A story, that masquerades as a dictionary, by Xurxo Borrazás, translated from the Galician by Jacob Rogers. Borrazás uses this form to reflect on various themes, ideas, and literary subjects. What results are his characteristically humorous, playful, and thoughtful reflections on literature and life, in a perfect showcase of this author’s immense intelligence, desire to experiment and break with traditional forms and structures, and ultimately the immense warmth radiating at the core of all his writing.
The original Galician follows the English translation. The Galician originally appeared in Borrazás’s 1998 collection, Contos malvados (Wayward Tales).
Other Words
Action
Amazon of time. Constant choice.
For De Quincey, the object of poetry.
Back-sliding substance. Energy translated into acts.
Whenever opposed to reflection it causes anti-social outbursts.
In fictions, being a verb, what’s substantive.
Influence or effect produced by one thing upon another. As with the one currently occupying us.
If you claim to find it in me, it was actually in you.
Then, now.
I’m searching for it.
In mid-action.
Essence
Aroma, perfume.
We talk about the quintessence as an element that would encapsulate and complement the other four that make up the world: air, earth, water, and fire. Like an instinct. But the world isn’t composed of those four elements, which are basically inessential; and the quintessence is couched in lighter, more superficial—sublime—meanings.
Essence is more volatile than substance; and, if not held accountable, it becomes totalitarian. It takes no notice of accidents and is intolerant of digressions.
Being an abstraction, its image, paradoxically, is always of a concentrated point: rich and simultaneously supple and expansive. Like a spirit (this definition is unnecessary). Like nothing.
Nothing
What we don’t feel. Quintessence of abstraction. Epitome and final revelation of the essence and possibilities of language.
It has inspired titles, theories in physics, and discoveries in philosophy.
Some languages deny its existence: Nothing doesn’t exist; and they’re not wrong. They’re simply operating in the realm where presence is best simulated, the realm of words.
This has nothing to do with nihilism, of course. Nothing. Not even the word defined enters into the definition, because it doesn’t exist.
Therefore I am fiction, but not nothing. Which is to say
Language
Combination, trick.
Play on words governed by arbitrary norms. Social filter.
The naïve idea that oral and written language are two sides of the same coin has as of now been cast aside.
Literature’s substance. Substitute for action.
Religion presided over by poets and philosophical commentators.
The variety of languages began with a tower, among bricklayers.
Foundation of grammars, schools, and dictionaries. Topic of conversation. Filibusterist’s weapon. Feminine noun.
Anthropocentrically applied to animal voices.
The onion has been defined as a metaphor for language.
The oppressors won the battle when they made it so that language, unlike an onion, wouldn’t sting when using it and cutting it up.
See: man of letters, lingua franca, orthography.
Fragment
Basic unit of structured reasoning. Said also of the largest unit (see: accumulation).
In music, part of the work that can be executed independent of the rest of the piece.
A fragment is anything that isn’t everything, quod vide. Beautiful word.
The survival of old-fashioned definitions such as “incomplete part of a whole” is shocking, given that completeness (is this in any doubt?) is an ideological concept.
Etymologically erroneous.
When a fragment contains more than half of another, or of a supposed totality, it stops being such and becomes instead a nonsense, something incomplete (a fragment?) which is missing a fragment.
Is a dictionary an aggregation of fragments?
To establish limits is to impose. The everythings are disrespectful to the fragments. The latter, unknowingly, are democracy.
In literature, while one works, everything is a fragment. Fragments are the only form I trust.
Dictionary
Some are incomplete.
Collection of signs to which we attribute magical powers: the unlimited ability to represent and communicate.
Choral, formulaic, and fragmentary text, generally of multiple authorship.
Untranslatable.
The thousand and one stories they do in fact contain (a catch phrase, they contain more), demand participation from the reader, active and itinerant.
Read alphabetically, they offer more surprises than one might imagine.
They’re overweight.
