Asymptote, the premier site for world literature in translation, has published an excerpt from Scherzo (Dialogue with a Statue) by Rafael Guizado. Many thanks to Caridad Svich, Lee Yew Leong, and Rachel Farmer.
Included with my translation are the translator’s note and an excerpt from the original Spanish (Colombia) text.
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Scherzo (Dialogue with a Statue) was written by my grandfather, Rafael Guizado, in Colombia, 1948. I translated Scherzo in order to share it with new audiences, because it’s theme, valuing love over political pettiness, is timeless.
“The love of power excludes other loves.”
Rafael Guizado
Asymptote has included an audio recording in Spanish as well. As Rafael Guizado was the founding director of Colombia’s first national radio and it’s groundbreaking radio theater, my friends and I did our best, under pandemic quarantine conditions, to record the excerpt as a radio play.
The artists who graciously lent their talents to bring this excerpt to life are: Angel Mendoza as Campesino 1, Dulce Valencia as Campesino 2, Gigi Guizado as La tierra, Lorenzo Gabaldón as El hombre, and Sound Engineer Napoleon Buenrostro. Beethoven – Piano Sonata nr.15 in D major op.28 “Pastoral” – III. Scherzo. Allegro Vivace by Karine Gilanyan. Birds:https://freesound.org/people/InspectorJ/sounds/339326/. Wind:https://freesound.org/people/spoonbender/sounds/244942/. Whistling:https://freesound.org/people/dersuperanton/sounds/433651/. WindHowl:https://freesound.org/people/swiftoid/sounds/117611/. GrassFootsteps:https://freesound.org/people/harrietniamh/sounds/400123/
The radio theater became “a true school of theatre art” and is considered “the first antecedent of contemporary theatrical activity” “due to the undoubted influence it had on the development of theatrical activity after 1940”. It “can be considered the cradle of contemporary theatrical movement in Colombia”
Gerardo Valencia, El Tiempo, Nov 6, 1976
For more on the journey of Scherzo, and my other Spanish to English translations, visit my Translations page.