El viaje de la noche

by María Negroni

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.

Genres: Poetry, Spanish Literature

83 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

María Negroni is an Argentine poet, essayist, novelist and translator. As a poet she has published De tanto desolar (1985), La jaula bajo el trapo (1991), El viaje de la noche (1994), Diario Extranjero (2001), La ineptitud (2002) and Islandia (1994; PEN American Center Prize for the Best Poetry Book of the Year in translation, 2001). She has also published the book of essays Ciudad gótica (1994) the novels El sueño de Ursula (1998)and La anunciación (2007) and a book-object in collaboration with the Argentine visual artist Jorge Macchi, Buenos Aires Tour (2004). Much of her work has been translated into English and French. A Guggenheim fellow, she has also received fellowships from the Rockefeller foundation, the Octavio Paz foundation, The New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Civitella Ranieri. She currently teaches Latin American Literature and creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College, New York.

Reviews

[Edita · Rating 5 out of 5]

To write is a risk. One sets
out, not knowing why. Or rather, in her motionless
nomadry, from cell to cell, lost in the oscillating face of
night, the traveler pursues signs as if pursuing her own
semblance in the semblance of absence, without
recognizing her home, that dark and immense and
quiet cave standing in the depths of the self, which has
never moved. Ah, still so much pride in what I write. So
much haste, overlooking the changeless, ignoring the
need to die into learning. I, the beggar on every
journey. Constant passenger in the cage of time.
Hunter of my oldest soul, my frailest, most fertile
sentiment. I who unravel my frayed memory, goaded
by a talent for incessant questioning, an incessant
nostalgia for the invisible design. What to expect from
the cursive city? Astrologers teach it on the outskirts. It
is practiced by those who hunt for the grave of your
shadow, where loving is easier. Those who yearn for
your silence as I do, for those white horses galloping in
your night dreams, as if they belonged to us …

[laudine · Rating 4 out of 5]

What do you know of ruin? The seven facets of light? The spheres of the fixed stars? Listen: this house does not exist. Only the garden, the wall, the tapestries. Perhaps you will learn how to love them, too, into invisibility.

[Pamela Rahn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maria dice cosas como esta, "Objetos que tal vez puedas amar hasta volverlos, también, invisibles", "Los niños y yo, apoyados contra el balcón, miramos todo muertos de tristeza", y tambien a veces decrera lineas como esta "Escribir es un riesgo" y es que en todos los poemas, no hace mas sino contarnos ese riesgo de vivir, que no es mas que escribir para alguien que lo ve todo con ojos de poema y de alumbramiento y sobre todo de sombra. La historia como poema, y el no poema como historia, eso para mi es este libro. Por eso el título le va tan bien. En esa "Night Journey" las historias son solo sombras, que quedaron tatuadas como poemas en la memoria de Negroni.

[Rachael · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought being a translation would hurt or stifle the work, but it's honestly better than a lot of poetry I've read this year written by native English speakers - props to Anne Twitty

[Lura · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a great book. Unfortunately I do not understand that much of Spanish (this is a bilingual edition) but I felt that if I did, the poems would have had a different emotional impact...
With that said, it is a gorgeous book, and has many blissful moments.

Here's a taste;

Autumn Skies

“You have changed, but you bear the sign.”
“The sign. What sign?”
“We used to call it the mark of Cain.”
—HERMANN HESSE



Who would have expected Maggie to arrive like this,
in the midst of this solitary rain, with silence intact
on her forehead and that thirst that made her so
beautiful. She sits in the precarious lamplight, facing
me, in the same study where we read Demian, My
Sister and I, The Human Condition. A victory in her
face: it has been sacked. She looks at me and I
tremble, as if she could inflame the invisible lines of
my body, leave me at the mercy of something I
cannot define. Not even a blind, urgent sun, somber
accomplice, could lash me like this. Now as then, not
knowing exactly what I’m saying, I ask:
“Do you think I can?”
She is lit by a flash (as if overflowing with chaos),
smiles wickedly, and spreads the wings of a silence
that contains islands, astonishment, the murmur of
books to come, revolt and its inescapable price,
illusory flights from myself, fear of domestic bliss;
that is, that huge glittering riddle: my life. Then she
vanishes.
And then, from afar, from a country creaking with
cold and shipwrecks, tides and reflux, from a space
utterly devoted to the impossible, gathering one by
one the pebbles left behind by the real, a call reaches me,
hazy visitor from that time when Destiny observed us like
a furtive animal. She answers:
“I don’t think. I know.”
And as for me, I realize that I loved her.

[hh · Rating 4 out of 5]

stars reflect the spanish.

it took a little while for me to get into the rhythm of this collection of dream poems, but once i got into the flow of it, it was a delight. this is something i would be interested in buying to reread and reference. the translation is serviceable but doesn't convey the music and disjunct of the original as much as i would like. this might be the first book of spanish poetry which i've read mostly in spanish, using the english mainly as a check on my mental translation, so i'm not sure how this would read for someone who doesn't read spanish. if you're into surreal poetry, mythological poetry, or enjoy comparing spanish/english translations, this is worth checking out.

a favorite ending, from "Simurgh:"

"como si por fin hubieras escrito un poema, uno solo,
sin faltar a la verdad."

reread 17 nov 2015

[Rauan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some beautiful moments. Magical images. Occasionally
breathtaking.

But, throughout, this book is tough going.

My Spanish is quite rudimentary but I'm guessing that some of this is due to problems in the original itself.

That being said, (and, again, I am no authority) this seems to me to be a very "weak" translation,....

[Esthër · Rating 5 out of 5]

Este libro es un trasiego por ciudades, ausencias, reversos de la noche y espejos realmente desgarrador e inspirador. El imaginario de María Negroni no tiene nada que envidiarle al de Pizarnik, de hecho la precisión, belleza y dolor de ambas son tan semejantes como únicas. Uno de mis descubrimientos de este 2013. Ay.

[Lázsló Alcarey · Rating 4 out of 5]

consider ourselves lucky that we have it in English? Yes! Could the translation be better? Always.

[Merinde · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wasn't convinced by every poem but the ones that worked for me were so so good. I love this book a lot. I printed one of these to hide in my wallet so I can reread it when I need it.