Ritual of My Legs [by Megin Jimenez]

I was startled into a new thought when, in college, I presented one of my teachers with a translation of Neruda's poem, "Ritual of My Legs." He was surprised by a line where the poet is staring at his legs "as if they had been the legs of a divine woman, / deeply sunk in the abyss of my thorax", or rather, surprised by the thought of me translating those words. He wondered what those lines would make me feel as a young woman. 

"What the Water Gave Me," Frida Kahlo

I was startled because it created a sudden rift between me and Neruda. He had been mine before, mine as if I weren't bound to be defined as a woman. I had entered his poems without thinking of Neruda as a man and myself as a woman. I had been the poet staring at his legs, I had chosen this poem because I identified so much with lines like:

one talks favourably of clothes,
it is possible to speak of trousers, of suits,
and of women's underwear (of "ladies'" stockings and garters)
as if the articles and the suits went completely empty through the streets
and a dark and obscene clothes closet occupied the world.

(Except I translated the word "ladies" as "misses," because I've always hated that word, dreaded ever having to browse the racks in the "misses" section of a department store.)

It's rare to read in this way anymore, with complete surrender, becoming the voice in the book. This was the bliss of reading from ages 10 to 15. I read most indiscriminately, without giving a second thought to the author's gender, the time the book was written or the quality of the writing. I would check out a stack of 10 from the library, place them beside my bed and work my way down. I read Ken Follett spy novels, I read Wuthering Heights and many Sherlock Holmes books, F. Scott Fitzgerald, I read my way through the "young adult" section (which ranged from Margery Sharp's tMiss Bianca  to Robert Cormier); W. Somerset Maugham became my favorite writer (eventually displaced). I didn't distinguish between "boy books" or "girl books," (though I'm not being disingenuous, I did know there was a difference between being a boy or a girl). It makes me wonder if boys allowed themselves to read in this way. Certainly it must be difficult for them to read "girl books" like The Secret Garden. 

There's a lot of speculation as to why women read so much more than men. (NPR: "When it comes to fiction, the gender gap is at its widest. Men account for only 20 percent of the fiction market, according to surveys conducted in the U.S., Canada and Britain.") Of course, the speculation centers, as usual, on the composition of our brains and how women are "wired" better for empathy and patience, which are both required to enjoy novels. This strikes me as a lot of bunk, because it was not until very recently (historically speaking) that women were even allowed to make up the vast majority of the novel-reading public.

I would posit, entirely on an anecdotal basis, that it's this identification across genders that makes women more avid novel readers. This is not a problem with men, or men's brains, but a problem with the collective value that's placed on something marked "female." I've had J.D. Salinger and Faulkner both described to me as a having a special hold on men ("boys' books") which is annoying, because I never felt that distinction in my own reading of them, they were "mine," as well. But could a male reader feel the same way about some of the women writers I've had to ferret out? (Grace Paley, Marguerite Duras, Alice Munro, Violette Leduc, Simone de Beauvoir.)

Oh no, now I'm mired in the Gender Question Quagmire... I'll never get out! I will aim for a quick leap to the closest liana and close by saying that it's troubling that there's still this discrepancy between who's reading the books and who's getting the plaudits. That is, mostly women are reading the books, and many women are writing the books, while men are largely getting the sophisticated reviews and enjoying the most prestigious rewards. (Don't believe me? Check out the latest Count by VIDA.) 

***

Please enjoy the entire Neruda poem as a palate cleanser. (I got the text form the internetz, which did not credit the translator--for shame!--but I will track his or her name down. This is not my translation.):

Ritual of My Legs

For a long time I have stayed looking at my long legs,
with infinite and curious tenderness, with my accustomed passion,
as if they had been the legs of a divine woman,
deeply sunk in the abyss of my thorax:
and, to tell the truth, when time, when time passes
over the earth, over the roof, over my impure head,
and it passes, time passes, and in my bed I do not feel at night that a woman is breathing sleeping naked and at my side,
then strange, dark things take the place of the absent one,
vicious, melancholy thoughts
sow heavy possibilities in my bedroom,
and so, then, I look at my legs as if they belonged to another body
and were stuck strongly and gently to my insides.

Like stems or feminine adorable things,
from the knees they rise, cylindrical and thick,
with a disturbed and compact material of existence:
like brutal, thick goddess arms,
like trees monstrously dressed as human beings,
like fatal, immense lips thirsty and tranquil,
they are, there, the best part of my body:
the entirely substantial part, without complicated content
of senses or tracheas or intestines or ganglia:
nothing but the pure, the sweet, and the thick part of my own life,
nothing but form and volume existing,
guarding life, nevertheless, in a complete way.

People cross through the world nowadays
scarcely remembering that they possess a body and life within it,
and there is fear, in the world there is fear of the words that designate the body,
and one talks favourably of clothes,
it is possible to speak of trousers, of suits,
and of women's underwear (of "ladies'" stockings and garters)
as if the articles and the suits went completely empty through the streets
and a dark and obscene clothes closet occupied the world.

Suits have existence, color, form, design,
and a profound place in our myths, too much of a place,
there is too much furniture and there are too many rooms in the world
and my body lives downcast among and beneath so many things,
with an obsession of slavery and chains.

Well, my knees, like knots,
private, functional, evident,
separate neatly the halves of my legs:
and really two different worlds, two different sexes
are not so different as the two halves of my legs.

From the knee to the foot a hard form,
mineral, coldly useful, appears,
a creature of bone and persistance,
and the ankles are now nothing but the naked purpose,
exactitude and necessity definitively exposed.

Without sensuality, short and hard, and masculine,
my legs exist, there, and endowed
with muscular groups like complementary animals,
and there too a life, a solid, subtle, sharp life
endures without trembling, waiting and performing.

At my feet ticklish
and hard like the sun, and open like flowers,
and perpetual, magnificent soldiers
in the grey war of space
everything ends, life definitively ends at my feet,
what is foreign and hostile begins there:
the names of the world, the frontier and the remote,
the substantive and the adjectival too great for my heart
originate there with dense and cold constancy.

Always,
manufactured products, socks, shoes,
or simply infinite air,
there will be between my feet and the earth
stressing the isolated and solitary part of my being,
something tenaciously involved between my life and the earth,
something openly unconquerable and unfriendly.

Comments

[DL]

I wonder what would happen if you attempted a translation of the Neruda poem now -- trying to reconstruct how you rendered things back then, to an extent, but editing as needed. Thank you for a provocative column. It is true that women vastly outnumber men as readers; I believe people in publishing have gone on that assumption for a long time.

[Megin]

Thank you, DL. I wanted to revisit my translation and post it, but ran out of time. I remember my first line was "I have stared at my long legs at length," which I prefer to "For a long time I have stayed looking at my long legs"... Re-reading the poem, I realize how it ponders the nature masculine/feminine, probably another reason it intrigued me at the time.

[rushmc]

I (a man) have always read all books, regardless of the gender of the author or protagonist, in the way you describe and have never had any trouble doing so with books like _The Secret Garden_, _Heidi_, etc or with more modern literary female authors. In fact, I am deeply suspicious of people who read from such a calcified perspective that they cannot enter into the spirit/point-of-view of a book. To me, they are letting other agendas interfere with reading and are missing out on a lot.

[DL]

"I have stared at my long legs at length" is much superior to "For a long time I have stayed looking at my long legs" -- more idiomatic, nice alliteration, and you avoid the too easy allusion to Proust. And yes, I agree: the masculine/feminine paradigm is an inexhaustible source of wonder.