EDWARD LUCIE-SMITH [17.421] Poeta de Jamaica

Edward Lucie-Smith

Nació en Jamaica en 1933. Se mudó a Reino Unido en 1948 y estudió en Oxford. Más tarde se trasladó a Londres donde lideró el grupo literario The Group. Es un autor prolífico (poesía, novela, historia, arte, biografía) y es un afamado crítico de arte. 

John Edward McKenzie Lucie-Smith es un británico escritor, poeta, crítico de arte, curador, locutor y autor de catálogos de exposiciones.

Obras 

Poesía y Ficción:

The Fantasy Poets: Number Twenty Five (1954)

A Tropical Childhood and Other Poems (1961)

Confessions & Histories (1964)

Penguin Modern Poets 6 (1964) with Jack Clemo and George MacBeth

A Game of French and English (1965) poems

Jazz for the NUF (1965)

Mystery in the Universe: Notes on An Interview with Allen Ginsberg (1965)

The Penguin Book of Elizabethan Verse (1965), editor

A Choice of Browning's Verse (1967)

Five Great Odes by Paul Claudel (1967), translator

Borrowed Emblems (1967)

Jonah: Selected Poems of Jean-Paul de Dadelsen (1967), translator

Silence (1967), poetry

The Penguin Book of Satirical Verse (1967), editor

The Little Press Movement in England and America (1968)

More Beasts for Guillaume Apollinaire (1968)

Snow Poem (1968)

Towards Silence (1968)

Egyptian Ode (1969)

Holding Your Eight Hands (1969; science fiction verse anthology), editor

Six Kinds of Creature (1969)

Six More Beasts (1970)

British Poetry since 1945 (1970 anthology), editor

The Rhino (1971) with Ralph Steadman

A Garland from the Greek (1971)

French Poetry Today: a bilingual anthology (1971), editor, with Simon Watson Taylor

Primer of Experimental Poetry 1, 1870–1922. Volume I (1971) editor

Two Poems of the Night (1972), with Ralph Steadman

The Well-Wishers (1974)

Joan of Arc (1976)

The Dark Pageant (1977)

One Man Show (1981), with Beryl Cook

Private View (1981), with Beryl Cook

Bertie and the Big Red Ball (1982), with Beryl Cook

Beasts with Bad Morals (1984)

Poems for Clocks (1986)

Changing Shape: New and Selected Poems (2002)

No Ficción:

Rubens (1961)

What Is a Painting? (1966)

Liverpool Scene: Recorded Live along the Mersey Beat (1967) editor

Sergei De Diaghileff (1929) (1968) with Anthony Howell

Thinking about Art: Critical Essays (1968)

Movements in Art since 1945 (1969)

Art in Britain 1969–70 (1970) with Patricia White

A Concise History of French Painting (1971)

Eroticism in Western Art (1972) revised as Sexuality in Western Art , 1991

Symbolist Art (1972)

Movements in Modern Art (1973) with Donald Carroll

The First London Catalogue (1974)

Late Modern: The Visual Arts Since 1945 (1975)

The Invented Eye: Masterpieces of Photography, 1839–1914 (1975)

The Waking Dream Fantasy and the Surreal in Graphic Art 1450–1900 (1975) with Aline Jacquot

The Burnt Child: An Autobiography (1975)

World of the Makers: Today's Master Craftsmen and Craftswomen (1975)

How the Rich Lived: The Painter as Witness 1870–1914 (1976) with Celestine Dars

Fantin-Latour (1977)

Art Today: From Abstract Expressionism to Superrealism (1977)

Joan of Arc (1977)

Toulouse-Lautrec (1977)

Work and Struggle: The Painter as Witness, 1870–1914 (1977), with Celestine Dars

Outcasts of the Sea: Pirates and Piracy (1978)

A Concise History of Furniture (1979)

A Cultural Calendar of the 20th Century (1979)

Super Realism (1979)

Art in the Seventies (1980)

The Story of Craft: The Craftsman's Role in Society . Phaidon, Oxford, 1981; ISBN 0714820377

The Art of Caricature (1981)

The Body Images of the Nude (1981)

The Sculpture of Helaine Blumenfeld (1982)

A History of Industrial Design (1983)

The Thames & Hudson Dictionary of Art Terms (1984)

Nudes and Flowers: 40 Watercolours by David Hutter (1984)

Steve Hawley (1984)

Art of the 1930s: The Age of Anxiety (1985)

American Art Now (1985)

Lives of the Great Twentieth Century Artists (1985)

The Male Nude: A Modern View (1985) with François De Louville (this book features Hockney , Kitaj & Shaw ), et al.

