The Book of Invisible Bridges

Sometimes a book lures you, says ‘read me’ in Alice in Wonderland fashion, and it’s not clear why.  This happened to me with The Book of Invisible Bridges, by Xelís de Toro and translated by John Rutherford.  It was on the Pighog Press stall at the poetry book fair a few weeks ago.  I tried to ignore it, went away but had to go back. 

Every page is different.  There are poems, very short stories, monologues, definitions of imaginary words (“Morsage: Clothes drying in the wind before the storm”), statements, photos of handwritten scribbles, blank pages for your own work...  Some things are printed sideways or upside down, which makes reading them feel like accessing a slightly different dimension.  Everything is bilingual, with parallel texts, Galician and English.  The translation feels very natural, while at the same time conveying a strangeness surely there in the original (which is accessible to readers of Spanish).  At the back are reproductions of artwork inspired by the text, and there’s a DVD with more of these.  

I’m not sure how to explain why I like this book. I think it’s something to do with the diversity of forms the writing takes, coupled with the consistency of voice. Plus the variety of subjects and approaches, never knowing what will come next, like Alice – but everything bound together by that strange, dreamy yet precise voice.  

One page consists of these four lines, in both languages, at right angles to each other, afloat on the white space of the page.  The English text ought to be rotated through ninety degrees, and floating above the Galician.

Estiven a piques de falar              I was about to talk             

mais calei                                    but I kept quiet                  

e o silencio falou                          and silence spoke                       

porén ninguén escoitou.               but no-one listened.            

The reader is invited more or less explicitly to participate, or imagine participating.  One part of ‘Complete fragments with instructions for reading them’ starts like this (it’s prose, in short lines as there are two columns per page, which gives the reader more space to take in the text):

‘I started out on a journey to learn 

how to walk’

(Look for a track or path, preferably

bordered with grass. If this is not

possible, any combination in which

the surfaces of the path and of

the adjoining land are different.

Remove your shoes or boots and

place them on the path, one in

front of the other as if they were

all that is visible of an invisible

walker. Stand by their side,

parallel to them, outside the path,

with bare, parallel feet…)

A poem called ‘The Art of Hatred’ includes these lines:

With the stone of your home

I will build a wall

to stop you seeing

what is beyond it..

Underneath is a photo of a whitewashed brick wall, with graffiti on it saying:

WITH THE STONE OF

YOUR WALL I WILL BUILD

AN INVISIBLE BRIDGE

TO TAKE ME TO YOU

The short-story fragments are enticing, mixing the surreal with more or less coherent narratives.  There’s a whole novel somewhere in this extract from ‘Description of three things that are not there (that are really four)':

A train:

Clouds. A suitcase. A telephone.

A kiss. In the breeze. Breeze.

A sea-breeze. The police are going

to come. I never did anything. I am

an intellectual. Please forgive me.

He did what with whom? A military

boot. An order to keep quiet. A heat

wave. Interference on the radio.

Another country. Another. A torn

sock. Torn. Torn sock. Another torn

sock. Socks. Another torn sock….

I quite like some of the art, but the text does far more work – the pictures in my head are much stronger than those on the page.  The latter presumably represent pictures in the artists’ heads conjured up by this Rubik’s cube of a book, which you can play with, juxtaposing different pieces of text, puzzling meanings out, or not.  

The Book of Invisible Bridges by Xelís de Toro and translated by John Rutherford is published by Pighog Press.