Once more, dear friends, once more.
So the story goes: Janis Joplin wanted to call her first live record, Dope, Sex & Cheap Thrills. Through the power of editing the record company issued it as Cheap Thrills. The rest, as they say, is history.
Now I have gone back to an earlier translation of Neruda's Oda a la cebolla, his ode to the wonderful onion, and compared it to Stephen Mitchell's. It's all in the tense. Everything I touched I brought into the present. That is not a compliment, flattery, kudos. It is an inability to read Spanish properly. Or rather, since I hold my translator's dictionary in one hand through all of this, Mitchell's book in the other, my art is rather hampered by the tools I have in my small room.
No matter, Herbert von Karajan's version of Tchaikovsky's Capriccio italien is on the stereo. We must find a new art; that was what I was looking for in Neruda's Odas, a new way of speaking to everyone. Here is what I wrote in this earlier posting:
[this is a] poetry that can reach anyone regardless of who is in the audience, "Oda a la cebolla" … It both simple in its aims and beautiful in its language. Mark J. Mascia of the Sacred Heart University says of "Oda a la cebolla:"
Neruda notes how this simple vegetable formed in the earth … as the onion quite literally becomes a symbol of auto-chthonous creation. In other collections of poetry, Neruda often characterizes man as auto-chthonous, having been formed from earth itself, in order to provide a sense of solidarity between mankind and nature … On this occasion, it is the humble onion which partakes in a cosmic union with the world … A brief dialectic of “"yo" (the pronoun "I") and "tú" is set up, in which Neruda’s poetic voice plays the former and the onion itself becomes the second-person interlocutor. This vegetable addressee is always “al alcance / de las manos del pueblo” - within the grasp of [field-laborers, the common man] - and satisfies the hunger of the "jornalero en el duro camino." It is at once the "Estrella de los pobres" and the "semilla del astro," a "globo celeste" and "copa de platino" - images of both earthly and celestial richness alongside people who are not rich. A simple yet animate entity such as an onion is partly responsible for feeding an entire population.
It is interesting, though, how many people consider Neruda one of the (if not the) most prolific and popular of all 20th century poets. Why is that? Is that the poetry of 2005 (soon to be 2006) remains, in large part, unteachable, academic, arcane? … Is it immaterial what our quick appraisal on entire schools of poetry's merit is? Who cares if I personally like it or not; it is being written all the same … 90% of the material in this latest issue of Poetry seemed to be designed and constructed in such a way that, not only is a road map required to understand where the poem is going, we pride ourselves on needing such a roadmap just to understand what the poem wants to say.
It is this map, Shelby tells me again and again as we read the poems out loud, that does not seem to be included in the instructions. Why is this? This assumption that we write for an ever decreasing, limited audience? What happened to Whitman singing to a nation? Why do we make art that becomes a labor of love simply to begin? Yes, all poetry taxes my patience at times, but this new poetry actively defies any attempt to be spoken orally.
For poetry to survive, I feel, people must be willing to be repeated. People must be able to repeat it, sing it, at some level. I can think of no poem, anywhere, that's been passed down through the generations that refuses to be sung. There are pretty experiments that exist, certainly. And it is a gamble to try to come up with the next big new thing, a strange beast of burden indeed, to build a text out of cacophony, to build anything.
That is why Neruda seems so popular, why it took a South American to be one of most popular poets of the 20th century, not one of our pretty boys and girls of 2005 getting published and awards and money and status today. It's not that our poets can't go in the direction Neruda has opened up for us, it is that we have chosen not to go that way … In fifty years from now will we have taken the dance out of the revolution? Or, as Allen Ginsberg put it, will it be: "the only poetic tradition is the Voice out of the burning bush. The rest is trash, & will be consumed"?
One of my favorite meditations on art comes from Bertolt Brecht's "Galileo," Appendix A actually, "Writing the Truth: Five Difficulties:"
Nowadays, anyone who wishes to combat lies and ignorance and to write the truth must overcome at least five difficulties. He must have the "courage" to write the truth when truth is everywhere opposed; the "keenness" to recognize it, although it is everywhere concealed; the "skill" to manipulate it as a weapon; the "judgment" to select those in whose hands it will be effective; and the "cunning" to spread the truth among such persons. These are formidable problems for writers living under Fascism, but they exist also for those writers who have fled or been exiled; they exist even for writers working in countries where civil liberty prevails.
I keep going back and underlining passages from every paragraph in Brecht's essay. If I were to teach a class one day on poetry, first I would have my students read this, paragraph by paragraph, back to front and back again. It should be required reading before anyone picks up a pen and paper. It should, but of course, it isn't.
