सलाम, एदुआर्दो गालियानो , अलविदा !! // Eduardo Galeano (1940–2015)
ऐसी कलम सदियों में एक होती है जिसमें इंसानी खून की धमक और दमक साथ हो.
ऐसी ही एक कलम , इंसानी दर्दमंदी से लबरेज़ आज रुक गई है.
वह किसी एक जुबान की कैदी न थी. पूरी कायनात उसकी नोक पर रक्स करती थी.
एदुआर्दो गालियानो, सलाम,अलविदा!!
Apoorvanand - सलाम, एदुआर्दो गालियानो , अलविदा !!
The Nobodies
Fleas dream of buying themselves a dog, and nobodies dream
एदुआर्दो गालियानो / ऐरे गैरे
ऐसी ही एक कलम , इंसानी दर्दमंदी से लबरेज़ आज रुक गई है.
वह किसी एक जुबान की कैदी न थी. पूरी कायनात उसकी नोक पर रक्स करती थी.
एदुआर्दो गालियानो, सलाम,अलविदा!!
Apoorvanand - सलाम, एदुआर्दो गालियानो , अलविदा !!
The Nobodies
Fleas dream of buying themselves a dog, and nobodies dream
of escaping poverty: that one magical day good luck will
suddenly rain down on them- will rain down in buckets. But
good luck doesn't even fall in a fine drizzle, no matter
how hard the nobodies summon it, even if their left hand is
tickling, or if they begin the new day with their right foot, or
start the new year with a change of brooms.
The nobodies: nobody's children, owners of nothing. The
nobodies: the no ones, the nobodied, running like rabbits,
dying through life, screwed every which way.
Who don't speak languages, but dialects.
Who don't have religions, but superstitions.
Who don't create art, but handicrafts.
Who don't have culture, but folklore.
Who are not human beings, but human resources.
Who do not have names, but numbers.
Who do not appear in the history of the world, but in the
police blotter of the local paper.
The nobodies, who are not worth the bullet that kills them
suddenly rain down on them- will rain down in buckets. But
good luck doesn't even fall in a fine drizzle, no matter
how hard the nobodies summon it, even if their left hand is
tickling, or if they begin the new day with their right foot, or
start the new year with a change of brooms.
The nobodies: nobody's children, owners of nothing. The
nobodies: the no ones, the nobodied, running like rabbits,
dying through life, screwed every which way.
Who don't speak languages, but dialects.
Who don't have religions, but superstitions.
Who don't create art, but handicrafts.
Who don't have culture, but folklore.
Who are not human beings, but human resources.
Who do not have names, but numbers.
Who do not appear in the history of the world, but in the
police blotter of the local paper.
The nobodies, who are not worth the bullet that kills them
मक्खियाँ अपने लिए एक कुत्ता खरीदने का ख्वाब देखते हैं,
और देखते हैं ऐरे गैरे, अपनी गरीबी से दूर भागने की स्वप्नों में: आयी एक है तिलिस्मी दिन, अचानक बाल्टियां भर भर के गिर रही उन पर खुशकिस्मती की बारिश।
पर आयी नही वह दिन बीत गयी कल, न आयी आज, न आयेगा वह आनेवाला कल, या कभी भी।
आती नही खुशनसीबी की महीन फुहार भी मगर, लगा लें कितनी ही ज़ोर नथ्थु खैरे अपनी कल्पना पर,चाहे झनझनाता हो उनकी बांयी हाथ, या करें वे शुरुआत नयी दिन की दांये पैर को पहले बढ़ा कर, या नयी साल को करें सलाम अपनी झाड़ु ही क्यों न बदल कर।
और देखते हैं ऐरे गैरे, अपनी गरीबी से दूर भागने की स्वप्नों में: आयी एक है तिलिस्मी दिन, अचानक बाल्टियां भर भर के गिर रही उन पर खुशकिस्मती की बारिश।
पर आयी नही वह दिन बीत गयी कल, न आयी आज, न आयेगा वह आनेवाला कल, या कभी भी।
आती नही खुशनसीबी की महीन फुहार भी मगर, लगा लें कितनी ही ज़ोर नथ्थु खैरे अपनी कल्पना पर,चाहे झनझनाता हो उनकी बांयी हाथ, या करें वे शुरुआत नयी दिन की दांये पैर को पहले बढ़ा कर, या नयी साल को करें सलाम अपनी झाड़ु ही क्यों न बदल कर।
हैं ये ऐरे गैरे: औलाद जो नथ्थु के ठहरे, विरासत में कुछ भी तो नहीं मिला रे।
नथ्थु खैरे: न अहम, न देहि, दौड़ के खरगोश जैसा, मरते हैं ज़िन्दगी भर, होकर बरबाद हर तरफ।
वे हैं नहीं,पर हो सकते हैं।
उनकी जुबान नहीं है, है बोली।
उनके धर्म नहीं है, जो है सो कुसंस्कार।
वे कला के सर्जन नहीं करते, वो तो महज हस्तशिल्पकार।
उनकी काहे की संस्कृति, होंगे लोकवार्ता दो चार।
वो मानव नही है, हैं मात्र सम्पदों के मानवीय आधार।
