El Nacional beginning in November of 1875. We will release it chapter by chapter on this blog, and eventually on PDF. Rachel Haywood Ferrera provides some excellent background on this story in English, in her book The Emergence of Latin American Science Fiction. We are translating right now from an edition offered in Spanish by the Biblioteca National in Buenos Aires.
To start from the beginning, you can take this link to: http://sciamremix.blogspot.com/2013/08/eng-chapter-1-preoccupations-of-author.html
For eight days, I have not had a bite, nor have I drunk a drop of water.
The strength of my body is leaving me, and I can hardly hold the weak pen
with which I trace these lines.
The pains of hunger, terrible at first, have yielded the fourth day, and I believe the internal organs are reducing, just as the grain of camphor that gradually evaporates.
Matter dies; but the spirit creates wings, and I feel the moment of departure is near.
The face sinks at the temples and in the cheeks, the eyes pop out of their sockets, the twitching of the muscles have also disappeared.
I look at myself in a mirror and I am horrified. If this is the image with which I am going to present myself to the other spirits, I do not doubt that the spirits will move away, terrified.
I feel tetanic shocks..it doesn’t matter...perhaps it is the spirit that produces them as it detaches the image from matter.
My family is disconsolate..they want to call a doctor...Fools! They do not know that I am going to enter in direct communication with the universal soul!
The convulsions increase..I feel a particular heat...fever…
The terrestrial images are losing their intensity...I only perceive shapes… Ah! The family...top hat, boots, pulse, clock...Doctor!
One shape, a doctor, takes me by the hand...His hand is like ice...It makes me shudder! Could his heart be as cold as his hand? Wretch...Why has he not consulted Seele?
He looks at me...I hardly make him out.
“He is dying” he says in a low voice, and I smile to hear that, because my spirit, which is already recovering its freedom, with the contact of the doctor, increases the intensity of its senses.
Upon examining my smile, he exclaims “Madman! He dies crazy!”
I smile again, the doctor moves back.
“It would be really good to give him some food” he says. He takes my pulse again. “He has died! How good would it have been to feed him well in his last days! He has died!”
Dead! Yes, yes! Wretches, you do not know that it is only now I am alive, and that the spirit and the image, already floating in the ether of the souls, enjoys all the activity of the universal spirit? Dead! You call death the supreme moment of glory? Do you not see my spirit that is elevated? Do you not see it? Do you not recognize the image?
There on Earth remains my body, surrounded by those who were my family.
Next to the table on which he wrote, the doctor who contributed to liberating my spirit, contemplates with alarm a sheet of paper on which these lines appear spontaneously.
It is my subordinate genie who traces them. But the doctor does not perceive the genie. Why?
Ah! What horror!
This doctor does not have an image.
This doctor does not have a physiognomy.
He lies down on the floor.
He just expired in horror.
His spirit, his image, also floats in the ether of the free souls.
Translated from Spanish by Ana Lucía Alonso and sam smiley
This was published in Argentina, in serial form in the Buenos Aires Newpaper El Nacional beginning in November of 1875. We will release it chapter by chapter on this blog, and eventually on PDF. Rachel Haywood Ferrera provides some excellent background on this story in English, in her book The Emergence of Latin American Science Fiction. We are translating right now from an edition offered in Spanish by the Biblioteca National in Buenos Aires.
To start from the beginning, you can take this link to: http://sciamremix.blogspot.com/2013/08/eng-chapter-1-preoccupations-of-author.html
For eight days, I have not had a bite, nor have I drunk a drop of water.
The strength of my body is leaving me, and I can hardly hold the weak pen
with which I trace these lines.
The pains of hunger, terrible at first, have yielded the fourth day, and I believe the internal organs are reducing, just as the grain of camphor that gradually evaporates.
Matter dies; but the spirit creates wings, and I feel the moment of departure is near.
The face sinks at the temples and in the cheeks, the eyes pop out of their sockets, the twitching of the muscles have also disappeared.
I look at myself in a mirror and I am horrified. If this is the image with which I am going to present myself to the other spirits, I do not doubt that the spirits will move away, terrified.
