T R A N S L A T I O N

R E V I E W

EDITORS
Rainer Schulte
Dennis M. Kratz
Charles Hatfield
M A N A G I N G EDITOR
Michele Rosen

BOOK REVIEW EDITOR

Gary Racz

EDITORIAL BOARD
John Biguenet
Steven Kellman
Elizabeth Lowe
Bonnie McDougall
Breon Mitchell
Denis Scheck
Jonathan Stalling
Lawrence Venuti
Sergio Waisman
Kelly Washbourne

ADVISORY BOARD
Samuel Hazo
Thomas Hoeksema
Kent Johnson
Elizabeth Gamble Miller
Margaret Sayers Peden
Marilyn Gaddis Rose
James R White

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April 2013

TRANSLATION

REVIEW

ISSUE 85, 2013

CONTENTS
Articles
The Voice of the Translator: An Interview with Salgado Maranhao and Alexis Levitin
Rainer Schulte

Of Translation, Towers, and Labyrinths: From Moses on the Mountain to the Rat
in the Labyrinth
Roger Celestin

12

"Citizenship Papers": Radical Domestication in Ben Belitt's Joaquin Murieta

Kevin G. Dunn

20

Drummond and Marino: Selection, Imitation, and Transcreation

J. Derrick McClure

32

No Anxiety of Influence: Ethics in Poetry Retranslation After Analogical Form

GregaryJ. Racz

42

As Easy as ABC
Phyllis Zatlin

59

Book Reviews
The Iliad by Homer
Reviewed by Aaron Poochigian

67

Approaching You in English by Admiel Kosman

Reviewed by Adriana X. Jacobs

72

Selected Poems by Adonis

Reviewed by Sinan Antoon

77

In Red by Magdalena Tulli

Reviewed by Madeline G. Levine

81

Women as Translators in Early Modern England by Deborah Uman

Reviewed by Rachel Galvin

83

07374836(2013)85(1)

"CITIZENSHIP
RADICAL
BEN

PAPERS":

DOMESTICATION

BEUTVS

JOAQUIN

IN
MURIETA

Kevin G. Dunn

Persuasion
In 1966 Chilean poet and activist Pablo Neruda (1904-73) published his first and only theatrical
work, Fulgory muerte de Joaquin Murieta at Empresa Editora Zig-Zag. Fulgor chronicles the life
of the folk hero Joaqufn Murieta, "The Chilean Robin Hood," who dreams of the California gold
rush and, with his ragtag band of Chileans, Argentines, and Mexicans, sets sail for North America.
On the way Joaquin falls in love with a young campes/no named Teresa, and the two marry. In the
United States the encapuchados, a fictional society of white supremacists that resembles the Ku
Klux Klan, harass Murieta and his men and eventually rape and murder Teresa. Murieta then kills
the leader of the encapuchados, who in turn retaliate by killing Murieta. The Chilean martyr's
head is placed in a cage and is taken around the country as a circus novelty.
The play's commentary on North American race relations intrigued New York literary agent
and political progressive Toby Cole (1910-2008). Aware of the marketability of Neruda's name
and work, she contacted him about the possibility of arranging an English translation, and
Neruda responded enthusiastically, although he emphasized that "'Fulgor y muerte de Joaqufn
Murieta' musr be done by a poet, as the greatest part of the play is poetry . . . My only translators
in English are Mr. Ben Belitt and Mr. Alastair Reid, in England. I wish you could propose the translation to both of them."1 On December 18,1968, Cole wrote to Belitt (1911 -2003) to propose the
translation, and the latter embarked on a four-year process he would come to consider "a very
personal failure."2
That process, described in these pages, illustrates the risks that extreme domestication
poses to both cultural authenticity and literary coherence. Fulgor's California setting affords its
translator a unique opportunity to render a foreign culture's perception of the United States into
American English. A Chilean's interpretation of a forty-niner or Klansman does not speak like a
North American's, and, in his foreword, Belitt determines to rectify that discrepancy on stage.
The work's "playableness" should be the priority of "the translator who translates for the stage
rather than the closet or the classroom."3 This principle informed most of Belitt's aesthetic decisions, but in this case the poet actually hoped to transcend both the classroom and the stage by
bringing a Pan-American play into the second major language of the New World.
In his attempt to break new literary ground, Belitt converted the play into a caricature of
North American cultural domination, but he did so by dominating Neruda's work, producing the
kind of "highly self-conscious project" that, Lawrence Venuti writes, "serves an imperialist appropriation of foreign cultures for domestic agendas."4 An English-speaking audience, Belitt wrote,
"born to the feel ofthecowboys-and-lndians myth, has a right to expect an American 'sound' not
present in the inflection of Neruda."5 Writing in 1972, a year before the United States engineered
the downfall of Salvador Allende, and determined to bring his own ideology of translation to the

Routledqe
R Taylors Francsi Croup

Translation Review85:20-31,20
Copyright The Center for Translation Studies
ISSN:
0737-4836 print/2164-0564 online
DOI: 1 0.1080/07374836.201 3.768147

