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Sunday, July 24th, 2011
At The Hooded Utilitarian, the first posts have gone up in the new Illustrated Wallace Stevens roundtable, which will be ongoing over the next few weeks. Up first is Mahendra Singh's take on the totally seasonally appropriate Cuban Doctor. (Singh styles himself "An illustrator busily fitting Lewis Carroll into a protosurrealist straitjacket with matching dada cufflinks.")
posted morning of July 24th, 2011: Respond
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Monday, July 11th, 2011
Two more poems from the "el maestro de Tarca" series:
EL MAESTRO DE TARCA (â…¦)
Con el oÃdo atento
al fragor de las olas
y los vientos
el Maestro de Tarca
nos decÃa:
En el rencor del Lago
me parece oÃr
la voz de un pueblo.
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EL MAESTRO DE TARCA (â…¦)
His ear turned, alert
to the clamor of the waves
and to the wind
el Maestro de Tarca
would tell us:
In the rancor of the Lake
I seem to hear
the voice of a nation.
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EL MAESTRO DE TARCA (â…ª)
El maestro de Tarca
aconsejó al marinero:
Si tu pensamiento
alcanza menos
que tu corazón,
piensa dos veces:
La nave tiene
la vela a pájaros
y la quilla a peces. |
EL MAESTRO DE TARCA (â…ª)
El maestro de Tarca
gave counsel to the sailor:
If your thoughts
cannot reach
as far as your heart,
then think two times:
Your ships possess
a sail, like birds
and a keel, like fish. |
The four I have not yet made a stab at are going to remain untranslated for the nonce: #2 is a series of couplets about sailing conditions betokened by different cloud covers (after the manner of "Red sky at night, sailor's delight") -- I would not know where to begin with it. #5 warns of a tiny fish called La Pepesca, which will invade a sailor's body via his asshole and devour his innards. (Can't find any evidence pointing to this being a real thing? A couple of sites refer to the tetra astyanax fasciatus as "la pepesca" but they don't mention it being dangerous, which you'd think they would mention...) #6 is a long, attractive poem with advice for what to hunt and to cook during the summertime. #10 is similar to #2, but concerns sailing at night.Besides these, the maestro makes a brief appearance in one of the final poems of the book, "The Islands", which is dedicated to Ernesto Cardenal. Here he is telling the people of the Lake a legend of a once and future king:
-- En Solentiname,
archipiélago de las codornices
pereció Tamagastad
contra los escollos de la Venadita.
Allà lloró la tribu a su héroe.
Allà todavÃa lloran los que pasan
esperando una antigua promesa.
Allà dice la leyenda
que ha de volver a su pueblo
con una palabra nueva.
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-- In Solentiname,
archipelago where quails nest
Tamagastad bled out his life
on the reefs of Venadita.
His tribe wept there for its hero.
And all who pass by there still weep;
they're waiting on an ancient promise.
For legend tells us there
that he must come back to his people
bearing a new word.
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posted evening of July 11th, 2011: 1 response
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Sunday, July 10th, 2011
The first and eighth poems in the "el maestro de Tarca" series both feature el maestro seated on Eagle Rock, telling his disciples what is fitting and just.
EL MAESTRO DE TARCA (â… )
Sentado en la piedra del Ãguila
el maestro de Tarca nos decÃa:
Es conveniente
es recto
que el marinero
tenga cogidas
las cosas por su nombre.
En el peligro
son las cosas sin nombre
las que dañan.
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EL MAESTRO DE TARCA (â… )
Seated up on Eagle Rock
el maestro de Tarca told us:
It is fitting
it is just
that the seafarer
should grasp
all things by their name.
In times of danger
the things without names
are the ones that harm.
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Carlos MejÃa Godoy sings
about grasping all things by their name
EL MAESTRO DE TARCA (â…§)
Sentado en la piedra del Ãguila
el maestro de Tarca nos decÃa:
Es conveniente
es recto
que el marinero
olvide a las aguas
su aventura.
Estela hecha
tiempo vivido
Estela deshecha
tiempo borrado. |
EL MAESTRO DE TARCA (â…§)
Seated up on Eagle Rock
el maestro de Tarca told us:
It is fitting
it is just
that the seafarer
should entrust his adventure
to the waters.