Michael Leonard: Paintings (1985) with Lincoln Kirstein

American Craft Today: Poetry of the Physical (1986), with Paul J. Smith

Sculpture Since 1945 (1987)

The Self Portrait: A Modern View (1987), with Sean Kelly

The New British Painting (1988), with Carolyn Cohen and Judith Higgins

The Essential Osbert Lancaster: An Anthology in Brush and Pen (1988) editor

Impressionist Women (1989)

Art in the Eighties (1990)

Art Deco Painting (1990)

Fletcher Benton (1990) with Paul J. Karlstrom

Jean Rustin (1990)

Harry Holland: The Painter and Reality (1991)

Keith Vaughan 1912–1977: Drawings of the Young Male (1991)

Wendy Taylor (1992)

Andres Nagel (1992)

Alexander (1992)

Art and Civilization (1992)

The Faber Book of Art Anecdotes (1992), editor

Luis Caballero: Paintings & Drawings (1992)

20th Century Latin American Art (1993)

British Art Now – A Personal View (1993), with Zsuzsi Roboz and Max Wykes-Joyce

Fritz Scholder , A Survey of Paintings 1970–1993 (1993)

Race, Sex and Gender in Contemporary Art: The Rise of Minority Culture (1994)

Elisabeth Frink : A Portrait (1994)

John Kirby: The Company of Strangers (1994)

American Realism (1994)

Art Today (1995)

Panayiotis Kalorkoti , Reflections of Grizedale (Acrylics, Watercolours, Etchings) (1995)

Visual Arts in the 20th Century (1996)

Leonardo Nierman : 1987–1994 Painting/Sculpture/Tapestry (1996)

Albert Paley (1996)

Ars Erotica: An Arousing History of Erotic Art (1997)

Dunbar Mining The Surfaces (1997)

Glenys Barton (1997), with Adrian Flowers and Robin Gibson

Impressionist Women: Reality Observed (1997)

Adam: The Male Figure in Art (1998)

Chadwick (1998)

Zoo: Animals in Art (1998)

Lives of the Great 20th Century Artists (1999)

Sean Henry – the Centre of the Universe (1999), with Beatrice F. Buscaroli

Women and Art: Contested Territory (1999), with Judy Chicago

Judy Chicago: An American Vision (2000)

Flesh and Stone (2000)

Sergio Ceccotti , Editions Lachenal & Ritter, Paris, 2001.

Art Tomorrow (2002)

Roberto Marquez (2002)

David Remfry : Dancers (2003), with Dore Ashton and Carter Ratcliff

Color of Time: The Photographs of Sean Scully (2004), with Arthur C. Danto and Mia Fineman

Censoring the Body (2007) ( ISBN 1905422539 ) [ 4 ]

"Byzantium & Beyond: The paintings of Dave Pearson" (2012), with Margaret Mytton

“La Cámara es un ojo inventado”

Edward Lucie-Smith

LLUVIA NOCTURNA

La lluvia cae en cadena

como cuentas de rosario.

Erosiona noche, roca, 

todas las cosas sucumben

bajo ella.

No puedo decir si está

arrastrando el tiempo, ni

si esto es el tiempo, tangible

como el agua.

Ha retornado la fiebre

como un río congelado.

Me estoy disolviendo, solo,

en la cama.

Mi carne se está volviendo

como esos húmedos sacos

abandonados ahí

afuera, en la oscuridad

del jardín, y que se hunden

muy lentamente en la tierra.

*Traducción de PEDRO SÁNCHEZ SANZ.

Del libro The Well-Wishers (1974).

http://traducciones.lagallaciencia.com/

NIGHT RAIN

The rain falls in strings, beads

to be counted. It wears

out the night and the rock;

all things succumb to it.