They go with the verbs consult and look up.
Defenders to the end of the semantic family, its members organize themselves by prefix.
Perishable item, feast for the woodworm.
Story organized hierarchically and with military discipline. The narrator is omniscient, the prose sloppy, and the style cryptic, halfway between neurosis and physical-mathematical formulas.
They’re distinct from encyclopedias because the latter advances a conventional syntax and moves within the most naïve of realisms.
Dictionaries are science, encyclopedias are childhood.
Story
This.
Incomplete, like dictionaries.
No talking for the sake of talking.
This I call a story because it has narrative, readers, style, intent, plot, fiction, characters, narrator, language, parody, action.
Just because you haven’t seen them yet doesn’t mean they’re not there. This is a flash forward. A digression. It also has flash forwards and digressions.
Written in prose.
Besides the story I’m writing a dictionary, no storytelling involved. It wasn’t fiction until that previous sentence, and that’s where the narrative came from.
The story is me, my activity, that previous sentence.
Fabrication, lie, myth, comic strip.
Structure which pivots around an eccentric axel, around an extreme. The poor ones haven’t mastered this kind of pivoting and the ending topples them. Others stumble their way around and end without
Sometimes, most of the time, they’re mistakenly formulated as short novels. They come in collections.
Any distancing from the norms here gathered will be beneficial. There will be dictionaries that protect said distancing in the future.
Logical
Adj. Out of context.
Disregardful of details.
Anxiety. Desire.
Hasty conclusion.
Euphemism for submission to a group of learned norms, which others refer to as coherence.
A logical course of action is one skillful at simulating what’s invisible, what’s standard. At walking the line without a foot out of place, without losing your balance. The physical kind.
Statistic. Now we’re talking about the noun. Doctrine which likened the masses to the real, phenomena to observation, faith to facts.
An impassable, imaginary barrier that separates, and enthrones, vested interests.
Weapon of victors.
Parody
Mimesis. Mirror.
Art. Process of its evolution and practice. Occasionally unconscious. Related to the finitude of codes and substances.
Dialogue, especially with tradition.
Reflection on learning.
Good examples of parodies are dictionaries, and within them, prefixes like meta-, para-, or pseudo-.
Reference, irony.
Not to be confused with “pastiche,” quod vide.
Expression of love towards masters, humility.
All imitations differ from their model, even if identical. The differences are clear, facial.
Synonyms: Original, copy.
Prose
World’s grammar.
Accumulation.
Written language.
Source of incorrect definitions.
Traditionally opposed to one of its parts: poetry. People sometimes talk, in a restricted manner, and in order to resolve the paradox, of poetic prose and prose poetry.
When we talk about poetic prose, we do so to elevate prose from the chaos of our senses to faith in absolutes. This responds to two concepts of beauty: for poetry, beauty precedes the observer; it’s an external, independent thing. For prose, beauty is a process, not a product, and its dependence on the reader is absolute. I promise I won’t repeat that word, absolute. Beauty lays in the observation, not in the prose itself.
The prose poem must fulfill two pre-conditions: a certain brevity and its non-verse layout. But concision isn’t exclusive to poems, and neither are tension or any other devices.
So, poetry (this was the definition for prose) is left with the distinction of stanzas, today forgotten or employed as an archaism; which is to say it’s left with hardly a thing: prose.
My skeleton is formed of choice, arrangement, and pauses. I am prose, accumulation. I am lines, but not stanza. I live within writing and lack faith.
My beauty is you.
Crime
Heroic behavior.
Dangerous relationship of individual to group. There are solved and unsolved ones.
Many of them are flawless; I don’t have statistics on hand. Others are punished by the hand of the law, with the judge’s gavel.
The criminal is individualistic, despite theorization about syndicated crime and the organized sort of the same. I’m talking about Jack the Ripper, Paulino from Chantada, L. Oubiña, Mario Conde, Bonnie and Clyde.
Their solitude is poetic.