उनके शकल नहीं है, पर है हाथ।
उनके कोई नाम नहीं है, पर है आंकड़ों के पहाड़।
दुनिया के तारीख में इनके नाम नहीं गिनाये जाते,
वे तो सिर्फ थानेदार के स्याहीचट पर प्रगट होते।
ऐरे गैरे, जो गोली उन्हें करती है ढेर, उससे भी कीमती नहीं हैं, हैं ये नथ्थु खैरे।
नथ्थु खैरे: न अहम, न देहि, दौड़ के खरगोश जैसा, मरते हैं ज़िन्दगी भर, होकर बरबाद हर तरफ।
वे हैं नहीं,पर हो सकते हैं।
उनकी जुबान नहीं है, है बोली।
उनके धर्म नहीं है, जो है सो कुसंस्कार।
वे कला के सर्जन नहीं करते, वो तो महज हस्तशिल्पकार।
उनकी काहे की संस्कृति, होंगे लोकवार्ता दो चार।
वो मानव नही है, हैं मात्र सम्पदों के मानवीय आधार।
उनके शकल नहीं है, पर है हाथ।
उनके कोई नाम नहीं है, पर है आंकड़ों के पहाड़।
दुनिया के तारीख में इनके नाम नहीं गिनाये जाते,
वे तो सिर्फ थानेदार के स्याहीचट पर प्रगट होते।
ऐरे गैरे, जो गोली उन्हें करती है ढेर, उससे भी कीमती नहीं हैं, हैं ये नथ्थु खैरे।
[अनुवाद अपूर्वानंद जी को समर्पित। प्रदीप बकशी, कोलकाता, १६ अप्रैल २०१५।]
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Eduardo Galeano: The Shoe
In 1919 Rosa Luxemburg, the revolutionary, was murdered in
Berlin.
Her killers bludgeoned her with rifle blows and tossed her
into the waters of a canal.
Along the way, she lost a shoe.
Some hand picked it up, that shoe dropped in the mud.
Rosa longed for a world where justice would not be
sacrificed in the name of freedom,
nor freedom sacrificed in the name of
justice.
Every day, some hand picks up that banner
Dropped in the mud, like the shoe.
जूता
1919 को इंकलाबी रोज़ा लक्समबर्ग का बर्लिन में क़त्ल कर दिया गया.
कातिलों ने उसे राइफल से कुचल-कुचल मारा और एक नहर के पानी में फेंक दिया.
बीच में, उसका एक जूता निकल गया .
किसी ने उसे उठा लिया, कीचड़ में पड़े उस जूते को .
रोज़ा एक ऐसी दुनिया की तमन्ना करती थी जहां इन्साफ को आज़ादी के नाम पर निछावर नहीं कर दिया जाएगा और न आज़ादी इन्साफ के नाम पर तर्क कर दी जाएगी .
हर रोज़ कोई हाथ उस बैनर को उठा लेता है.
कीचड़ से, उस जूते की तरह .
(Apoorvanand - सलाम, एदुआर्दो गालियानो , अलविदा !!)
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Sometime in 1986, I did a reading with Eduardo Galeano and Mauricio
Rosencof in New York City. The dictatorship of Uruguay had recently ended, but the
pain of those memories was still raw and the civil wars raging in Central
America (El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua) gave the evening both urgency
and an air of hope that events in Central American would eventually lead to revolutionary
outcomes.
Galeano had escaped military rule in Uruguay and fled to
Argentina, only to flee again to Spain when the military junta overthrew the
government of Isabel Perón in March 1976. Rosencof, aside from being a poet and
playwright, was one of the three top leaders of the MLN, the urban guerrilla
movement known as the Tupamaros. He was not as fortunate as Galeano: he
had been captured by the military, imprisoned, tortured savagely by his
captors, and spent eleven of thirteen years in solitary confinement.
He shared with the audience that while in prison he would
smuggle poems out written on cigarette paper tucked into dirty T-shirts his
family would collect, wash and return to him clean. He called them his “poemas
de la camiseta” (t-shirt poems) and he read many of them that evening.
They were short, sharp, and devastating.
Galeano took the stage, thanked Rosencof, and spoke of the
difficulty of the democratic transition, quoting soccer player Obdulio Varela
(“We have grown selfish. We no longer see ourselves in others.”). He then
remembered how Uruguayan culture had survived during those dismembering years
in large and small ways, which he described using the words of Martín Fierro:
“the fire that really heats comes from below.” Galeano then read texts from his
monumental trilogy Memory
of Fire (three volumes 1982–1986), short texts or vignettes that
captured the poetry, joy, and resistance of Latin America and its torturously
beautiful history.
