Raúl Gómez Jattin: One Memory Alone

Adapted by David Pegg

Artwork by Eliza Savage

CHARACTERS

NARRATOR:  Introducing the poet to the audience.
RAÚL GÓMEZ JATTIN (SPANISH):  Depicting the poet in the original Spanish.
RAÚL GÓMEZ JATTIN (ENGLISH):  Depicting the poet translated into English.
ANONYMOUS SELF:  Representing the poet’s internal struggles.


POEMS

“In My Defense”
“An Adoring God”
“And Going”
“A Drunken Fire from the Mountains of Lebanon”
“Lola Jattin”



SETTING

Over the course of one day in the town of Cereté, department of Córdoba, Colombia, in the mid-1980s. Town square. River. Verandah.

 
ACT ONE

SCENE 1

The performance begins with instrumental music, mixed with original recordings of Raúl Gómez Jattin reading “In My Defense” and “An Adoring God”. Stage elements include hammock, verandah, rocking chair, and river. RAÚL GÓMEZ JATTIN (SPANISH) and RAÚL GÓMEZ JATTIN (ENGLISH) come out quietly to a darkened center stage, dressed in simple cotton clothes, as well as sandals and mochilas. Leaning against verandah. Lying in hammock. Sitting in rocking chair. Smoking. Reading. Writing. NARRATOR introduces the poet in a town square. Several persons in the audience represent different townspeople who express disparaging remarks. Concurrently, ANONYMOUS SELF goes into the audience and begins to recite verses from the poem, “In My Defense,” in Spanish and English. By the end of the poem, NARRATOR is reciting the English version.


NARRATOR:  Raúl Gómez Jattin was a poet who grew up along the Colombian Caribbean coast. Although he initially moved to Bogotá to study law, he gave up his studies and decided to immerse himself in the world of theater. Frustrated with his life in the capital, he moved back to the Caribbean coast. Cartagena. Cereté. Córdoba. Depicting his return home, the rejections he encountered, the natural environment surrounding him, the memory of his loved ones, and how he perceived himself before the world he inhabited. That is the Raúl Gómez Jattin we know. He rests in peace now.

. . . He stepped in front of a bus.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  He couldn’t take it any more. And who can blame him.

ANONYMOUS SELF:  Antes de devorarle su entraña pensativa. Before you devour his inner mindfulness.

NARRATOR:  Some say it was an accident. Others know he could no longer reconcile the two worlds. The world you and I find ourselves in and the world his mind would take him to . . . Some people, though, prefer to obsess over the image of the crazy poet.

ANONYMOUS SELF:  Antes de derribarlo. Before you tear him down.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  I hear he burned down hotel rooms. 

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Barefoot. He walked around naked and even threw punches at his best friends.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Did you hear about when he was found on the street screaming wildly over non-existent debts?

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  . . . Pissing all over some library director’s car.

ANONYMOUS SELF:  Valorad al loco. (Repeat.)

(Pointing toward Raúl Gómez Jattin.)

NARRATOR:  Respect the madman. (Repeat.) And remember, he wasn’t writing any poems then . . . Before he lost his mind . . . In times of clarity and decency with himself and his world. That’s when he was writing his poetry.

ANONYMOUS SELF:  Su árbol que le crece por la boca con raíces enredadas en el cielo.

NARRATOR:  This tree growing out of his mouth with roots entangling in the sky.

ANONYMOUS SELF:  Él nos representa ante el mundo con su sensibilidad dolorosa como un parto.

NARRATOR:  With his sensitivity, painful as a birth, he depicts us to the world.

As the song pauses, the lights come up on RAÚL GÓMEZ JATTIN (SPANISH AND ENGLISH), who are looking toward the audience. Stage lights indicate it is dawn; the sun is rising. ANONYMOUS SELF joins them on stage. They are visibly content and at ease with having returned home and begin to recite verses from the poem “An Adoring God,” at times overlapping and echoing each other’s voices in Spanish and English.

(Speaking to public, beseeching and triumphant.)

RAÚL GÓMEZ JATTIN (SPANISH):  Soy un dios en mi pueblo y mi valle. No porque me adoren sino porque yo lo hago.

(Speaking to public, measured and confident.)

RAÚL GÓMEZ JATTIN (ENGLISH):  In my valley and my town, I’m a god. Not because I’m adored, but because I adore.

RAÚL GÓMEZ JATTIN (SPANISH):  Porque me inclino ante quien me regala unas granadillas o una sonrisa de su heredad.

RAÚL GÓMEZ JATTIN (ENGLISH):  Because I bow to all who give me pomegranates or a bequeathed smile.

ANONYMOUS SELF:  Porque soy solo. Because I’m alone.

RAÚL GÓMEZ JATTIN (SPANISH):  Porque dormí siete meses en una mecedora y cinco en las aceras de una ciudad.