A criminal, like an artist, is one who infringes. Except that the artists are always realists, the criminals fantastical. The pen and the blade: knife art
The problem with crime is victims. Literature eliminates this problem and keeps just the experience; it keeps the taste without the digestion; it keeps the mechanics, the tune.
Reader creates victim, victim is reader.
People say of writing that it kills language, the latter being life and the former death. Language love, and writing desire.
The most intense crimes don’t seem that way at first. The ink doesn’t stand out. It’s the blood that puzzles us. Our blood, not the blood of texts.
Write
With the left, with the right. Lyrics or letters.
To spread ink.
To murder, imprison. Way of life.
Action of the immobile. Collector’s spirit.
Destiny is written, someone once wrote.
To dialogue calmly, without waiting for a reply.
Some people speak in writing.
For me it’s to reveal, or feign, the secrets I’d like to have.
Openly.
Poetry
See “prose.”
When some poets, even the ones who eschew rhetoric—the most prosaic—decide to write a novel, they revert unintentionally to their debutante’s verbosity.
Only when we write something do the margins of the blank page start to appear.
Dream
Simultaneity, desire, condensation.
The thing they do in movies when someone dreams. The hazy, wavy image and the sound of a harp bringing along the next one.
In dreams I attended to my whole circle of friends. Friendly and variegated people.
One half I slew, by various means; the other half I loved through and through.
Half – friends
Slew – Loved through and through
That’s condensation, desire.
Also simultaneity.
I
Person who narrates.
Dressed up as such. Protagonist.
Esoteric term concealing an absence.
Egotistical pronoun. Convention.
Solipsistic doctrine, malgré-lui.
Solitude, separation. Lack of love.
Plural Is, rarely used.
Memory’s disarray.
Recognizable thread in the midst of dispersion.
I am, I are, I is, I’re, I’s, I am again.
Exception
What pays off. Manifestation of reality.
Some moron claimed that exceptions exist to confirm the rules. There must have been an unstoppable and flattening scientific impulse burning in his soul.
Within the subconscious all phenomena sidestep presupposed models. All rules are exceptional.
Art. Madness.
The feeling that love-struck pronouns, or those who possess them, have of themselves.
Privilege. Restriction.
What irritates the controllers and amuses the unruly.
It’s writers with a weird streak, murderers, or plotless stories.
There’s rain in the desert. Come dance with me.
Applied in Biblical texts to the rich that will finally save their souls.
Extraordinary!
Order
Alphabetical. Law and. From the top. Established. Monastic. Apparent. Natural. Of the day. World. Chronological. Architectonic. Public. Constitutional. Logical. Numerical. Gag. Short. Honorific. Military. Social. Biological. In the court. Divine. Payment. Purchase. Sale. Attack.
Universal neurosis.
Affective disorder.
Intellectual tension.
Analytic chaos.
Antonyms: Laxity, inertia, exception; life, mon frère.
Style
Personal way of holding the pen.
Stamp.
Degree of each keyboard key’s dirtiness or cleanliness.
Desire to show off. Each person’s own.
Periods, commas, and their caprices.
Elongation of the plant’s ovary, which results in stigma.
A group of them (of styles, naturally).
Series of coincidental experiences on the sensory and epidermic level, when regarding the same artistic form.
Manner of moving through water. It can be freestyle, backstroke, or butterfly. Doggy paddling and floaties were not approved. But breaststroke was; that’s the one I was missing.
Etcetera.
Favorite exercise.
Way, manner, eagerness.
Character
Not all are narrators. But I am.
I am what I am. Stolen.
Linguistic device allowing one to move the story forward.
Public figure.
Some simulate people, others animals, others natural elements. Some simulate linguistic devices, thus they’re not lying.
The fact that you’re unaware of my past, my motivations, and my appearance doesn’t preclude my existence. I too am unaware of them, and despite this I’m not solely a character, I’m also the story. I’m unaware of your past, your motivations, too, and do not as a result deny your existence.
