le mar, la mer, le mar
Back on 18th of December I translated Neruda's Deber del poeta. What a wonderful poem! It makes me very happy and I think I want to share a bit of the first stanza here with you:
A quien no escucha el mar en este Viernes
por la mañana …
a éste yo acudo y sin hablar ni ver
llego y abro la puerta del encierro
y un sin fin se oye vago en la insistencia,
un largo trueno roto se encadena
al peso del planeta y de la espuma,
surgen los ríos roncos del océano,
vibra veloz en su rosal la estrella
y el mar palpita, muere y continúa.To everyone not listening this Friday morning
to the sea waves …
to you let me arrive, and, without speaking or looking,
let me open the door to your prison cell,
let a vibration begin, so vague, so relentless,
a great speck of thunder set into action
the whole roar of the planet and the sea foam,
the harsh rivers of the flooding ocean,
the stars vibrating all together in their corona,
and the sea, battering, dying and continuing.
Consider this a starting point. I too am one of the horde of humanity not listening to the sea right now. I live in the flat ex-swamp of lower Michigan. Once it was all farmland here, but slowly the subdivisions turned the cornfields full of deer and turkey of my childhood into gated communities. If anything is vibrating out here, it is the pulse of machines, the earth movers, the unthinking cranes and the hydroelectric drills, turning out more and more suburbia. It is hard for me to keep the sea in my mind and yet the sea is such a benevolent and tempestuous image in so many poet's work that I feel I can do little else before I head off to work than dream of the sea … le mar, la mer, le mar.
A little journey is required now. You and me. Why not? You hunger for it, too, I think. So why not go together?
We start with weighing anchor and for that I call on the great Uruguayan poet Delmira Agustini (1886 - 1914). I highly recommend the translations of Alejandro Cáceres, from Selected poetry: poetics of Eros (2003) as well as El libro blanco (1907) from which this poem comes from and her posthumous book Los calices vacios (1968).
El poeta leva el ancla
El ancla de oro canta…la vela azul asciende
Como el ala de un sueño abierta al nuevo día.
Partamos, musa mía!
Ante lo prora alegre un bello mar se extiende.En el oriente claro como un cristal, esplende
El fanal sonrosado de Aurora. Fantasía
Estrena un raro traje lleno de pedrería
para vagar brillante por las olas.Ya tiende
La vela azul a Eolo su oriflama de raso…
El momento supremo!…Yo me estremezco; acaso
Sueño lo que me aguarda en los mundos no vistos!…Acaso un fresco ramo de laureles fragantes,
El toison reluciente, el cetro de diamantes,
El naufragio o la eterna corona de los Cristos?…The singing from the golden anchor … the ascending blue sail
Like the dream's wing opening to a daybreak.
Let us cast off, my Muse!
For beyond our joyous prow lies a bewitching sea.Out in the east, crystal clear, burns
The dawn's rosy lantern. Fantasy,
Draped in a precious gown coated with rare gems,
Wanders sublimely by the waves.The blue sail
To Aeolus now unfolds the satin royal banner …
Ai, the supreme moment! … I toss and turn; perhaps I am
Dreaming of what awaits for me in these unknown worlds? …Perhaps a bough of fresh, fragrant laurels,
The shimmering Golden Fleece, the scepter of diamonds,
A shipwreck or the the Christs' eternal crown?…
Again, in the spirit of conversation, I know I am using a bit more "mutable" set of definitions for various words than, say, Cáceres does. But is that a bad thing? I do not know. Do we lose the essence of the poem? I think not.
Take for example, Agustini's term oriflama. Cáceres translates it as "oriflamme;" and while that is certainly a word and might hold certain meaning for the translator, I must confess I had no idea what it meant and so I skipped over it in my first reading. Poor way to read a poem, really. My dictionary said "oriflamme" meant: 1) An inspiring standard or symbol. 2) The red or orange-red flag of the Abbey of Saint Denis in France, used as a standard by the early kings of France. Fine, and I don't want to imply that I have a monstrous vocabulary but one of my rules of translating is if I don't understand a word in English then perhaps some of my readers will not as well. Simplify, simplify, simplify. What is the point of a translation if you must then translate the translation? So instead I used "royal banner" which might not be literally what Agustini wrote down but I know I am not confusing my reader either.
I must stop here. It is time to get into my scrubs and head to work. Tomorrow we shall return to the sea. I hope you are there with me when it happens.