McNair to Hall: June 29, 1978

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Postmarked
June 29, 1978

Dear Don & Jane –

As you have already discovered, the
man on the front of the card is myself,
mounted and dressed in C.U.C.
academic regalia, accepting the
“white horn” award for my lectures
on sexuality in American culture.

“But seriously, folks” – I am still
working on the translation of N.
Parra’s “Christo de Elqui” book
Though I have begun to doubt the
worth of the project. I have gone
through it now almost 3 times,
each trip w/ a different translator,
and the thing just doesn’t seem that
impressive. Since “anti-poetry” goes
back at least as far as dada,
the book cannot claim to be original,
so it had better extend the
“anti-poetic” mode in some interesting

2/

way. I’m not sure that it does this.

Briefly speaking, Parra’s book – whose full
title is Sermones Y Predicas del Christo
de Elqui is a sort of found poem, which
features the life/works of an actual evangelist
of the late 1920’s in Chile. In fact, the
man was pretty much crackers. Deriving
many of his “Christo’s” Sermons (each
of the book’s poems is a sermon or [preachment?])
from the real man’s own words, Parra
creates a speaker who sounds alternately
like a prophet and a lunatic. Parra says
about his Christo : “Sometimes I am his
ventriloquist, sometimes he is my ventriloquist
and sometimes we both talk together.” (We
are left to question whether the ultimate
ventriloquist in this arrangement is “God
Himself”.) Seems interesting stuff, no
cierto? – This in spite of echoes of Beckett,
Ionesco, Duchamps, etc. If it worked, the poem
might offer a rich parody of the Christ
myth, engaging its readers in a critical
evaluation of the meaning/relevance of Christianity.

But at this point what one might say
about the work is more interesting than the work –

Back August 25, 1978. Look forward to
seeing you both —

Saludos,

Wes


A note from McNair about this letter: Eventually a chill set in between me and Nicanor Parra. After our first, enthusiastic, meeting, he began to distrust my method of translation, done with the help of native speakers, and I became less enamored of his poetry, as my comment about the Cristo de Elqui poem at the close of this letter implies.