Carlos+Wieder+and+New+Chilean+Poetry

CARLOS WIEDER AND NEW CHILEAN POETRY

Oddly contradictory accounts regarding Carlos Weider (pronounced like “cider”) AKA Alberto Ruiz-Tagle AKA Carlos Ramírez Hoffman AKA Emilo Stevens. The former two are the names by which he is called in //Distant Star//, but the latter two are the names by which he is called in the segment of //Nazi Literature in the Americas// from which //Distant Star// was derived. Its unsigned foreword describes the process by which this happened: The author of //Nazi Literature// (it is unclear whether this is the implied author or the real author or something in betwen) hears that “Arturo B.” is unsatisfied with the short chapter of //Nazi Literature//, so the two spend a few days creating a novel-length version. Arturo’s past as the writer of this foreword relates it is identical to the life of Arturo Belano as described in //The Savage Detectives//. If //Distant Star// and //Nazi Literature// are written in the universe of Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima, why has Carlos/Emilio become Carlos/Alberto and why have the Garmendias sisters become the Venegas sisters? Perhaps Arturo Belano has fictionalized the account. Perhaps Bolaño has changed the names himself, for no reason we can know, as a joke or a trick or a trap. Perhaps Calros Ramírez Hoffman was like the “scrawled palm trees that someone edits away” in Antwerp. The foreword-writer concludes by stating that, “my role was limited to preparing refreshments, consulting a few books, and discussing the reuse of numerous paragraphs with Arturo and the increasingly animated ghost of Pierre Ménard.” This seems to be a way of suggesting that Arturo (Belano or otherwise) has expanded on the original story from imagination and that some of the ‘reported’ details may be unreliable. [Note to self: reread Ramirez Hoffman for clues.] Anyway, we press forward with Wieder. Google Translate tells us his name means “back, again.” Wiktionary confirms this, but adds a cryptic sentence among the entomological roots: “From Proto-Indo-European *widʰu- (‘tree, beam’), from Proto-Indo-European *weydʰ-, *widʰ- (‘to separate, split, cleave, divide’).” Bolaño, in //Distant Star//, writes (or rather his character, Bibiano, says) that //wieder// can also mean “over and over” and “‘the next time,’ in sentences referring to future events”  and that words derived from it include “//Widerchrist//, ‘the Antichrist’; //Widerhaken//, ‘barb, hook’; //wiederraten//, to dissuade”; //Widerlegung//, ‘refutation, rebuttal’; //Widerlager//, ‘buttress’; //Widerklage//, ‘counteraccusation, counterplea’; //Widernatürlichkeid//, ‘monstrosity, aberration’” and also that //weiden// meant “to graze, to put out to pasture” or “to look after grazing animals,” but also “to take morbid pleasure in the contemplation of an object that excites sexual desire and/or sadistic tendencies.”  I suppose, in light of all that, we can’t blame Bolaño for turning Ramírez Hoffman into Wieder. What gives the implied author and Bibiano the energy to spend all this time researching Wieder? As he writes, “Ruiz-Tagle had disappeared for good, and Wieder was all we had to give our wretched, empty days some meaning.” Hold that thought for a moment, if you will, because I’ve just taken a closer look at “Carlos Ramírez Hoffman,” and noticed a curious difference in the final lines. //Distant Star// ends, “A taxi pulled up beside us. Look after yourself, my friend, he said, and went off.” “Carlos Ramírez Hoffman” ends, “Look after yourself, Bolaño, he said, and off he went.”  As far as I know, this is the only time Bolaño appears as a character (at least by that name) in his works, though “Dance Card” is said to be autobiographical. So the writer of //Distant Star//’s foreword (who claims to be “Bolaño,” author of //Nazi Literature in the Americas//) meets Arturo possibly-Belano, the one who told him the story of Ramírez Hoffman in the first place, who demands that he turn it into something capable of standing on its own rather than a conclusion to the stories in //Nazi Literature//. This all seems mighty complicated, and we might consider turning back for fear of exposing Bolaño’s inner ‘wanky-ness,’ but we always knew he was a little wanky, right? I mean, look at the epigraph of my thesis prospectus. Okay. So the quest for Wieder is the quest for meaning and someone who calls himself Bolaño is the searcher... or rather, someone who call himself Bolaño is letting Arturo B. fictionalize as much of the search-story as he likes. Bolaño, anyway, is the speaking subject of the narrative Arturo writes. Who, then, is Wieder? Rest assured, he is “a man and not a god.” The body of Angelica Garmendia (“my adorable, my incomparable Angelica”) is found, even if the bodies of her sister and aunt are not. Then again, maybe Wieder wants her body to be found. Maybe it is just one of the many artifacts he intends to leave behind – like the photos, the ones he shows to officers of the Chilean airforce, surrealist “(or super-realist)” journalists, and one woman, Tatiana von Beck Iraola, the military heiress “who went into the room expecting to see heroic portraits or boring photographs of the Chilean skies” at an exhibition that leaves some vomiting, some fleeing, and some remaining, dazed, with a feeling of camaraderie. “Someone referred to an oath.” That is to say: Wieder makes some converts. Wieder, before opening the door to the claustrophobic room that contains his photographs (he lets one person in at a time as “the art of Chile is not for herds), says that it is, “time to plunge into the art of the future.” This is New Chilean Poetry. What exactly is in the pictures? Bolaño doesn’t quite ‘reveal the monster,’ but the exhibition follows show of skywritten poetry (his specialty) in which Wieder references “the twins” and the names of other women who have disappeared. Of the photos, only a little is said: some were of the Garmendia sisters, most were of women, and “they had all been taken to the same place.” There was, “a progression, an argument, a story (literal and allegorical).” The Garmandia sisters, by the way, were excellent poets. They had been in a workshop with Bolaño, Bibiano, and Ruiz-Tagle. Ruiz-Tagle was popular with both sisters, much to the dismay (or jealousy) of Bolaño and Bibiano. The sisters later disappeared, but they was a time when many people were disappearing in Chile. Only later did Bibiano discover that the Garmandias had not fled. This is New Chilean Poetry. As the party grows old, an air force captain says, “I advise you to get some sleep and forget everything that happened here tonight.” This reminds us of Father Urrutia, the ‘good German’ from //By Night in Chile//. Like that text’s Pinochet, Wieder is a sort of evil übermensch (or at least a man of steel) who stuns us not just with his ruthlessness but with his knowledge.