For me, what remains from that night is a sense of community
built not only through the power of the word but also through “[creative] shit,
grit and mother-wit” (to quote Ralph Ellison), a community of pain, solidarity,
creativity, and hope that stretches from New York City (or Los Angeles) to
Tierra del Fuego. Galeano, through his words, was a builder of communities, a
true pan–Latin Americanist, whether he was talking about religions in the
favelas of Brazil, the bewildering intricacies of Peronist populism in
Argentina, genocide against the Maya in Guatemala, the social violence of
Caracas, a festival in Mexico, a soccer game that led to war (between El
Salvador and Honduras), or the beauty of Nicaraguan poetry.
As an aspiring poet-revolutionary, I was awed to be in the
same room with Galeano, by then a renowned author throughout Latin America,
with a growing reputation in the US. His Open
Veins of Latin America(1971) and his two Casa de las Américas Awards
(in 1975 for La
canción de nosotros, a novel, and in 1978 for his Days
and Nights of Love and War, a testimonial essay) made him one of Latin
America’s most read and admired writers. But those were my days of connecting to my Cuban
revolutionary roots, of being a comecandela, a word in Spanish that
conveys a total revolutionary commitment, and this must have tempered my
nerves. Comecandela literally means fire-eating, which in English
would be best rendered as fire-breathing.
Fire is the image that recurs when thinking of Galeano and
his trilogy Memory of Fire, which captures both the urgency — and yes,
warmth — of both his imagination and indignation. This fire was one of
intelligence, curiosity, and rebellion, the fire of resoluteness, Martín
Fierro’s fire from below. A precocious writer, Galeano was already an editor at Marcha,
Uruguay’s prestigious weekly paper at age twenty. He then worked for Epoca and
as director of publications at the University until he fled the dictatorship in
1973, moving to Buenos Aires, where he founded the journal Crisis.
In 1976, because of the Argentine dictatorship, he fled to Barcelona, where he
lived until 1985, when he returned to Montevideo. Along with Juan Carlos Onetti and Mario Benedetti, they founded Brecha in
1985, a weekly meant to continue in the tradition of Marcha; it
continues to appear thirty years later.
In the late eighties he formed his own small publishing
house Ediciones del Chanchito (Little Pig Editions), which issued his book on
soccer. In 2005, he joined the advisory committee of Tele Sur, the Pan-Latin TV
station based out of Caracas, Venezuela. In 2007, he successfully underwent
surgery for lung cancer, but eventually it would claim him.
Galeano’s great obsession was memory and history, as he wrote in theGuardian in 2013: “My great
fear is that we are all suffering from amnesia.” It terrified him that human
beings, ever more distracted by the velocity and depredations of consumer
culture, would lose our sense of culture, rootedness, and identity. He was fond of saying that every time an old person dies in
Latin America, it was like having a library burn down, because that person’s
life was an enormous repository of living history and culture. One could argue
that his work was dedicated to at least capturing some of those voices, of
building a library to ward off the ravages of oblivion.
Even his best-known work, The Open Veins of Latin
America, could be seen as an attempt to chronicle the forgotten or
domesticated history of capitalism in Nuestra América (Our
America), as Martí put it. Aware that capital wants us to see the glittering
skyscrapers and forget its slums, crime, and plunder, Galeano was a consistent
critic of capitalism and neoliberalism. He took Adorno’s “all reification is a forgetting” to heart
and his other books build on what he laid out in Open Veins,
offering not only a critique of capitalism, but glimpses of alternatives to it
based on values of solidarity, anti-authoritarianism, dignity, creativity, and
selflessness.
In this the New York Times’s obituary only had it half-right in merely describing
him as anti-capitalist. Galeano had a gift for making social realities come to
life, as in the following about the poor: “They sell newspapers they cannot
read, sew clothes they cannot wear, polish cars they will never own, and build
homes where they will never live . . . They build Brazil each
day and Brazil is their land of exile.” After being a clandestine book in many
countries during the 1970s, Open Veins experienced a resurgence in
sales when Hugo Chávez recommended it to President Obama in 2009.
Much has been made of Galeano’s subsequent criticism of Open
Veinsin 2014 when he said, “I wouldn’t be capable of reading this book again;
I’d keel over. For me the prose of the traditional left is extremely leaden and
my physique can’t tolerate it.” Galeano did not say that he regretted having written the
book, but that he was unprepared to have taken on such a major work on
political economy in his late twenties. (The book was published when he was
thirty-one.) Compared to his other writings it is the one book that most reads
like a social science text, unlike the more poetic or writerly language that
characterizes The
Book of Embraces (1989), The Memory of Fire, We
Say No (1989), and Soccer
in Sun and Shadow(1995).
