Night Journey (ebook)

Argumento de Night Journey (ebook)

One of South America's most celebrated contemporary poets takes us on a fantastic voyage to mysterious lands and seas, into the psyche, and to the heart of the poem itself. Night Journey is the English-language debut of the work that won María Negroni an Argentine National Book Award. It is a book of dreams--dreams she renders with surreal beauty that recalls the work of her compatriot Alejandra Pizarnik, with the penetrating subtlety of Borges and Calvino.

In sixty-two tightly woven prose poems, Negroni deftly infuses haunting imagery with an ironic, personal spirituality. Effortlessly she navigates the nameless subject to the slopes of the Himalayas, to a bar in Buenos Aires, through war, from icy Scandinavian landscapes to the tropics, across seas, toward a cemetery in the wake of Napoleon's hearse, by train, by taxis headed in unrequested directions, past mirrors and birds, between life and death.

Night Journey reflects a mastery of a traditional form while brilliantly expressing a modern condition: the multicultural, multifaceted individual, ever in motion. Displacement abounds: a "medieval tabard" where a pelvis should be, a "lipless grin," a "beach severed from the ocean." In one poem "nomadic cities" whisk past. In another, smiling cockroaches loom in a visiting mother's eyes.

Anne Twitty, whose elegant translations are accompanied by the Spanish originals, remarks in her preface that the book's "indomitable literary intelligence" subdues an unspoken terror--helplessness. Yet, as observed by the angel Gabriel, the consoling voice of wisdom, only by accepting the journey for what it is can one discover its "hidden splendor," the "invisible center of the poem." As readers of this magnificent work will discover, this is a journey that, because its every fleeting image conjures a thousand words of fertile silence, can be savored again and again.

"A mysterious configuration of presence and absence, Night Journey is an intricate symbolic mapping of identity. María Negroni has written a book in which each poem is an open window allowing us to observe the dangerous clash of unreality and reality. For as she writes: 'I began to name things, that is, to conceal them.' And so the reader enters the fascinating universe of a woman traveling amid and beyond fear, mirrors, and shadows. Night Journey: a book where existence is a daring language of dreams."--Nicole Brossard, author of Mauve Desert

"Calvino's prose (as in Invisible Cities) is the only predecessor I can cite for María Negroni's sophisticated texts, and Anne Twitty's remarkable translations are quite as striking and idiomatic as William Weaver's celebrated versions of the Italian master. These prose poems have all the glamour of narrative fables and all the lyric density of odes. One reads through Night Journey with the rare certainty that this is literature, a sequence of passionate, sorrowing renunciations; and the singular elegance of the utterance, in English as in Spanish, brings these illuminations precisely to the level where Rimbaud had left that word."--Richard Howard

"In El viaje de la noche, a sense of the uncanny is presented with a precise eloquence that preserves its hermetic nature. . . . Here we have an exceptional book, one that transforms its dark, serene, and fearsome music into a desire to read and reread."--Jorge Monteleone, Página/12, Buenos Aires

"A great book."--Jordi Villalonga, El País, Madrid

"Arising from this intricate collection is a message. The poet comes to learn that her quest is both multiple and unified; for her, the act of writing cannot be separated from loving, from remembering, from voyagin out."--John Taylor, The Antioch Review

"Night Journey is a collection of prose poems, each recounting a dream sequence. . . . Many of Negroni's dreams combine elements of surrealism and lyric narrative, which creates a matrix of symbols both archetypal and idiosyncratic through which the poet confronts generally nameless, yet recognizable, fears. . . . It reminds me that when we read wonderful poetry it's as if we are privy to a delicious rumor, and we must pass it on."--Priscila Uppal, Toronto Globe and Mail0ix Kidnapped by the Inexorable - TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION
2Esqueletos bajo el cielo - 3 Skeletons under the Sky
4La jaula en flor - 5 Cage in Bloom
6Catástrofe - 7 Catastrophe
8Ecuyère y militar - 9 Equestrienne and Officer
10Los bosques de marmol - 11 The Marble Forests
12La pérdida - 13 Loss
14Gabriel - 15 Gabriel
16Heráldica - 17 Heraldry
18Van Gogh - 19 Van Gogh
20The Great Watcher - 21 The Great Watcher
22El espejo del alma - 23 Mirror of the Soul
24La ciudad nómade - 25 Nomadic City
26El padre - 27 The Father
28Diálogo con Gabriel I - 29 Dialogue with Gabriel I
30Lido - 31 Lido
32La visita - 33 The Visit
34La guía telefónica - 35 The Telephone Book
36El mapa del Tiempo - 37 The Map of Time
38Napoleón II - 39 Napoleon II
40Los amantes - 41 The Lovers
42Los ojos de Dios - 43 The Eyes of God
44El caballo blanco - 45 The White Horse
46El bebé - 47 The Baby
48Las tres madonas - 49 The Three Madonnas
50Tout cherche tout - 51 Tout cherche tout
52Carta a Sèvres - 53 Letter to Sèvres
54El diccionario infinito - 55 The Infinite Dictionary
56Las ventanas del siglo - 57 Windows on the Century
58Diálogo con Gabriel II - 59 Dialogue with Gabriel II
60Los dos cielos - 61 The Two Heavens
62Fata Morgana - 63 Fata Morgana
64New Jersey - 65 New Jersey
66Rosamundi - 67 Rosamundi
68Encrucijada - 69 Crossroads
70La ceguera - 71 Blindness
72Midgard - 73 Midgard
74La ropa - 75 Clothes
76El diluvio - 77 The Deluge
78Sleeping Beauty - 79 Sleeping Beauty
80El viaje - 81 The Journey
82Die Zeit - 83 Die Zeit
84Diálogo con Gabriel III - 85 Dialogue with Gabriel III
86Teoría de la luz - 87 Theory of Light
88Los hilos del ser - 89 Threads of Being
90Over Exposure - 91 Over Exposure
92Eternidad - 93 Eternity
94Los osos - 95 The Bears
96El mundo no termina - 97 The World Doesn't End
98Cuento de hadas - 99 Fairytale
100 Terra Incognita - 101 Terra Incognita
102Peridural y despojo - 103 Epidural and Plunder
104Hieros gamos - 105 Hieros gamos
106Diálogo con Gabriel IV - 107 Dialogue with Gabriel IV
108Simurgh - 109 Simurgh
110El libro de los seres - 111 The Book of Being
112El techo del mundo - 113 The Roof of the World
114El juego sin nombre - 115 The Anonymous Game
116Hurgãlyã, ciudad peregrina - 117 Hurgãlyã, Peregrine city
118Los cielos del otoño - 119 Autumn Skies
122Teoría del buen morir - 123 Theory of a Good Death
124Casandra - 125 Cassandra
126Carta a mí misma - 127 Letter to Myself