Ejercicio Geométrico

by Bronwyn Haslam and Samuel Garrigó Meza

In Roberto Bolaño’s 2666, Amalfitano is haunted by a geometry book—Raphael Dieste’s Testamento geométrico—a book he does not recall having purchased nor packed, a book whose inexplicable presence marks the beginnings of Amalfitano’s madness. “Madness is contagious” (Bolaño 177). Amalfitano and Bolaño take a page out of Marcel Duchamp’s ready-made book. During his stay in Buenos Aires, DuChamp writes to his sister Suzanne and Jean Crotti, just married, with a set of instructions as a wedding gift: the couple is to hang a geometry book by strings on the balcony of their apartment. Amalfitano pins the stubborn book on the laundry line and stares at it for hours. “I take it all back: all Duchamp did while he was in Buenos Aires was play chess” (Bolaño 191).

The knight moves two squares forward and one to the left (Nb8c6), his snout pointed towards the white pieces opposite.

The term translation bears two processes—one mathematical, the other literary or linguistic. There is a fantasy that a thing, if moved with exactitude, does not change. The conflation of these terms is a peculiarity of English: French distinguishes between traduction and translation, as Spanish does between traducción and traslacion.

This video documents the translation of 2666 from 51.041549 , -114.068255 to 51.046943,-114.057801.