The Unknown University (63 page)

[Author's notes,
untitled]

The first seven sections of
The Unknown University
are dated
between 1978 and 1981.
A Barcelona that surprised and instructed me appears and
disappears in all of the poems.

THREE TEXTS
are, in a way, a sort of prologue to
PEOPLE WALKING AWAY
.
“Fat Chance, Hon” was meant to be a point of
encounter between two visions, the Mexican and the Spanish.
Nel
, in Mexican
slang, means “no.”
Nel, “majo”
: No, dear: No, poet.

I wrote
PEOPLE WALKING AWAY
in 1980 while I was working
as a night watchman at the Estrella de Mar campground in Castelldefels.
The poem, as
you can see, owes itself to my enthusiastic reading of William Burroughs.

ICEBERG
: the three poems date to 1981 and 1982.
“The
Redhead” is an intent to write à la Raúl Zurita—may the Muses forgive
me—but in the realm of pornographic photographs.
The Chile in “The Redhead” is
the country, but also, in Mex- ico City gypsy slang, the male sexual organ.

PROSE FROM AUTUMN IN GERONA
was written in 1981 during
my first year of residency in the thrice (or twice?) immortal city.

MANIFESTOS AND POSITIONS:
“Chilean Poetry is a Gas” is
from 1979 or 1980.
“Mexican Manifesto” from 1984.
“Horde” from 1991 and “Latin
American Poetry” from 1992.

The
LOST POEMS
, as their name indicates, are lost
poems.
“The Pulsing of Your Heart” is dated 1981.
I found the rest in a notebook
that was given to me in 1987.

The
NINE POEMS
are from 1990, after not writing poetry
for a long time.
My son was just a few months old and life was passing by like in
Jerzy Andrzejewski’s The Gates of Paradise.

MY LIFE IN THE TUBES OF SURVIVAL
is from 1992, with a
few poems from 1991 and 1993.
“The Neochileans” is the last poem I wrote for
The
Unknown University.

A HAPPY ENDING
is from 1992.
As in a few poems from the
preceding section, Mexico, nostalgia for Mexico and a chimeric Chile, appear and
disappear in all the poems.

Blanes, July 1992 – May 1993

“Library” and “Read the Old Poets” were written
immediately after leaving the Valle Hebrón Hospital, in Barcelona, in the summer of
1992, or maybe while I was still there, with old men and their destroyed livers,
with people sick from AIDS and girls admitted after overdosing on heroin and who
from that point on—the ward was full of all sorts of
preachers—rediscovered God.

They’re two very simple poems, fairly awkward in their execution and
with the intention of clarity of meaning.
The message was originally for my son
Lautaro—these words, deep down, are also for him.
Both poems capture more than
just advice and well wishes.
Desperate with the possibility of never seeing my son
again, to whom else but books could I trust his charge?
It’s that simple: a poet
asks the books he loved and fretted over to protect his son in the years to come.
In
the other poem, on the contrary, the poet asks his son to take care of the books in
the future.
That is to say, that he read them.
Mutual protection
.
Like the
motto of a gang of undefeated mobsters.

Blanes, January 1993

Breve historia del libro

Durante el año 1993, aproximadamente, Roberto se dedica a ordenar y
clasificar su poesía.
Unos meses antes le habían diagnosticado su enfermedad.
Lautaro apenas tenía dos años.
De esas fechas data el manuscrito titulado
La
Universidad Desconocida
que ha dado origen al libro que ahora se
publica.

El embrión del libro lo encontramos entre sus archivos.
Se trata de
dos fotocopias de un manuscrito mecanografiado de 57 páginas con el título
La
Universidad Desconocida, poemas 1978–1981
.
No está fechado pero se puede
considerar anterior a 1984 por la anotación de una de las fotocopias: «Optante al
premio Villa Martorell 1984».
En la segunda fotocopia están señalados por Roberto
los poemas que transcribiría en el manuscrito del que nace la versión ahora
publicada.

En la misma carpeta donde encontramos el manuscrito anterior aparece
otra versión, de 138 páginas.
Tampoco está fechada, pero la máquina de escribir que
utilizó Roberto permite intuir que es posterior a 1985.