Wake formed
time lived
Wake dissolved
time erased. |
posted morning of July 10th, 2011: Respond
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Saturday, July 9th, 2011
Here are a few resources for the "el maestro de Tarca" poems and more broadly, Songs of Cifar and of the Sweet Sea. I will add to this list over the coming weeks if I find more that seem worth including.
- Sergio RamÃrez, a member of Nicaragua's Academia de la Lengua, delivered a paper on El maestro de Elqui: la narrativa de Pablo Antonio Cuadra when he entered the academy in 2003. It is online at RamÃrez' home page. A shorter version of the same paper is at La Prensa Literaria. RamÃrez also has a short piece in Ancora from 2002, in which he seems to indicate that el maestro de Tarca is Cuadra himself.
- Folk musician Carlos MejÃa Godoy recorded his album "Cantos de Cifar" in 1992. A few tracks are online at YouTube, and I found "El maestro de Tarca" (the first poem in the series) online at Radio La PrimerÃsima.
- The full text of the book is online at turtleislands.net.
posted afternoon of July 9th, 2011: Respond
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In the third "teachings of el maestro de Tarca" poem, the customary introduction is reversed: here Cifar is speaking to the teacher. This suggests to me that the other poems in this series, where el maestro is speaking "to me" or "to us", are told from the POV of Cifar. The two main difficulties for me in translating this poem were the conditional tense of "jurarÃa" and the parallelism in the final two lines. I'm not really sure what conditional tense does -- from its name it sounds like it has a similar function to subjunctive. Schulman translates "jurarÃa" as "I would swear", which sounds ok, but makes me ask what the condition is. I am going with "I could swear" which sounds a little more natural to my ears. (As a weak bonus, "I could swear it" scans the same as "jurarÃa" -- though in the rest of the poem, I am not doing much to preserve the metric pattern.) The last two lines, el maestro's response to Cifar, are the koanic element of this poem. In the original there is a strong parallelism: "Lo conocido/ es lo desconocido." I am going with a literal rendering to preserve this parallelism even though I think it mangles the meaning of the words slightly. Schulman uses the wordy "That which is known/ is the unknown", which I think is slightly closer to Cuadra's meaning, but not nearly as pleasant to read.
EL MAESTRO DE TARCA (â…¢)
Maestro, dijo Cifar,
seguà tu consejo
y crucé el Lago
buscando la isla desconocida.
Fui con viento benévolo
a la más lejana, virgen y perdida
Pero
que yo conocà esa isla
jurarÃa!
que su sonoro acantilado
devolvió mi canto un dÃa
jurarÃa!
que era la misma mujer
casi lo jurarÃa!
Sonrió el maestro y dijo:
Lo conocido
es lo desconocido. |
EL MAESTRO DE TARCA (â…¢)
Maestro, said Cifar,
I followed your counsel
and crossed the Lake
in search of the unknown island.
I sailed with a gentle wind
to its farthest point, untouched and lost
But
I knew this island
I could swear it!
her echoing cliffs
had once already returned my song
I could swear it!
it was the same woman
I could almost swear it!
El maestro smiled and spoke:
The known
is the unknown. |
The fourth poem in the series is a sweet little gem.
EL MAESTRO DE TARCA (â…£)
Dijo el maestro
de Tarca:
Coge la cigarra
del ala
Al menos
llevas en la mano
el canto.
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EL MAESTRO DE TARCA (â…£)
Thus spoke el maestro
de Tarca:
Seize the locust
by its wing
At least
carry in your hand
its song.
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(I am tampering with the voice of the verb "llevas" in the next-to-last line -- Schulman renders it as "you carry" which is true to the original; whereas "coge" is imperative, "llevas" is indicative.) (Update: here is a better idea.)
posted afternoon of July 9th, 2011: Respond
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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.
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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.
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 * 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 July 9th, 2011: 3 responses
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Monday, July 4th, 2011
 Source material for a poem I posted today in comments at Dave Bonta's Morning Porch -- this is from Pablo Antonio Cuadra's Songs of Cifar and of the Sweet Sea (which, happy day, I discover Tony Bigras of turtleislands.net has uploaded in full). Translation is my own, with reference to that of Grace Schulman and Ann McCarthy de Zavala.