RAÚL GÓMEZ JATTIN (ENGLISH):  Because I slept in a rocking chair for seven months and on a city’s sidewalks for another five.

ANONYMOUS SELF:  Porque amo a quien ama. Because I love all who love.

RAÚL GÓMEZ JATTIN (SPANISH):  Porque amo los pájaros y la lluvia y su intemperie que me lava el alma.

RAÚL GÓMEZ JATTIN (ENGLISH):  Because I love birds, the rain, and its storms, which cleanse my soul.

ANONYMOUS SELF:  Porque nací en mayo. Because I was born in May.

RAÚL GÓMEZ JATTIN (SPANISH):  Porque mi madre me abandonó cuando precisamente más la necesitaba.

RAÚL GÓMEZ JATTIN (ENGLISH):  Because my mother left me precisely when I needed her most.

RAÚL GÓMEZ JATTIN (SPANISH):  Porque sobre todo respeto solo al que lo hace conmigo. Al que trabaja cada día un pan amargo y solitario y disputado.

RAÚL GÓMEZ JATTIN (ENGLISH):  Most of all because I respect all who respect me. All who work for a bitter, solitary, prized piece of bread.

ANONYMOUS SELF:  Como estos versos míos que le robo a la muerte. (Repeat.) Like these verses of mine I rob from death. (Repeat.)

 
SCENE 2

Lights dim and a river is projected onto RAÚL GÓMEZ JATTIN (SPANISH), RAÚL GÓMEZ JATTIN (ENGLISH), and ANONYMOUS SELF. Initial instrumental music is playing again. RAÚL GÓMEZ JATTIN (SPANISH) recites verses from the poem “And Going.”

NARRATOR:  With this clarity, he would put the dark areas of his soul and body to verse. This poetry built bridges of friendship. This poetry bridged two worlds. The world of his imagined delusions and the world where the rest of us live. Only then the two worlds could live as one memory alone.

RAÚL GÓMEZ JATTIN (SPANISH):  Hay una tarde varada frente a un río y entre los dos un niño canta, vaiviniéndose en su mecedora de bejuco. El huevo dorado del sol anida en los mangos de la ribera. El río es un gusano de cristal irisado. Es una tarde enclavada en el recodo de un tiempo que va y viene en la mecedora . . . Conozco el nombre de ese río y al niño lo he visto, casi un hombre, en la penumbra de un cinematógrafo. El cuerpo de esa tarde es un fluido tenso entre el pasado y el futuro que en ciertos lugares de mi angustia se coagula como una caracola instantánea.

(The English translation of these verses is projected as supratitles.)

There’s an afternoon stranded along a river and between them a boy sings swaying in his bejuco-vine rocking chair. The sun’s golden egg nestles among the mangos along the shore. The river is an iridescent glass caterpillar. This is an afternoon fastened to the bend of a time, coming and going with the rocking chair . . . I know the name of this river and I saw the boy, almost a man, in a filmmaker’s nightfall. The body of this afternoon is a stiff liquid, part future and part past, that, like an instant spiraling shell, congeals in a few places of my anguish.

 
SCENE 3

Lights come up. RAÚL GÓMEZ JATTIN (SPANISH), RAÚL GÓMEZ JATTIN (ENGLISH), and ANONYMOUS SELF are next to the verandah and rocking chair. The initial instrumental music continues to play in the background. Stage lights indicate it is nightfall; the sun is setting. NARRATOR continues to present RAÚL GÓMEZ JATTIN. ANONYMOUS SELF goes into the audience and begins to recite, somewhat to himself, the verses from poem “A Drunken Fire from the Mountains of Lebanon.”

NARRATOR:  This isn’t about creative insanity. He wasn’t just irrational.

ANONYMOUS SELF:  Yo te sé de memoria. I know you by heart.

NARRATOR:  He had patience, discipline, and order. Certain anti-poetic virtues.

ANONYMOUS SELF:  En ti circula un fuego ebrio de las montañas del Líbano. In you stirs a drunken fire from the mountains of Lebanon.

NARRATOR:  A unique capacity for rhythm in language . . . He would make mistakes but also insist on fixing them. A sideways yet coherent vision of the world. This was also perhaps the only way for Raúl Gómez Jattin to escape from his madness.

ANONYMOUS SELF:  Madre yo te perdono el haberme traído al mundo. Aunque el mundo no me reconcilie contigo. Mother, I forgive you for having brought me into this world. Even though this world hasn’t yet brought me back together with you.

Next, RAÚL GÓMEZ JATTIN (ENGLISH) and RAÚL GÓMEZ JATTIN (SPANISH) recite verses from the poem “Lola Jattin.” RAÚL GÓMEZ JATTIN (SPANISH), as Lola Jattin, is sitting in a rocking chair. RAÚL GÓMEZ JATTIN (ENGLISH) is speaking to the audience and returning to face RAÚL GÓMEZ JATTIN (SPANISH). Music fades out during this scene.