This is an inappropriate entry for a dictionary. Too much cohesion.
Characters are also historical, round, and secondary; flat and protagonists; heroes and anti-heroes; fixed and flexible; human and functional; pure and obscure; active or reflective; and then there’s me.
This is the story of an author who’s decided to write a dictionary fragment.
As well as narrator, story, and character, I’m also the authors, the fragment, and the dictionary. I am language and parody. An exception. Am I poetry? Style, prose; which is as to being nothing; and I am also a criminal.
The essence of crime is order.
I am…what I am. And I’m not quite that.
Fiction
1. Falsehood 2. Propaganda 3. Written text 4. Version
Comes paradoxically to be a noun. And appears in oxymorons like science-fiction. Invention. Pretense. Metaphor for the world.
It goes against the pallor and reductionism of essays, and also against the statements which hide the hand pulling the strings.
My life is fiction, and I don’t hide it. It’s part fiction, and I don’t hide part of it. Don’t expect lies and realisms of me.
What I’m telling you must be accepted to make sense, without further evidence.
Whatever I’m writing here I must be stealing from elsewhere. Nothing ever comes from nothing, even less so fiction. Stories are scarce and some people don’t like to share.
My alibi is that there’s no crime without a body. But I’ll accept it if they accuse me with fictitious accusations, and I’ll comply with any sentences which come as a result. You can’t steal something fictitious, something that doesn’t exist.
The thing is, it does, of course, exist. Except for fundamentalists of the word exist.
Reader
This might be the first dictionary you’ve read. But you surely have more of them at home.
Libraries are full of them.
You must’ve realized that what’s essential isn’t to unravel them, but to experience them. See: experience and experiment.
The poor quality of this narrative is my poor quality, my narrative. And if it’s unfinished then so am I; so what? It’s just like the Sagrada Familia, and the search for Atlantis, or Mount Medulio.
My syntax, too, along this line, and not just for you, has its lapses.
The poet is not he who affirms; this is once again something stolen. And all works, ones of art too, are never finished, they’re abandoned.
O, for something to have its end put! For it will put an end to everything.
Pity for the person who understood everything, because it was worth nothing.
I’d fill you with love to prove it.
To experience, to experience.
My pauses are your stopping points. My breath your voice.
Your conclusions, dear reader, are my conclusion too.
~
Palabras Outras
Acción
Amazona do tempo. Elección constante.
Para De Quincey, o obxecto da poesía.
Materia que discorre. Enerxía que se traduce en actos.
Cando se opón á reflexión deriva en arroutadas de túzaro.
Nas ficcións, sendo verbo, o substantivo delas.
Influencia ou efecto producido pola actividade dunha cousa noutra. Así é a que nos ocupa.
Se dis que en min a atopas, é que estaba en ti.
Antes, agora.
Búscoa.
En plena acción.
Esencia
Aroma, perfume.
Fálase da quintaesencia como do elemento que englobaría e complementaría os outros catro que conforman o mundo: a auga, a terra, o aire e o lume. Coma un instinto. Pero o mundo non se compón deses catro elementos, que son basicamente inesenciais; e a quintaesencia acubíllase en acepcións máis lixeiras e superficiais. Sublimes.
A esencia é máis volátil cá substancia; e, non tendo que renderlle contas á realidade, aínda é totalitaria. Non repara en accidentes nin tolera as digresións. Sendo unha abstracción, paradoxalmente, a súa imaxe é sempre a dun punto concentrado, ricaz; e á vez áxil e expansivo. Coma un espírito (esta definición é prescindible). Coma nada.
Nada
O que non sentimos. Quintaesencia da abstracción. Epítome e revelación última das posibilidades e a esencia da linguaxe.
Inspirou títulos, teorías físicas, ou achados filosóficos.
