Trying to understand a difficult sentence about the chances we humans might have of not completely destroying ourselves, a difficult sentence uttered by Gabriel García Márquez in the final paragraph of his 1982 Nobel Lecture, I wrote two new versions.
First, let me say that I can’t evaluate the original in Spanish with any skill:
Ante esta realidad sobrecogedora que a través de todo el tiempo humano debió de parecer una utopía, los inventores de fábulas que todo lo creemos nos sentimos con el derecho de creer que todavía no es demasiado tarde para emprender la creación de la utopía contraria.
Here is the difficult English translation I encountered first:
Faced with this terrifying reality that throughout all of human time must have seemed a fantasy, the inventors of fables we all believe feel we have the right to believe that it still isn’t too late to undertake the creation of the contrary utopia.
I first tried to understand that sentence by translating it into a more detailed English sentence:
Faced with this terrifying reality, which throughout all of human time must have seemed no more than an unlikely fantasy, we who for all cultures and in all times have invented the transforming fables our fellow humans come eventually to believe in and live by, we writers and artists and other visionaries feel we have the right and duty to believe that now is not too late to undertake the literal creation of a contrary utopia.
And then into a simpler English sentence:
Faced with this terrifying reality, which throughout all of human time must have seemed only a fantasy, we the inventors of transforming stories still have the right and duty to believe that now is not too late to undertake the literal creation of a contrary utopia.
There are tasks for every trade and craft and walk of life as we get to this work. But, the Nobel Laureate suggests, the work in these last minutes of this last hour of restorative human possibility must in part be done by our heart- and mind-transforming artists and writers.
From the Nobel site, here is the full final paragraph of Gabriel García Márquez’s lecture:
Un día como el de hoy, mi maestro William Faulkner dijo en este lugar: “Me niego a admitir el fin del hombre”. No me sentiría digno de ocupar este sitio que fue suyo si no tuviera la conciencia plena de que por primera vez desde los orígenes de la humanidad, el desastre colosal que él se negaba a admitir hace 32 años es ahora nada más que una simple posibilidad científica. Ante esta realidad sobrecogedora que a través de todo el tiempo humano debió de parecer una utopía, los inventores de fábulas que todo lo creemos nos sentimos con el derecho de creer que todavía no es demasiado tarde para emprender la creación de la utopía contraria. Una nueva y arrasadora utopía de la vida, donde nadie pueda decidir por otros hasta la forma de morir, donde de veras sea cierto el amor y sea posible la felicidad, y donde las estirpes condenadas a cien años de soledad tengan por fin y para siempre una segunda oportunidad sobre la tierra.
Photo–Boston Globe, no photographer listed.
Semaphore & Cairn 