"CITIZENSHIP PAPERS"

21

play, Belitt ended up committing the very same "ethnocentric violence" that Neruda portrayed
in Fulgor.6
Since 1938 Belitt had worked as a professor of literature and languages at Bennington
College while writing and translating poetry. When Cole contacted him in 1968 he had published
several collections of "solemn and majestic" poetry,7 but was better known in the literary world
as a translator of Arthur Rimbaud, Federico Garcia Lorca, Eugenio Montale, Antonio Machado,
Rafael Alberti, Jorge Guillen, and two collections of works by Pablo Neruda (a third was published
in 1969). Throughout his career Belitt opposed foreignization with ideological rigidity. In Adam's
Dream he wrote:
The literal translator would take his foreign text into the laboratory of the pure scientist, subject it
to a science of absolute communication, a semantic bombardment of its fissionable phonemes, and
emerge with basic transmutation into English . . . Yet the "science" of translation is often no better than a science-fiction of translation, and the weapon of "accuracy" merely a magical change of
clothing, in which the mild-mannered reporter emerges from the telephone booth minus his specific
gravity, in the accoutrements of Superman.8
Belitt felt not only that the translator should domesticate a text for the benefit of her audience,
but also that in doing so she should make it her own stylistically: He went on to write that "the
role of being 'nobody in particular' is the least interesting of the available roles of the translator of
poetry."9 While some critics praised Belitt for "allowing himself to take several liberties, picking
and choosing what he considers most important,"10 others were more critical: In his review of
Belitt's Selected Poems of Pablo Neruda, Robert Bly wrote that Belitt "is already known as the man
who massacred Lorca's Poef in New York" and accused him of "an inability to see Neruda for the
original man he ishe is constantly being presented as stale Shakespeare, stale Lowell, or stale
Eliot."11
In 1968 Belitt had never heard of Toby Cole and wasn't sure about Neruda's play. In his
first letter, which was addressed to "Mr. Cole," he said that he "might consider translating" Fulgor
since there "was little reason to question its eventual publication in this country" (24 December
1968), but for a year and a half he hesitated. In one letter he was "almost ready to undertake a
translation" (16 June 1969) while in another he felt that Fulgor was "too misbegotten to survive
performance in this, or any, country" (15 March 1970). Belitt would sometimes take weeks before
responding to Cole's polite reminderseager but never overbearingthat she was still waiting
for his commitment. At least once he felt obliged to show signs of life. Writing to Cole in early
1969, he apologized for his silence, the result of "a siege of Hong Kong flu in New York," and
contradicted a peculiar rumor: "Neruda has been a little mystified, since he wrote me that when
he had previously specified me as the preferred translator, he was informed that I was not only
inaccessible, but dead\" (14 January 1969). Cole confessed that she herself was the origin of this
rumor and asked Belitt to accept her "deepest apology for having written Neruda of your demise!
Believe it or not, such news came to me, though I am hard pressed at this moment to identify the
source of it" (21 January 1969).
Neruda, too, was chronically incommunicative to all of his colleagues, and to Cole especially. He acknowledged as much in a letter to Belitt: "My dear Ben: I've never thought that you
and I had our differences; it's just that I don't have the time to write letters."12 From 1968 to
1970 Cole received only one letter from Neruda, and frequently voiced her frustration to Belitt
because she needed clarification and authorization from Neruda on a number of practical issues.
For Belitt, Neruda's reticence was merely a sign of "the usual Hispanic immunity to Time and

22

KEVIN G.DUNN

the Post Office" (11 March 1971), and he wrote off practical issues, such as "getting his signature on the kind of contract which you [Cole] regard as so essential" (15 March 1971). Belitt had
long known Neruda to be a poor correspondent, but his silence was even steadier at the peak
of his political career when he was "enlisted to travel the length and breadth of Chile, reading
his poems and electioneering in behalf of his Party and candidate."13 Neruda's appointment
as Salvador Allende's ambassador to France in 1970 cut even deeper into his correspondence
time, as did his Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. With Belitt playing hard-to-get, and Neruda not
playing at all, Cole's project held little promise.
In early 1970, however, Cole had a breakthrough. Knowing of Belitt's propensity for liberal
translation, and his reservations about translating such a "wild and whirling play,"14 Cole casually
wrote that Fulgor had recently been adapted into French. Belitt did not miss the key word: "Your
mention of a French adaptation fans my interest again . . . Was it performed? Was it approved
by Neruda? To what extent was it 'adapted' rather than translated?" (15 March 1970). For Belitt,
the word must have been the springboard that launched Fulgor into the ideological realm of
Venuti's "highly self-conscious projects." Within a year he had produced a translation and sent it
to Cole, and in October 1971, to the publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Days later, Robert Giroux
informed Belitt that he was "eager to publish" the translation.15