I feel tetanic shocks..it doesn’t matter...perhaps it is the spirit that produces them as it detaches the image from matter.
My family is disconsolate..they want to call a doctor...Fools! They do not know that I am going to enter in direct communication with the universal soul!
The convulsions increase..I feel a particular heat...fever…
The terrestrial images are losing their intensity...I only perceive shapes… Ah! The family...top hat, boots, pulse, clock...Doctor!
One shape, a doctor, takes me by the hand...His hand is like ice...It makes me shudder! Could his heart be as cold as his hand? Wretch...Why has he not consulted Seele?
He looks at me...I hardly make him out.
“He is dying” he says in a low voice, and I smile to hear that, because my spirit, which is already recovering its freedom, with the contact of the doctor, increases the intensity of its senses.
Upon examining my smile, he exclaims “Madman! He dies crazy!”
I smile again, the doctor moves back.
“It would be really good to give him some food” he says. He takes my pulse again. “He has died! How good would it have been to feed him well in his last days! He has died!”
Dead! Yes, yes! Wretches, you do not know that it is only now I am alive, and that the spirit and the image, already floating in the ether of the souls, enjoys all the activity of the universal spirit? Dead! You call death the supreme moment of glory? Do you not see my spirit that is elevated? Do you not see it? Do you not recognize the image?
There on Earth remains my body, surrounded by those who were my family.
Next to the table on which he wrote, the doctor who contributed to liberating my spirit, contemplates with alarm a sheet of paper on which these lines appear spontaneously.
It is my subordinate genie who traces them. But the doctor does not perceive the genie. Why?
Ah! What horror!
This doctor does not have an image.
This doctor does not have a physiognomy.
He lies down on the floor.
He just expired in horror.
His spirit, his image, also floats in the ether of the free souls.
(ENG) Chapter 2: The Author consults with a Spiritualist.
From Viaje maravilloso del señor Nic-Nac al planeta Marte by Eduardo Ladislao Holmberg
Translated from Spanish by Ana Lucía Alonso and sam smiley
This was published in Argentina, in serial form in the Buenos Aires Newpaper El Nacional beginning in November of 1875. We will release it chapter by chapter on this blog, and eventually on PDF. Rachel Haywood Ferrera provides some excellent background on this story in English, in her book The Emergence of Latin American Science Fiction. We are translating right now from an edition offered in Spanish by the Biblioteca National in Buenos Aires.
To start from the beginning, you can take this link to: http://sciamremix.blogspot.com/2013/08/eng-chapter-1-preoccupations-of-author.html
My youth has been a blur.
My spirit had all the vagueness of infinity, and in spite of this, my name is Nic-Nac.
In 1856, when I was hardly 20, all of my preoccupations had developed, without having however, ties that bound them, the connecting link with which the years have strengthened them today. The more so as I have resolved serious problems unknown not only by philosophers without senses, but also by sensorial scholars.
A spiritualist had just arrived from Europe.
No one knew him.
Only one person consulted with him and that person who found the ideal of his aspirations in the word of this man, that person was me.
There soon existed between us the communion of the soul. However, if vast were his ideas when related with the world of the spirits, more vast still were mine, because they concerned the spirits and all matter, the Kosmos of the pantheists, the supreme dreamer of dreamers.
How beautiful is the life of dreams!
The dream is the link that binds the human spirit with the grand mysteries of Nature.
That spirtualist was named Friedrich Seele, or as he would want his name in Castilian, Federico Soul. [NOTE: we decided to use the English word Soul rather than the Spanish word Alma. We may decide to change that back to Alma, but are waiting to see how this unfolds]
No one has ever taken a name better given.
Many have taken the last name of Torres, [in English: "Towers"] and nevertheless, they are of smaller stature than average. Others flaunt the name León, [in English: "Lion] and I have know some to have fled from a cat.
But Seele, or rather, Soul, was as a supreme concession of truth to reality. Here there had no contrast, the shocking contrast between the Torres and the Leónes, because if any time there has existed on the world, a corporeal and tangible soul, it was in the personification of Friedrich Seele.