Algunhas linguas negan a súa existencia: Non hai nada; e non erran. Só que o fan no eido onde mellor se simulan as presencias, o das palabras.
Isto non ten nada que ver co nihilismo, por certo. Nada. Nin o definido entra na definición, porque non existe.
Xa que logo son ficción, pero non nada. É dicir.
Linguaxe
Combinación, truco.
Xogo de palabras rexido por normas arbitrarias. Filtro social.
Hoxe desbotouse a inxenuidade de que lingua oral e lingua escrita sexan dúas caras da mesma moeda.
Material da literatura. Substituto da acción.
Relixión oficiada por poetas e comentaristas da filosofía.
A variedade de linguas comezou nunha torre, entre albaneis.
Sustento de gramáticas, escolas, e diccionarios. Tema de conversa. Arma de filibusteiros. Feminina.
Antropocentricamente aplicado á voz dos animais.
Tense definido a cebola coma metáfora da linguaxe.
Os opresores gañaron a batalla cando conseguiron que, coma a cebola, a linguaxe non proese ao empregala e fragmentala. E conseguírono por aburrimento, esgotando as lágrimas.
Ver: home de letras, lingua franca, ortografía.
Fragmento
Unidade básica do razoamento estructurado. Dise igualmente da unidade máxima (ver: acumulación).
En música, parte dunha obra que pode ser executada, independentemente do resto.
É un fragmento calquera cousa que non sexa todo, quod vide. Palabra fermosa.
Sorprende aínda a pervivencia caduca de acepcións do estilo “parte incompleta dun todo”; sendo a completitude, ¿quen o dubida?, un concepto ideolóxico.
Etimoloxicamente errado.
Cando un fragmento abarca máis da metade doutro, ou dun suposto todo, deixa de ser tal e pasa a ser un sen sentido, algo incompleto (¿un fragmento?) ao que lle falta un fragmento.
¿É un diccionario un conxunto de fragmentos?
Establecer límites é impoñer. Os todos son irrespectuosos cos fragmentos. Eles son a democracia, sen sabelo.
En literatura, mentres se traballa, todo é un fragmento. Eu só confío nos fragmentos.
Diccionario
Hainos incompletos.
Colección e signos aos que se lles atribúen poderes máxicos: capacidade para representar e comunicar sen límite.
Obra coral, formulaica e fragmentaria, xeralmente de autoría múltiple.
Intraducible.
As mil e unha historias que de feito contén (frase feita, contén máis), esixen a participación do lector, activa e itinerante.
Lidos alfabeticamente ofrecen máis sorpresas das planeadas.
Son obesos.
Van cos verbos consultar e manexar.
Defensores a ultranza da familia semántica, os seus membros sindícanse por prefixos.
Producto perecedoiro, banquete para a couza.
Relato xerarquizado e con disciplina castrense. O narrador é omnisciente, a prosa remendona e o estilo críptico, a cabalo entre a neurose e as fórmulas matemático-físicas.
Distínguense das enciclopedias porque estas presentas sintaxe convencional e móvense no realismo máis iluso.
Os diccionarios son a ciencia e as enciclopedias a infancia.
Conto
Este.
Incompleto, coma os diccionarios.
Non se fala por falar.
Digo conto este porque ten historia, lectores, estilo, desexo, trama, ficción, personaxes, narrador, linguaxe, parodia, acción.
Que non as vises ata agora non quere dicir que non estean. Isto é unha prolepse. Unha digresión. Tamén ten prolepses e digresións.
Escrito en prosa.
Fóra do conto escribo un diccionario, non é conto. Iso non era ficción ata a frase anterior, e de aí saíu a historia.
O conto son eu, a miña actividade, a frase anterior.
Embuste, mentira, fábula, historieta.
Estructura que pivota sobre un eixo excéntrico, sobre un extremo. Os ruíns non dominan esta sorte de pivotaxe e esboróanse co remate. Outros atoutiñan esfarelados e conclúen sen
Ás veces, as máis, erroneamente concíbense coma novelas curtas. Preséntanse en coleccións.
