READIN

Thursday, June 30th, 2011

🦋 Breakfast and Lunch

A new poem from Pelele had the happy effect of reminding me of one of my very favorite poems, Kenneth Koch's "Lunch" -- and the funny thing is, I was noticing similarities to "Lunch" even before I looked up to the top of the poem and noticed Pelele's title...

Breakfast

by Eduardo Valverde

Last night I dreamed of you -- or of your father:
a tall man under his hat.
The place I found myself reminded me,
its silence, of a bird -- a bird that’s sleeping,
an engine, maybe, lying in the junkheap.
He came along, his face drawn long, like kids
when they play at grown-up
or like a bankrupt god
who tallies up his mornings carefully
and finds that all that glitters is not gold;
he carried a green bottle in his hands
and the analgesic pain that comes of touching earthly things.

He spoke enthusiastically of the sea's paternal womb,
of land unmapped, unconquered, which begins off in the darkness --
in every single letter of the word, “desperation” --
He spoke of a taste like olives, of the flavor in her breasts,
in hers who never aged but who had brought forth many daughters
each with olive nipples;
of the unease that he feels before the window in a photo
in which a bowl of fruit is standing lonesome on the floor
of the hallway in a vacant house --
or I should say, before the light that’s coming through the window,
an angel hewn of green basalt;
a solid angel, weak Annunciation.

He poured me out a cup and took the bottle by its neck.
Could not remember you; but he said,
with joy in his eyes, he said My kids were like the rattle
of the hills when trains are rolling by;
like a pack of dogs, dogs baying in the distance
to push your weary heart along the journey.
It must have been getting dark, I guess -- a solitary lamp
was turning back to ash his eyes and moustache

And me, I was anxious, I needed to pee;
I felt my dress was falling into shadow --
     its weight returning --
raised my hands to my cheeks and found I was not dying
nor was I really back among the living.

Two images in particular seem like they could have come from Koch's pen, the woman "who never aged but who had brought forth many daughters/ each with olive nipples", and the man boasting, "My kids were like the rattle/ of the hills when trains are rolling by" -- also the general flow of the text and of voice reminds me of Koch. (I have probably intensified this similarity in my translation; but I believe it is present in the original as well.) The "analgesic pain that comes of touching earthly things" is going to stay with me for a long time.

posted evening of June 30th, 2011: 2 responses
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Monday, July 4th, 2011

🦋 Brandished back against the lances of the sun

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 clarín de la mañana y miran el vasto campo de batalla. Entonces sueñan -- bulle la remota osadía -- se remontan a los días heroicos, cuando el hierro devolvía al sol sus lanzas potros blancos escuadrones de plata el grito lejanísimo 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.

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 haunches drunk 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.

posted afternoon of July 4th, 2011: Respond
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Saturday, July 9th, 2011

🦋 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 (Ⅸ) El maestro de Tarca me decía: 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 July 9th, 2011: 3 responses
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🦋 Lo desconocido

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 "juraría" 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 "juraría" 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 "juraría" -- 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 (Ⅲ) Maestro, dijo Cifar, seguí tu consejo y crucé el Lago buscando la isla desconocida. Fui con viento benévolo a la más lejana, virgen y perdida Pero que yo conocí esa isla juraría! que su sonoro acantilado devolvió mi canto un día juraría! que era la misma mujer la que allí me esperaba casi lo juraría! 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 who was waiting there for me I could almost swear it! El maestro smiled and spoke: The known is the unknown.

EL MAESTRO DE TARCA (â…£) Dijo el maestro de Tarca: Coge la cigarra del ala Al menos llevas en la mano el canto.

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.

posted afternoon of July 9th, 2011: Respond
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Sunday, July 10th, 2011

🦋 La piedra del Águila

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 (Ⅰ) Sentado en la piedra del Águila el maestro de Tarca nos decía: 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.

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.

Carlos Mejía Godoy sings
about grasping all things by their name

EL MAESTRO DE TARCA (Ⅷ) Sentado en la piedra del Águila el maestro de Tarca nos decía: 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

Monday, July 11th, 2011

Two more poems from the "el maestro de Tarca" series:

EL MAESTRO DE TARCA (Ⅶ) Con el oído atento al fragor de las olas y los vientos el Maestro de Tarca nos decía: En el rencor del Lago me parece oír la voz de un pueblo.	EL MAESTRO DE TARCA (Ⅶ) 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.
EL MAESTRO DE TARCA (Ⅺ) 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 (Ⅺ) 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.