The material life had been sublimated in him, so to speak. Its manifestations transformed into a series of psychic phenomena, analogous to the ones that would be presented by a perceptible and intangible vision at the same time. It was similar to the vision of this black cat that for the last few hours, pursues with its immaterial form the power of my senses.
Seele, as his name indicates, was German and in his noble spirit, the full intellectual force of his nation had been concentrated: all the dreams, all the fogs, all the sylphs, all the beauty, and the lights that are born, shine, fly, roam, and color the German spirit.
Well versed in all the physical and moral sciences, he was as familiar with the interpretation of a cosmic phenomenon, as the explanation of a physic phenomenon. If to all of this, one adds his powerful strength as a medium, we must admit that Seele could have notable imitators, but never rivals.
Seele was not of those spiritualists, or, to speak more accurately, one of those mediums who know to call spirits very versed in the life of Doctor Agüero, but who ignores how many letters the world “sun” has in Quichua. [NOTE: we won't elaborate or footnote on Doctor Agüero at this time, but would like to note that in this passage, we think Holmberg might be talking about indigenous knowledge and western positivistic knowledge. We are also wondering if Quechua and Quichua have the same meaning.]
Seele was a learned man, but still, he was a spirit, and more still, he was a medium.
The spiritualists, in general, are treated like charlatans, but Seele was not treated as one of them, because Seele demonstrated in a palpitating way everything that he or his genie familiar found out. [NOTE: the word in spanish for genius and genie are the same..so it's hard to translate this wordplay. We are using genie at the risk of losing the wordplay.]
An example: a certain day, a learned man asked him: how many letters does the word carbonado have in Chinese? Consulting with one of his genies, he answered, it has nine letters, just as the word sombrero in English has eight.
“It is not true” said the man who asked. “Sombrero in English, is said to be hat: it has three letters, not eight.”
“Fool!” said the genie. “In English, hat has three letters, but sombrero has eight letters in the same or any other language...“
If the genie limited himself to carbonada, the learned man would have been satisfied, and would have left, recognizing the wisdom of Seele, who had at his service, such knowledgeable genies. However, when the learned man remembered positivism as the affiliation of his ideas, he and his assistants withdrew, treating Seele as a charlatan and the genie as phony.
This was later the opinion of the people, but it was well known to me that the people did not have, nor could have, nor must have an opinion.
I consulted with the spiritualist, and remained convinced, after the first meeting, that it was impossible to meet a man comparable to this man.
“The spirit,” he said to me, “and particularly the spirit of each one of the men, is not but a minimal part of the universal spirit, alone and unique, of which is a direct emanation. So as matter [NOTE: we are translating from “la matería” and will continue to use "matter" in English] is composed of atoms, the universal spirit is formed of atomic spirits, and in those exist all the strengths that characterize the human life in its spiritual form. In those, the sensations are manifested with all their purity, and encompass the image, or that which is perceptible. They are lacking weight, resistance, and impenetrability; but they are visible by encompassing the image.”
“So it is possible to contemplate one of those images without more help than our senses?” I asked him.
“Yes, because the senses of man form part of a spirit. And as one has the same nature as the other, both being at the same time integrated into the universal spirit, the image is perceived through the function of the senses.”
“And how can you explain, that the spirit being single [NOTE: We are using single instead of simple, perhaps meaning "undivided" in this context] since you have called it atomic, or even better, spiritual atom, may consist of parts with their own force, being that the essential condition of the atom is that it does not have parts?
“This is the atom of science; but the spiritual atom, it actually has parts, if you would like to call them in this way, they are but qualities that are manifested by vibrations called senses. “
“So that after death the spirit is separated from matter, preserving the senses and the image?”
“Yes, and even before death. Have you not observed that during the dream state all the corporeal functions retain their intensity in the spirit? Have you not contemplated your image floating in space like a bird, or a star, and that this image perceived all the perceptible phenomena? But nevertheless, matter was dead, although the vegetative phenomena continued.”
“But this spirit of mine that appeared to float was not but an emanation of the organ that secreted it.”
“Secreted? Perhaps the spirit is a secretion?”
“Yes, the proof of it is when the organ that produces less of the spirit, when the secretion is diminished, the spiritual force also diminishes.”
