READIN

Friday, October 22nd, 2010

🦋 These Precious Evenings

Here is a poem by a Mexican poet named José Cárdenas Peña, "Los contados días".

This wandering groping
like I'm walking into ruins:
this turning my face to the wind
without expecting a response from the wind;
instinctive phrasing, to live and to hope
without contact:
this clamour to God,
this doubt and this love, this blasphemy;

this dread of being lonely,
of the death that is not death;
it hurts me, hurts like a wound,
like my own native land,
like an angel's wing --
like my crime, like her bleak silence...

And when at last I scream Here! Here I am!,
so cleaves in two my naked, naked heart.

(I posted the original of this poem in the comments to a LanguageHat entry about free verse and memorization.)

posted evening of October 22nd, 2010: Respond
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Thursday, October 21st, 2010

🦋 Another opening

Saramago seems almost to be picking at a linguistic scab in his consciousness in these first few sentences of "Chair", the first story in An Object, Almost. If I'm understanding right the chair he is talking about is to some approximation the government of Salazar, though I'm not sure how explicit he makes that.

The chair begins to fall, to come down, to capsize, but not, in the strictest sense of the term, to come unleashed. Speaking strictly, coming unleashed means losing one's bonds. And of course, one can't say that a chair is chained or in bonds, if it had for instance a couple of lateral arm rests, you would say the armrests of the chair are falling, not that they have been unleashed. But truthfully, storms can be unleashed, I would say, or better I remember having said, so as not to fall into my own traps: if cloudbursts can be unleashed, which is just another way of saying the same thing, could not, in short, chairs likewise be unleashed, even without having bonds? As at least a poetic liberty? At least as the simple artifice which proclaims itself style, voice? Let's accept that chairs can come unleashed, even if it ultimately proves preferable that they should only fall, should capsize, should come down.

I finished a couple of revisions of "Ebb-tide" and sent a copy of it to the editor who accepted my translation of "Requiem" -- I'm starting to fantasize about publishing a translation of this collection of stories, not sure if that means I have to learn Portuguese or if it's legit to translate from the Spanish translation -- what I have done so far sounds very nice to my ear so I am sticking to the Spanish for now.

posted evening of October 21st, 2010: Respond
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Tuesday, October 19th, 2010

🦋 First sentence

In one beginning, for everything must have a beginning, even in the case where this beginning is the same as that terminal point from which it cannot, ultimately, be broken, and to say "cannot" is not the same as saying "will not" or "need not", it is the extremity of not being able, for if this breaking could take place, we know that the whole universe would crumble into its component bits, the universe is a fragile construction, it cannot bear interruption, in one beginning, then, four paths were laid out.

It's interesting to read Saramago talking about two cycles of his work, the narrative novels and the more allegorical novels he wrote after moving to the Canary Islands -- it makes a lot of sense to me that he named this book as the root source of the allegorical stories, I can hear Blindness and The Cave in it. I think Death With Interruptions will be worth rereading with this story in mind.

(It occurs to me that "the extremity of not being possible" or "of impossibility" might be better English. I kind of like the sound of "the extremity of not being able". The Spanish is "el extremo no poder".)

posted evening of October 19th, 2010: 1 response
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Saturday, October 9th, 2010

🦋 Untranslated Saramago

Here is a list of Saramago's works which I believe (based on the English and Spanish Wikipædia pages) have never been translated into English, in reverse chronological order. (I am not including his last novel Cain because I believe this is in the process of being translated by Margaret Jull Costa and will be published next year. I am not including his plays or his opera.)

• Cadernos de Lanzarote vol. 2 (2001): memoir
• A maior flor do mundo (2001): children's fiction (and magnificently animated (in Spanish translation) by Juan Pablo Etcheverry)
• Cadernos de Lanzarote (1997): memoir
• Levantado do chão (1980): historical fiction
• Poética dos cinco sentidos: O ouvido (1979): short stories (Update -- Poética dos cinco sentidos is a collection, Saramago has one story in it called "O ouvido".)
• Objecto quase (1978): short stories
• Os apontamentos (1976): columns
• O ano de 1993 (1975): poetry (Horácio Costa terms the contents of this book "fragments of prose-poetry")
• As opiniões que o DL teve (1974): columns
• O bagagem do viajante (1973): columns
• Deste mundo e do outro (1971): columns
• Provavelmente alegria (1970): poetry
• Os poemas possíveis (1966): poetry
• Terra do pecado (1947): novel

posted afternoon of October 9th, 2010: 2 responses
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Saturday, September 25th, 2010

🦋 Distance

Something you will occasionally see in books translated from a foreign language and published in America, is that metric units of measurement are rendered as English units*, with no conversion of the number next to the units, e.g. "cinco kilogramos" is rendered as "5 pounds". I'm not sure how often this happens, I have noticed it a couple of times and it's driven me just batty. (Also have seen it with monetary units, "cien francs" being translated as "100 dollars" which does not make much sense either.) I believe the thinking behind it is something on the order of, someone reading this story in the original language would get an immediate sense of what 5 kg means, where a US reader would need to pause and convert it mentally -- at the very least it seems to me every time I notice this that it at least ought to be rendered as "ten pounds" or whatever, to keep the meaning the same.

