Translation Review - The University of Texas at Dallas

First Cause/Primera Causa. By Tino Villanueva.
Translated from the Spanish by Lisa Horowitz.
Illustrations by Tino Villanueva. Bilingual Edition:
Spanish/English. Cross-Cultural Review, 1999.
Paper: ISBN 0-89304-177-7.
James Hoggard, Reviewer
Although he has a reputation for being one of the
few American poets who write notably well in both
Spanish and English, Tino Villanueva does not usually
translate his own work. He is, however, generous
and exacting with his translators. To my own
pleasure I found that out first-hand when I started
working on his Crónica de mis años peores (La
Jolla: Lalo, 1987), a collection of meditative poems
on his youth that I translated as Chronicle of My
Worst Years (Evanston: Northwestern UP, 1994). I
should also point out that, when it was still in typescript,
I saw his most recent volume, Primera
Causa, published now in a bilingual edition with a
translation, First Cause, by Lisa Horowitz. I mention
these matters for two reasons: I know
Villanueva’s work well, and I also know how attentive
he is to his translator’s efforts, sometimes even
to the extent that the translation process becomes
not only a collaborative effort but also, in several
relatively minor places, a revision of the original
work. One should keep that latter element in mind
when assessing what Lisa Horowitz has done in her
consistently effective translation. Getting nit-picky
about some of the translated phrases would likely be
unfair and even inaccurate when one considers the
possibility that a translation can become, at least in
part, a revision—if the writer is an active participant
in the process.
In his two collections immediately previous to
Primera Causa—Crónica de mis años peores and
the American Book Award–winning Scene From The
Movie Giant (Willimantic, CT: Curbstone, 1993)—
Villanueva kept his dramatic situations vivid while
he meditated on concerns associated with his youth.
In Crónica, details about the migratory farmworker’s
life are sharply presented; and in Scene (written
in English), that same attention to event is intense.
In Primera Causa/First Cause, however, we find
Villanueva turning almost altogether meditative as
he examines his own experience with writing and
memory. Without belaboring the matter, he employs
liturgical points of phrase and concern, something
he has done in other works as well. In fact, his work
reflects a subtly sacramental approach that some of
his most supportive readers have missed. The result
of the liturgical points of reference is an evocation
of the sacred, even the prophetic, in his sensibility.
Rather than giving us the fully polished evocation of
sacramental matters in Primera Causa/First Cause,
however, Villanueva takes us into the stages of germination,
during which will and discipline are
admittedly often more prominent than inspiration.
The third of the ten poems in the chapbook,
“Teoría de la redención” (“Theory of Redemption”),
illustrates Villanueva’s dual motifs of prophecy and
craftsmanship when he refers to the
…estancias de me historia
que me están llamando,
a la vez que me cargo encima estos recuerdos
con voluntad de epifanía
…chapters of my history
calling me,
while I take on layers of memory
with a will that’s bent on epiphany.
Something similar, but even subtler, occurs in
“Primera causa que me nombra” (“First Cause To
Name Me”) when he uses versículos instead of versos
to suggest a liturgical quality of intent. In her
translation, however, Horowitz goes for a secular
tone by using verses instead of versicles. Nevertheless,
because in usage neither word is associated
exclusively with the secular or religious, Horowitz
has certainly done no violence to the text; and here,
as well as elsewhere, her choices are defensible.
Throughout this rather short but richly contemplative
collection, Villanueva sees language in ways
that are parallel to Martin Heidegger’s understanding,
articulated both succinctly and provocatively
when he says in What Is Called Thinking? (Was
Heisst Denken?): “Language speaks.” A concept like
that is worth noting because in Villanueva’s book,
84 Translation Review