“Force, that on the other hand, retains all its action during the dream, is that not true?”
“You are right, Señor Seele. So that according to your doctrine, the spirit is an emanation of the universal soul, and this emanation is susceptible to receive impressions, independently of the matter in which it vibrates?”
“Yes, and also holds the image.”
“Can one spirit that is connected to matter detach from it at some predetermined moments?”
“Yes, and it does not only detach, but also it carries the image, the essential condition of its existence. This phenomena, whose most common form is in the dream state, presents something very characteristic. In a dream, the more we approach the universal soul, the less we remember, in waking, the marvels we have witnessed. And the weight of matter drowns, so to speak, the strength of the memory, which only retains but a vague idea, lost, of what it has contemplated.”
“And what could one do to break the material yoke?”
“Reduce its action, by depriving oneself of all nourishment.”
“And is there any means of recognizing when the matter has arrived to become spiritualized completely?
“When hunger has stupified us”
“That is for the dream state. And what if now I had the idea to launch my spirit image to visit the planets?”
“Beforehand, you would have to submit yourself to the same privations. When you felt that your weakness annihilated you, you would observe that the spirit moved away from you, becoming more fixed in its course, the greater the intensity of your desire.
“According to that, my spirit image can visit other celestial bodies, and encounter phenomena never before known to man?”
“Without a doubt, and what is even more, you will be able to communicate directly with the rest of the free spirits or slaves that populate the other planets or those that inhabit the ether.”
I retired with some appetite. Nevertheless, I was to begin from that moment to deprive myself of all that would weaken the spirit, strengthening the matter. As evidence of my energy, I spent the rest of the day reading the description of the “Wedding of Camacho” [from Don Quijote de la Mancha.]
Translators' NOTES: This was a really philosophical chapter that had a lot of narrative functions. Its primary narrative function was to explain the technology of space travel to Mars or in Star Trek terms "teleportation". These are ideas the reader will need to know for the upcoming chapters.
However, this was also a chapter describing Holmberg's philosophies of scientific knowledge. There was a lot of semantic word play which we interpreted to be texts that opened up questions of indigenous knowledge, of European knowledge, and the mixing and dialogue between European and Argentinean epistemologies. Translating this was really hard and took several meetings to work it out. We hope we did it justice!
Translated from Spanish by Ana Lucía Alonso and sam smiley
This was published in Argentina, in serial form in the Buenos Aires Newpaper El Nacional beginning in November of 1875. We will release it chapter by chapter on this blog, and eventually on PDF. Rachel Haywood Ferrera provides some excellent background on this story in English, in her book The Emergence of Latin American Science Fiction. We are translating right now from an edition offered in Spanish by the Biblioteca National in Buenos Aires.
To start from the beginning, you can take this link to: http://sciamremix.blogspot.com/2013/08/eng-chapter-1-preoccupations-of-author.html
My youth has been a blur.
My spirit had all the vagueness of infinity, and in spite of this, my name is Nic-Nac.
In 1856, when I was hardly 20, all of my preoccupations had developed, without having however, ties that bound them, the connecting link with which the years have strengthened them today. The more so as I have resolved serious problems unknown not only by philosophers without senses, but also by sensorial scholars.
A spiritualist had just arrived from Europe.
No one knew him.
Only one person consulted with him and that person who found the ideal of his aspirations in the word of this man, that person was me.
There soon existed between us the communion of the soul. However, if vast were his ideas when related with the world of the spirits, more vast still were mine, because they concerned the spirits and all matter, the Kosmos of the pantheists, the supreme dreamer of dreamers.
How beautiful is the life of dreams!
The dream is the link that binds the human spirit with the grand mysteries of Nature.
That spirtualist was named Friedrich Seele, or as he would want his name in Castilian, Federico Soul. [NOTE: we decided to use the English word Soul rather than the Spanish word Alma. We may decide to change that back to Alma, but are waiting to see how this unfolds]
No one has ever taken a name better given.
Many have taken the last name of Torres, [in English: "Towers"] and nevertheless, they are of smaller stature than average. Others flaunt the name León, [in English: "Lion] and I have know some to have fled from a cat.