Well: when Saramago was writing The Elephant's Journey he faced a similar issue in terms of translating archaic units of distance into metric, and he came up with a very tidy, winning solution. Check this out -- on the first day of the journey, Subhro is reckoning how far they have travelled:

How far have we traveled, a league, possibly two, he wondered. ...Let us consider the league, which was the word used by subhro, a distance that was also composed of paces and feet, but which has the enormous advantage of placing us in familiar territory. Yes, but everyone knows what leagues are, our contemporaries will say with an ironic smile. The best answer we can give them is this, Yes, everyone did in the age in which they lived, but only in the age in which they lived. The old word league, or leuga, which should, one would think, have meant the same to everyone at all times, has in fact made a long journey from the seven thousand five hundred feet or one thousand five hundred paces of the romans and the early middle ages to the kilometers and meters with which we now divide up distance, no less than five and five thousand respectively. It's the same with other measurements as well. ...Now, having presented the matter with such dazzling clarity, we can make an absolutely crucial, almost revolutionary decision, namely this, while the mahout and his companions, given that they would have no other means at their disposal, will continue to speak of distances in accord with the uses and customs of their age, we, so that we can understand what is going on in this regard, will use our own modern itinerary units of measurement, which will avoid constantly having to resort to tiresome conversion tables. It will be as if we were adding subtitles to a film, a concept unknown in the sixteenth century, to compensate for our ignorance or imperfect knowledge of the language spoken by the actors. We will, therefore, have two parallel discourses that will never meet, this one, which we will be able to follow without difficulty, and another, which, from this moment on, will remain silent. An interesting solution.

*Ooh and look! I did not know anything about this; but until the mid-19th C. there used to be an entirely separate Portuguese system of measurement units.

↻...done

posted afternoon of September 25th, 2010: Respond
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Thursday, September 23rd, 2010

🦋 Publication!

(Well not until next summer, but still...) I got word today from Words Without Borders that they love my translation of Réquiem and are going to publish it in their "Homages" issue next July. I'm tremendously excited about this! I remember a line of Edith Grossman's to the effect that the way to be a translator is to assert that you are a translator, to just go ahead and do it; and now I feel like I am a translator, like I am going ahead and doing it. I also heard from John Carvill of the brand-new site oomska that he wants to publish my translation of Pablo Antonio Cuadra's "Black Boat". This is great... I think I will look around for a new story to start working on, maybe something by Soledad Puértolas.

posted evening of September 23rd, 2010: 8 responses
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Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010

🦋 La bella nadadora

Speaking of Altazor, I found on YouTube a reading of the Prologue that I've been translating over the last few weeks. Clémence Loonis is reading:

"And I created the mouth and the lips of the mouth, to imprison ambiguous smiles; and the teeth of the mouth to keep watch on the absurdities that enter our mouths.

"I created the tongue of the mouth, the tongue which man tore from her proper role, making her learn to speak... She, she, the gorgeous bather, torn forever from her proper role, aquatic, purely sensual."

My parachute began to fall vertiginously. Such is the force of the attraction from death, from the open sepulchre.

You must believe it, the tomb holds more power than the eyes of my beloved -- the open tomb and all its charms. And I'm saying this to you, to you who when you are smiling, you make me think about the beginning of the world.

My parachute became entangled with an extinguished star, one which went conscientiously about its orbit as if it were not aware of the futility of its efforts.

And making good use of this well-earned respite, I proceeded to fill in, with my profound thoughts, the blank squares of my gameboard:

"Authentic song is arson. Poetry weaves herself through every thing, she lights the way for her consumations with her shivers of ecstasy, of agony.

"One must write in a tongue which is not one's mother tongue.

"The four cardinal points are three: the South and the North.

"A poem is a thing which is coming into being.

"A poem is a thing which never exists, which must exist.

"A poem is a thing which never has existed, which could never exist.

"Flee from the sublime external, unless you want to die brought low by the wind.

"If I did not commit some madness at least once every year, I would surely go mad."

↻...done

posted evening of September 22nd, 2010: Respond
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🦋 Weinberger as translator

In Canto V of Altazor it seems like Weinberger is really coming in to his own -- this is the first Canto where I can really read the translation without constantly looking back to the original to see what rhythm and meaning Huidobro was getting at, the point at which Weinberger's poem becomes a poem of its own.

Here begins the unexplored land
Round on account of the eyes that behold it
Profound on account of my heart
Filled with likely sapphires
Sleepwalking hands
And aerial burials
Eerie as the dreams of dwarfs
As the branch snapped off in infinity
The seagull carries to its young

Jugamos fuera del tiempo
Y juega con nosotros el molino de viento
Molino de viento
Molino de aliento
Molino de cuento
Molino de intento...

We play outside of time
And the windmill plays along
The wind mill
The mill of inspiration
The mill of narration
The mill of determination
The mill of proliferation...

