Carnation and Tenebrae

by Marosa Di Giorgio, Jeannine Marie Pitas (Translator)

This new collection by Marosa di Giorgio, long considered a major figure in Latin American literature, is the work of a translator who has immersed herself, with great thoughtfulness and dedication, in the life of a writer whose poetry is foreboding, mystical, dangerous and magnificent. Everywhere in di Giorgio's oeuvre, there are wars, crimes, monsters, possessed plants and animals, ghosts, illnesses and miracles animating a world that is always on the verge of explosion. Di Giorgio's writing is as foreboding as it is tentacular, as intricate as it is unsettling. Jeannine Marie Pitas' ongoing and remarkable engagement with di Giorgio has brought us an exciting and valuable gift. —Daniel Borzutzky


“It seemed as if everything was coming to an end,” writes Marosa di Giorgio in the first section of Carnation and Tenebrae Candle, preparing the reader for the wondrous and terrifying world of contradictions that will follow: a lush countryside filled with enormous hares and enchanted begonias, meals of rats and apples as well as a “wheat field of stars,” where readers must constantly renegotiate the borders between the inanimate and the living, the living and the dead. Even the most familiar relations transform until a father becomes the “Chosen One” as well as “an Oak Tree of Fine Understanding,” and a mother can be both savior to and the victim of her daughter. There are ghosts and “war storms,” rapes and resurrections in a location both unmappable and as recognizable as the first prayers whispered from the mouth of a child who cannot possibly understand them. But there’s nothing naïve about di Giorgio’s work, and no other voice that sounds quite like hers. “[J]ust as I was walking among the eucalyptus apothecaries, at that time when the walls become filled with stars”, di Giorgio writes, “I saw the language, and I immediately understood it, as if it had always been my own.” Jeannine Marie Pitas’s English translations have helped bring this Uruguayan writer to a new audience. Carnation and Tenebrae Candle will continue to solidify di Giorgio as a major voice from Latin America. —Susan Briante


In di Giorgio’s childhood Salto, a wide-ranging and ever-vibrant flora and fauna nourished the memories she’d draw on for her work’s extraordinary transfigurations. Eggs, insects, and reptiles exit or enter the body, either being born or invading the body’s depths, generating an intense and shocking pleasure. Despite her Italian background, she affirms her belonging to an ancestral earth, to an indigenous enclave that nourishes her: she paints herself as “a native princess under her anacahuita tree.” Bringing this landscape to life became a task of joy and responsibility for di Giorgio, her own unique mission, and one which she devoted herself to with passion and perseverance. —Roberto Echavarren



Marosa di Giorgio’s Carnation and Tenebrae Candle is a complex world, where the present and past coexist, where animals and plants are humanized, and where the oneiric, the real, and the magical operate on the same plane, guided by an immersive, surrealist rhythm.—Laura Cesarco Eglin

Genres: Poetry

124 pages, Paperback

Published November 2, 2020

About the author

Marosa di Giorgio (1932–2004) was a Uruguayan poet and novelist.

Marosa di Giorgio is considered one of the most singular voices in Latin America. Critics tend to agree that her writing is greatly influenced by European surrealism, although her vocabulary, style, and imagery are uniquely her own. Her work deals predominately with the imaginary world of childhood and nature.

In the past few years, Latin American critics such as Hugo Achugar, Luis Bravo, Leonardo Garet, Sylvia Guerra, María Alejandra Minelli, and María Rosa Olivera-Williams have explored Marosa Di Giorgio's writing. Uruguayan poet Roberto Echavarren published in 1991 "Transplatinos", which offers an excellent introduction to Di Giorgio's writing. Selected poems from The March Hare have been translated into English by K.A. Kopple and published in the 1995 by Exact Change Yearbook. An article discussing gender politics, parody, and desire (as elaborated by Gilles Deleuze) also written by K.A. Kopple appeared in March 2000 in the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies. In'Identity, Nation, Discourse: Latin American Women Writers and Artists, edited by Claire Taylor (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009), Soledad Montañez opens up a new discussion of Di Giorgio's erotic writing. Montañez shows how "Di Giorgio's erotic prose illustrates the representation and performance of patriarchal hierarchy as a perverse comedy, creating a genre that constructs gender narratives in order to undermine the patriarchal system from within."Montañez also affirms that "The effect achieved in Marosa's radicalised narrative is ultimately a mocking performance, a burlesque discourse that reveals and denounces domination and power. Through a perverse representation Marosa exposes the complicated matter of culturally constructed sexual norms and develops a writing that is at the same time disturbing and astonishing" (2009: 158).

In 1982 she received the Fraternity Award for literature

Reviews

[Sylvia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Empecé a leerlo con una amiga a diario en audios, ella leía en inglés, luego yo en español. Descubrimos nuestras infancias, plantas y frutos, colores, padres y recuerdos. Tal vez una abuela. Y digo tal vez porque con Marossa no siempre se sabe qué es qué pero igual las imágenes remueven tu memoria del pasado.

[Joaquín García · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Existe un hermosísimo idioma, cuyas palabras parecen casitas hechas con hongos. A su lado, palidecen las más bellas letras rúnicas. Lo descubrí una tarde, y, no, lejos: aquí, nomás, mientras avanzaba entre las boticas de los eucaliptos, a la hora en que las paredes se colman de estrellas, y desde los árboles y el cielo, caen pastillas y perlas, vi el idioma, y lo entendí, enseguida, como si siempre, hubiera sido el mío."

[Cody Stetzel · Rating 4 out of 5]

What an absolutely bizarre adventure that I'm certain as I process it and go back to it more will illuminate into an utterly gorgeous evocation.