Myth of Arrival

Alfonsina took a train to Mar del
Plata. That much is true. She took a train
and walked into the sea. The rest? I tell
you I was not there, I don't know. Complain
all you want. Argentina is not Spain
and your lousy geography does not
make it so, ever. Please try and explain
this. We spend millions, send a cosmonaut
to space and still a girl is only taught
about spinsterhood and her maidenhead.
She had cancer, you know. It was not caught
in time. She wrote, "voy a dormir." She said,
"I am going to sleep." That is true. She
took a train and walked out into the sea.

My sonnet is about Alfonsina Storni (May 1892 — October 25, 1938); Argentina's first feminist poet and one of the greatest writers of all South American verse. I do not know if that will come through in my translations of her yo en el fondo del mar¹ but that is the fault of the translator, not the poet. Tarraugh Flaherty says this of the poet:

Alfonsina Storni's life serves as a reflection to the problems that may have faced any intellectual woman during the early to mid 20th century in a male dominated society. Storni introduced pertinent issues well before the Women's Liberation Movement even began to impact society. She was a Latin woman, of lower income who … spoke on the behalf of many women by suggesting that relationships between men and women be intellectual and more balanced. She urged the government to grant women the vote and wrote articles and essays on women's rights. La Nacion of Buenos Aires published several articles that she wrote under the pseudonym "Tao-Lao." She became a part of a group of writers, poets, artists, and musicians of the time who together visited "La Pena," a restaurant where Alfonsina used to stand to recite her poetry.

However, it is always dramatic deaths that make front page news and Storni, like her fellow Argentine poet Alejandra Pizarnick, took her own life. Though Pizarnick battled life-long depression, Storni's battle was with cancer. Following her sister-in-writing, Virginia Woolf, on October 25, after writing her suicide note in the form of the poem, Voy a Dormir, she filled her pockets with stones and drowned herself in the surf off Mar del Plata.

Some very good translations of her work can be found in Marjorie Agosin's These Are Not Sweet Girls (1994) as well as Rachel Phillips' Alfonsina Storni: From Poetess to Poet (1975).

***

at the bottom of the sea
there is
a crystal house.
it flows
to an avenue
of stony coral.
around five o’clock
a great golden fish
comes to greet me.
to me it brings a red
bouquet of coral
flowers.
I sleep in a bed
a little bit bluer
than the sea.
through the crystal
a squid
winks at me.
in the green wood
that surrounds me
"din, don," "din, dan" …
sing and dance
the blue-green sirens
of mother-of-pearl.
and over my head,
burning in the sunset,
the spiny bristles of the sea.

1. Yo en el fondo del mar goes as follows:

   En el fondo del mar,
   hay una casa
   de cristal.
   A una avenida
   de madréporas
   da.
   Un gran pez de oro,
   a las cinco,
   me viene a saludar.
   Me trae
   un rojo ramo
   de flores de coral
   Duermo en una cama
   un poco más azul
   que el mar.
   Un pulpo
   me hace guiños
   a traves del cristal
   En el bosque verde
   que me circunda,
   din don … din dan ñ
   se balancean y cautan
   las sirenas
   de nácer verdemar.
   Y sobre mi cabeza,
   arden en el crepúsculo,
   las erizadas puntas del mar.
   [back]

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 10th, 2006 at 5:51 pm and is filed under Scantily Clad Info Dump, Original Poetry, 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.