a new look at neruda’s la united fruit co.
I think it is time to learn from my mistakes. How can one develop if they do not learn? For example, I am still in love with Neruda's poem La United Fruit Co., regardless of who is translating it. I am not concerned that someone called me on my errors, I am actually pleased it happened, rather my question this morning is what were those errors?
Perhaps if I explain why I am working on Spanish poetry in the first place a few things will be cleared up. I have no interest in presenting the "definitive" translation or whathaveyou (as if I have the skill or talent to even try that), of a poet's work. No; I make no claims about being fluent in Spanish. Rather, with the fantastic wealth of Spanish poetry in the world, why is it that only 30% of it has been translated into English and maybe 30% of that is on the Internet so anyone can read it? Free translations for anyone? What an idea! But it is sad, I think, that for all our talking about how the Internet is a radical system for independent thought, we rarely use the tools given to us.
I am an Anglo; mixed breed Ukrainian Jew, Irish and Italian. But even in my limited experience I know that the general, middle class American reading public (who is somewhere in the back of my head as a possible "audience" as I type this) knows even less about modern Latin and South American poets than I do. So, if I could do anything with my blog, it would be waystation for these translations. Perhaps they are bad translations? But at least they are translations of voices that need to be heard! You could then read this work by Daisy Zamora or Alfonsina Srorni and say: "I never even heard of these poets but now I want to read more!" That, I think, is a better service than leaving these poets lost in a slim anthology from the 1970s in some back shelf of a library few will ever check out again.1
To begin with, when I first posted this translation2 I wrote the following:
There are rare poems that have things to say about politics that are permanently smart and useful, and those poems I find myself still reading. How interesting! How difficult is it then to have the keeness to write poems that will both say something about ourselves and have a lasting power. One might ask oneself: if suddenly this present Administration (or whoever it is you are currently writing a poem about) was to be voted out of office, would my poem still have anything to say? Will people look back 100 years from now and find your poem just as powerful or will they say: "I guess you had to be there to understand what the poet was getting at"? I am thinking of Neruda's La United Fruit Co. because 100 years from now I believe this poem, this angry poem, will still hold its power, even if Coca Cola, Co. disappeared tomorrow.
And again I think this brings up some interesting questions: is a translator doing a disservice to a poem by changing the tenses? I recall after 9/11 reading translations of anti-war Roman poets where the translators did do just that, change the tense so the poems took on a "here and now" tension. I don't think anyone wrote in complaining the translations were bastardizing Horaces' verse, but I could be wrong. So much was happening then, so many poets were trying to find words (both their own and others) to explain what was happening that, in context, the sins of the translators were slight compared to flying fully loaded commerical jet airliners into the Twin Towers.
It is hard to find poets willing to take risks. Even I balked after my first letter from Laura suggesting I stop what I was doing. So it is refreshing to re-read that there are poets in the world willing to put their words into service of "the simple people" (again, Neruda's term). Shelby sent me a link concerning the poet Robert Hass. Here is an example of activism and poetry in action. Hass' passions revolve around the enviornment. A bit of the interview goes as follows:
Q: How do you think poetry makes a difference in activism?
A: It's definitely a trickle-down theory. A relatively small number of educated people read poetry, and written poetry affects songwriting, and songwriting affects masses of people. Poetry becomes an expression that filters into the world slowly. Wordsworth read the German Romantics, [who transformed the perception of wilderness into] a place for the soul's great adventures. … Wordsworth, more than anyone else, articulated this new vision. So Thoreau read Wordsworth, Muir read Thoreau, Muir preached the gospel of Yosemite, and we got our national-park system. Ideas matriculate slowly through poetry into the general culture, but they eventually matriculate into the general culture.
Q: In several poems, you seem to have doubts about how poetry can serve as a mode for an activist. For example, in "Rusia en 1931," you write, "Poetry proposes no solutions."
A: There have been poems and novels that have inspired political movements. But I don't think that's what poetry's particularly good at, and it's not in the end what people go to poetry for. People are apt to read poems about people who stub their toes, or smell the flowers, or get into an argument with their girlfriends … There are rare poems that have things to say about politics that are permanently smart and useful, and those poems I find myself still reading.
Q: You were one of the first poet laureates [of the United States, 1995 to 97] to take the role and open it up beyond literacy to activism. Have you changed the position for future poets?
A: I think we all have collectively done it over time. In the early days, it didn't really have much impact beyond whoever would be interested in going to a poetry reading in the evening on Capitol Hill. It's gradually evolved into a more activist post. I don't necessarily think that every poet should treat it that way — you presumably pick people because they're good poets, and what they want to do is write poetry, not be converted into politicians.
What I felt then, that I got a formulation of when I read Aldo Leopold, is that you can't be stewards of a place that you don't love, and you can't love a place that you don't know. Actually you can love a place that you don't know. All kinds of Americans think they love America as a place without actually knowing what's there, so the problem is … opening or reopening people to the life of their senses and the rich life of the planet going on around them.
- I am not hinting that Daisy Zamora or Alfonsina Srorni aren't widely read; rather that was the mentality I was using, going into this experiment [back]
- Since I still do not understand the difference between "translation" and "adaptation" I will continue to call everything I do "translation" until a time when I decide I am no longer doing that activity [back]