READIN

🦋 Soñando caminos: We change the language by what we say.

(with thanks to Leilani for the lovely restatement of Machado's theme)

Wanderer, these your steps
make up the path, and nothing more;
wanderer, there is no path:
you make the path by walking.
By walking you make the path,
and turning back your gaze you see
the trail you'll tread upon no more.
Wanderer, there is no path:
just wake upon the sea.

— Antonio Machado: Proverbs and poems â…©â…©â…¨

I've had this poem on my mind quite a bit recently. I thought I would spend a little time writing about it — I'd like to examine its face-value meaning, the metaphor of the poem, and the value of the metaphor, how it speaks to me; and incidentally I'd like to put a little effort into defending my translation, which is fairly different from the standard translation of Betty Jean Craige, in Selected Poems of Antonio Machado, 1979. I think (obviously I think) it is an improvement on Craige's translation; it seems worthwhile to elaborate on why I think that way — how my translation speaks more clearly than Craige's. But that should be a secondary point really; what I really want to talk about is how it is that I find this poem to speak to me so clearly. It is nice as well to get a chance to quote a couple of poems that I've translated and written over the past few years. I think it will make worthwhile reading, see what you think.

Let's reread Machado's first lines. Your steps make up the path, and nothing more. (The "path" dang it, not the road — roads are engineered and built by crews of men over the years, not "made by walking". And a wanderer is hardly confined to the roadways.) A path is a most personal thing. And what Machado's metaphor here is, is the path of one's life: it's not mapped out before one but made up of one's footsteps, the trail one leaves through life. Which one will tread upon no more. The obvious question here to ask is, "But isn't that pretty obviously true?" and yes, of course it is, and has been pointed out before; but an obvious truth that seems perennially to need restatement — one that comes to me at least as a revelation every time I hear it expressed, and doubly so when it is expressed so elegantly as Machado puts it here.

I came to this poem pretty early in life. I can't remember what group it was but I seem to recall its having had an anthemic quality in some vaguely lefty/artistic circles I had some contact with in my teen years — possibly I remember it from Peace Camp, though in what context is not quite clear.* It has an elemental feel to it, something so clearly correct and valuable that it is hard to know where to begin. (And this quality is, obviously, so strong that it shines through a slight roughness of rendering like Craige's, which is the poem I remember from my youth. It was not until I was talking about it with a friend last year and he brought up the objection vis-a-vis roads that I realized a better translation was needed.) I heard it again recently in Oaxaca, a man played guitar and sang it prior to a poetry reading.

Machado's clarity of voice as he addresses you, asks you to reexamine the ground you're walking on, gives you the reader a new point of perspective. Likewise another restatement of this metaphor, this obvious truth — poems of a slightly different form but closely related theme are a few of Pablo Antonio Cuadras's about el maestro de Tarca. The first and eighth poems in his series both feature el maestro sitting up on la Piedra del Águila, telling his disciples what is fitting and just. The maestro's seafarer plays much the same role here as the wanderer (in the desert?) of Machado.

One thing I love about Machado's treatment of this universal truth is how easily it can be parodied, and how the parodies can ring clear, can bring out new shades of meaning in the original. What at first seems paradoxical can with a slight twist of the lenses be made to appear blindingly, obviously the case. Take for instance Leilani Hagberg's line in the title of this piece, or my expansion on it:

For language (while it is of course a facility created over hundreds (or tens?) of thousands of years by all of humanity in concert) has as highly personal a quality to it when considered in the particular case as does one's path. A sillier (and a fun, and rewarding, to be sure) parody, and one that indeed suffers from the same symptom of misunderstanding as does Craige's version, is:

Let's look at another fragment of Machado's concerned with paths and wanderers; this one from "I keep dreaming of pathways":

Not quite sure how to bring out what it is that I find so compelling about the central metaphor these pieces all have in common, why it rings so clear to me and (I hope) to the reader. (—Not to take any unwanted liberties.)

* Also Ellen reminds me to mention Myles Horton and Paolo Freire's book We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations on Education and Social Change (1990).

posted morning of Sunday, October 6th, 2013
➳ 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

Atardecer en los campos de Baeza por Abelardo Martínez

Pathways and walking flow again from Machado's pen in this Andalusian poem of mourning.

From this moorish city
beyond her ancient walls
I contemplate the silent evening,
alone with my shadow and with my grief.

The river running
between the thick orchards
the gray olive trees,
past the happy fields of Baeza

Golden shoots growing
from the red vines.
Guadalquivir, like a broken scimitar
scattered, shining, splendid.

And far away, the hills are sleeping
enveloped in fog,
maternal autumn fog; and their
stone hearts, rough mortars
in this warm November evening,
the livid, violet, pious evening.

Wind shaking the highway's withered elms
and raising up the dust of the earth
in rosy whirlwinds.
The full moon rising,
livid, gasping.

The white pathways
cross each other and diverge
toward the various country hamlets
on the mountainside and in the valley.
Pathways through the fields...
Alas, I cannot walk with her!


Elsewhere: an essay on Que significa "camino" para Antonio Machado . todo pasa y todo queda (possibly this one is as arranged by J.M.Serrat -- it is very catchy).

posted afternoon of October 6th, 2013 by Jeremy

Hm. Looking back I do not think my rendering of the 4th and 5th lines is quite right. In the original, the 4th line has "se hace camino" and the 5th has "se hace el camino" -- these are quite different, they should not be translated identically. The movement here is from general to particular.

Wanderer, it's these your steps
that form the path, and nothing else;
wanderer, there is no path:
you make a path by walking.
Walking, you make the path,
and turning back your gaze, you see
the trail you'll tread upon no more.
Wanderer, there is no path:
just wake upon the open sea.

I like this much better. Also the parallel form between "al andar...se hace" in the 5th line and "al volver...se ve" in the 6th is preserved. This is getting very close to an accurate translation.

posted evening of October 7th, 2013 by Jeremy

I like way better than path

posted evening of October 9th, 2013 by l.hagberg

Respond:

Name:
E-mail: (will not be displayed)
Link:
Remember info	Send