El manuscrito definitivo para la edición actual se hallaba también en
sus archivos, clasificado en diferentes carpetas.
Está mecanografiado con máquina de
escribir mecánica, con correcciones a mano de Roberto, un índice y una nota para su
edición.
La peculiar forma de trabajar de Roberto dejó otra versión fotocopiada de
este original en una carpeta con el título escrito a mano «La Universidad
Desconocida, versión definitiva (o casi) 1993», también con correcciones a mano.
Eso
nos llevó a cotejar los dos textos para averiguar cuál era la versión posterior.

Por otro lado, en el ordenador de Roberto encontramos una
transcripción de 1996 de la primera parte de esta versión.
El cotejo de esta
transcripción con la primera parte del manuscrito, que contenía correcciones a mano
y un índice ampliado, nos dieron las pautas definitivas para determinar sin la menor
duda que la versión que publica Anagrama es la que Roberto trabajó más
tardíamente.

También hallamos una carpeta con el titulo «4N» que contiene una
versión de
La Universidad Desconocida
de 68 páginas.
No tiene fecha, pero,
al tratarse de una versión contenida en un archivo de su ordenador, la podemos
situar en 1996.

Por último en su ordenador encontramos una versión, con el nombre
«UD», creada el 26 de marzo de 1998.
83 páginas con una estructura distinta, pero
que incluyen algunos poemas del presente libro.

En los archivos de Roberto se han encontrado otras carpetas con
diferentes títulos que incluyen gran parte de los poemas de
La Universidad
Desconocida
junto a otros poemas inéditos:

—;«Rayos X y otros poemas», con la anotación a mano «Para el
premio de poesía en Castellano Vicente Gaos».
Sin fecha.

—;«Sin miedo ni esperanza y otros poemas», con la anotación a
mano «Premio en Castellano».
Sin fecha.

Roberto fue optante y ganador con algunos poemas contenidos en este
libro de los siguientes premios:

—;Premio Rafael Morales, Talavera de la Reina, 1992, con
«Fragmentos de la Universidad Desconocida».

—;Premios Literarios Ciudad de Irún, 1994, con «Los perros
románticos».

El apartado de
La Universidad Desconocida
titulado «Gente que
se aleja», ya fue publicado por Roberto, con pequeñas variaciones, como
Amberes
en Anagrama en el año 2002.

Roberto escribía toda su poesía a mano, generalmente en cuadernos y
libretas.
En ellas se encuentran prácticamente todos los poemas, algunos con
diferentes títulos.

El original de
Amberes
, por ejemplo, está contenido en la
libreta «Narraciones 1980» como «El Jorobadito».
De esa producción se encontró una
versión mecanografiada sin título ni fecha, pero se puede datar en los años 1983 o
1984, por la máquina de escribir utilizada.

El original de la parte «Prosa del otoño en Gerona» se encuentra en
una libreta con poemas y escritos comprendidos entre 1981 y 1984.
De este material
también se encontró otro original con el nombre «Prosa del Otoño en Gerona o El hoyo
Inmaculado, primera versión».

En relación con los años en que fueron escritos los diferentes poemas,
Roberto ya nos indica en su nota a la edición los años en que fueron creados.
Un
minucioso estudio de sus cuadernos nos aporta más información:

La primera parte se corresponde en su gran mayoría con los años 1979 y
1980.
Son textos que forman parte de las libretas «Diario de vida I», «Diario de
vida II» y «Diario de vida III», datadas en esos años, y de otras tres libretas sin
título fechadas en octubre y noviembre de 1980.

La segunda parte está formada por poemas del cuaderno «Narraciones
1980», de los cuadernos sin título que contienen poemas de la primera parte y de un
cuaderno titulado «Poesía octubre 1990», que contiene poemas datados en 1993 y 1994.
Ahora bien, la gran mayoría de poemas se corresponde con los años comprendidos entre
1980 y 1984.

Por último, la tercera parte casi en su totalidad contiene poemas
escritos en libretas y cuadernos fechados entre los años 1987 y 1994.

El origen del título
La Universidad Desconocida
nos lo aclara
el propio Roberto en el poema «Entre Friedrich Von Hausen .
.
.» (pág.
163):
«Querido Alfred Bester [autor de ciencia ficción, Nueva York 1913, Pensilvania
1987], por lo menos he encontrado uno de los pabellones de la Universidad
Desconocida!»

Muchas gracias.