Todo afastamento das normas aquí recollidas será beneficioso. Diccionarios haberá que no futuro o acollan.
Lóxico/a
Adx. Fóra de contexto.
Que prescinde do accesorio.
Ansia. Desexo.
Conclusión apresurada.
Eufemismo para a submisión a un conxunto de normas aprendidas, que outros chaman concordancia.
Proceder lóxico é o que amosa habelencia en simular o invisible, a convención. En camiñar pola raia sen que sobresaia un pé, sen perder o equilibrio. O físico.
Estatística. Falamos agora do substantivo. Doutrina que equipara as maiorías co real, os fenómenos coa observación, a fe cos feitos.
Infranqueable barreira imaxinaria que separa, e entroniza, intereses particulares.
Arma dos vencedores.
Parodia
Mímese. Espello.
Arte. Proceso da súa evaluación e práctica. Ás veces inconsciente. Relacionado coa finitude dos códigos e os materiais.
Diálogo, especialmente coa tradición.
Reflexión sobre a aprendizaxe.
Bos exemplos de parodia sono os diccionarios, e dentro deles prefixos como meta-, para- ou pseudo-.
Referencia, ironía.
Non confundir co “pastiche”, quod vide.
Expresión do amor aos mestres, humildade.
Toda imitación difire do seu modelo, mesmo sendo idéntica. Hai diferencias aparentes, faciais.
Sinónimos: Orixinal, copia.
Prosa
Gramática do mundo.
Acumulación.
Linguaxe escrita. Fonte de definicións erradas.
Tradicionalmente oposta a unha das súas partes, a poesía. En ocasións fálase, de xeito restrinxido e, para resolver o paradoxo, de prosa poética ou de poemas en prosa.
Cando se fala de prosa poética faise para elevar a prosa desde o caos dos sentidos ata a fe nos absolutos. Isto responde a dous conceptos da beleza: para a poesía a beleza precede a quen a observa, é algo externo e independente. Para a prosa a beleza é un proceso, non un producto, e a súa dependencia do lector é absoluta. Prometo non repetir esa palabra, absoluto. A beleza está na observación, non na prosa mesma.
O poema en prosa ha de cumprir dúas condicións: certa brevidade e a súa non disposición en versos. Pero a concisión non é exclusiva dos poemas, como tampouco o son a tensión ou os recurso que ser queiran.
Así, á poesía (esta era a definición de prosa) réstalle o distintivo das estrofas, hoxe esquecidas ou empregadas como arcaísmo; que é como dicir que a penas lle resta nada: a prosa.
Elección, disposición e pausas conforman o meu esqueleto. Eu son prosa, acumulación. Son versos, pero non estrofa. Vivo por escrito e carezo de fe.
A miña beleza es ti.
Crime
Comportamento heroico.
Perigosa relación do individuo co grupo. Hainos resoltos e sen resolver.
Boa parte deles resultan perfectos, non manexo estatísticas. Outros páganse coa lei na man, coa vara dos xuíces.
O criminal é individualista, malia que se teorice co sindicato do crime e co idem organizado. Falo de Jack o Destripador, de Paulina o de Chantada, de L. Oubiña, de Mario Conde, de Bonnie e Clyde.
A súa soidade é poética.
Criminal, como artista, é quen vulnera. Só que os artistas son decote realistas, os criminais fantásticos. A pluma e o coitelo: arte knife.
O problema do crime son as víctimas. A literatura elimínao e queda coa experiencia; queda co sabor sen a dixestión; coa mecánica, coa canción.
A víctima créaa o lector, éa o lector, a lectora.
Dise da escrita que mata a lingua, sendo esta vida e aquela a morte. A lingua o amor e a escrita o desexo.
Os crimes máis intensos non o parecen de entrada. A tinta non destaca. É o sangue o que nos confunde. O sangue noso, non o dos textos.
