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Lexicon of Affinities
A prowl through words reveals the unstable character of the cosmos.
With entries as varied as ‘elbow�, ‘Ophelia�, ‘progress�, the painter Giorgio Morandi, ‘chess�, ‘Eulalia� (a friend of the author’s aunt), and ‘unicorn�, this lexicon constructs a voice and a worldview that takes the reader by the arm, inviting us to become a confidant in Vitale’s memories and what she calls ‘the juicy life of language�. Like every dictionary, Lexicon of Affinities seeks to impose order on chaos, even if in its joyful, whimsical profusion it lays bare the unstable character of the cosmos.
With entries as varied as ‘elbow�, ‘Ophelia�, ‘progress�, the painter Giorgio Morandi, ‘chess�, ‘Eulalia� (a friend of the author’s aunt), and ‘unicorn�, this lexicon constructs a voice and a worldview that takes the reader by the arm, inviting us to become a confidant in Vitale’s memories and what she calls ‘the juicy life of language�. Like every dictionary, Lexicon of Affinities seeks to impose order on chaos, even if in its joyful, whimsical profusion it lays bare the unstable character of the cosmos.
233 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
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225 people want to read
About the author
Ida Vitale
58books64followersIda Vitale (Montevideo, 2 de noviembre de 1923) es una poeta, traductora, ensayista, profesora y crítica literaria uruguaya. Entre los premios que ha recibido destacan en 2015 el Premio Reina Sofía de Poesía Iberoamericana, en 2016 el Premio Internacional de Poesía Federico García Lorca y en 2018 el Premio Cervantes.
Considerada integrante de la Generación del 45 con otros escritores uruguayos como Mario Benedetti, Juan Carlos Onetti, Carlos Maggi o Idea Vilariño, es también madre del economista Claudio Rama Vitale, y cuarta generación de emigrantes italianos en Uruguay, donde se formó en una familia culta y cosmopolita. Lectora preferente de obras históricas, su descubrimiento de dos poetas uruguayas de entresiglos, Delmira Agustini y, en especial, un espíritu afín, María Eugenia Vaz Ferreira, la inclinó a la poesía lírica, aunque sus dos grandes referentes fueron José Bergamín, su profesor en Montevideo, y Juan Ramón Jiménez, a quien también conoció en persona.
Estudió Humanidades en Uruguay y ejerció la profesión docente. En 1950 se casó con el ensayista Ángel Rama y tuvo dos hijos, Amparo y el economista Claudio, nacidos en 1951 y 1954 respectivamente. Se separó de su primer marido y colaboró en el semanario Marcha; entre 1962 y 1964 dirigió la página literaria del diario uruguayo Época. Fue codirectora de la revista Clinamen e integró la dirección de la revista Maldoror.
Empujada por la dictadura, se exilió a México en 1974 y, tras conocer a Octavio Paz, este la introdujo en el comité asesor de la revista Vuelta. Además participó en la fundación del periódico Uno Más Uno y continuó dedicada a la enseñanza, impartiendo además un seminario en El Colegio de México. Amplió su obra cultivando el ensayo y la crítica literaria (que ejerció en El País, Marcha, Época, Jaque y, entre otras, en las revistas Clinamen, Asir, Maldoror, Crisis de Buenos Aires, Eco de Bogotá; Vuelta y Unomásuno, de México; El pez y la serpiente de Nicaragua...) Tradujo libros para el Fondo de Cultura Económica; impartió conferencias y lecturas, participó en jurados y colaboró en numerosos diarios.
Volvió a Uruguay en 1984, y dirigió la página cultural del semanario Jaque. Desde 1989 vive en Austin (Texas) junto a su segundo marido, el también poeta Enrique Fierro, aunque viaja muy frecuentemente a Montevideo. Fue nombrada doctora honoris causa por la Universidad de la República en 2010. Lee y traduce particularmente del francés y del italiano, y entre los autores de sus versiones se cuenta a Simone de Beauvoir, Benjamin Péret, Gaston Bachelard, Jacques Lafaye, Jean Lacouture y Luigi Pirandello.
Su poesía indaga en la alquimia del lenguaje y establece un encuentro entre una exacerbada percepción sensorial de raíz simbolista y la cristalización conceptual en su perfil más preciso.
Desde 1990 al presente es residente estadounidense.
Considerada integrante de la Generación del 45 con otros escritores uruguayos como Mario Benedetti, Juan Carlos Onetti, Carlos Maggi o Idea Vilariño, es también madre del economista Claudio Rama Vitale, y cuarta generación de emigrantes italianos en Uruguay, donde se formó en una familia culta y cosmopolita. Lectora preferente de obras históricas, su descubrimiento de dos poetas uruguayas de entresiglos, Delmira Agustini y, en especial, un espíritu afín, María Eugenia Vaz Ferreira, la inclinó a la poesía lírica, aunque sus dos grandes referentes fueron José Bergamín, su profesor en Montevideo, y Juan Ramón Jiménez, a quien también conoció en persona.
Estudió Humanidades en Uruguay y ejerció la profesión docente. En 1950 se casó con el ensayista Ángel Rama y tuvo dos hijos, Amparo y el economista Claudio, nacidos en 1951 y 1954 respectivamente. Se separó de su primer marido y colaboró en el semanario Marcha; entre 1962 y 1964 dirigió la página literaria del diario uruguayo Época. Fue codirectora de la revista Clinamen e integró la dirección de la revista Maldoror.
Empujada por la dictadura, se exilió a México en 1974 y, tras conocer a Octavio Paz, este la introdujo en el comité asesor de la revista Vuelta. Además participó en la fundación del periódico Uno Más Uno y continuó dedicada a la enseñanza, impartiendo además un seminario en El Colegio de México. Amplió su obra cultivando el ensayo y la crítica literaria (que ejerció en El País, Marcha, Época, Jaque y, entre otras, en las revistas Clinamen, Asir, Maldoror, Crisis de Buenos Aires, Eco de Bogotá; Vuelta y Unomásuno, de México; El pez y la serpiente de Nicaragua...) Tradujo libros para el Fondo de Cultura Económica; impartió conferencias y lecturas, participó en jurados y colaboró en numerosos diarios.
Volvió a Uruguay en 1984, y dirigió la página cultural del semanario Jaque. Desde 1989 vive en Austin (Texas) junto a su segundo marido, el también poeta Enrique Fierro, aunque viaja muy frecuentemente a Montevideo. Fue nombrada doctora honoris causa por la Universidad de la República en 2010. Lee y traduce particularmente del francés y del italiano, y entre los autores de sus versiones se cuenta a Simone de Beauvoir, Benjamin Péret, Gaston Bachelard, Jacques Lafaye, Jean Lacouture y Luigi Pirandello.
Su poesía indaga en la alquimia del lenguaje y establece un encuentro entre una exacerbada percepción sensorial de raíz simbolista y la cristalización conceptual en su perfil más preciso.
Desde 1990 al presente es residente estadounidense.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
September 19, 2022
El concepto del libro me pareció increíble, es básicamente un diccionario donde Ida Vitale (me encanta ese nombre) va incorporando palabras que son importantes para ella, le parecen interesantes o despiertan recuerdos de su vida. Masomenos como el abecedario de la Rosalía.
January 13, 2025
zuibitsu
The asymmetry, the freedom, the independence of a text in relation to others, the mixture of prose and poetry, rival governesses, each one on her own shore, does not trouble me nor cause me more thirst than it should. I believe the differing tones could ultimately become a pleasant virtue. There is a species of mimosa tree that mixes distinct types of leaves in its crown
[…] For a long period of time during which infinite things also took place, I reveled in the collecting of heterogeneous particles not opposed to living together. I did not have the slightest idea I was reproducing a zuibitsu or zuihit su, 'follow-the-brush' an ancient Japanese literary form that gathers assorted matters, anecdotes, delights, musings,judgments,etc.
Lexicon of Affinities is Sean Manning's translation of Léxico de afinidades (1994) by Uruguayan poet, translator, essayist, lecturer and literary critic Ida Vitale, born in 1923 and .
I have previously read the duo's Byobu, where I concluded "were I in a more generous and expansive mood, I think I would have loved this fragmentary and delightfully brief novel. But I struggled to make any sense of it. Perhaps one to revisit."
Lexicon of Affinities is as the last entry, part of which is above, and Vitale's introduction (below) explains a lexicographical series of words that sing to her, with entries ranging from a few words, to 8 pages, and from poetry, through prose poetry to the (lyrically) essayistic:
The world is chaotic and, fortunately, difficult to classify, but chaos, matter susceptible to wondrous transfor-mation, presents the temptation of order, as any theogony can demonstrate. We live in search of the best system to organize it all, to understand it at least. Until that one irrefutable order comes along, the most innocent option is alphabetical. Its vastness can resemble the chaos it looks to substitute. So I will limit it according to my affinities, selecting the lexicon that crystallizes, arbitrarily, around each letter: not all of them, only those words that sing to me. But a song is both a river and a net. Words mutually frolic, conspire, float, they are suicidal, dynastic, migratory, their every roar far from the inertia. They do not expect us, ephemeral, standing on the wayside, to think them eternal, or that we can, ignorant of where we are, know our eventual destination following their lead. They are content if we, obeying some of their intentions, avail ourselves of what they propose, commensurate with our thirstandourglass.
One example is a poem about Borges, a contemporary, whose middle verse reads:
He watched maliciousness and force go by,
calm in his allegiances and patience,
He wandered labyrinths, devised mirrors,
zahirs and infinite libraries,
quiet inside a center of wisdom
ever shifting with blistering speed.
One on birth, perhaps more typical begins:
birth
Everything that converges, dense, and condenses to devise a birth determines its prolongation in an infinite echo that resounds until the death - perhaps beyond? - of the signatory who enters the world.
Zodiac signs, terrestrial signs, spoken signs, ritual signs are usually preserved in the memories of others, coated by the luster of another's generous gaze. But there is a diverse factory from which these others emerge: the one the lone individual constructs alone if she lacks the assistance, albeit meager and flawed, of those who experienced her childhood. Alongside distracted third parties, she imagines from inside the density of time, which nevertheless seems empty to her. She casts desperate buckets down a deep dark well whose walls, under the clanging metal, sometimes ignite shreds of strange mosses. She struggles against the barricades that pretend to let themselves be breached and then offer lightning flashes of dazzling light or compact blackness. Intimacy forms between her intimate ear and the dissolution of concreteness.
I have to admit that once again - and it's me not the author - this rather passed me by, particularly the affinities between the terms in the lexicon. Indeed I wasn't sure if links were intended or not -an entry on museums includes each work is a precious moment of solitary eternity, a mystery that in order to be unlocked demands the gaze come from an eye empty ofotherimages and this felt a more appropriate way to approach the work, as a book to be dipped in to rather than necessarily read, cover-to-cover and alphabetically.
And instead I found myself as the author, as a young girl, in an entry on library discussing the Italian and French books in the extensive family collection: beyond my reach, regardless of how often I riffled through their pages imagining a magic moment of sudden comprehension, like with the language of the birds after biting into a particularleaf.
A book I admire but not one I found particularly fulfilling to read I'm afraid. 2 stars for my personal apprecation and 3.5 as a literary apprecation, so 3 overall (2.75 rounded up).
The asymmetry, the freedom, the independence of a text in relation to others, the mixture of prose and poetry, rival governesses, each one on her own shore, does not trouble me nor cause me more thirst than it should. I believe the differing tones could ultimately become a pleasant virtue. There is a species of mimosa tree that mixes distinct types of leaves in its crown
[…] For a long period of time during which infinite things also took place, I reveled in the collecting of heterogeneous particles not opposed to living together. I did not have the slightest idea I was reproducing a zuibitsu or zuihit su, 'follow-the-brush' an ancient Japanese literary form that gathers assorted matters, anecdotes, delights, musings,judgments,etc.
Lexicon of Affinities is Sean Manning's translation of Léxico de afinidades (1994) by Uruguayan poet, translator, essayist, lecturer and literary critic Ida Vitale, born in 1923 and .
I have previously read the duo's Byobu, where I concluded "were I in a more generous and expansive mood, I think I would have loved this fragmentary and delightfully brief novel. But I struggled to make any sense of it. Perhaps one to revisit."
Lexicon of Affinities is as the last entry, part of which is above, and Vitale's introduction (below) explains a lexicographical series of words that sing to her, with entries ranging from a few words, to 8 pages, and from poetry, through prose poetry to the (lyrically) essayistic:
The world is chaotic and, fortunately, difficult to classify, but chaos, matter susceptible to wondrous transfor-mation, presents the temptation of order, as any theogony can demonstrate. We live in search of the best system to organize it all, to understand it at least. Until that one irrefutable order comes along, the most innocent option is alphabetical. Its vastness can resemble the chaos it looks to substitute. So I will limit it according to my affinities, selecting the lexicon that crystallizes, arbitrarily, around each letter: not all of them, only those words that sing to me. But a song is both a river and a net. Words mutually frolic, conspire, float, they are suicidal, dynastic, migratory, their every roar far from the inertia. They do not expect us, ephemeral, standing on the wayside, to think them eternal, or that we can, ignorant of where we are, know our eventual destination following their lead. They are content if we, obeying some of their intentions, avail ourselves of what they propose, commensurate with our thirstandourglass.
One example is a poem about Borges, a contemporary, whose middle verse reads:
He watched maliciousness and force go by,
calm in his allegiances and patience,
He wandered labyrinths, devised mirrors,
zahirs and infinite libraries,
quiet inside a center of wisdom
ever shifting with blistering speed.
One on birth, perhaps more typical begins:
birth
Everything that converges, dense, and condenses to devise a birth determines its prolongation in an infinite echo that resounds until the death - perhaps beyond? - of the signatory who enters the world.
Zodiac signs, terrestrial signs, spoken signs, ritual signs are usually preserved in the memories of others, coated by the luster of another's generous gaze. But there is a diverse factory from which these others emerge: the one the lone individual constructs alone if she lacks the assistance, albeit meager and flawed, of those who experienced her childhood. Alongside distracted third parties, she imagines from inside the density of time, which nevertheless seems empty to her. She casts desperate buckets down a deep dark well whose walls, under the clanging metal, sometimes ignite shreds of strange mosses. She struggles against the barricades that pretend to let themselves be breached and then offer lightning flashes of dazzling light or compact blackness. Intimacy forms between her intimate ear and the dissolution of concreteness.
I have to admit that once again - and it's me not the author - this rather passed me by, particularly the affinities between the terms in the lexicon. Indeed I wasn't sure if links were intended or not -an entry on museums includes each work is a precious moment of solitary eternity, a mystery that in order to be unlocked demands the gaze come from an eye empty ofotherimages and this felt a more appropriate way to approach the work, as a book to be dipped in to rather than necessarily read, cover-to-cover and alphabetically.
And instead I found myself as the author, as a young girl, in an entry on library discussing the Italian and French books in the extensive family collection: beyond my reach, regardless of how often I riffled through their pages imagining a magic moment of sudden comprehension, like with the language of the birds after biting into a particularleaf.
A book I admire but not one I found particularly fulfilling to read I'm afraid. 2 stars for my personal apprecation and 3.5 as a literary apprecation, so 3 overall (2.75 rounded up).
April 7, 2024
A de te Amo Abuelita Abecedaria
September 11, 2023
Un libro de excelente calidad. Escrito con una técnica irrefutable y un completo dominio del lenguaje. Ida Vitale es una de las escritoras más hábiles que he leído. Sin embargo, a mí no me gustó casi nada.
Read
April 22, 2025Maybe better if I had known more about her work & way of writing & thinking?
December 4, 2024
This must have been a delightful puzzle to translate given the alphabetical structure of the chapters. There's no linear narrative, it's not particularly about anything, it's full of very obscure references and arcane words; I really enjoyed it a lot and will be reading more Vitale!
May 19, 2022
Este libro es como si Ida Vitale hubiera escrito abcdefg de la Rosalia. Todo cabe en este compilado alfabético: memorias, aforismos, prosa poética, ensayos mínimos, poemas. Siempre es maravilloso leer a Ida.
September 26, 2019
Un acto hermoso, similar al que emprendió Foucault con su búsqueda de las palabras y las cosas.
June 14, 2020
¡Qué bello que es este libro! Dan ganas de poder escribir como Ida Vitale. No quedó página de este libro sin subrayar. Bello, bellísimo como una canción.
August 9, 2023
Aunque denso, es una preciosidad. La prosa de Vitale es de una vivacidad e inteligencia admirables.
October 27, 2023
Definiciones de diferentes palabras que lleva desde la reflexión hasta las anécdotas.
December 21, 2023
El libro es un juego con las palabras, el lenguaje.
Lo une con relatos, ideas, mensajes. Un diccionario propio.
Lo une con relatos, ideas, mensajes. Un diccionario propio.
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