I cannot tell if time

is being washed away,

or if this is time, made

tangible as water.

My fever has returned,

like an icy river.

In bed alone, I am

dissolving. Flesh becomes

like the wet sacks out there

abandoned in the dark

of the garden, lapsing

slowly into the earth.

Hacia el silencio (2016, editorial Dalya), es la primera traducción al español de la poesía de Edward Lucie- Smith. Nacido en Jamaica en 1933 y habiendo estudiado en The King´s School y en Oxford, alcanzó fama como poeta a mediados de los años 50 y 60 cuando se unió a The Group, círculo poético formado por Philip Hobsbaum, Peter Redgrove o Martin Bell. Entre 1956 y 1986 la producción poética de Lucie- Smith fue abundante y de gran calidad. Títulos como: The Fantasy Poets: Number Twenty Five (1954), A Tropical Childhood and Other Poems (1961), Silence (1967) o Six More Beasts (1970 ) entre otros, le granjearon importantes premios dentro de la literatura de habla inglesa. Aunque Lucie-Smith abandonó la poesía en los años 80 y es hoy uno de los más pretigiosos comisarios de arte del mundo, Lucie ha sido traducido a muy diversas lenguas entre las que destaca el chino y ahora, gracias al magnífico trabajo de Pedro Sánchez Sanz, el español. 
En una entrevista realizada por Sánchez, Lucie agredece que, aunque tarde, por fin le haya llegado el turno a su poesía traducida al español, fundamentalmente por dos motivos: porque es la lengua de Cervantes y porque así, junto con el inglés y el chino, definitivamente podrá llegar a cualquier parte del mundo.
Sánchez Sanz recopila en este libro Hacia el silencio una pequeña selección del trabajo que le ha llevado tres años. La trayectoria poética de Sánchez, que ha publicado también varios poemarios y recibido premios como el Premio Internacional de Poesía Rilke, avala dos de los pilares de su trabajo como traductor: el respeto por la literariedad del texto y por mantener el tono poético en español sin dañar el propio estilo del autor. Un equilibrio sin duda difícil de mantener pero que Sánchez consigue con maestría. Aquí una muestra:

SILENCE

Silence: one would willingly
Consume it, eat it like bread.
There is never enough. Now,
When we are silent, metal
Still rings upon shuddering
Metal; a door slams, a child
Cries; other lives surround us.

But remember, there is no
Silence within; the belly
Sighs, grumbles, and what is that
Loud knocking, that summoning?
A drum beats, a drum beats. Hear
Your own noisy machine, which
Is moving towards silence.



SILENCIO

El silencio:
uno se lo comería
con deleite, como el pan.
Nunca habría suficiente.
Ahora mismo que estamos
silenciosos, el metal
todavía está sonando
sobre el vibrante metal;
un portazo, llora un niño,
otras vidas nos rodean.

Pero recuerda que no hay
silencio dentro. El vientre
suspira, retumba ¿ Qué
es ese golpe tan fuerte
que nos está convocando?
Suena un tambor, un tambor.
Lo que oyes
es solo tu maquinaria
que, ruidosa,
se dirige hacia el silencio.

A LITTLE ODE

One door slams,

Another opens.

Things happen

In ways we cannot know.

How did we come to where we stand

On mountaintop,

In valley,

High or low?

Is there some turning clockwork

We obey?

Or do we have a say

In all this wandering?

Can we be sure,

Amidst our blundering,

That we’re self-guided?

Or are we the derided

Toys of fate?

That’s not the thing to ask.

Life gives us its own task.

What one asks is:

How did it taste?

Did it bring dark or light,

Joy or fright,

Gain or waste?

How went the day?

AMBITION

Ambition took her

To that high window –

She flew through it,

And broke.

You could say

Ambition broke her,

Shattered her plan

To be the first…

The first in eons

To lift the lid

Of Pandora’s box.

‘Free us! Free us!’

A buzzing swarm

Of women’s secrets.

Too heavy for one,

So she looked about

For a man of power.

Wrong choice.

He picked her up

And threw her away.