Escribir
Coa dereita, coa esquerda. Letras ou cartas.
Esparexer tinta.
Asasinar, aprisionar. Modo de vida.
Acción dos inmóbiles. Espírito coleccionista.
Está escrito o destino, escribiu alguén.
Dialogar con calma, sen agardar resposta.
Hai quen fala por escrito.
Para min é revelar, ou finxir, os segredos que quixera ter.
Abertamente.
Poesía
Ver “prosa”
Cando algúns poetas, mesmo os bos e espidos de retórica: os máis prosaicos, se meten a escribir unha novela, retornan sen querelo á verborrea do debutante.
As marxes no folio en branco aparecen tan só cando escribimos algo.
Soño
Simultaneidade, desexo, condensación.
Iso que fan no cinema cando alguén soña. A imaxe borrosa, ondulante, e o son dunha arpa traendo a nova imaxe.
En soños dei conta do meu círculo de amizades. Xente amable e variopinta.
A metade mateina, por diferentes vias; e a outra metade ameina.
Metade – amizade
Ameina – mateina
Iso é condensación, desexo.
Tamén simultaneidade.
Eu
Persoa que narra.
Disfrazado de tal. Protagonista.
Termo esotérico que agocha unha ausencia.
Pronome egoística. Convención.
Doutrina solipsista, malgré-lui.
Soidade, separación. Falta de amor.
Plural eus, pouco empregado.
Revoltallo da memoria.
Enfiado recoñecible no medio da dispersión.
Eu son, eu es, eu é, eu somos, eu sodos, eu son outra vez.
Excepción
O que paga a pena. Manifestación da realidade.
Algún ultraparvo aseverou que as excepcións están para confirmar as regras. No seu ánimo avivecería un irrefreable ímpeto achanzador, científico.
No subconsciente todo fenómeno esquiva os referentes presumidos. Toda regra é excepcional.
Arte. Loucura.
Sensación que os pronomes namorados, ou quen os detentan, experimentan sobre si.
Privilexio. Restricción.
O que amola aos dirixistas e divirte aos revirados.
Sono os escritores con bicho, os asasinos, os contos sen historia.
Chove no deserto. Ven bailar comigo.
Nos textos bíblicos dise dos ricos que han salvar a alma.
¡Extraordinario!
Orde
Alfabética. Xurídica. De arriba. Establecida. Monástica. De aparición. Natural. Do día. Mundial. Cronolóxica. Arquitectónica. Pública. Constitucional. Lóxica. Numérica. E concerto. De honra. Militar. Social. Biolóxica. Na sala. Divina. De pago. De compra. De venda. De ataque.
Neurose universal.
Desarranxo afectivo.
Tensión do intelecto.
Analítica desorde.
Contrarios: Relaxo, inercia, excepción; vida, mon frère.
Estilo
Xeito persoal de soster o bolígrafo.
Punzón.
Grao de limpeza ou sucidade de cada unha das teclas do ordenador.
Afán de aparentar. O aquel de cadaquén.
Puntos, comas. Os seus caprichos.
Prolongamento do ovario da planta, que remata no estigma.
Conxunto deles (de estilos, claro).
Serie de experiencias coincidentes no nivel sensorial e epidérmico perante a mesma forma artística.
Maneira de avanzar na auga. Pode ser libre, p’atrás ou á bolboreta. O can e a bomba non foron homologados. A ra si; faltábame ese.
Etcétera.
Exercicio preferido.
Xeito, maneira, afán.
Personaxe
Non todos son narradores. Pero eu si.
Eu son o quen son. Roubado.
Dispositivo lingüístico que permite progresear na historia.
Figura pública.
Algúns simulan persoas, outros animais, outros elementos da natureza. Outros simulan ser dispositivos lingüísticos, e así non menten.
