In the latest workshop at Tinta Viva we talked about magic realism. The task this time was to take a short paragraph from Joyce Carol Oates’s story about a teenage girl who behaves one way at home and another way outside, and rewrite it using elements magical realism. That meant adding two or three impossible details that grow out of her emotions, such as a laugh that curdles milk or bracelet charms that multiply when she lies, and having everyone treat them as perfectly normal. The rewrite had to stay within 160 words and keep the original’s sense of her double life.
Encantos
a la manera de Joyce Carol Oates
Todo en ella tenía dos caras: una para casa y otra para cuando no estaba en ella. En casa iba dando brincos de niña, tan altos que a veces se quedaba suspendida junto al techo, y su madre le pedía que de paso quitara las telarañas. Fuera, en cambio, caminaba tan lánguida que una música suave de bolero viejo sonaba con ella y a su paso las flores de los jardines se mustiaban de pura pena. Su boca era pálida y sonriente casi siempre, pero las noches que salía se le encendía de un rosa tan brillante que los demás jóvenes no necesitaban linternas para encontrarse unos a otros. En casa su risa era cínica y arrastrada, ja, ja, ja, muy gracioso, y agriaba la leche del desayuno; en cualquier otro lugar sonaba aguda y nerviosa, igual que el tintineo de su pulsera, cuyos colgantes se multiplicaban cada vez que mentía.
— Reescritura en clave de realismo mágico de un fragmento de «¿Adónde vas, dónde has estado?» (1966), de Joyce Carol Oates.
Charms
after Joyce Carol Oates
Everything about her was two-faced: one face for home, another for the rest of the world. At home she bounded about like a child, leaping so high that she would sometimes hang in mid-air beside the ceiling, and her mother would ask her to clear the cobwebs while she was up there. Out of the house, though, she moved so languidly that the soft strains of old boleros drifted along with her, and the flowers in the gardens she passed drooped out of sheer sorrow. Her mouth was pale and smiling most of the time, but on the nights she went out it glowed such a bright pink that the other young people needed no torches to find one another. At home her laugh was cynical and drawling, ha, ha, ha, very funny, and it curdled the breakfast milk; anywhere else it came out high and nervous, like the jingle of her bracelet, whose charms multiplied every time she lied.
— A magical realist rewriting of a passage from Joyce Carol Oates’s “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” (1966)
Commentary: The translation follows meaning rather than words. The opening became “two-faced” because the literal “had two faces” is neutral in English and loses the hypocrisy I think. Phrases with no English equivalent were rebuilt for example de paso became “while she was up there”, which adds a deadpan domestic note that normalises the magic. “Curdled” is stronger than “soured” and echoes a familiar idiom. The bracelet’s “charms” gave a bonus double meaning, trinkets and spells, that the Spanish lacks though and that gave the title to the piece.