living syllable
This is the poem “Sílaba viva,” or “Living Syllable”:
Qué vachaché, está ahí aunque no lo
quieran,
está en la noche, está en la leche,
en cada coche y cada bache y
cada boche
está, le largarán los perros y lo mismo estará
aunque lo acechen, lo buscarán a troche y moche
y él estará con el que luche y el que espiche
en todo el que se agrande y se repeche
él estará, me cachendió.1
I’m not sure how to translate this for you because it is literally about the sound “che” that appears in a number of words that might otherwise not be found together in the same piece of language: night (noche), milk (leche), car (coche), pothole (bache), brawl (boche), hunt (acechen), pell-mell (a troche y moche), fights (luche), speechifies (espiche), climbs (repeche), goddamn it (me cachendió).
All these words, in Spanish, have the syllable “che” in them. Julio tells us that this syllable is everywhere, even if you don’t want it, even if you try to hunt it down, it will be there, in all these words.
“Che” is also a kind of filler phrase common to Argentine Spanish, so common in fact that Argentines are sometimes known as “che’s”. Now Argentines have a famously vexed relationship with other Latin Americans, many of whom feel that Argentines consider themselves superior, more “European” than other Latin Americans. Maybe this poem is a little joke, by an Argentine, that says to other Spanish speakers: no matter how much you’d like to get rid of us, we will be everywhere.
Maybe it’s also just nonsense, or, in the specialized vocabulary of literary studies, pure formalism: not about anything other than the language, the sound of the words themselves. Words usually work like paths to get you somewhere. Maybe to an intended idea, or an object in the world, or to an understanding with another person. We might consider the sensual qualities of the path only insofar as these help us get somewhere else or keep you from getting somewhere else—wherever it is we think we want to go.
With this little poem, Julio offers an opportunity to notice the sensual qualities of the path for their own sake, for the sake of the pleasure or irritation they provoke when they pop up in relief alongside and against the ordinary meanings of words. Notice that words have fur, and a color, and a smell—like my cats.
Maybe, then, it is a “living syllable” (“sílaba viva”) because it appears to have a life of its own dancing in and out of the words we discover. And it is also a “living syllable” because it is free not only to participate in the conveying of meaning, but also to exist for its own sake, for the sake of the sound that it is and the sensuous experience it delivers to us. In short, perhaps the syllable is “living” because, for it, work (conveying meaning) and play (making sound) are one [9, 11, 20].
It’s a poem that suggests all this just by being about a syllable, “che”. But by being about that particular syllable, the poem opens itself back out again into the world of things and people that are named by words.
For the syllable “che” also names a specific individual, Che Guevara, the asthmatic Argentine physician who fought alongside Fidel Castro in the Cuban revolution before resigning his position in Fidel’s new government to take the revolution elsewhere. After an extensive manhunt, Che was killed by US Rangers in Bolivia in October, 1967. Julio wrote this poem not long after that. “Sílaba viva” – “Living Syllable.” And now I will translate:
“Whatcha gonna do, he’s there even if you don’t want him,
he is in the night, he is in the milk,
in every car and every pothole and every brawl
he is, you will send the dogs after him and all the same he will be
though you hunt him, you search for him haphazardly
and he will be with whoever fights and makes speeches
and in everything that grows and climbs
he will be, god damn it.”
Julio certainly believed that Che Guevara fought and died to allow people to live, in just the sense that the syllable “che” was living. In paying homage to Guevara’s effort, and in making “che” a living syllable, Julio also reveals the ways in which Che, the person, remains alive.
Now this poem stuns me not because I think it’s such a great or pleasing poem. It stuns me because it contains and resolves one of the central tension that marked Julio’s life as a writer. Many people who have studied Julio, even people who loved him, seem to fall into one of two parties: we can call them the the “party of literature” and the “party of politics.”
The party of literature says Julio was a great writer until around 1968, roughly the time he wrote this poem, because he respected the intrinsic power of literature and never mobilized it for extrinsic purposes like a political cause.
The party of politics says Julio was an amusing playful writer until around 1968, roughly the time he wrote this poem, when he began to accept his responsibility as a writer and stopped goofing around to mobilize his skill for political purposes.2
I exaggerate only slightly. In this little poem, Julio, like the syllable and the individual person he writes about, eludes those who would hunt him down and dismiss him with labels and judgments; and remember that “elude”, however deadly serious a game it might have been for Che, always bears the marks of its origins in the Latin word [ludere] that means “to play.”
1 Julio Cortázar, “Sílaba viva,” Ultimo Round (México: Siglo Veintiuno, 1969), primer piso, p. 11.
2 For a statement from the “party of literature,” see Mario Vargas Llosa’s sad prologue to the recent edition of Cortázar’s complete stories in Spanish: Cuentos Completos/1 (Madrid: Alfaguara, 1994), pp. 13-27. For a statement from the “party of politics” see Jean Franco, “Modernización, Resistancia y Revolución: La producción literaria de los años sesenta,” La cultura moderna en américa Latina, Trans. Sergio Pitol (México: Grijalbo, 1985), pp. 335-56.