Perhaps this is why Neruda is so popular by both academics and his "day-laborers"? Each of his odes melds all the elements of what Brecht says are necessary and then Neruda adds more. His poems are "funny" and "emotional." Those are two items missing in contemporary poetry, as well. How refreshing to hear something true and laugh at the same time! Perhaps, when it is all said and done, if I can't dance I don't, as the old saw goes, want to be part of your revolution — regardless of what you have to say. I will take this one step further. I think I would rather listen to anything Duran Duran ever penned than another poem that takes me no where, says nothing, is un-singable, refuses to be comitted to memory.
How odd, is it not, to go back and reread something you have written a month before? I went through that Brecht essay paragraph by paragraph and yet I still return to Neruda's Odas every time. I hope to make peace with all those who find fault with my poor translations. That is why I posted *A Note On All Translations* on the first page of this blog. Read that, my friends, then read this new translation. I hope it speaks clear. Unlike real life, I hope not to stutter. I hope all this pleases.
Oda a la cebolla
Pablo Neruda |
Ode to the Onion
translated by ZJC |
|
Cebolla
luminosa redoma,
pétalo a pétalo
se formó tu hermosura,
escamas de cristal te acrecentaron
y en el secreto de la tierra
oscura se redondeó tu vientre
de rocío.
Bajo la tierra
fue el milagro
y cuando apareció
tu torpe tallo verde,
y nacieron
tus hojas como espadas
en el huerto,
la tierra acumuló su poderío
mostrando tu desnuda
transparencia,
y como en Afrodita
el mar remoto
duplicó la magnolia
levantando sus senos,
la tierra
así te hizo,
cebolla,
clara como un planeta,
y destinada
a relucir,
constelación constante,
redonda rosa de agua,
sobre
la mesa
de las pobres gentes.
Generosa
deshaces
tu globo de frescura
en la consumación
ferviente de la olla,
y el jirón de cristal
al calor encendido
del aceite
se transforma en rizada
pluma de oro.
También recordaré
cómo fecunda
tu influencia el amor
de la ensalada
y parece que el cielo
contribuye
dándote fina forma
de granizo
a celebrar tu claridad
picada
sobre los hemisferios
de un tomate.
Pero al alcance
de las manos del pueblo,
regada con aceite,
espolvoreada
con un poco de sal,
matas el hambre
del jornalero en el
duro camino.
Estrella de los pobres,
hada madrina
envuelta en delicado
papel, sales del suelo,
eterna, intacta, pura
como semilla de astro,
y al cortarte
el cuchillo en la cocina
sube la única lágrima
sin pena.
Nos hiciste llorar
sin afligirnos.
Yo cuanto existe celebré,
cebolla,
pero para mí eres
más hermosa que un ave
de plumas cegadoras,
eres para mis ojos
globo celeste, copa de
platino,
baile inmóvil
de anémona nevada
y vive la fragancia
de la tierra
en tu naturaleza
cristalina.
|
Onion,
crystalline sack,
your beauty formed,
petal after petal,
of luminous scales
that increased you
and your belly grew with dew
in the mystery of the
dark earth.
Underground
this mystery
occurred
and when your cumbersome
green stem burst forth,
and your leaves were born
like sabers
in the garden,
the earth heaped up
her power
showing your naked
transparency,
and as the withdrawn sea
lifting Aphrodite's breasts
duplicated the magnolia,
so did the earth
fashion you,
onion
clear as a planet,
and destined
to bedazzle,
constant constellation,
round rose of water,
upon
the tabletops
of the poor.
Generously,
you undo
your globe of freshness
in devout consummation
of the cooking pot,
and the crystal shred
in the flaming heat
of the oil
is transformed into
a curled feather of gold.
Again, I will recall how fertile
is your influence on
the love of the salad,
and it seems that
the sky must aid
by giving you hail's
clever form
to celebrate your
chopped brightness
on the borderlands
of the tomato.
But within reach
of our communal hands
sprinkled with oil,
dusted
with a nip sea salt,
you kill the hunger
of field-laborers
on the hard road.
Star of the oppressed,
pixie godmother
wrapped
in delicate
paper, you rise from
the ground
infinite, intact, perfect
as any astral seed,
and on chopping you up
the kitchen knife
will raise one single tear
without agony.
You force us to cry
but never hurt us.
I have praised all
the world that exists,
but to me, you
onion, you are
more handsome
than any bird
of dazzling feathers,
a heavenly orb,
a platinum bowl,
an unmoving dance
of the snowy windflower
and the aroma of
wet earth burns
in your luminous being. |