Caravaggio Dying

Potto Ercole, July 1610, aged 36 

1

It goes. The fever leaves me. Even thirst

Is merciful and goes. My clumsy tongue

No longer bursts my lips. I’ve lost my anger.

It left, and left me empty. I greet smiling

My new-found death.

                        Oh true, I might have died

A little sooner. At Naples last October

A dagger missed. So now the fever strikes.

It doesn’t matter. Arrest, loss of goods,

Which met me here in Porto Ercole,

The Pope’s pardon that I came in hope of,

And the Grand Master’s enmity I ran from,

Are like the flea-stricken bed.

I cannot budge for them. No-one supposed,

Not even I, I’d live to be much older.

What’s left? What I have painted, scattered in

Rome’s palaces and churches, Naples, Malta –

Some of my latest, done in Sicily,

Already gnawed by salt air, candlesmoke.

Perhaps they’ll be forgotten. All will rot

Sooner or later, just as bodies rot.

My images visit me. As children come

To watch a father’s deathbed, they are with me.

2 

My own head. Seen in mirrors. Cleanly axed.

By the frame’s edge. Then. in my pictures painted:

Young, wigged with snakes and screaming – staring 

gorgon

Made for a prince to stare at. Leering image

To freeze the great and mighty in their places.

Later, my own head for Goliath’s painted.

Held in the tender hand of a young David,

Beard drenched with sweat, cheeks sunk, eyes flutter 

     open –

So I have looked, stumbling from a shared bed,

Humbled by the boy’s easy, lewd surrender. 

My vices. Framed on walls. A naked urchin,

Mocking my namesake Michelangelo,

Sprawled on a cloth and insolently caressing

A ram, my lustful symbol. I got credit

For new invention, painting this St John – 

At least my Baptist speaks of wilderness

(St John, St John, into what wilds you drove me,

Cursed me as Neptune did the wise Ulysses). 

Another boy, one plumed with borrowed wings

A Roman, offering wares. Giustiniani

Who bought it from me said he liked it best

Of all his pictures. ‘Sir, a noble liking!’

Was what I told him. ‘Lie in my soiled bed.

You know love-making makes me sweat in rivers.

Press your nose down upon that crumpled sheet

The boy bestrides. I think you’ll smell sweat still.’

But still he bought it. Now this keyhole shows him

My conquest of Amore Vincitore 

3 

Still other images. Enough to show

It was not only boys and women called me

Out into taverns, brothels, Roman alleys.

A fortnight’s painting paid for a month’s brawling;

Sometimes amidst the brawling was a picture.

I wore a sword and used it. All my natures

Unleashed in turn, and then in turn depicted.

Three card-players. Two cheat, and one is cheated –

Ail three myself. The Saviour calling Matthew.

I’m Matthew hearing the voice, drawn out of doors,

And I’m the indifferent watchers. One dark theme

Often returned to. See it my Judith,

Her stern brows set, her sharp blade cleaving through

The sinewy neck. The dark blood, jetting out,

Stains Holofernes’ pillow. His face twisting ... 

I saw that face I’d painted, as my knife

With an oiled smoothness gently, gently glided

Into the soft flesh of Ranuccio’s groin.

Ranuccio whom I killed. I think that we

Quarrelled for a dark purpose. As I killed him

I suddenly felt a long release and sweetness

I’d never had with either boy or woman.

I’d have felt the same with his knife sheathed in me. 

4 

St John. St john. It was Ranuccio

made you my patron, and you led me far

To bring me here. Such lonely wilderness.

A heavy punishment for a sly picture. 

To Naples, first, escaping. then to Malta,

Summoned by the Grand Master of your Order.

I was a knight, too, when I did this portrait.

A Knight of Grace. I scapegrace. Do saints laugh?

I could have sworn I heard your naked laughter.

You owe me something for your altarpiece

There in Valetta. theme: your decollation.

Payment: a golden collar and two slave-boys.

A high, blank wall; an eager shining platter.

You, prison-worn, being butchered.

I did not mock you then. Forgive me for it. 

And then I fell from grace. De Wigancourt

Put all his holy bravos on my back.