But Seele, or rather, Soul, was as a supreme concession of truth to reality. Here there had no contrast, the shocking contrast between the Torres and the Leónes, because if any time there has existed on the world, a corporeal and tangible soul, it was in the personification of Friedrich Seele.
The material life had been sublimated in him, so to speak. Its manifestations transformed into a series of psychic phenomena, analogous to the ones that would be presented by a perceptible and intangible vision at the same time. It was similar to the vision of this black cat that for the last few hours, pursues with its immaterial form the power of my senses.
Seele, as his name indicates, was German and in his noble spirit, the full intellectual force of his nation had been concentrated: all the dreams, all the fogs, all the sylphs, all the beauty, and the lights that are born, shine, fly, roam, and color the German spirit.
Well versed in all the physical and moral sciences, he was as familiar with the interpretation of a cosmic phenomenon, as the explanation of a physic phenomenon. If to all of this, one adds his powerful strength as a medium, we must admit that Seele could have notable imitators, but never rivals.
Seele was not of those spiritualists, or, to speak more accurately, one of those mediums who know to call spirits very versed in the life of Doctor Agüero, but who ignores how many letters the world “sun” has in Quichua. [NOTE: we won't elaborate or footnote on Doctor Agüero at this time, but would like to note that in this passage, we think Holmberg might be talking about indigenous knowledge and western positivistic knowledge. We are also wondering if Quechua and Quichua have the same meaning.]
Seele was a learned man, but still, he was a spirit, and more still, he was a medium.
The spiritualists, in general, are treated like charlatans, but Seele was not treated as one of them, because Seele demonstrated in a palpitating way everything that he or his genie familiar found out. [NOTE: the word in spanish for genius and genie are the same..so it's hard to translate this wordplay. We are using genie at the risk of losing the wordplay.]
An example: a certain day, a learned man asked him: how many letters does the word carbonado have in Chinese? Consulting with one of his genies, he answered, it has nine letters, just as the word sombrero in English has eight.
“It is not true” said the man who asked. “Sombrero in English, is said to be hat: it has three letters, not eight.”
“Fool!” said the genie. “In English, hat has three letters, but sombrero has eight letters in the same or any other language...“
If the genie limited himself to carbonada, the learned man would have been satisfied, and would have left, recognizing the wisdom of Seele, who had at his service, such knowledgeable genies. However, when the learned man remembered positivism as the affiliation of his ideas, he and his assistants withdrew, treating Seele as a charlatan and the genie as phony.
This was later the opinion of the people, but it was well known to me that the people did not have, nor could have, nor must have an opinion.
I consulted with the spiritualist, and remained convinced, after the first meeting, that it was impossible to meet a man comparable to this man.
“The spirit,” he said to me, “and particularly the spirit of each one of the men, is not but a minimal part of the universal spirit, alone and unique, of which is a direct emanation. So as matter [NOTE: we are translating from “la matería” and will continue to use "matter" in English] is composed of atoms, the universal spirit is formed of atomic spirits, and in those exist all the strengths that characterize the human life in its spiritual form. In those, the sensations are manifested with all their purity, and encompass the image, or that which is perceptible. They are lacking weight, resistance, and impenetrability; but they are visible by encompassing the image.”
“So it is possible to contemplate one of those images without more help than our senses?” I asked him.
“Yes, because the senses of man form part of a spirit. And as one has the same nature as the other, both being at the same time integrated into the universal spirit, the image is perceived through the function of the senses.”
“And how can you explain, that the spirit being single [NOTE: We are using single instead of simple, perhaps meaning "undivided" in this context] since you have called it atomic, or even better, spiritual atom, may consist of parts with their own force, being that the essential condition of the atom is that it does not have parts?
“This is the atom of science; but the spiritual atom, it actually has parts, if you would like to call them in this way, they are but qualities that are manifested by vibrations called senses. “
“So that after death the spirit is separated from matter, preserving the senses and the image?”
“Yes, and even before death. Have you not observed that during the dream state all the corporeal functions retain their intensity in the spirit? Have you not contemplated your image floating in space like a bird, or a star, and that this image perceived all the perceptible phenomena? But nevertheless, matter was dead, although the vegetative phenomena continued.”