Caballos en el Lago
Los caballos bajan al amanecer.
Entran al lago de oro y avanzan
-- ola contra ola
el enarcado cuello y crines --
a la cegadora claridad.
Muchachos desnudos
bañan sus ancas
y ellos yerguen
ebrios de luz
su estampa antigua.
Escuchan
-- la oreja atenta --
el sutil clarÃn de la mañana
y miran
el vasto campo de batalla.
Entonces sueñan
-- bulle
la remota osadÃa --
se remontan
a los dÃas heroicos,
cuando el hierro
devolvÃa al sol sus lanzas
potros blancos
escuadrones de plata
el grito
lejanÃsimo de los pájaros
y el viento.
Pero vuelven
(Látigo
es el tiempo)
Al golpe
enfilan hacia tierra
-- bajan la frente --
y uncido
al carro
el sueño
queda
atrás
dormido
el viento.
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Horses in the Lake
The horses come down at daybreak.
They enter into the golden lake, and on
-- wave after wave
the long arched necks, the manes --
into the blinding clearness.
And naked boys
are bathing their haunchesdrunk with light
they're lifting up their ancient image.
They listen
-- ears perked up --
to the morning's subtle trumpet
and they gaze
on the enormous field of battle.
And then they dream-- and glimpse
remote effrontery -- rising back up
to the days of glory,
when steel met
the sun's proud lances
stallions white
and squadrons silver
the cries
of distant birds and
of the wind.
But they return
(Before
the whip of time)
And struck
move slowly back to land
-- they bow their heads --
they're yoked to
the wagon
the dream
remains
behind
asleep
the wind.
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posted afternoon of July 4th, 2011: Respond
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Thursday, June 30th, 2011
"However much you feed a wolf, it always looks to the forest. We are all wolves in the dense forest of Eternity." This was written by the Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva, the man said softly as he stroked the silver fur of the animal crouched in his arms. The animal pricked up its ears, then strained to look back at the dark copse of trees where shadows moved as if alive. As if alive and waiting to move out into the open.
Listen, this process called poetry is an exercise in imagining memory, and then having that memory snare and cherish imagination. Yet, every poem is and will be a capsule of territory in the perpetual present tense, a vessel taking on the ever-changing colors of the sea.-- Breyten Breytenbach
"Poetry is the Breath of Awareness"
Intimate Stranger
 (The Tsvetaeva quote is from her book of essays, Art in the Light of Conscience, tr. Angela Livingstone.)
posted evening of June 30th, 2011: Respond
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Sunday, June 26th, 2011
I find myself fascinated by Steven White's statement about Alfonso Cortés, Nicaragua's "poeta loco," that he "was prone to fits of violence that coincided with the full moon" -- I am finding in Cortés' poetry some beautiful fragments without its yet coming together for me as a whole. Inscribed on Cortés' tomb in León (adjacent to the tomb of Rubén Dario) is his poem "Supplication."
Time is hunger, space is cold
pray, pray: only supplication
can satisfy the longings of the void.
Dreaming is a lonely rock
where the eagle of the soul can build his nest:
dream, dream, dream the whole day long.
 (I see a couple of references, in the few of Cortés' poems that White includes, to ether -- I wonder if he was a recreational user and if so, whether that had anything to do with his reputation for insanity.)
posted evening of June 26th, 2011: 2 responses
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Sunday, June 5th, 2011
¿Cómo puedo entender el «Canto de guerra de las cosas»? JoachÃn Pasos me parece periodista incrustado en el ejército de la existencia... Es un poema largo, 19 estrofas, 150 lÃneas, cada lÃnea (casà cada lÃnea) dibujando su propia imagen y cada estrofa surgiendo de estas imágenes en un cuadro complejo y múltiple. Todo junto es demasiado (para mÃ) para mantener... Me parece que el mejor camino de entender el poema entero y también de traducirlo, es bien entender cada lÃnea y cada estrofa, trabajar desde las raÃces del árbol más bien que intentar todo en una vez comprender.
posted morning of June 5th, 2011: Respond
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