Leaps of Faith
In a 1985 interview with Edwin Honig (1917-2011), Belitt criticized "puristic" translators, who he
felt were intent on the "leveling of Neruda to the letter of the literal world," and continued to
argue that:
One has a license, poetic or otherwise, to multiply chaos. But where provisionality abounds (I sound
like Saint Paul talking about grace!), the determinations have to remain suspended or vague. One is
merely faith-full: as faithful as one can be under circumstances that don't moralize as much as, say,
dogma does. The operative word is faith, and not fidelity?6
Belitt had taken just such leaps of "faith" with Neruda's text, although in his foreword he claimed
to "have worked for systematic fidelity to the context and spirit of the original Spanishfor a
translation rather than an adapter's overlay."17 Belitt translated the Spanish into an American
Western dialect, and modified several scenes to the point of rewriting them. Virtually every page
contains a deliberate alteration of Neruda's intended meaning, although the motive behind
those alterations is often difficult to pinpoint.
Take, for example, the following exchange between Tresdedos (Threefingers) and the
male Oficinista (Office Clerk), which Belitt translated as follows (Willis Barnstone's translation,
published in 1976, is also included for reference).

Neruda
Oficinista: Como se le ocurre? Se
trata de la documentacion,
de la inscripcion, de la
circunscripcion, de la
numeracion . . .

Belitt
Office Clerk: That's the craziest idea I
ever heard of! What about my
documents? My inscriptions? My
circumscriptions? My
numerations?

Barnstone
Clerk: How could you get
such an idea? It's a
matter of documents, of
inscriptions and
numerations. . .

23

"CITIZENSHIP PAPERS"
Tresdedos: Y de la transpiracion
. . . Al diablo con los papeles!
Vamos a volver nadando
en oro.
Oficinista: Sabe que me esta
convenciendo?18

Three-F.: and your menstruation,

maybe? To hell with it all! We'll be
rolling in money. We'll swim back
on the gold!
Office Clerk: You know, Mr.
Three-Fingers, you've convinced
me...?' 9

Three Fingered Jack: And

perspiration . . .Thehell
with papers! We'll come
back swimming in gold.
Clerk: You know, you are
beginning to convince

The most significantand mysteriouschange in this example is the replacement of

"transpiracion" (transpiration) with "menstruation," which adds harshness to Tresdedos's character and challenges the oflcinista's masculinity. Equally mysterious is the change of tense and
addition of an ellipsis in the third line, where Belitt renders "Sabe que me esta convenciendo?" as
"You know, Mr. Three-Fingers, you've convinced me . . .?"
This passage is not exceptional: In many others, Belitt's attempt to "reinvent the dynamics
of the dramatic undertaking"21 leads to changes so arbitrary that it is often impossible to determine whether they are deliberate or simply mistranslations, as in this exchange from the second
scene.
Neruda

Belitt

Barnstone

Reyes: Usted de donde es,

Reyes: If you'll permit me to ask: whereReyes: Where are you from,
Three Fingers?
Tresdedos?
are you from, Mr. Three-Fingers?
Three Fingered Jack: From
Tresdedos: Nortino, copiapino, Three-F.: From up north, my good
Nortino, Pine Mountain, for
para que lo sepa. Minero. Alia buddy. The mines, in case you're
your
information. A Miner.
en mi tierra y entre dos cerros interested. Left a couple of fingers
There, in my land between
deje los dos dedos, que ni
back there in a mountain pass
two hills, I left two fingers
falta que me hacen. Con uno somewhere. But I still do pretty fair
que me quede se puede
in a scrap. They's more ways to skin behind, which I don't miss at
all. With the one that's left I
apretarel gatillo.22
a cat than one!23
can squeeze the trigger.24
Belitt translates "gatillo" (trigger) as a diminutive of gato (cat), which yields "there's more than
one way to skin a cat." Where Tresdedos says "Con uno que me quede se puede apretar el
gatillo," Belitt presumably read "uno" as referring to one of the several potential ways to skin
a cat, whereas Tresdedos literally says "with one [finger] left one can [still] pull the trigger."
Belitt wrote that one of the dilemmas he faced was converting Chilean poetry into "the
American sound itself . . . which checks with whatever is idiosyncratic to the yanqui sense of
history, [and with Neruda's] real or imagined vision of its archetypes: cowboys, 'forty-niners, vigilantes, pitchmen, desperadoes."25 Although Belitt had little practice with dialect, he believed
that vulgar language was necessary for capturing the "intercultural phenomenon" of Fulgor.26
The play, he wrote,
had to be translated not only into English but American. Ku Klux Klanners, or their early equivalents, had to incite, curse, vilify, and all the rest of it with a distinctly American sound not present in
the inflections of Neruda, "a sound," I said prefatorially, "Native to the vigilante and the con-man."
If American or British musical comedy was the point of Neruda's pastiche, the rhymes and the
momentum had to be mine, and not Neruda's.27

