Eunice Odio (sculpture by Marisel Jiménez; image from Oregon Arts Watch)
AT JOURNEY’S END
The Fire’s Journey
Part IV: The Return
Eunice Odio
Translated by Keith Ekiss with Sonia P. Ticas and Mauricio Espinosa
Tavern Books
A review by Christopher Bernard
“2ND MAN
Where, where is the house of your words?
ION
Behind your heart.”
—The Fire’s Journey, Part IV: The Return
Eunice Odio, considered by many the greatest Costa Rican poet of the twentieth century, wrote what we can now see is one of that century’s most remarkable poems – her complex, elusive, deeply imagined epic of creation, The Fire’s Journey. It has taken several generations for Anglophones to be introduced to this extraordinary poem; with the publication of this translation of the epic’s concluding section, we are finally able to get a sense of the full magnitude of Odio’s accomplishment.
To briefly recap: the first three parts of this epic depict, and in some ways enact, the creation of the world from primordial chaos, and of both the poet narrating the epic (introduced in part two) and of the world’s poet-creator, Ion, named after a central character in Plato’s dialogue of the same name in which the philosopher presents his understanding of poetry as a kind of inspired madness and the role of the poet as a necromantic artificer and a tutor, wise in his madness and mad in his wisdom, of the ways of the gods.
The third, hitherto longest, section depicted the heroic making and remaking by Ion and his faithful servant, Dedalus, with the help of a host of gods, of a great cathedral, an edifice against the void that threatens creation at every instant of its existence.
The fourth part depicts the return of Ion and Dedalus and the other creator gods and goddesses (Om, Tiara, Thauma, Efrit, Demon) to the city of humanity to celebrate the creation of the world after a great victory has been achieved (it is not entirely clear what this “victory” is of, or against what, though it may be the victory of creation itself against chaos and nothingess). On their way to the city, they meet a group of men carrying an angel who seems, somewhat ominously, to have been killed by the masters of the city. In a Lazarus-like act, or an allusion to Jesus, they resurrect him:
He is a crippled angel, he is a man;
not a whole man, but broken in pieces;
half a man that rage spun cut by cut,
large in wounds and small in hope . . .
Ion, returning to his human form, hopes to be recognized by his mother, his uncle, and his brothers (curiously, Ion’s father is never referred to directly, though an ultimate being irregularly appearing, called “The Guardian,” may be him), but even his family does not see him for what and who he is (the second brother speaks):
You’re left, mother, with the son
who disturbs you piece by piece;
you’re left with your recovered son
in whom you never rest
the one you love in secret
without joy and without pause;
in whom you whirl, crying in pain.
In consequence, Ion, who, as a creator of the universe, is also the creator of himself, must now reject his family:
Mother, . . .
. . .
Stay in your place,
Stay there, living, besieged by the dead.
Stay there, kissing me from within.
A new word annihilates me,
another sets me free
another one is born in me, allowing a new birthing;
I am become birth-light once again.
I emerge.
. . .
I keep on until the end,
journeying in rapture.
But on their way to the city, the creators make a harsh discovery: though those they meet are eagerly awaiting the coming of the creators to celebrate them and all of creation, Ion and Dedalus are not recognized; they are spurned, laughed at, denied. They then discover the harshest reality of all. The city of men where they hoped to celebrate, and justly be celebrated, has been conquered by an oligarchy of demons: god of the dead Erebos, three-headed Cerberus, Syriac devil Beherit, and Hybris, named not coincidentally for the Greek word for the overweening arrogance that leads to catastrophe. Humanity has been corrupted, and the euphoria of creation is poisoned by the reign of evil.
Ion and Dedalus are cast out of the city. After their long labor creating the universe, they are stripped of joy and pride, mocked, and left destitute in the wilderness:
DEDALUS
Lord, you are sad. You have nothing left
nothing
but your solitude.
. . .
ION
You, my populous solitude
my soul’s pluranimous movement,
the thirst that sustains me,
mother, child, my brother pulse,
the bread’s skeleton,
an unbroken visitor
. . .
Guarding
keeping watch
at
the gates of the earth.
“The return” of the title means different things: Ion’s return to the city of men, his return to human form from his time as spiritual creator, the return to “reality” from the inspired insanity of the rhapsode, a return to darkness after the blazing light of creation. It is also a kind of return to the primordial questions of existence, to void and chaos confronting the painful articulations of reality, to the adventure of being that is always about to begin.
Thanks to Keith Ekiss and his associates, Anglophone readers now have a chance to be enriched by this strange and challenging poem, Blakean (as the great Mexican poet Octavio Paz recognized) in its range and originality, a myth of origin of endlessly ramifying depth, a spiritual and verbal journey rich with promises of discovery, and a look into human and ahuman reality depicted in a masterpiece that deserves a wide readership in any language. One can only wonder why it has taken so long for us to learn about it. But surely it has been worth the wait, since the result is this masterly translation.
____
Christopher Bernard is co-editor and poetry editor of the webzine Caveat Lector. His new novel, Meditations on Love and Catastrophe at The Liars’ Café, appeared in January 2020. His third collection of poetry, The Socialist’ Garden of Verses, is slated to appear later this year.