“But this spirit of mine that appeared to float was not but an emanation of the organ that secreted it.”
“Secreted? Perhaps the spirit is a secretion?”
“Yes, the proof of it is when the organ that produces less of the spirit, when the secretion is diminished, the spiritual force also diminishes.”
“Force, that on the other hand, retains all its action during the dream, is that not true?”
“You are right, Señor Seele. So that according to your doctrine, the spirit is an emanation of the universal soul, and this emanation is susceptible to receive impressions, independently of the matter in which it vibrates?”
“Yes, and also holds the image.”
“Can one spirit that is connected to matter detach from it at some predetermined moments?”
“Yes, and it does not only detach, but also it carries the image, the essential condition of its existence. This phenomena, whose most common form is in the dream state, presents something very characteristic. In a dream, the more we approach the universal soul, the less we remember, in waking, the marvels we have witnessed. And the weight of matter drowns, so to speak, the strength of the memory, which only retains but a vague idea, lost, of what it has contemplated.”
“And what could one do to break the material yoke?”
“Reduce its action, by depriving oneself of all nourishment.”
“And is there any means of recognizing when the matter has arrived to become spiritualized completely?
“When hunger has stupified us”
“That is for the dream state. And what if now I had the idea to launch my spirit image to visit the planets?”
“Beforehand, you would have to submit yourself to the same privations. When you felt that your weakness annihilated you, you would observe that the spirit moved away from you, becoming more fixed in its course, the greater the intensity of your desire.
“According to that, my spirit image can visit other celestial bodies, and encounter phenomena never before known to man?”
“Without a doubt, and what is even more, you will be able to communicate directly with the rest of the free spirits or slaves that populate the other planets or those that inhabit the ether.”
I retired with some appetite. Nevertheless, I was to begin from that moment to deprive myself of all that would weaken the spirit, strengthening the matter. As evidence of my energy, I spent the rest of the day reading the description of the “Wedding of Camacho” [from Don Quijote de la Mancha.]
Translators' NOTES: This was a really philosophical chapter that had a lot of narrative functions. Its primary narrative function was to explain the technology of space travel to Mars or in Star Trek terms "teleportation". These are ideas the reader will need to know for the upcoming chapters.
However, this was also a chapter describing Holmberg's philosophies of scientific knowledge. There was a lot of semantic word play which we interpreted to be texts that opened up questions of indigenous knowledge, of European knowledge, and the mixing and dialogue between European and Argentinean epistemologies. Translating this was really hard and took several meetings to work it out. We hope we did it justice!
Sunday, August 25, 2013
(ENG) Chapter 1: Preoccupations of the author
From Viaje maravilloso del señor Nic-Nac al planeta Marte by Eduardo Ladislao Holmberg
Translated from Spanish by Ana Lucía Alonso and sam smiley
This was published in Argentina, in serial form in the Buenos Aires Newpaper El Nacional beginning in November of 1875. We will release it chapter by chapter on this blog, and eventually on PDF. Rachel Haywood Ferrera provides some excellent background on this story in English, in her book The Emergence of Latin American Science Fiction. We are translating right now from an edition offered in Spanish by the Biblioteca National in Buenos Aires.
Chapter 1: Preoccupations of the author
Translated from Spanish by Ana Lucía Alonso and sam smiley
This was published in Argentina, in serial form in the Buenos Aires Newpaper El Nacional beginning in November of 1875. We will release it chapter by chapter on this blog, and eventually on PDF. Rachel Haywood Ferrera provides some excellent background on this story in English, in her book The Emergence of Latin American Science Fiction. We are translating right now from an edition offered in Spanish by the Biblioteca National in Buenos Aires.
Chapter 1: Preoccupations of the author
Nothing is more admirable than the perfect mechanism of the skies.
Nothing is more pitious than human ignorance. Endowed with weak senses, if compared to other animals, we claim to have solved the most important questions that can stimulate the spirit in the path of investigation. We can compare ourselves to a traveler who when following a fixed course, suddenly meets a labyrinth of trails: only luck can remove him from a difficult trance; a mariner who in the ocean loses his instruments, leaving his ship to float like a leaf that the wind blows.
