Viggo Mortensen reads poems from his new book Ramas para un nido in Buenos Aires on July 9th. Enrique García Medina (EFE)
For a time it seemed possible to do nothing. Viggo Mortensen, 64, was third among the four authors on stage and sat in the third chair – two gray and two red; he in a grey. The full hall applauded with almost no shouting or excitement. It was a loud round of applause, though by no means different or unusually long. The first poetess, Gabriela Luzzi, began to recite; continued the second author, José Villa; The third was Mortensen, who, unlike the other two, began reading without saying anything first:
– After trying to write poetry for almost fifty years, I have come to the conclusion that a poem is the flower of lies that words are. They never reach what I think or feel, they don’t represent it faithfully. For example: María’s hair / on the blond plane / blue at night / following the sea.
He was reading from some loose A4 sheets that he had pressed into a red notebook that was smaller than the pages. The text that begins is El pelo de María from his latest volume of poetry, Branches for a Nest, which the actor presented a few days ago in Bahía Blanca, a city in southern Buenos Aires province; on Sunday he made it in the capital. Now, this Monday, he read it to two hundred people on a stage at the Borges Cultural Center in downtown Buenos Aires. The book is the first published in Argentina by the American interpreter and is published by Ediciones Lux, which promotes the work of contemporary authors from Latin America and also translated authors.
“The poets who will be reading today are poets who make up our catalogue, they are also friends; Some, as you know, come from far away… But he is fully integrated into our poetry, we consider him an Argentine poet,” said editor Gustavo López about Mortensen’s presence a few minutes before the reading began. The actor sat and stood on stage, which is something a superstar usually isn’t. He wore urban sneakers, light-colored jeans, a blue shirt and a t-shirt under the shirt that joked about a hypothetical candidacy of Frodo and Sam for the US elections, characters from Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, who were there solidified him, in the role of Aragorn, as a planetary star.
When Mortensen finished reading his first text, the poetess Gabriela Bejerman continued to recite, standing and from memory. The reading kept spinning between the four of them. He read Luzzi again, then Villa, and then Mortensen.
In the third round, the actor intervened for the first time to thank the other poets and dedicate the next text to the Huracán football club. Huracán is the classic rival of San Lorenzo, the Argentine side that Mortensen has tattooed on his right arm. “It’s not bad milk, not at all,” the actor, who speaks perfect Spanish, clarified before beginning to read, continuing, “I want him to hit Boca, I want the neighborhood cousin.” stays in first place.” Because if not, what do we do? His wishes were not granted and Boca won 1-0.
–Sobering up / has a box / upstairs / in the room / in the shade / where / the flies are sleeping–, he began to read.
This text, La lapicera de Pavese, is a “long poem about the personal hell of the last days”. [Cesare] Pavese”, the Italian writer who committed suicide in 1950. This is how the Argentinian Fabián Casas defines him in the book’s prologue. There, Casas recounts the joy he felt at the postcards from the actor, his friend, during the pandemic: “It was, for example, a long rectangle of shiny paper, in the shape of a marker that read on the other side instead of an ‘In the Landscape there was only the name of a brand of weed.” Also one day a package arrived containing the poems that would become a book, this one, which finished printing in June of that year.
“I never confuse friendship with what I read. Sometimes my friends write things that I don’t like, and if they ask my opinion, I give it to them,” Casas writes in the prologue. But Mortensen’s poetry seemed “so incredible”: “The poems (…), written at different times and dated below, shook me.” The project began to take the form of a book in 2017, says Gustavo López, who has been involved for 20 years Mortensen works together, on the phone. “We collected and corrected poems. Viggo worked very hard on each text. “It was all very relaxed in the time he could,” he adds. In June, Bahia Verlag published the first edition of 1,000 copies.
It is not Mortensen’s first volume of poetry – including Ten Last Night (1993), Canciones de invierno (2010), Eudaimonia (2021) – but it is the first published in Argentina, the country which he arrived at was released with his family at the age of 11. His father came to work in Chaco, up north, and when the couple separated, the children returned to New York with their mother. De Mortensen is considered discreet, sensitive and versatile. As well as being an actor – he was nominated for three Oscars for Dangerous Promises (2007), Captain Fantastic (2016) and Green Book (2018) – and a poet, he is also an editor, photographer, painter and music composer. In 2002 he founded his own publishing company and in 2020 he directed, wrote, produced and starred in his first film Falling.
The audience continued to devote themselves to the readings, applauding all the authors equally, with no greater sign of fanaticism than a few “Come on, Viggo!”. Towards the end, the poet Gabriela Bejerman began to break through the illusion of normality when she spontaneously rewrote the text of a text she was reciting. “I know this is your entourage, Viggo,” he said, encouraging the audience to complete the verse with the logic of the rest of the poem. “I know, I know,” the audience replied in unison. Poet Gabriela Luzzi brought him back to prominence minutes later when she picked up the microphone and asked him: “When did you get here, Viggo? Since we are all here, tell us.” The actor replied that he had been to Bahía Blanca and Buenos Aires 15 days ago. And they did another round of readings.
In the end it was already impossible to pretend that nothing had happened. The line that formed after the event for the copy signing turned around on the second floor of the cultural center with the name of an Argentine writer. Most had bought their copy, which costs 5,000 Argentine pesos, about $20 at the official exchange rate, when they left the room. There were fans dressed as hobbits, mothers fighting with their son for possession of a signed book, excited, nervous, disrespectful, shy… Also an employee of the Father Lorenzo Massa parish who gave the actor a hat and a small card. Mortensen helped fund this community, which is named after the founder of the club of his passions. On the stamp more poems: “The afternoon falls in Almagro / the last mate is brewed in Boedo / The sky is azulgrana / Mosaic of hopes”.
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