24

KEVIN C. DUNN

The moments when Belitt reaches for a "distinctly American sound" are easy to find, as when he
translates "No me atrevo" (I wouldn't dare) as "I jest wouldn't presoom!"28 Changes in meaning
necessarily accompany such changes in diction, and in his desire to satisfy America's "right" to a
radically domesticated Neruda, Belitt created a whole new play with new characters, new motifs,
and, above all, a new idiolect.
Susan Bassnett notes that where Belitt replaces Neruda's voice with his own, "the political
line of the play is completely changed. By stressing the 'action', the 'cowboys and Indians myth'
element, the dialectic of the play is destroyed."29 Nowhere is this more evident than in Belitt's
revision of Neruda's North Americans. When released in Chile in 1966, reviewers recognized that
Fulgor was critical of North American politics. Concordia wrote:
The author has found in the Chilean (or Mexican?) bandit, Joaquin Murieta, a symbol of dignity,
bravery, and rebellion in the face of North Americans' racial discrimination against Chileans, blacks,
and Mexicans, drawing on the folklore of the time, on historical documents, and on popular legends
which bear witness to the daring bandit.30
Belitt's North Americans, however, are guilty of much more than generic "racial discrimination."
Contrast Neruda's and Belitt's handling of the following lines, which an American delivers to a
group of Chileans (Barnstone omitted this passage from his translation):
Neruda

Belitt

Y ustedes que hacen aqui? Son

ciudadanos norteamericanos? No
conocen la ley? [. . .] No queremos
negros ni chilenos por aqui. Ni
mexicanos. Esta no es tierra
mexicana. Si siguen aqui se van a
enfermar.31

Jest what do you fellers reckon you're up to? Got yer citizenship
papers handy? Or mebbe you're jest natural-born citizens of
the U-nited States of America. We got laws in this land! [. . .]
We don't fancy niggers and Chileans here. We don't take to
Mexicans. Mexico's down yonder somewhere, over the
border. Now, make tracks! Git back where you come from. It'll
be a sight healthier!32

Neruda's Americans are a sight more natural-born in Belitt. Their domesticationthe addition
of a demand for "citizenship papers," the translation of "negros" as "niggers," and the phrase
"Mexico's down yonder somewhere"are stronger signs of American prejudice and ignorance
than anything in Neruda's text. Later in the play, the lines Belitt gives to the Chileans make them
more hateful than they are in Spanish:

Neruda

Belitt

Galopa con poncho rojo

En su caballocon alas,
Y alii donde pone el ojo,
Mi vida, ay, pone la bala.
Y como se llama este hombre?
Joaquin Murieta es su nombre.33

Till his poncho is red

And his horse rises on wings.
Joaquin fixes his eye, a bullet sings
Out, and a gringo drops dead.
I speak for that lonely vendetta.
I call it by name: Joaquin Murieta.34

Barnstone
He races with his red poncho
on his horse with wings,
and where he fixes his eyes,
my God, he lets a bullet fly.
And what's this man's
name?
His name is Joaquin
Murieta.35

"CITIZENSHIP PAPERS"

25

Later, when attacking, the Chilean men sing:

Neruda

Belitt

Barnstone

Le voy a romper la crisma

So help me, I'll clout
I'll break the head of all
Al que me lance un sermon, Any guy who comes preaching a sermon! who lecture me. For a start
Ya la rubia que me quiera
Any whore of a gringa who opens her
I'll grab the blonde who likes
Le comere el corazon!36
legs like a woman
me
Will end with her heart eaten out!37
and I will eat up her heart.38
In Neruda's text the Chileans are vengeful in a general sense, but in Belitt's they are vengeful
toward gringos particularly.
No doubt these are acts of verbal violence in Belitt's "reinvention" of a play that itself
decries North American racial violence and discrimination. Just as the encapuchados strip
Murieta's band of their cultural identity by conflating blacks, Chileans, and Mexicans as nonwhites, so does Belitt strip Fulgor of its cultural identity, disregarding a Chilean's more nuanced
perspective of North American intolerance, "in the interests of 'American' momentum."39

"The Tawdry Actuality"

Belitt, Cole, and Giroux encountered a number of roadblocks in their attempt to publish Splendor
and Death of Joaquin Murieta. Neruda had written Cole that "my only English translators are Mr.
Ben Belitt and Mr. Alastair Reid, in England" (1 May 1968), which Cole transformed into "Mr.
Neruda named you as one of his official English translators" (18 December 1968). Belitt, in turn,
interpreted this to mean he was Neruda's "preferred translator."40 Cole was dismayed, then,
to learn that Willis Barnstone (1927-) had already translated the play for BBC radio. Initially
she believed that this was an unauthorized translation, but a composer soon approached her,
"referred by Neruda to read the English text because he was to write a score for the BBC
broadcast!"41
Cole had not known that, with Neruda's blessing, the BBC had contracted Barnstone for the
translation, which had been picked up by the publisher Harper & Row.42 This apparent inconsistency on Neruda's part irritated Cole. She wrote to Belitt: "If he insisted on an 'official' translator,
yourself, for the play, how does he happen to be approving another for a radio production? And
why did he never, apparently, mention the existence of a translation by you which he knew about
from both of us?" (19 October 1971). After writing Barnstone off as "the most pedestrian and academic 'Hispanist' in the business," Belitt reprimanded Cole sharply: "There should be any number
of translations . . . we do not have 'exclusive English translation rights'a practice abhorred by
Neruda . . ,43 all that happened was he specified that I was the only one to undertake the translation of the play for you, with nothing said about rights" (23 October 1971). After receiving this
letter Cole did not write to Belitt for nearly ten months, tunneling all necessary correspondence
through her associate, Francine Stone. Belitt continued addressing his letters to Cole, prefacing
them with "Thanks for the note from your associate, Miss Stone."
During this period the drama shifted from agent to publisher. The correspondence
between Giroux and Belitt reveals a string of mini-dramas: debate about which version of
Neruda's text would face the translation in the bilingual edition,44 haggling over royalties,45 and
the elimination of "for the American theatre and the American voice" from the subtitle.46 The
play's first printing suffered from faulty binding, and Giroux sent a copy for Belitt's amusement.47