RAÚL GÓMEZ JATTIN (SPANISH):  Más allá de la noche que titila en la infancia. Más allá incluso de mi primer recuerdo. Está Lola, mi madre, frente a un escaparate empolvándose el rostro y arreglándose el pelo.

(RAÚL GÓMEZ JATTIN (SPANISH) sits in chair putting on makeup and fixing hair.)

RAÚL GÓMEZ JATTIN (ENGLISH):  Beyond the night shimmering in my childhood. Beyond even that of my first memory. Lola, my mother, in front of her wardrobe, powdering her face and fixing her hair.

RAÚL GÓMEZ JATTIN (SPANISH):  No sabe que en su vientre me oculto para cuando necesite su fuerte vida la fuerza de la mía.

(RAÚL GÓMEZ JATTIN (SPANISH), standing now, gestures at [or to, or toward] an apparent pregnancy.)

RAÚL GÓMEZ JATTIN (ENGLISH):  She doesn’t know that I’ve hidden in her womb for when her strong life is needed by the struggle of mine.

RAÚL GÓMEZ JATTIN (SPANISH):  Más allá de estas lágrimas que corren en mi cara de su dolor inmenso como una puñalada.

RAÚL GÓMEZ JATTIN (ENGLISH):  Beyond these tears for her immense pain which run down my face like a stab.

RAÚL GÓMEZ JATTIN (SPANISH):  Más allá de este instante estoy oculto yo en el fluir de un tiempo que me lleva muy lejos y que ahora presiento.

RAÚL GÓMEZ JATTIN (ENGLISH):  Beyond this instant, I am hidden within the flow of a time taking me far away and I now forebode.

RAÚL GÓMEZ JATTIN (SPANISH):  Cuando los dos recuerdos—el de mi madre y el mío—sean sólo un recuerdo solo.

(Both RAÚL GÓMEZ JATTIN (ENGLISH) and RAÚL GÓMEZ JATTIN (SPANISH) face audience.)

RAÚL GÓMEZ JATTIN (ENGLISH):  When the two memories—my mother’s and my own—are only one memory alone.

RAÚL GÓMEZ JATTIN (SPANISH):  Este verso.

RAÚL GÓMEZ JATTIN (ENGLISH):  This verse.

Lights out on stage. The performance ends with traditional music from the Colombian Caribbean coast.

translated from the Spanish by David Pegg



Raúl Gómez Jattin: One Memory Alone was developed as part of an artist residency with Shá Cage and Catalyst Arts in 2018. A staged reading was performed on May 30, 2018, as part of the pUSH LAB (Art + Activism =) conference, with Daisuke Kawachi providing directorial support.

Listen to the original read by the author:

I first heard about Raúl Gómez Jattin in 1998, one year after the poet died in an accident in Cartagena. He was a constant reference in conversation. As if it were an ongoing eulogy, everyone had a story to tell about him. They would recite his poetry to console themselves about [or through] their own difficulties. In some ways, I believe his poetry was a means for people to comfort themselves through the trauma of having survived the extermination of left-wing social and political movements and the generalized violence widespread in Colombia in the 1990's.

In 2018, I participated in an artist residency program with Catalyst Arts, where I started to adapt his poems into a play that presented the original Spanish with the English translation. The end result was the following bilingual dramatic piece, which was performed as a staged reading at the pUSH Art+Activism LAB conference.

The short play at hand, Raúl Gómez Jattin: One Memory Alone, presents the poet as he returns home from the capital. There he finds rejection from many in society, but also the love of old relationships and literature. He spent much time in Cereté, where his family had lived for generations, immersing himself in his father's library and his own memories.

The unique challenge of translating this poetry lies in being able to follow the lyrical patterns flowing through Jattin’s varied themes and registers. The translator has to be comfortable with the re-invention of classical writers, and also the side streets of Cartagena and Bogotá. Raúl Gómez Jattin surrounds his crass nature in endless tenderness, and the translator must find a balance in the play between the fragile and the obscene.

Raúl Gómez Jattin (1945–1997) was a poet from the Colombian Caribbean coast. He published several brief volumes of poetry and is widely regarded as the poet who brought modern poetry into fruition in Colombia in the 1980s and 1990s. He was direct in his feelings and expression. Recurring themes in his poetry include childhood friends and loved ones, self-portrayal, sexuality, literature, and the natural world. He suffered from mental illness and drug addiction, lived his sexuality very much out of any closet, and spent much of his time studying and writing about modern and classical literature.

David Pegg lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In addition to Raúl Gómez Jattin, he has published his translations of several Colombian authors, including Jorge Largo, Jorge Enrique Botero, and Luis Miguel Rivas, and has translated works for the Teatro La Candelaria. Presently, he is an investigator with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights.