Scarecrow & Other Anomalies Read Free Page B

his teachers. First, at El Nacional school, the largest egg in nature—an ostrich egg—hurled at a pedagogue named Calixto Oyuela. Then, at the Albert Le Grande school in France, an inkwell aimed at the skull of a geography teacher who refers to “cannibals who live in Buenos Aires, the capital of Brazil.” Removed from these schools, as well as from the Epsom School in London, where something bad—we don’t know what—happened, returns to Argentina. Persuades his rich parents that he will be a good boy and study for law if they will send him back to Europe once a year for his vacation. Begins annual pilgrimages to France, Italy, Spain and beyond—to Africa and the source of the Nile. Also visits the United States, Cuba and other countries of Latin America. Finishes law school, but never practices law. Meets Ultraist poetess Norah Lange at a luncheon in 1926, marries her twenty years later. Presides as a patron of Argentine arts and letters until 1964, when he is run over by a car. Survives, but with a debilitating head injury. When the house on Calle Lavalle in which he was born is paved over, a literary friend proposes placing a plaque in the asphalt to mark the historical birthplace. To which Girondo responds: “I was fatally wounded in the same place as I was born—in the middle of the street.” Dies in January 1967.
     
    6. From Comoedia to El Puro No
     
    As for his literary career, he founds at age 20 a short-lived journal with his friends, Comoedia . Four years later, in 1915, writes a play with one of them, René Zapata Quesada, entitled La madrastra [The Stepmother], which premiers in November. A second play, La comedia de todos los días , fails to reach the stage when an actor refuses to say lines addressing the public as “estupidos.” Seven years later produces Veinte poemas para ser leídos en la tranvía [Twenty Poems To Be Read on the Streetcar], a slim volume of street scenes observed in European cities and in Buenos Aires. First edition published in Paris; second edition three years later in Buenos Aires. Written abstractly and illustrated with nonchalant water colors by the author, it establishes Girondo as a modernist among the literary elite, both abroad and at home. (Samples are included in the current volume as “Prose poems.”) The same year, 1925, sees the publication of Calcomanías [Decals], a similar collection, likewise slim. Meanwhile, in 1923, helps found the journal Martín Fierro , edited by Evar Méndez, which runs through forty-five issues up to 1949. Promotes the publication on his travels in Latin America and turns his home into a salon for established and aspiring writers: Leopoldo Lugones, Macedonio Fernández, Jorge Luis Borges, Enrique Molina, Norah Lange and Xul Solar are among the Martinfierristas supporting the cause of avant-garde Argentine literature.
    On his travels he meets Blaise Cendrars, Paul Morand, Valéry Larbaud, Ramon Gómez de la Serna, Federico García Lorca, Pablo Neruda, Rafael Alberti, Salvador Dalí, John Dos Passos and other luminaries of the artistic world; forms a close friendship with some, such as la Serna; some visit his salon when in Buenos Aires, as do South Americans Miguel Angel Asturias, Amado Alonso, Olga Orozco. Settles down in Buenos Aires in 1931, but does not entirely forsake his travels; publishes Espanatapájaros the next year, Interlunio five years later. So far, all his books are short enough to dispense with page numbers.
    Five years later, 1942, he issues Persuación de los días , a collection of poems numbering 142 pages. Considered by some critics his major work, in that, aside from its size, it seeks to go beyond the referential sign, to pierce the world of illusions and to reveal the emptiness and corruption of life; others might consider poems with such sentiments as “Invitación al vómito” a bit adolescent. (The reader can judge, as the poems translated in this volume all come from this collection.) In 1946, another