So the philosophers, completely lacking in the final elements of the research, concentrate their spirit and appear to explain the phenomena of the universe by any whim of their imagination, as if they were to solve an abstract question, the only case in which such concentration is permitted. The person is not any different who closes and tightens both eyes, seeking to examine a weak organism in a microscope, an instrument which perhaps he didn’t even know by name.
But it is necessary to break with such an old system, to liberate the spirit of material weight, and substantially raise it to those regions that can perhaps serve to resolve the most difficult points of the universe.
A black cat is presented to my eyes and I watch it.
This cat is real under the viewpoint of primary research, but this cat is not substantial, because it lacks many of the essential conditions.
This cat appears virtually; it is neither a reflection nor a shadow, but it is a cat. I see it, and although I can't feel it, it is possible to assure that its nature is comprehensible.
Who can deny that by virtue of unknown forces, it could be possible to undertake extraordinary travels, as would be in the case of this cat, whose body and spirit being found is perhaps two hundred leagues of distance, comes to impress me with its real image, yes, real, though it is not matter?
This is not, surely, a simple phenomena of the spirit. Simply imitate this cat , and all doubts are vanquished.
The image is not material, all the same, it is perceptible. A mirror reflects a figure, returns it with all its elements... and this image is not a spirit either. Could it perhaps be given the name of spirtual matters?
When the spirit jumps daringly to interpret certain mysteries, it recedes at the immensity of the attempt with the paucity of the elements that are at its disposal; tied to the dominion of the senses, the senses do not go on beyond its power.
But if the spirit accompanies the image: if the latter conserves the sensory force, free, in turn, of matter, is it not possible to penetrate the world of the unknown and interpret the universe?
Millions and millions of luminaries sparkle in the space. Science baptizes them, calculates their distances, observes their beams, breaks down the elements of their light, numbers them, and archives them in its libraries. And life? Are these perhaps splendid deserts launched in space for man to contemplate?
No, life palpitates in each of those grains of sand in the shining beach of the sky, and those marvels that the spirit can not understand alone, are going to be resolved by the spirit and the image.
Translater's note: In this chapter, we took the word "materia" and used the English "matter". We also noticed Holmberg's interest and fascination with the images of Edgar Allen Poe, as signified by the black cat.
(ENG) Nic-Nac.. beginning a new translation.
Ana and I are about to take on a very large task..to translate into English Eduardo Holmberg's novela, Viaje maravilloso del señor Nic-Nac al Planeta Marte. This was published in Argentina, in serial form in the Buenos Aires Newpaper El Nacional beginning in November of 1875. We will release it chapter by chapter on this blog, and eventually on PDF. Rachel Haywood Ferrera provides some excellent background on this story in English, in her book The Emergence of Latin American Science Fiction. We are translating right now from an edition offered in Spanish by the Biblioteca National in Buenos Aires.
Currently Anexia Editions in Argentina is doing a graphic novel of this tale in Spanish. They have completed part 1 and are working on part 2.
Here is a youtube preview:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1P4A_mQ8ts
Here is some information in English on Argentinian science fiction:
http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/argentina
Currently Anexia Editions in Argentina is doing a graphic novel of this tale in Spanish. They have completed part 1 and are working on part 2.
Here is a youtube preview:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1P4A_mQ8ts
Here is some information in English on Argentinian science fiction:
http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/argentina
Wednesday, August 7, 2013
(ENG) Translation of El Vampiro
El Vampiro (The Vampire) by Horacio Quiroga
Translated by Ana Lucía Alonso and sam smiley
"Yes" said the lawyer Rhode. “I had that case. It is a situation, quite rare for here, of vampirism. Rogelio Castelar, a man until then normal outside of some fantasies, was discovered one night in the cemetery as he dragged the recently buried body of a woman. The individual's hands were destroyed because he had recently removed one cubic meter of the earth with his fingernails. In the side of the grave lay the remains of the coffin, newly burnt. And as a macabre complement, a cat, no doubt an outsider, lay thereby with broken kidneys. As you can see, nothing lacked in the scene.
