Harry Mathews
Harry Mathews (Nueva York, 14 de febrero de 1930) es un escritor norteamericano autor de novelas, poesía, cuentos y ensayos. Fue la segunda persona de esa nacionalidad en pertenecer a la sociedad literaria francesa Oulipo.
Nace en Nueva York en 1930, y cursa estudios en la escuela Groton en Massachusetts, para luego ingresar en la Universidad de Princeton en 1947. Abandona Princeton para ingresar en Harvard, donde realiza estudios de música, graduándose en 1952. Antes, el 6 de junio de 1949 contrae matrimonio con la artista Niki de Saint Phalle. En 1951 tienen su primera hija, Laura, y en 1952 se trasladan los tres a la Rue Jean Dolent en París. En mayo de 1955 nacea su segundo hijo, Philip, y en 1960 la pareja separa. En 1961 crea, junto con los poetas John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch y Jimmy Schuyler la revista literaria Locus Solus, de la cual solo se editan cinco números.
Harry Mathews pasa a formar parte de la sociedad literaria Oulipo, siendo el segundo norteamericano en conseguirlo.1 Entabla amistad con otro miembro, el escritor francés Georges Perec, y se traducen sus obras mutuamente.
En 1992 se casa con la escritora Marie Chaix, residiendo actualmente en las ciudades de París, Cayo Hueso y Nueva York.
Bibliografía
Ha escrito novelas, poesías, relatos y ensayos, destacando los siguientes:8
The Ring - poesía, 1960
The Conversions - novela, 1962
Tlooth - novela, 1966
The Sinking of the Odradek Stadium - novela, 1972
The Planisphere - poesía, 1974
Selected Declarations of Dependence - prosa, 1977
Trial Impressions - poesía, 1977
Country Cooking and Other Stories - relatos, 1980
Armenian Papers: Poems 1954-1984
Cigarettes - novela, 1987 (Cigarrillos. CIRCE Ediciones, S.A. 1990. ISBN 84-7765-029-2)
Singular Pleasures - prosa, 1988
The Way Home - varios, 1988
20 Lines a Day - prosa, 1988
The Orchard - remembrance, 1988
Out of Bounds - poesía, 1989
S. - ficción, 1991 (uno de los siete autores)
Immeasurable Distances - crítica, 1991
The Journalist - novela, 1994
The Human Country - relatos, 2002
The Case of the Persevering Maltese - no ficción, 2003
My Life In CIA - memorias, 2005
The New Tourism - poesía, 2010
El nuevo turismo
¿De dónde vine
y dónde estoy varado?
Una parte de los mapas es negra
y el resto es lenguaje prestado
No tengo ropa
y las tiendas no aceptan mi dinero
los niños doblaron mis rodillas
y los párpados se me llenaron de escozor
Los labios de hierro son resbalosos
y las páginas que se incendian, soleadas
pero no les encuentro sentido
a las activas criaturas arrugadas
¿por qué pensar en el miedo frente
a plácidos rasgos extraños?
son más extrañas las lágrimas
de las activas criaturas arrugadas.
¿De dónde vine
y dónde estoy varado?
Una parte de los mapas es negra
y el resto es lenguaje prestado
Versión de Cecilia Pavón
ROMANTIC POEM
for L. S.
In the dead of night
In the dead of the past
The landscape of mathematical bats
With inviting slate-lined troughs sunk in gravel
Can you think of me
Can you think of us
Armorially intricated like a bunch of bananas
In wastelands of utopian desire
Can you think
How can real things if lovable be so uncomfortable
Sloth, nevermindness, sweetish pus
Excuses worse than astrological babble
Tomorrow was another day
With vicious sunlight
Not even room enough to moralize
Just get down and stay down
I can’t remember but then you
Are not to be forgotten
Putting myself out of your reach
Backing towards immobility
So sluggishly attained
Then as now
IN PRAISE OF HEINRICH HEINE
In longing, the underage seaman veered from the drift,
Elsewhere, out of the wind, scuppered his stone desire.
Unluck cleaving to him made him no schadenfreuder—
What was plus or minus? He loved the least cat.
Starbursts should light up this moment, the child
Be jealous of nighttime and its laughing yellow listener!
The red doe of the prince of studies sunders,
Shedding her likeness. Her undimmed luster fits him.
SUSSEX DAYS
Singing has shed its sound,
Soundless song articulates itself
In mauve fevers
That sting the unopened nose.
Halal lamb is distributed
Like goose on Christmas afternoon.
You likewise will be cut into pieces of deliberation:
Relics sufficient for passionate sleepiness.
Lateral Disregard
after an observation by Kenneth Koch
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s bay
an orange cliff rising from its waters to the east
to the west a slope of reddish earth whorled with gray olives
between them an arc of rock, then sand, then little port
four houses of blue-washed rubble and red-tile roofs
and below them under broad-leaved vines a terrace with tables and benches
from which at noon the smoke of golden bream grilling
brings a gust of longing to the wayfarer as he looks over the bay
from a bluff down which a dusty zigzag path
leads to a straggly cluster of fig trees near the water’s edge
(their first fruits now ripened in July sun)
to whose left on flat rocks ample nets have been drying
to whose right on the sand — green, yellow, green, red — four fishing craft
rest through the languid hours of the blue day
only at night taking to the clear dark waters
through which their bow-lights beckon curious fish
for nets to scoop from their nimble careers
to be shaken over the decks in slithering heaps
and at dawn the boats coast home between brighter blues
the glory of the world suffuses earth stone and leaf
land and sea reaffirm their distinction
in an exchange so gentle that the wayfarer briefly believes
he has been suspended lastingly in newborn light
the happiness and rightness of the morning
no longer dreaming plowing on through thick mud?
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