Rafael Barret "The Effort"

The Effort

Life is a weapon. ¿Where to hurt, over what obstacle fray our muscles, of what summit hang our wishes? ¿Will it be better to expend ourselves of a sudden and die the ardent death of the bullet smashed against the wall or age in the endless road and survive hope? The forces that destiny forgot an instant in our hands are forces of tempest. For someone who has the eyes open and the ear on guard, for whom has incorporated once over the flesh, the reality is anguish. Wailings of agony and clamors of triumph call us in the night. Our passions, like an impatient pack of dogs, sniff the danger and glory. We guess ourselves masters of the impossible and our avid spirit gets torn.

Rafael Barret "The Fellow Man"

                                        The Fellow Man.

Without the fellow man, we wouldn’t realize of just how deep is our loneliness.

The nature gives us more intimate company than our brothers; is more pious with our illusions. She lets us talk alone and, sometimes, returns us the desired echo of our wailings. Maybe because of being so far from us in the crowd of her strange forms, maybe for being between us and her an immense emptiness, manage our fragile dreams to sustain above the serene abyss and can our shadow enlengthen unimpeded. Thus God accompanied the fathers of the wilderness, and to Robinson in his island, and rested the genius on the bard of Guernesey. But the men clog each other. They are too similar, contiguous notes that dissonate. The society overwhelms the harmony in the germ. Each one feels himself buried alive by his fellow human.

Rafael Barret "Johnson"

Johnson.

The best of the black boxers has defeated the best of the white boxers. It’s something scandalous. Johnson has forgotten that he belonged to an inferior race. His cannibal homocromes don’t forget that white meat is the most exquisite of all. They just ate in Africa two missionaries. But Johnson didn’t want to eat Jeffries’s body. He wanted to eat his soul. He’s a civilized black. He triumphed, not only by the muscle, but by perseverance and intelligence. Raw energy, and also skill and will. He’s the triumph of the complete man. His fists have felt over the white face, and sunken it in the shadows. ¡Oh, blows defamatory like slaps! Transmitted by telegraph as Jeffries received them, few instants later they felt them in their skin the North Americans. And very soon the cities of the union were reproducing the torture, through their cinematographers. Thanks to a film, the generations could watch, until the consummation of the centuries, the live image of the defeat of Jeffries, the fall of the black fists over the white face. ¡National opprobrium! And in great part of the territory of the United States, the whites started to lynch blacks with double animation than usual.

Rafael Barret "Acts of Hope"

Acts of Hope

Analyze the virile virtues and you will discover that they amount to one: Hope. We would never be constant, heroic, truthful, patient, if we didn’t hope, if didn’t hope our flesh, our intelligence, our occult being, if we didn’t trust, even during agony, in the fruits of time. The time walks without looking back; everything is permitted to him except regret and undo his work. We can’t do more than advance. The universe does not retrocedes. ¿How not fill ourselves with hope? ¿How we not foresee the marvelous possibilities? ¿How not feel the continuous imminence of the new, of what to nothing will resemble? We believed that one must not wait more than the gods; that only they are sacred. Error: everything is sacred, everything collaborates, since everything lives. We are sacred in first term; the nature hasn’t revealed us until today no factor as prodigious as man. Let’s admire ourselves; let’s hope in ourselves. Let’s learn to venerate the mysteries that our spirit encloses and to trust in its incalculable potency.

Rafael Barret "Dreams"

Ok, so this is it, the first article, it's likely occasionally i will post a little bit of text before and or after  the article itself, but not this time, i hope you don't mind, anyway, here it is:

Opening entry

Well. Hi.

The purpose of this blog is to keep a site where to host the works of a person whom i humbly consider to be a great man; Rafael Barret. This classic, this "sage who died at 34 and who has already written everything" as Osvaldo Bayer put it, created an enormous underground influence over the literary cannon of South America (three of the ones considered the greatest writers of the continent cited him as both a genius and a remarkable influence) But above that, and how i hope his works will prove, he was a remarkable example and influence for the world.

Or so i hoped and though. Enormous and sad was my surprise at not seeing absolutely any of his works translated to the english language, this blog humbly attempts to change that, fortunately pretty much all of his works are already common property, or as i think he would have put it with an overflowing joy "property of Humanity".

So, without any more meaningless words to bore you with, i will try to post each article in it's separate entry as much and as fast as i can go, i hope you enjoy reading his works more than how much i enjoy reading and translating them.