We play outside of time
And the windmill plays along
Ventilationmill
Inspirationmill
Narrationmill
Determinationmill
Proliferationmill...

A couple of lovely lines from earlier in the canto, in my own translation:

So let us light a pyre beneath the oracle
To placate destiny
Let us feed solitude's miracles
With our own flesh
So in the cemetery, sealed off
And beautiful, like an eclipse
The rose breaks its bonds and blossoms beyond the grave
...
Laugh, laugh, before fatigue arrives.

(Speaking of translation, I had some potentially very good news from an editor at Words Without Borders, about my submission of Zupcic's Réquiem. Should know more next week.)

posted evening of September 22nd, 2010: Respond
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Friday, September 17th, 2010

🦋 Romped romped tantas cadenas

Each Canto of Altazor gets a little faster, a little more frantic. In Canto III (which Weinberger says in his preface, is where the fireworks really start), the rhythm is getting insistent, begging you to follow along:

Break all one's ligaments and veins
The loops of breathing and the chains

Of our eyes, our paths to the horizon
Flower projected on uniform skies

The soul paved with memories
Like stars, emblazoned by the wind

The sea, a rooftop shingled with bottles
Dreams in the sailor's memory

posted evening of September 17th, 2010: Respond

Tuesday, September 14th, 2010

🦋 Altazor's manifesto

I'm feeling on a bit of a roll with reading and translating the prologue to Altazor. Here is another section, in which Huidobro/Altazor lays out the manifesto of the poem. There is some tricky pronoun-switching here; but I think the way I'm reading it makes sense.

Oh: how beautiful... how beautiful.

I see the mountains, the rivers, the jungles, the sea, the ships, the flowers, the seashells.

I see the night and the day, the axis where they converge.

Oh, oh,-- I am Altazor, great poet, without a horse who eats birdseed, nor who warms his throat in the moonlight; with my little parachute, like a parasol above the planets.

From each drop of sweat on my forehead are born stars; I will leave you the task of baptizing them, like so many bottles of wine.

I see it all, my brain was forged in tongues of prophecy.

See the mountain as the breath of God, climbing its swollen thermometer until it touch the feet of my beloved.

Am that one who has seen all things, who knows all the secrets, without being Walt Whitman -- I have never had a white beard, white like lovely nurses, like frozen streams.

That one who hears at night the counterfeiters' hammers, just busy astronomers.

That one who drinks from the warm glass of wisdom after the flood, paying heed to the doves, who knows the path of fatigue, the seething wake behind the ships.

That one who knows the storehouses of memory, of lovely forgotten seasons.

He: he, shepherd of airplanes, who conducts lost nights and masterful winds to the matchless poles.

His moan is like a blinking web of unseen meteors.

The day rises in his heart; he lowers his eyelids to make night, the farmer's respite.

He washes his hands under the gaze of God, he combs his hair like light, like he's harvesting slender raindrops, satisfied.

The screams are more distant now, like a flock across the hills, when the stars are sleeping afer a night of continuous labor.

The beautiful hunter, looking at the heavenly watering-hole where the heartless birds drink.

(The as-yet-nameless stars will make another very satisfying appearance early in Canto I.)

Ah, qué hermoso... qué hermoso.

Veo las montañas, los ríos, las selvas, el mar, los barcos, las flores y los caracoles.

Veo la noche y el día y el eje en que se juntan.

Ah, ah, soy Altazor, el gran poeta, sin caballo que coma alpiste, ni caliente su garganta con claro de luna, sino con mi pequeño paracaídas como un quitasol sobre los planetas.

De cada gota del sudor de mi frente hice nacer astros, que os derea la tarea de bautizar como a botellas de vino.

Lo veo todo, tengo mi cerebro forjado en lenguas de profeta.

La montaña es el suspiro de Dios, ascendiendo en termómetro hinchado hasta tocar los pies de la amada.

Aquél que todo lo ha visto, que conoce todos los secretos sin ser Walt Whitman, pues jamás he tenido una barba blanca como las bellas enfermeras y los arroyos helados.

Aquél que oye durante la noche los martillos de los monederos falsos, que son solamente astrónomos activos.

Aquél que bebe el vaso caliente de la sabiduría después del diluvio obedeciendo a las palomas y que conoce la ruta de la fatiga, la estela hirviente que dejan los barcos.

Aquél que conoce los almacenes de recuerdos y de bellas estaciones olvidadas.

Él, el pastor de aeroplanos, el conductor de las noches extraviadas y de los ponientes amaestrados hacia los polos únicos.

Su queja es semejante a una red parpadeante de aerolitos sin testigo.

El día se levante en su corazón y él baja los parpados para hacer la noche del reposo agricola.

Lava sus manos en la mirada de Dios, y peina su cabellera como la luz y la cosecha de esas flacas espigas de la lluvia satisfecho.

Los gritos se alejan como un rebaño sobre las lomas cuando las estrellas duermen después de una noche de trabajo continuo.

El hermoso cazador frente al bebedero celeste para los pájaros sin corazón.

↻...done

posted evening of September 14th, 2010: Respond
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