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🦋 Whenless whyless ultimate things

Further to the post below about Borges' lecture on Emanuel Swedenborg: I see that Borges also wrote a sonnet about the theologian.

Más alta que los otros, caminaba
Acquel hombre lejano entre los hombres;
Apenas si llamaba por sus nombres
Secretos a los ángeles. Miraba
Lo que no ven los ojos terrenales:
La ardiente geometría, el cristalino
Edificio de Dios y el remolino
Sórdido de los goces infernales.
Sabía que la Gloria y el Averno
En tu alma están y sus mithologías;
Sabía, como el griego, que los días
Del tiempo son espejos del Eterno.
En árido latín fue registrando
Últimas cosas sin por qué ni cuando.

Taller than the rest, that distant
Man would walk among men, faintly
Calling out to angels, speaking
Their secret names. What earthly eyes
Cannot see he saw: the burning
Geometries, the crystalline
Labyrinth of God, the sordid
Whirling of infernal delights.
He knew that Glory and Hades
And all their myths are in your soul;
He knew, like the Greeks, that each day's
The mirror of Eternity
In flat Latin he catalogued
Whenless whyless ultimate things.
     (I'm not sure whose translation this is.)

He loomed among the others when he walked,
That man who was remote among good men;
By secret names he called them when he talked
To angels. When he gazed beyond his pen,
He saw what earthly eyes can never look upon:
Burning geometry, the crytal dome
Of God, and the disgusting whirlwind home
Of those infernal joys nourished each dawn.
He knew that Glory and the gate of Hell
And their mythologies live in your soul.
He knew, like Heraclitus, that one day
Of time's a mirror of eternity,
And in dry Latin found the final role
Of things whose why or when he wouldn't tell.
      (Translated by Willis Barnstone -- this is from Selected Poems)

posted afternoon of Wednesday, February 25th, 2009
➳ More posts about Borges oral
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What a difference! This is why it always makes me sad to know I'm reading a translation...

posted evening of February 26th, 2009 by painterofblue

Agreed -- a correspondent was telling me recently it is difficult to read poetry in translation, I didn't quite get what he was saying -- I don't read a whole lot of poetry, much of what I do read is translated -- but here the Spanish is just obviously different from either of the translations. I love the line "Whenless whyless ultimate things" though -- the original is more like "Ultimate things without why nor when."

posted morning of February 27th, 2009 by Jeremy

(Funny -- looking at the beginnings of the two translations my instinct is to say that Barnstone's is the better poem. But he ends so weakly, and totally out of sync with the original.)

posted morning of February 27th, 2009 by Jeremy

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