Myth of Arrival

I discovered the Cuban poet Dulce María Loynaz while reading Marjorie Agosín's wonderful These Are Not Sweet Girls: Latin American women poets (Fredonia, NY: White Pine Press, 1994) a few weeks ago. Anyone who wants a introduction to the shakers and movers of modern poets making a name for themselves should not only buy this book, read it, love it, but buy it for the one person you can think of who hungers for the poems inside. We are all hungering for something. This is what Agosín has to say about Dulce María Loynaz (page 42):

She was born December 10, 1903 in Havana, Cuba. She is the daughter of Cuban general Enrique Loynaz del Castillo, who fought for independence from Spain. Her brother, Enrique Loynaz Munoz (1904 - 1966) was also a poet. She became a lawyer in 1927, retiring from that profession in 1961. She was elected member to the National Academy of Arts and Letters (1951), the Cuban Academy of Spanish Language (1959) and the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language (1968). In 1992, she won the Cervantes Prize, the most distinguished literary prize in the Spanish-speaking world.

María Loynaz passed away in 1997. If you are interested in her work I recommend Judith Kerman's translations in A Woman in Her Garden (Buffalo, N.Y.: White Pine Press, 2002). They, unlike what I am about to present to you, do justice to a powerful voice.

When I was a wee Zachary and living on a steep hill in El Cerrito, California (across the Bay from San Francisco), my brother and I would make paper boats and race them down the flooded gutter after it rained. Sea View Drive, the street we lived, on was about a quarter mile long and often a fast stream of rushing water made perfect racing conditions. Eli and I would labor for hours over the paper boats, making entire background stories as to the fate and future of these crudely designed crafts. Then we would drop them into the gutter and run along side, cheering on their progress. It always ended the same way — they would disappear down the storm grate and that would be that. I probably thought, as we trudged back up the hill, our 5 minutes of excitement over, that somehow the sewer ran directly into the Bay and the Bay, of course, opened to the sea. I might not be able to work my way around the world on a tramp steamer as a radio operator (a childhood wish) but my paper boat could.

Dulce María Loynaz's paper boat is slightly different; this is not a childhood memory but rather a poem set in the present. It is in these lines: un punto de amor, de derrota predestinada,/ un mínimo viaje jacia la muerta that the adult voice is heard. The terror of failure, doomed love, even the foreshadowing of ones own death; I had trouble with the phrase un mínimo viaje, however. I tried various word combinations but "minute voyage," "minor trek" or "minimal journey" just didn't sing to me. I finally settled on "minute voyage" since it seemed a more literal translation, but I am still unhappy with that choice. What do you think?

Barquito de papel Dulce María Loynaz	Paper Boat translated by ZJC
hince un barquito de papel y lo eché al río: Desde la orilla, trémula de liris de agua, me quendé mirándole … ¡Barquito mío de papl, un punto de amor, de derrota predestinada, un mínimo viaje jacia la muerta … ! – ¿Quíen me mira a mí, desde otra orilla trémula de lirios …?	I made a tiny paper boat and flung it into the river: From the shore, shivering with the water lilies, I watched after it … Ai, my paper boat, focus of my love, of my predestined failure, minute voyage toward my death … ! – Who will look after me, from the other shore shivering with lilies …?

Again, we hunger for what we cannot have and today I am starving for sea foam, tidal currents, the ebb and flow of the surf. How do other people do it? How do other people who can almost taste the grit on their tongues, the way the wind blinds the eyes, the cold rush of water, get on through their days? When I was finished translating Cuando vayamos al mar I compared it to Kerman's version. There were some differences. For example, she renders a la ola as "a wave," whereas I saw it as "the surf." I am not sure whether my change makes too much of a difference, but does it change the meaning of the line? Also, she turns Me amarga as "It embitters me" and simply said "It sours me." Embitter? Sour? Are they the same or is the difference to be called out on? I do not know, to be honest. I have stared at this poem all morning and I still do not think I "grocked it fullness."

Cuando vayamos al mar Dulce María Loynaz

When We Go Out to Sea translated by ZJC

Cuando vayamos al mar yo te diré mi secreto … Mi secreto me parece a la ola y a la sal. Cuando vayamos al mar te lo diré sin palabras: Por debajo del agua quieta, desdibujado y fugaz, mi secreto pasará como un reflejo del agua, como una rama de algas entre flores de cristal … Cuando vayamos al mar yo te diré mi secreto: Me envuelve, pero no es ola … Me amarga … pero no es sal …

When we go out to sea I will tell you my secret … My secret appears like the surf, like salt. When we go out to sea I will tell you this but not with words: Beneath the calm surface, erasing itself as it is written, my secret will glide by, a reflection in the water, a strand of kelp among all these crystal flowers … When we go out to sea I will tell you my secret: It washes over me, but it is not the surf … It sours me … but it is not salt …

Finally, we leave today's translations with Ophelia. Hamlet's ex. X as in the crossing over into the Other Land (Shelby and I are reading Wicked by Gregory Maguire and they keep referring to the land of the dead as the Other Land). I recall a comment in my Shakespeare class I took at UNLV several years ago that in Victorian medicine young women were described as suffering from an "Ophelia Complex;" that is, doctors of the day used Shakespeare's description of Ophelia's madness to explain away symptoms they saw rather than do any research as to why these young women were behaving the way they were. An example of literature shaping the medical establishment. Curious.

I bring this all up because Dulce María Loynaz's punchline in the poem evokes the drowned body of Ophelia. Furthermore, by associating the speaker with Ophelia she takes on all the madness and anger the archetype contains. It is a pretty straight forward translation but I did go out on a limb with the title, Mal pensamiento which Kerman translates as "Dark Thoughts" but I tried out "Ill Thinking." "Ill" is much more slangy choice than "Dark," and I had that in mind when I chose it. Actually, I had the Beastie Boy's Ill Communication in mind, but this word choice might backfire on me. I am prepared to use a different word if it is proved I am very wrong here, of course. But if we don't push the envelope how can we ever see if there is a better way of saying something?

Mal pensamiento Dulce María Loynaz	Ill Thinking translated by ZJC
¡Qué honda serenidad el agua tiene esta noche …! Ni siquiera brilla: Tersa, obscura, aterciopelada, está a mis pies extendida como un lecho … No hay estrellas. Estoy sola y he sentido en el rostro la frescura de los cabellos mojados de Ofelia …	How deeply serene this water is at night! It does not even glitter: Smooth, dark, robed like velvet, it stretches out at my feet like a bed … There is no starlight. I am all alone, I can feel the freshness on my cheeks of the drowned hair of Ophelia …

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 3rd, 2006 at 1:23 pm and is filed under Scantily Clad Info Dump, Translations, Spanish Translations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.