26

KEVIN G.DUNN

Upon receiving the "stillborn Joaquin," Belitt suggested that "on the second run-through, my
name can be included, with the author's and publisher's, on the spine of the book itself... it is
my poetic translation."48
In July 1972 Stone wrote to Belitt on Cole's behalf, imploring him to ensure that the
copyright page affirmed "Toby as the agent for production rights" (31 July 1972). When Belitt
informed Cole that this could not happen, as the rights were handled by Simone Benmussa
(1932-2001)whom Cole later described as "the most inefficient and uncommunicative agent
worldwide"49she broke her silence to voice her frustration.
Really, Ben . . . Since receiving Neruda's letter I've included the title in my catalog, first in Spanish
and then in English, have submitted the play to three world-famous composers, to practically every
theatre in the U.S. with resources for a play of this kindall of it on the basis of one single letter asking
me to get the play translated, etc. as if I were in fact the agent for it. If Mr. Neruda, who has surely
been reminded of my existence any number of ways, chooses not to even advise Mme. [Carmen]
Balcells [Neruda's agent] that I have been acting for him in the U.S.what must I do? I've long since
learned (but obviously not applied the lesson in this case) that playwrights gravitate to me (or to any
particular agent) because they want them. Mr. Neruda does not gravitate to me. (10 August 1972)
Belitt did his best to make peace with Cole. No matter that Neruda hadn't appreciated her, "I,
for one, have 'gravitated toward you' because 7 want you' and am still very much a part of the
picture" (29 August 1972). Proof of this was his dedication of the translation: "For Toby Cole, who
insisted," which did the trick. "Murieta is a beautiful book," Cole responded,
and thanks so much for it. I don't know how to thank you properly for the dedication.
I know I'm always overjoyed to see a good play in print, because suddenly the idea of theatre is
on a plane far above the tawdry actuality, its perpetuity secure. Your very thoughtful dedication has
linked me to that permanence and I'm honored by the association with your beautiful workand
indirectly to Neruda's.
Yes, I suppose I insisted. I will certainly continue to if only I can count on the same happy results!
(29 September 1972)
Reaction
Fulgor had received mixed reviews in Chile. La Mahana wrote that:
With this play, Neruda reaffirms his status as a great poet and writer, and this is just one single
example of his inexhaustible talent. This is a book for everyone to read, savor, and enjoy.50
On the other hand, a reviewer for El Mercurio wrote that:
A work like thisspeaking as one who has not seen it performedgives one cause to think ill of
Pablo Neruda. If you admire the poet and hold him, as is certainly appropriate, among the greatest of
our time, Fulgory muerte de Joaquin Murieta will seem like a sad symptom of his recent decline.5'
In the United States the play met with harsher and more specific criticism. Belitt did not
have Neruda's stature in the literary world, and he was releasing what many considered an
anti-American play in the Nixon-era United States. The Boston Globe ironized about Belitt's

27

"CITIZENSHIP PAPERS"

overexaggerated depiction of racial confrontation: "The South Americans are all good, plain folk,
and the North Americans are without exception vicious exploiters and bigots."52 Newsday noted
that Belitt's ideological translation affected the play's sound as well as its sense: "The translator,
Ben Belitt, has ably removed most of the poetic merit that might have offset the various forms of
license that Neruda took both as poet and propagandist."53 Writing to Giroux, Belitt called this
review "a fascinating exercise in ambivalence" (7 January 1973).
Academic reviews were more offended by Belitt's translation than by Neruda's politics.
Prairie Schooner wrote that:
Ben Belitt's translation of Splendor and Death of Joaquin Murieta is a thorough failure for predictable
reasons: a poet himself, Belitt could not resist rewriting Neruda's poem instead of reliably translating
it. For the reader who relies on the translated version, Mr. Belitt's rendition has estranged a great deal
that belongs, and inserted much that does not.54
The review went on to accuse Belitt of "diminishing" Neruda's metaphors and of an "elaborate,
incomprehensible shift of diction," citing examples for each. The Hudson Review called the translation "a piece of theatricality, not theatre . . . the results are not very good,"55 and printed the
following excerpt as an example of Belitt's liberties (Barnstone's text was not printed in The
Hudson Review).

