🦋 La Alegradora
Scattered throughout Cuadra's Songs of Cifar and of the Sweet Sea are eleven short (even "koanic") poems titled "El maestro de Tarca" -- these seem different from the rest of the text. They are printed in italics, and they all begin with the phrase "El maestro de Tarca was telling us" or "was telling me" or similar. I think these poems might be the framework around which the rest of the book is built... Not sure, but that is anyway an interesting idea. Tarca is not known to Google Maps; other Internet sources suggest it is on the island of El Carmen, off the western shore of Lake Nicaragua. Schulman translates "maestro" as "master"; it could also be translated "teacher". My impulse is to leave the phrase "el maestro de Tarca" untranslated. I'm interested this morning in the ninth poem of this series, one which Schulman and Zavala do not include in their edition. It presents a few challenges for the translator; key among them is the term "La Alegradora". "Alegrar" is "gladden", so "alegradora" would be "someone who makes you happy" -- span¡shd!ct.com gives it as an archaic term for "jester". This is pretty clearly not the meaning intended in the poem; a little digging around with Google* turns up a blog entry from No-Nan-Tzin [you will get an adult content warning when clicking this link, you can safely ignore it], who tells us that "alegradora" is the Spanish rendering of the Nahuatl term "tlatlamiani", a prostitute in pre-Columbian Mexico. Well: "prostitute" works semantically in the poem; but why did Cuadra not use "La Prostituta"? Was "alegradora" still idiomatic in 20th-Century Nicaragua? Is the usage intentionally archaic, hearkening back to ancient times (this seems likely)? I believe the Aztec empire included Nicaragua; so this is my working assumption, and I am going to leave "La Alegradora" untranslated. But if a Nicaraguan reader would recognize it immediately as meaning "prostitute", this may be a poor choice.
EL MAESTRO DE TARCA (â…¨)
El maestro de Tarca
me decÃa:
La Alegradora
con su cuerpo da placer,
no con su recuerdo.
Con la mano hace señas
con los ojos llama,
no con su recuerdo.
La Alegradora
es el puerto
la tierra
que sólo es del pobre
en la noche.
|
EL MAESTRO DE TARCA (â…¨)
El maestro de Tarca
was telling me:
La Alegradora
gives you pleasure with her body,
not with her remembrance.
With her hand she beckons
with her eyes she calls you hence,
not with her remembrance.
La Alegradora
is the port
is the land
which the poor man only knows
by night.
|
 * The same round of searches also brought to my attention this ode by Aztec prince Tlaltecatzin, who praises his love as a "precious toasted huitlacoche". The original Nahuatl is here.
posted morning of Saturday, July 9th, 2011
➳ More posts about Poets of Nicaragua
➳ More posts about Poetry
➳ More posts about Readings
➳ More posts about Translation
➳ More posts about Writing Projects
➳ More posts about Projects
Alegradora certainly is not semantically equal to Prostitute. It's more close to that nahuatl term you talk about. As you can notice in the poem, this woman is an important person to the social environment that Cuadra suggests thru his book. She has a function in that world, she brings consolation, a place to go, she might be, metaphorically, the island these lonely men seek at night, weary of spending a hard life, a hard day in the Cuadra´s "sweet sea". It is also a bitter thing, because she is not "love" neither, she is in fact a prostitute.
In my opinion the best way to go is as you did, keeping it untranslated.
Saludos
Eduardo
posted evening of July 10th, 2011 by Pelele
Thanks, Pelele -- that's good to hear that my impression was correct, that the meaning of the term is distinct. I'm pretty sure there is no English-language word with that particular meaning. I think when an English speaker is reading the poem it will be pretty clear from context that "Alegradora" is a woman being considered sexually, that will be sufficient for a broad understanding of the poem; a footnote or end-note expanding on the meaning of the term would be appropriate for the reader who wants a deeper understanding of the poem.
posted evening of July 10th, 2011 by Jeremy
I was mistaken -- Schulman and Zavala do include this poem, although they mistitle it as #7. They leave Alegradora untranslated as well, but they seem to be treating it as a proper name -- their end note says only that it "means literally, a woman who makes others happy."
posted evening of July 11th, 2011 by Jeremy
|