 Amulet. 10. (I imagine memory as a flying island. It grows tall with towers of piza and pyramids, but the bottom crumbles away and the banks erode. Some things are lost forever. The tower grows taller and taller until the base crumbles and it falls away at the bottom. Ramírez Hoffman is like the falling debris: we can see him, but we don’t know why he’s around. Removed from the final version.)  Distant Star. 2. Pierre Ménard, I presume, as in the short story by Borges.  http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Proto-Germanic/widuz  Distant Star. 40  Distant Star 40-1 (There are a few more etymological fragments on 42 if you’re interested in that sort of thing.)  Distant Star. 42. (Compare with Apocalpytic Quest. Did Vasilenko mention this? I always imagined the quest for V. to be a wretched search for meaning.)  Distant Star 149.  Nazi Literature 204. (Note that Chris Andrews is the translator the Distant Star and Nazi Lit texts in my possession.) (The fictional critic Ibacache does something similar to this with Wieder. See //Distant Star// 107.)  Note to self: collect and review this.  Amalfitano thinks, “Now even bookish pharmacists are afraid to take on the great, imperfect, torrential works, books that blaze paths into the unknown. They choose the perfect exercises of the great masters. Or what amounts to the same thing: they want to watch the great masters spar, but they have no interest in real combat, when the great masters struggle against that something, that something that terrifies us all, that something that cows us and spurs us on, amid blood and mortal wounds and stench.” Don’t worry. We’ll get to //2666// in time. We just have to descend through a few circles first.  Distant Star. 23.  Distant Star. 82-6. (Might they be journalists //de ultraismo//? I’d have to get my hands on a Spanish copy to find out. I remember the Infrarealists resolutely refusing to be called “the Mexican section of surrealism.” Perhaps this was in Los Detectivos? It would make sense if they were Infrarealist journalists. After all, the account is described as “accurate” [Distant Star 83])  Distant Star. 84.  Distant Star. 88.  Distant Star. 92.  Not that I believe in good or evil.