Neruda

Belitt

Barnstone

Mi reloj!
Mi reloj!
Mi reloj!
Mi reloj!56

Gimme my watch!
My gold-plated watch!
Gimme my granddaddy's ticker!
He wentthataway!
No, thisaway!
Big-city slicker!57

My watch!
My watch!
My watch!
My watch!58

Belitt called the reviews "a mixed bag, like the play itself and my own sense of my odds and
alternatives as a translator."59 Although he optimistically hoped that "the proof of the pudding,
whatever the pudding is, would lie in its performance," he could not resist some self-justification:
What has not been disclosed on the page is that the intent is, on both Neruda's part and mine, parodistic rather than "realistic": cinematic equivalences for the egregious over-simplifications of partisan
cartoonsvice and virtue, good guys and bad guys, gunslingers and great-hearted prospectors, all
equally consumed by greed.50
To say that Neruda's intent was "parodistic" is a stretchNeruda's aim was to refashion Murieta
as what one recent critic calls "the archetype of the 1960s Latin American guerilla fighter,"61 and
Belitt apparently interpreted this archetype into a stereotype. The characterization of Fulgor as a
"mixed bag," however, is certainly in line with the play's reception in Hispanic scholarship. One
of the first significant articles on Fulgor said that the play "is neither this nor that. . . what is this
disconcerting text, and what does it want to be?"62 and another recognizes Fulgor as "difficult
to classify within the genre."63 Neruda himself acknowledged the play's hybridity in his preface:
'This is a tragic work, but it is also written partly as a joke. It is at once a melodrama, an opera and
a pantomime."64

28

KEVIN G. DUNN

After publishing Splendor and Death of Joaquin Murieta, Belitt apparently complained to
Farrar, Straus and Giroux of "translation-weariness."65 Later, when trying to secure another translation, he argued, unsuccessfully, that "translation-weariness is as natural and restorative a phase
as battle fatigue or post-coital tristesse."66 The publishing company had apparently muscled
him out of its inner circle; Belitt blamed Michael di Capua, an editor at the company, "who in
1976 repudiated me as a translator because 'there is good reason to doubt that his translations
are as scrupulously faithful to Neruda as others.'"67 In April 1973 Farrar, Straus and Giroux sold the
British rights to the play to Alcove Press for 150 pounds.68 As Belitt bitterly recalled twelve years
later, "about that time, the title disappeared entirely from their annual catalog of Nerudiana and
has not been heard of since."69
Toby Cole, who had considered it "a matter of great pride to put this great man's play
on some marvelous stage"70 spent many years unsuccessfully trying to find that stage. The
American premier was a student production at Indiana University, which caused some controversy in the local media regarding whether a student cast as a stripper would completely
derobe. She did not.71 For all of Belitt's dogmatism on the importance of a translation's "playableness," the director found the horse opera's "partisan cartoons" awkward and impractical, and
at several points was forced to alter the "unusual script," which, he wrote, "keeps us on our
toes."72
Cole continued to send updates to Belitt, promising that she had "never given up on the
play and never will" (1 October 1976). Belitt, on the other hand, quickly lost interest. He wrote to
a colleague that the play:
Was the special project of the distinguished theatrical agent, Toby Cole, who secured the consent of
Neruda, provided I could be persuaded to do the translation. I had the good sense to resist for about
two years, and the bad judgment to try it at her repeated insistence that I undertake the assignment
as a special favor to her.73
In notes for a lecture, Belitt took a different attitude toward Cole.
To me, Neruda's great paper butterfly was an obvious can of worms for a translator, and though
Neruda insisted I was the eofy one to translate him for Americans, it was two years before I made the
rash attemptostensibly for a theatrical agent in New York, but actually for myself, as a piece of pure
research.74
Belitt rarely responded to Cole's updates, and politely declined to attend the Indiana University
premier.75 In 1985 Cole asked Belitt to send along any extra copies of the play so that she could
continue to market it. He responded that he had no extra texts of the play, and was "content to
write it off as a vanished experiment" (23 June 1985). A native of Chile, Joaquin Murieta would
never become "a natural-born citizen of the f-nited States."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kevin G. Dunn is currently in his last semester of a dual degree program at Boston University, where he is
earning a BA in English, Spanish, and religion, and an MA in Hispanic language and literatures. He is
the winner of Boston University's Graduate Essay Prize for his essay "Citizenship Papers," as well as of
the Barbara Argote award in Spanish.

"CITIZENSHIP PAPERS"

29

NOTES
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.

12.

13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.