CAROLINA LÓPEZ

Brief
history of the book

Around 1993, Roberto set about organizing and classifying his poetry.
A
few months earlier, they had diagnosed his illness.
Lautaro was only two.
The
manuscript entitled
The Unknown University
dates to this period and was the
origin for the book published here.

We found the book’s embryo in his archives.
It consisted of two
photocopies of a 57-page typewritten manuscript with the title
The Unknown
University, poems 1978–1981
.
It isn’t dated, but it must have originated
before 1984, based on the annotation found on one of the photocopies: “Submission to
the Villa Martorell Prize 1984.”
On the second photocopy Roberto had marked the
poems that would be included in the manuscript which gave birth to the version
published here.

In the same folder where we found the aforementioned manuscript there
appears another version with 138 pages.
This version, too, is undated, but the
typewriter Roberto used indicates a date later than 1985.

The definitive manuscript for the current edition was also found in
his archives, classified in different folders.
It is typed on a mechanical
typewriter, with Roberto’s handwritten corrections, an index and a note for
publication.
Roberto’s peculiar way of working left us with another photocopied
version of this original in a folder with the handwritten title “The Unknown
University, definitive version (almost) 1993,” also with handwritten corrections.
That led us to compare the two texts to determine which was the more recent
version.

Furthermore, on Roberto’s computer we found a 1996 transcription of
the first part of this version.
The comparison of this transcription with the first
part of the manuscript, which contained handwritten corrections and an expanded
index, gave us the definitive guidelines to determine without a doubt that the
version published by Anagrama is the one that Roberto worked on most recently.

We also found a folder with the title “4N” that contains a 68-page
version of
The Unknown University
.
It is not dated, but by comparing it to
a version contained in a file on his computer, we can date it to 1996.

Finally, on his computer, we found a version, with the name “UD,”
created March 26, 1998.
These eighty-three pages have a distinct structure, but
include some of the poems in this book.

In Roberto’s archives many other folders with different titles have
also been found that include many of the poems from
The Unknown University
alongside other unpublished poems:

—“X-Rays and other poems,” with the handwritten note “For the
Castellano Vicente Gaos poetry prize.”
Undated.

—“Without Fear or Hope and other poems,” with the handwritten
note “Castellano Prize.”
Undated.

Roberto was chosen as winner of several prizes with poems included in
this book:

—Rafael Morales Prize, Talavera de la Reina, 1992, with
“Fragments of the Unknown University.”

—City of Irún Literary Prize, 1994, with “The Romantic
Dogs.”

The section of
The Unknown University
called “People Walking
Away,” was already published by Roberto, with small variations, as
Antwerp
by Anagrama in 2002.

Roberto wrote all of his poetry by hand, usually in notebooks.
In them
you can find practically all of the poems, some with different titles.

The original Antwerp, for example, is contained in the notebook
“Narrations 1980” as “The Little Hunchback.”
After that version, a typed version was
found without title or date, but which can be dated to the year 1983 or 1984, based
on the typewriter used.

The original for the part called “Prose for Autumn in Gerona” is found
in a notebook with poems and writing spanning the years 1981 to 1984.
Another
version of this material was also found with the name “Prose from Autumn in Gerona
or The Immaculate Grave, first version.”

Regarding the year in which the different poems were written, Roberto
has already indicated in his note to this edition the years in which they were
created.
A meticulous study of his notebooks adds more information:

The first section corresponds in large part to the years 1979 and
1980.
They are texts that form part of the notebooks “Diary I,” “Diary II,” and
“Diary III,” dated with those years, and also three other untitled notebooks dated
October and November 1980.

The second part is composed of poems from the notebook “Narrations
1980,” the same untitled notebooks containing poems from the first part, and another
notebook called “Poetry, October 1990,” which contains poems dated 1993 and 1994.
That said, the great majority of poems correspond to the years between 1980 and
1984.

Finally, the third part almost entirely contains poems written in
notebooks dated between 1987 and 1994.

The origin of the title
The Unknown University
is clarified
for us by Roberto himself in the poem “Between Friedrich von Hausen .
.
.”: “Dear
Alfred Bester [science fiction writer, New York 1913–Pennsylvania 1987], at least
I’ve found one of the wings of the Unknown University!”

Thank you.

CAROLINA LÓPEZ