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Selected works , translated from the Spanish

University of British Columbia

This thesis is composed of the translation of previously untranslated works of important modern Spanish authors from Spain, Argentina and Mexico: Adolfo Bioy Casares (Argentine novelist and frequent collaborator with Jorge Luis Borges): PLAN DE EVASION, 1945. The entire novel is structured on a "fantastical" formula of physiological-philosophical ideas--rooted in the psychological theories of William James and encompassing even the borders of the current threshold of biological engineering. This "formula" is presented near the end of the novel and serves as the key to the reality of the novel itself: to the manner of its architecture, its mental and emotional perceptions and its ultimate "resolution" which turns the conclusion back on its parts, forcing the reader to make a reassessment of the perplexing components of reality in the novel and, perhaps, even to reexamine the questions of the nature of reality itself. In a fully fictional and highly symmetrical manner, the novel explores the question of reality, building its own structure of a network of multiple and conflicting realities which are each developed to be consistent with themselves but which conflict insolubly at their ultimate junctures with each other. Rafael Alberti (poet and dramatist of the famous "Generation of 1927" in Spain): EL ADEFESIO, 1944. This work, often compared with Garcia Lorca's "House of Bernarda Alba", is considered by the critics to be his finest play, and in Spain his work is more highly regarded than that of Lorca. Like Lorca, in El Adefesio Alberti utilizes common Spanish folklore, but unlike Lorca he uses it only as a springboard to larger and more complex ends. In the play he interweaves Spanish folklore with Greek mythology and Christian legend, employing a naked, fluid symbolism in a way that is at moments strikingly modern and existential. In the play he achieves a startling poetic counterpoint between the classical, lyrical ritual of tradition, with its elevated emotion, and a dissonant ritual of grotesqueries suggestive of the modern theatre of the absurd—resulting in a poetic unity that is both rich and complex. Jorge Guillen (an imagist poet, also of the "Generation of 1927" in Spain): CANTICO, 1928. His self-professed aims in Cantico (a "poetry of affirmation") are to express his concept of the basic unity, harmony and abundance of life and of the intimate relatedness of all things in time and space. In the poems of Cantico Guillen pursues this affirmation through purity, intensity of vision and exclusion, his verses characterized by a refined, joyful classicism and brilliant metaphor. Alfonso Canales (an important member of the school of modern Spanish poets, whose works date from 1950 to the present): 0T0N0, 1956. This poem is from his book of poetry El Candado. Max Aub (major modern playwright and fervent anti-fascist, self- exiled from Spain and now residing in Mexico since 1942): LOS EXCELENTES VARONES, 1946. Although his work is no longer recognized in Spain, Aub is generally regarded by critics as one of the finest living Spanish playwrights. The concerns which have dominated Aub's post-Spain writings are those of war, fascism, exile, humanism and the dignity of man under pressure in relation to moral values. Although Los Excelentes Varones, by Aub's own classification, belongs to the genre of his work which he calls "police theatre", it is much more than that, being also a piercing black farce satirizing the recurrent and ominous impulse of society—past, present and possibly future—toward the police state

Text

2011-04-11

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/33486

Creative Writing

University of British Columbia

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