This letter was written in English, 1 May 1968. All letters are from the Ben Belitt Collection, Howard
Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University.
Honig, The Poet's Other Voice, 66.
Belitt, Splendor and Death of Joaquin Murieta, xv.
Venuti, "Translation as Cultural Politics," 36.
Belitt, Splendor and Death of Joaquin Murieta, xiv.
Venuti, "Translation as Cultural Politics," 37.
Fowlie, "The Poetry of Ben Belitt," 324.
Belitt, Adam's Dream, 46. Belitt rarely used the terms domestication or foreignization; in Adam's
Dream he instead refers to "literalist and liberalist" translations.
Ibid., 48.
Dominicis, "Juan De Mairena by Antonio Machado; Ben Belitt," 870. In Spanish: "Se permiteademas
muchas libertades, resumiendo y seleccionando lo que es a su juicio mas importante."
Bly, "Rewriting vs. Translation," 469-70. In 1978, decrying translators who simplify Neruda "for the
common reader," Belitt wrote that "Robert Bly, for example, for all his raucous devotion to the
genius of Neruda, has not only annexed him to the American Middle West, but finally bound
him back-to-back with Cesar Vallejo in a maudlin formula for the 'open' way in poetry" (Adam's
Dream, 141).
Neruda to Belitt, 9 February 1971. In Spanish: "Mi querido Ben: Nunca he pensado que tengamos
alguna diferencia, sino que no tengo tiempo para escribir cartas." Belitt had planned to visit Neruda
on Isla Negra in the summer of 1970, but desisted when Salvador Allende appointed Neruda the
Chilean ambassador to France. In the letter Neruda apologizes for not giving Belitt advance notice
of the change, and approves "todos tus planes." There is no indication of what these plans were.
Belitt to Cole, 20 February 1969.
Belitt to Cole, 14 January 1969.
Belitt to Cole, 23 October 1971.
Honig, The Poet's Other Voice, 66.
Belitt, Splendor and Death of Joaquin Murieta, xv.
Ibid., 26-29. Neruda rarely used conventional Spanish inverted punctuation.
Ibid.
Barnstone, Radiance and Death of Joaquin Murieta, 14.
Belitt, Splendor and Death of Joaquin Murieta, xiv.
Ibid., 42-45.
Ibid.
Barnstone, Radiance and Death of Joaquin Murieta, 17.
Belitt, Splendor and Death of Joaquin Murieta, xiv.
Belitt to Cole, 16 June 1969.
Belitt's undated, untitled lecture notes, Ben Belitt Collection.
Belitt, Splendor and Death of Joaquin Murieta, 12-13.
Bassnett, Translation Studies, 78.
Gonzalo Drago, "Rev. of Fulgor y muerte de Joaquin Murieta," Concordia [Santiago de Chile],
November 2,1967. The review is included in the Pablo Neruda Papers collection, Houghton Library.
In Spanish: "El autor ha encontrado en el bandolero chileno (^o mejicano?) Joaquin Murieta, un
simbolo de dignidad, de valentia y rebeldia frente a las discriminaciones raciales de los norteamericanos hacia chilenos, negros y mejicanos, recurriendo para ello a cronicas de la epoca, a
documentos historicos y a leyendas populares que recuerdan al osado bandolero."

30
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.

43.

44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.

51.

52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
59.
60.
61.
62.

KEVIN G.DUNN
Belitt, Splendor and Death of Joaquin Murieta, 106-7.
Ibid.
Ibid., 123.
Ibid.
Barnstone, Radiance and Death of Joaquin Murieta, 28.
Belitt, Splendor and Death of Joaquin Murieta, 134-35.
Ibid.
Barnstone, Radiance and Death of Joaquin Murieta, 32.
Belitt, Splendor and Death of Joaquin Murieta, xv.
Belitt to Cole, 14 January 1969.
Cole to Belitt, 27 September 1971.
Telephone interview with Barnstone, 4 November 2012. Publication was canceled when Neruda
won the Nobel Prize in 1971, and the rights to his only play became outside of Harper & Row's price
range. The translation, Radiance and Death of Joaquin Murieta, was eventually published in Modern
international Drama in 1976.
In an interview fourteen years later, Belitt would claim that Neruda "insisted that I was the only one
to translate his first and only play into the kind of theater and poetry he intended" (Honig, The Poet's
Other Voice, 66).
Belitt to Giroux, 16 November 1971.
Giroux to Belitt, 15 February 1972.
Belitt to Giroux, 20 February 1972.
Giroux to Belitt, 13 July 1972.
Belitt to Giroux, 23 July 1972.
Cole to Belitt, 12 October 1972.
"Rev. of Fulgor y muerte de Joaquin Murieta," La Mahana [Talca], October 28, 1967, Pablo Neruda
Papers. In Spanish: "Con este drama, Neruda reafirma sus condiciones de gran poeta y escritor, y
esta es solo una muestra de su talento inagotable. Un libro que todos deben conocer, paladear y
gustar."
Hernan Del Solar, "Pablo Neruda: 'Fulgor y muerte de Joaquin Murieta,'" El Mercurio, November 5,
1967, Pablo Neruda Papers. In Spanish: "Una obra como esta para quien la lea solamente, sin verla
representada en la escena es una incitacion a pensar mal de Pablo Neruda. Si se admira al poeta
y se le tiene, como es justo, entre los mas grandes de nuestro tiempo, 'Fulgor y muerte de Joaquin
Murieta' les va a parecer a muchos que es una triste demostracion de su iniciada decadencia."
Briggs, "Cantata for Revolutionists," 37.
"Rev. of Splendor and Death of Joaquin Murieta," Newsday, November 12,1972, Ben Belitt Collection.
Regier, "The Spanish Language and American Verse," 177-78.
Pevear, "Poetry Chronicle," 197.
Belitt, Splendor and Death of Joaquin Murieta, 88-89.
Ibid.
Barnstone, Radiance and Death of Joaquin Murieta, 24.
Belitt to Giroux, 7 January 1973.
Ibid.
Paz, "Pablo Neruda e Isabel Allende," 38. In Spanish: "El arquetipo del guerrillero latinoamericano
de la decada del 60."
Droguett, "Apuntes sobre Fulgory muerte de Joaquin Murieta de Pablo Neruda," 39. In Spanish (without ellipsis): "Si Fulgor y Muerte no es ni eso ni aquello, si quiere ser esto o lo otro; ante la duda,
nosotros nos preguntamos: ique es y que quiere ser su texto tan desconcertante?"