-----------------------------
“In the first interview with the man, I saw that I had to contend with a mournful and crazy person. At first, he was obstinant and did not respond to me although he did not stop nodding his head at my reasonings. Finally he appeared to find in me a man deserving of hearing him. His mouth trembled with the anxiety of communicating.”"Ah! You understand me!" he exclaimed, fixing on me his fevered eyes. With a vertigo that you would barely believe, he continued, this which I remember:
"To you I will say everything! Yes! You mean what was that like, about the...the cat? I! Only I!
Listen to me: When I arrived..there, my wife..."
"Where THERE?" I interrupted him.
-----------------------------
"THERE..the cat or no? So? ...When I arrived, my wife ran like crazy and embraced me. And immediately she fainted. Everyone then ran rapidly to me, looking down at me with crazy eyes. My house! It had burned, crumbled, and sank with everything inside! That, that was my house! But not she, my wife of mine!”Then a spiteful man, devoured by madness shook me on the shoulder, yelling at me:
“What are you doing? Answer me!”
And I answered him:
“It is my wife! my wife of mine who has survived”
Then a cry rose:
“It is not her! That is not!”
I felt that my eyes, lowering their glance at what I had between my arms, wanted to jump out of their sockets. Was this not María, the Maria of mine, and fainted? A shock of blood lit my eyes. From my arms fell a woman who was not María. Then I jumped on a barrel and overpowered all the workers. And shouted with a hoarse voice: “Why, Why!”
Not even one of them was combed because the wind threw all of their hair to the side. And the eyes from outside looking at me.
Then I started to hear from everywhere:
“She died”
“She was crushed to death”
“She died”
“She screamed”
“She screamed only once.”
“I felt her scream”
“Me too”
“She died”
“His wife was crushed to death.”
“By all the saints!” I then shouted, wringing my hands. “Let us save her, comrades! It is our duty to save her!”
And all of us ran. Everyone ran with a silent fury to the rubble. The bricks flew, the framework swayed, the removal advanced, leaping.
At 4:00, only I worked. I did not have a healthy nail, nor in my fingers was there anything else to dig. But in my chest! Anguish and fury and horrid misfortune trembling in my chest in looking for my María!
Nothing remained but the piano to remove. There was an epidemic silence, a fallen petticoat, and dead rats. Under the lying piano, on the granite floor of blood and charcoal, was the crushed servant.
I took her out to the patio, where nothing remained but four silent walls, viscous with tar and water. The slippery floor reflected the dark sky. Then I took the servant and began to drag her around of the patio.
They were mine, these steps. And what steps! A step, another step, another step!
In the hollow of a door..charcoal and water, nothing more- was huddled the cat of the house, who had escaped the disaster, although battered. The fourth time that the servant and I passed in front of her, the cat howled in anger.
“Ah! It was not I, then?” I shouted desperately. “Was it not I who looked in the rubble, the debris and the shroud of the framework, for one piece of my María?”
The sixth time that we passed in front of the cat, the animal bristled. The seventh time, it rose, dragging its feet behind it. And it followed us then so, striving to wet its tongue on the oiled hair of the servant - of her, of María, no damned corpse stealer.
-----------------------------
“Corpse stealer!” I repeated and looked at him. “But then that was in the cemetery!”The vampire flattened his own hair while he looked at me with his immense crazy eyes.
“So you knew, then!” he articulated. “So everyone knows this and lets me speak for an hour! Ah!” he roared a sob, throwing his head back and gliding against the wall until he fell, seated. “But who tells me, the wretch that I am, here, why in my house I pulled out my nails but did not save from the tar even the hanging hair of my María!”
-----------------------------
“Nothing more was needed, as you understand” concluded the lawyer “to orient myself completely regarding the individual. He was admitted immediately. It has been two years from this, and last night he has come out, perfectly cured.”
“Last night?” exclaimed a young man in deep mourning. “And at night they discharge the insane?”
“But why not? The individual is cured, as sane as you or I. Furthermore, if he lapses, which is the law of these vampires, by this time he will be back in action. But these are not my issues. Good night, gentlemen.”
Thursday, March 21, 2013
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)