Despite having written and published short stories and a
novel, Galeano is best known for a hybrid style that is uniquely his own: using
vignettes he either tells a story (or anecdote) that usually has a point
(political, moral, philosophical, historical, cultural). The language can vary from poetic musing to philosophical
aphorism, or plain sentences with a hint of irony or outright sarcasm. His
style effortlessly combined storytelling techniques, aphorism, chronicle, dream
narratives, historical citations, lists, and snippets of dialogue. Most of
these vignettes last less than half a page.
In the case of Memory of Fire, Galeano proceeds
chronologically, with Volume I (Genesis) starting with indigenous myths,
then going from 1492-1700; Volume II (Faces and Masks) from 1700 to 1900
and Volume III (Century of the Wind) covering the
twentieth century up to 1986. Each text is followed by a number (or
numbers), which refers to a bibliography of hundreds of sources at the back of
the book should the reader want to follow up on the vignettes. The three volumes, running over a thousand pages, are a
collage of history, a rich amalgam of indigenous myths, letters, chronicles,
historical documents, poems, dialogues, speeches, diaries, quotes from novels,
newspaper clippings and more. Galeano claims he undertook the project because
growing up he found history textbooks unbearably boring, and Memory of
Fire is a beautiful and captivating response to history as a dry
recitation of facts.
Galeano was equally gifted as an essayist, with an
omnivorous curiosity, often with a different style, less expansive but always
honing in on an image or idea. Among his most memorable are “God and the Devil
in the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro” (1969), “In Defense of the Word” (1976), “Ten
Frequent Lies or Mistakes About Latin American Literature and Culture” (1980),
“The Blue Tiger and The Promised Land” (1987), “Salgado: Light is A Secret of
Garbage” (1990), on Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado, and “Othercide:
For Five Centuries in the Rainbow Has Been Banned from America’s Sky” (1991).
(Fortunately, all are in We Say No, Chronicles 1963–1991).
His essays show the same wit and incisiveness, often using
the vignette style to string together an argument. And despite some of the grim
subjects he covers (dictatorship, social violence, racism, imperialism),
Galeano always tries to leave his reader with a note of hope. In “The Blue Tiger and The Promised Land,” which deals with
indigenous genocide and current injustices, he concludes with the following:
And perhaps in this way we could get a bit closer to the day
of justice than the Guaraní, pursuers of Paradise, have always been awaiting.
The Guaraní believe that the world wants to be different, that it wants to be
born again, and so the world entreats the First Father to unleash the blue
tiger that sleeps beneath his hammock. The Guaraní believe that someday that
righteous tiger will shatter the world so that another world, with neither evil
nor death, guilt nor prohibitions, can be born from its ashes. The Guaraní
believe, and I do, too, that life truly deserves that festival.
While Galeano reserved most of his criticism for the Right
and conservatives, he was not above criticizing the Left, albeit
constructively, since he remained on the Left until his death. Sometimes, he
could do both at once, as when he wrote about soccer.
First, he deals with the conservative position and its
“conviction that soccer worship is precisely the superstition people deserve.
Possessed by the ball, working stiffs think with their feet, which is entirely
appropriate, and fulfil their dreams in primitive ecstasy. Animal instinct
overtakes human reason, ignorance crushes culture, and the riffraff get what
they want.” A fairly conventional argument that equates sporting skill with
animality and the abandonment of civilized mores.
But the Left comes under equal scrutiny: “In contrast, many
leftist intellectuals denigrate soccer because it castrates the masses and
derails their revolutionary ardor. Bread and circus, circus without the bread:
hypnotized by the ball, which exercises a perverse fascination, workers forget
who they are and let themselves be led about like sheep by their class
enemies.” Here, aside from the puritanical sentiment expressed, is a
real blindness in underestimating the intelligence of working people as well as
their ability to distinguish between a sporting event and the realities of
their lives. Galeano reminds us that there are progressive elements in South
American soccer, ending with a quote by Antonio Gramsci describing soccer as
“this open-air kingdom of human loyalty.”
In one of Galeano’s most delightful books, Las
palabras andantes (The
Wandering Words), his vignettes are accompanied by the woodcuts of José
Francisco Borges, one of Brazil’s most brilliant folk artists. The book begins
with a quote from Bahia’s Caetano Veloso, singer and songwriter extraordinaire:
“Visto de cerca, nadie es normal” (“Seen close up, no one is normal”). Under the vision and pen of Galeano, Latin America’s history
and culture, with all of its cruelty and beauty, was always seen close up, with
an appreciation for the region’s exciting diversity, always resisting
neoliberal cultural homogenization and the bland platitudes of the status quo.