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. Allí lloró la tribu a su héroe. Allí todavía lloran los que pasan esperando una antigua promesa. Allí dice la leyenda que ha de volver a su pueblo con una palabra nueva.

-- 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.

posted evening of July 11th, 2011: 1 response

Monday, July 18th, 2011

🦋 Counterfeits

My copy of the forthcoming issue of Two Lines -- journal of the Center for the Art of Translation -- arrived in today's mail. A nice feeling to see my name there; my translation of the first chapter of The Art of Resurrection is my first contribution to Two Lines, hopefully there will be more to come.

And -- well, this seems like some kind of sign to me, to me who is always looking for portents: The editor's note from Luc Sante mentions in its second sentence "the late Kenneth Koch, one of my greatest teachers" -- so soon after I'd been thinking about Koch in the context of translation...

posted evening of July 18th, 2011: 4 responses
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Tuesday, July 19th, 2011

🦋 Two Lines

So I am reading some of the pieces in this edition of Two Lines (the one I mentioned yesterday) and it is making me feel very good to be included in this crowd. The quality of selections and of translation is just off the charts. And rereading my piece in this context, I honestly think it holds up, that it is of a like quality to the rest of the anthology. (Although almost the first thing I noticed was a problem of tense, a sentence that would have sounded much better with the addition of the word "had". Oh well, too late for revisions.)

• Chris Andrews' translation of the opening of Varamo, by César Aira, had me laughing out loud on the train this morning, underlining passages ("the sequence was dense with meaning, but threatened from within by the infinite"! "the innocent look of an incoherent letter"! "Light dissolved the worries created by its dark twin, thought"!) and longing to read the whole thing.
• Joanne Turnbull's translation of The Letter Killers, by Sigizmund Krzhinzhanovsky, again makes me want to read the whole book. The inklings of asemia contained in Krzhinzhanovsky's protagonist's method of composition have me dying to know where he goes from here.
• Andrew Oakland translates Martin Reiner's meditation on "The Angel of Destruction" -- the Warsaw Pact troops entering Brno when Reiner was 4 years old, in kindergarten. Extremely powerful and, as Oakland asserts in his translator's note, it does not require much familiarity with Czech history to get the point.
• Harry Thomas and Marco Sonzogni translate two poems by Primo Levi which have me wondering how come I have not read any Levi yet.

posted evening of July 19th, 2011: Respond

Friday, July 29th, 2011

🦋 holy, unspeakable, mysterious Night.

In case you have not been following comments on my years-old threads (and really -- who could blame you?): Ben has convinced me to re-open the Novalis translation project that I started back in 2007 but never really got anywhere with. He has contributed some excellent suggestions regarding nearly all of the sentences in the poem's second stanza. Perhaps you started reading this blog sometime since 2007 and you would be interested in helping out with this project, if only you knew about it! -- Well, here is your chance. We're trying to improve on the various English translations of Novalis' poem Hymns to the Night, and we're trying to do it by committee. Take a look and see what you think.

Ben's working translation of the second hymn is below the fold.

Hymn to the Night â…¡

Does the Morning always have to return?

Will the obligations of everyday life never stop?

Troublesome activity undermines the heavenly passage of Night.

Won’t the secret offering of love ever burn for ever?

Light’s time was measured out, but the power of the Night is timeless and boundless.

Holy Sleep, gladden not too seldom the Night’s servant in everyday work.

The span of sleep is endless.

Only fools misunderstand you and know of no sleep except that shadow that in the half-light of genuine sleep you softly throw over us.

They aren’t aware of you in the nectar of the golden grape, in the almond tree’s marvelous oil, and in the brown juice of the poppy.

They don’t know you are that which lingers around the bosom of the tender maiden and makes a heaven in her lap; they have no idea that you open a path to Heaven from the Old Stories, and that you carry the key to the dwellings of the blessed,

O, silent bringer of endless secrets.

↻...done

posted evening of July 29th, 2011: Respond
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Sunday, July 31st, 2011

🦋 Sussurating

The hiss of the cicadas in the trees behind our house is at its peak this evening -- really reverberating through our entire second floor. (It's a sound I love, for which small mercy I give thanks.) As I was listening to the buzzing just now a new approach hit me to a problem of tense that I'd been batting around a few weeks ago:

EL MAESTRO DE TARCA (â…£)

by Pablo Antonio Cuadra

Thus spoke el maestro

de Tarca:

Catch the cicada

by its wing
At least

you're holding in your hand

its song.

I believe this is both truer to the source and better sounding, more poetic, than what I had previously.

posted evening of July 31st, 2011: 1 response
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