Que non coñezas o meu pasado, as miñas motivacións ou o meu aspecto non preclude a miña existencia. Tampouco eu os coñezo, e malia iso non só son personaxe, son tamén a historia. Tampouco coñezo o teu pasado, as túas motivacións, e non por iso nego a túa existencia.
Esta entrada é impropia dun diccionario. Cohesión de máis.
Os personaxes son históricos, redondos e secundarios; planos e protagonistas; heroes e antiheroes; ríxidos e cambiantes; humanos e funcionais; puros e escuros; activos ou reflexivos; e logo estou eu.
Este é o conto dun autor que resolve compoñer un fragmento de diccionario.
Ademais de narrador, historia e personaxe, tamén eu son os autores, o fragmento e o diccionario. Son linguaxe e son parodia. Unha excepción. ¿Son poesía?, estilo, prosa; que é coma ser nada; e son tamén un criminal.
A esencia do crime é a orde.
Eu son… o que son. E non son tal.
Ficción
1. Falsidade 2. Propaganda 3. Texto escrito 4. Versión
Paradoxalmente vén ser un substantivo. E aparece en oxímoros como ficción científica. Invención. Finximento. Metáfora o mundo.
Contraponse á palidez e ao reduccionismo dos ensaios e as declaracións que agochan a man de quen as guía.
A miña vida é ficción, e non o agocho.
É ficción en parte, e non o agocho en parte. Non me pidades mentiras e realismos.
O que vos digo debe ser aceptado para ter sentido, sen probas.
Canto aquí escribo debo roubalo en algures. Nada vén nunca de nada; e menos aínda a ficción. Os relatos son limitados e hai quen non gosta de compartir.
A miña coartada é que non hai delicto sen corpo del. Pero acepto que me denuncien con denuncias ficticias, e acatarei as sentencias que de aí se deriven. Non se pode roubar o ficticio, o que non existe.
O que pasa é que si existe, claro. Excepto para os fundamentalistas do verbo existir.
Lectora
Pode que este sexa o primeiro diccionario que les. Pero é seguro que tes máis na casa.
As bibliotecas están cheas deles.
Decataríaste de que o esencial non é desentrañalos, senón experimentalos. Ver: experimento e experiencia.
A pobreza desta historia é a miña pobreza, a miña historia. E se está non rematada tamén o eu estou; ¿que pasa? Igual cá Sagrada Familia, a busca da Atlántida ou o monte Medulio.
A miña sintaxe, tamén, en consonancia, e non só para ti, presenta lapsos.
O poeta non é quen afirma, isto volve a ser roubado. E as obras, tamén as de arte, nunca se rematan, abandónanse.
¡Ai do que remate algo!, porque o rematará todo.
Pobre da que todo o entenda, porque non lle valeu de nada.
Encheríate de amor para demostrarcho.
Experimentar, experimentar.
As miñas pausas son as paradas túas. O meu alento a túa voz.
As conclusións túas, lectora, son a miña conclusión.
About the Author
Xurxo Borrazás was born in Galicia and studied English Philology at the University of Santiago de Compostela. He is the author of novels, stories, essays and various volumes of miscellanea in the Galician language, some of which have been translated into Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, and Polish, and English. He has received the Spanish Critics Award for Fiction and the Galician Critics Award for Non-Fiction, among others. He writes regularly in the Galician Press about culture, ideology and politics, along with a recent article in the Charles River Journal. He has translated Henry Miller and William Faulkner into Galician.
About the Translator
Jacob Rogers is a translator of Galician prose and poetry living in Spain. He has published fiction by Xurxo Borrazás in Asymptote and Nashville Review, and other translations have appeared in Your Impossible Voice, PRISM International, The Brooklyn Rail InTranslation, Portico of Galician Literature, along with a piece forthcoming in Dalkey Archive’s Best European Fiction 2019. His translation of Carlos Casares’ novel, His Excellency, came out from Small Stations Press in 2017.
Appears In
Cagibi Issue 3