And so to Sicily. From house to house

Shadowed and hunted. Sheltered for my genius.

Great pictures for small, churches. Lazarus

Raised and not raised. I neither lived nor died. 

Then this last voyage here. Arrest. Mistaken.

The thieving captain gone with all my baggage.

The blank sea-mirror held to my black anger.

A fever caught me. On this July day

They’ll bundle me underground in an hour or two,

Or I’ll be swollen like a corpse from Tiber. 

How does it feel, this change? As I imagined.

I raise my arms as Paul does in my picture

Painted nine years past for the Cerasi chapel –

Lying on his back, cast doen by revelation,

Hands clenched, soul clenched. The vision

   going,

And sight quite gone. The, brute world that has thrown

   me

Waits, like my horse, till I resume my journey.

LOVERS 

Et ego confiteor! tua sum nova praeda, Cupido;

porrigimus victas at tura iura manus.

                  Ovid: Amores, I, ii

1.

Clothes on a chair, torn off

Pell-mell, in the hurry

To be joined, and get to

Our business. Lax, slack

Pieces of cloth, the shed

Husk that the world looked at.

The constructed being

So lightly got rid of,

I marvel at all the years

Spent making it. But

Later, dressing, I see

How we are both transformed,

That the material

Clingingly moulds us, and

The voice and face alter 

As the armour fastens. 

2.

Locked, rocking together

In the animal act,

Limbs tensed, mouthing the old

Banned ritual words... Soon

Memory will soften

The harshness of loving.

Our bodies will slip, roll

Numbly apart, hands linked

Perhaps, or thighs brushing

One over another.

These are the times we hold

Easily in mind: not

The immediate, hard

And dangerous minute,

When the self drowns, and the

Stifled cry wrenches out.

3.

Someone else’s sweat, still

Pungent on the pillow.

The sheets rumpled; each fold

Seeming to remember

The act that created it.

I ;lie upon a chart,

A record of movements,

Intertwinings, knottings

Of limbs. And our whispers

Have died in the hollow

Dark of the room. Absence...

Then the blackness fills up.

You people it; your selves,

Guessed at, are around me.

My hands reach out, surprised

That they do not find you. 

4.

No sooner over, the

Partner gone, the flesh still

Wrenched and weary, than a

Voice begins and images

Burn on the screen of the

Closed eyelid. To be thus,

And thus. The bowels shake

With impossibly wild

Spasms, and the fibres groan.

Now, waking in the dawn,

I am calmer, and have

Time to listen to the

City which moves towards

Another part of its

Cycle. And there, far off,

The crowing of a cock. 

5.

The ghost of your body

Clings implacably to

Mine. When you are absent,

The air tastes of you, and

Last night the sheets had your

Texture. Then, when I looked

In this morning’s mirror,

I found a bruise which had

Suddenly risen through

The milky flesh, a black

Star on the breast, surely

Not pinned there before (I

Count my wounds, and record

The number). How did it 

Arrive? The ghost made it.

I turn, hearing you laugh. 

6.

The body burning bright

Like a light bulb. Fever

Thinning its substance. I

Do not know if the flesh

Shines because of what we

Did together, but the 

Heat of fever is now

Entirely yours, your own

Ambassador, as if

You filled my veins with a

Reminder; as if, too,

My blood became yours - I

Keep it on sufferance

Only. Make a cut and

Let it drain out. You

Rise from the red, embodied. 

7.

The rain falls in strings, beads

To be counted. It wears

Out the night and the rock:

All things succumb to it.

I cannot tell if time

Is being washed away,

Or if this is time, made

Tangible as water.

My fever has returned,

Like an icy river.

In bed alone, I am

Dissolving. Flesh becomes

Like the wet sacks out there

Abandoned in the dark

Of the garden, lapsing

Slowly into the earth. 

8.

Ah, how I want to make

Every inch of skin,

Each muscle and organ

Mine! My name, thought of, or

Casually spoken,

Must seize your joints. Any

Hint of my presence must

Bring dryness to the tongue,

A cracking of knuckles.

Let these be the signals

That travel between us.

Do not ask if they go

Already from you to

Me. The hand shakes, forming

The words of the poem