"CITIZENSHIP PAPERS"
63.

64.
65.
66.
67.
68.
69.
70.
71.
72.
73.
74.
75.

31

Obregon, "Apuntes sobre el teatro latinoamericano en Francia," 33. In Spanish: "Pablo Neruda nos
ha dejado una sola obra teatral: Fulgor y muerte de Joaquin Murieta, de dificil clasificacion dentro
del genero."
Barnstone, Radiance and Death of Joaquin Murieta, 11. In Spanish: "Esta es una obra tragica, pero,
tambien, en parte esta escrita en broma. Quiere ser un melodrama, una opera y una pantomima."
I have not found this complaint, but Belitt's letter to Roger Straus of 5 November 1976, alludes to a
previously discussed bout of "translation-weariness."
Belitt to Roger Straus, 5 November 1976.
Belitt to Cole, 23 June 1985.
Giroux to Belitt, 17 April 1973. Published by Alcove Press in 1973 as Splendour and Death of Joaquin
Murieta.
Belitt to Cole, 23 June 1985.
Cole to Belitt, 19 February 1970.
"USB Snubs Nudes, 'for More Sensuous' Erotica. Rev. of Splendor and Death of Joaquin Murieta," The
South Bend Tribune, Ben Belitt Collection.
Warren Pepperdine (director) to Belitt, 10 April 1977.
Belitt to Professor Woodbridge, 26 May 1985.
Belitt's undated, untitled lecture notes; strikethrough in original.
Belitt to Pepperdine, 22 April 1977.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
BARNSTONE, WILLIS, trans. Radiance and Death of Joaquin Murieta. By Pablo Neruda. Modern International
Dramo 10, no. 1 (1976): 10-38.
BASSNETT, SUSAN. Translation Studies. London: Methuen, 1980.
BELITT, BEN. Adam's Dream: A Preface to Translation. New York: Grove, 1978.
, trans. Splendor and Death of Joaquin Murieta. By Pablo Neruda. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
1972.
BEN BELITT, COLLECTION, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University, Boston, MA.
BLY, ROBERT. "Rewriting vs. Translation." The Hudson Review 15, no. 3 (1962): 469-75.
BRIGGS, EDWIN. "Cantata for Revolutionists." The Boston Globe, November 1,1972, 37
DOMiNiciS, MAR[A c. "Juan De Mairena by Antonio Machado; Ben Belitt." Hispania 47, no. 4 (1964): 870-71.
DROGUETT, IVAN. "Apuntes sobre Fulgor y muerte de Joaquin Murieta de Pablo Neruda." Latin American Theatre
Review 2, no. 1 (1968): 39-48.
FOWLIE, WALLACE. "The Poetry of Ben Belitt.' Review of The Enemy Joy." Poetry (February 1965): 324-25.
HONIG, EDWIN. The Poet's Other Voice: Conversations on Literary Translation. Amherst: University of
Massachusetts, 1985.
OBREGON, OSVALDO. "Apuntes sobre el teatro latinoamericano en Francia." Cahiers du monde hispanique et
luso-bresilien 40 (1983): 17-45.
PABLO NERUDA PAPERS, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.
PAZ, YANIRA. "Pablo Neruda e Isabel Allende: Las dos sagas de Joaquin Murieta." Atenea (Concepcion) 492
(2005): 31-44.
PEVEAR, RICHARD. "Poetry Chronicle." The Hudson Review 26, no. 1 (1973): 192-218.
REGIER, w. G. "The Spanish Language and American Verse." Prairie Schooner 47, no. 2 (1973): 177-78.
VENUTI, LAWRENCE. "Translation as Cultural Politics." Textual Practice 7, no. 2 (1993): 35-47.