Machado poem translated

Antonio Machado

“Excerpts of Proverbs and Songs

29” from Castilian Fields, 1912

Wayfarer, there are your steps

On the path and nothing else;

Wayfarer, there is no path,

You make the path by walking.

By walking you make the path,

And looking backward

You see a trail whose footprints

You can never retrace.

The wayfarer has no path

Except frothy washes on the ocean.

Translated by Jerry Blanton—June 30, 2011, 3-4 a.m.

As you can see, I translated this early today.  The translation was prompted by a conversation with Mauricio Soto, who admires Machado's writing and pointed me to this poem in particular.  I liked the poem and the challenge of translating it and capturing Machado's timeless theme and his melancholy mood.
 
Machado's "Song 29" reminds me of the folksong "I'm just a poor wayfaring stranger / I'm a-travelling through this world of woe."  It also reminds me of Nietzsche's dictum:  "Embrace your fate"; and Robert Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken."
 
In researching some biographical facts about Machado, I ran into another serendipitous moment.  During the conversation with Mauricio, I had told him about something that happened when I was about thirty years old in Tampa and was teaching ESOL to adolescents from around the world during a summer session.  In my class was a beautiful sixteen-year-old girl from Argentina; she had the soft, gentle kind of beauty that made me think she would continue to be beautiful all her life--a kind of internal grace.
 
I, however, was suffering the anguish of my recently broken marriage, although professional teacher that I was and am, I try not to show that to my classes.  Evidently, this quiet beauty had developed a crush on me, for at the end of the course, she gave me a medallion from her home town and told me to come see her in Argentina.  It was an invitation to romance and perhaps more.  She said something like "You would like it in the mountains where I live.  It's a beautiful place.  A wonderful place to raise a family."
 
I didn't go, for, thank goodness, I had enough common sense to know that I was at that time a psychological mess and would just be tossing my wreckage on her shore and she didn't deserve the chaos that could bring.
 
Nevertheless, I have wondered what my life might have been like had I tossed aside my wreckage here and fled to the arms of the beautiful young Argentine.  I'm sure I would have still been a writer and a professor there, but a different writer and professor, perhaps even a happily married one.
 
Here's the serendipity.  When Machado was thirty-four, he met and married a fifteen-year-old girl.  Unfortunately, the girl died a few years later from tuberculosis.  Like the forlorn narrator's lost love in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven," the girl's name was Leonor (Lenore in Poe's poem).  Machado spent many years getting over her death, about which he wrote many poems as if he were Poe reincarnated.
 
So, I thought, Suppose I had gone to Argentina, fallen deeply in love, married this young woman, and then she had died as Machado's wife had died.  I would have been in even more of a mess psyhcologically.  Perhaps I had avoided the Siren's call to disaster.

a romantic French Canadian

A DREAM OF WATTEAU



By Emile Nelligan


When shepherds in evening’s russet twilight
Lead their great black goats by the flute’s gilded trill
To the home hamlet, from the hillocks,
They return along fields of prickly holly sprigs;


Bohemian schoolboys, souls free of strife,
Laden with nothing for a while and in days without anger,
In a recess from study, to the woods strewn with husks
We go, unbounded, give our ears to the cascade


Of the brook, in the dale along which runs the yelping
Little sheepdog of the easy-going sons of Pan,
Whose wailing whistle summons, far away.


Then, weary, we lie down, shivering to the bone
And, at times, radiant, in our palace of hay,
We lunch on the dawn and dine on the stars.

2007
 
This is my translation from the French.  Emile had an Irish father and a French mother.  Until he was twenty years old, he wrote and spoke wonderful poetry.  From then until his death he existed in mental institutions.
 
"Tragically, but perhaps not surprisingly, this highly intelligent, sensitive and literary young man, torn between two languages, two cultures and two parents, lurched into what may have been schizophrenia (the word was not used at the time). Diagnosed in August 1899, he entered the first of two psychiatric hospitals. He would never be cured.


During his four years as a teenage poet he had produced about 170 poems. He is now discussed, studied, and honoured as the most important poet of Quebec and as one of Canada’s most interesting and significant writers."--http://www.ballinagree.freeservers.com/emilnelligan.html

Look at Emile's young face.  Has there ever been a more romantic visage!

Below are items related to thid blog.

Cuba's poet and freedom fighter

Jose Marti

Simple Verse of José Martí



I’m a sincere man
From where the palm grows,1
And before I die I want
To scatter my verses from my soul.

1 Cuba


My verse is from a clear green
And from a bright red.
My verse is a wounded stag
That seeks shelter in the woods.


I have seen the injured eagle
Fly to the serene blue
And kill in its lair
The poisonous viper.


I come from all places
And to all places I go.
I am art inside the arts;
And in the woods, the woods.


The leopard has a pelt
In the dry, dun forest.
I have more than the leopard,
For I have a good friend.


I grow a white rose
In June as in January
For the true friend
Who gives me his honest hand.


And for the cruel who tear out
The heart that gives me life,
I don’t grow stinging nettles;
I grow a white rose.


I want when I die --
No homeland, but no master --2
To have in my tomb a sprig
Of flowers and a flag.

2 Expatriate of Cuba, but free from Spain’s tyranny.


Don’t put me in the dark
To die like a traitor.
I am good, and as good,
I will die facing the sun.


Sometimes when I’m happy
Like a simple schoolboy,
I think of the yellow canary
That has such black eyes.3

3 Symbolic reference to Spain (yellow) and the evil (black) that it has caused.


With the earth’s poor,
My die is cast.
The mountain stream
Pleases more than the sea.


I trembled once at the fence
At the vineyard’s entrance
When the foreign queen-brute
Bit my daughter’s brow.


If you see a mountain of spray,
It’s my verse you see;
My verse is a mountain,
And an open fan of feathers.


These verses are my translation, although I have to credit Federico Rodriguez who stimulated me to do the translations and gave me suggestions on tone and diction.  They have not been published before now.  Jose Marti for Cubans is like Thomas Paine or Thomas Jefferson or Patrick Henry or all three combined for Americans because Marti articulated the hopes and desires of the Cubans.  Marti is a hero to both expatriates in Miami and ironically to Fidelistas, although I doubt Marti would think highly of a totalitarian state, nor would he be tolerated there.  If Jose Marti were alive today, he would probably be imprisoned in Cuba for speaking and writing against the oppressive state.
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Cesar Vallejo

Cesar Vallejo

THE BLACK HERALDS


By Cesar Vallejo


There are blows in life so hard . . . I don’t know!
Blows like the fury of God; as if before them
The undercurrent of all we suffer
Is soaked into our souls . . . I don’t know!


They are small; but they are . . . they open dark crevices
In the bravest of faces and in the strongest of backs,
They are perhaps the ponies of Attila’s hordes;
Or the black heralds sent for us by Death.


They are the precipitous falls of the Christs of the soul,
Of some loved one that Fate blasphemes,
These bloody blows are the crackling of any bread
That burns us in the door of the oven.


And man . . . pitiful . . . pitiful!
Turns his eyes, as if someone had tapped him on the shoulder;
Turns his manic eyes, and all reality pools
Like a puddle of guilt, in the stare.
There are blows in life, so hard . . . I don’t know!

I translated "The Black Heralds" first in the early 1990s with a professor from Crown Business Institute.  I looked through my paper files in 2007 but could not find that translation, so I translated it again by myself.  Below are items related to this blog.

French song and nursery rhyme

A statue of Cadet Rousselle in Auxere, France.

CADET ROUSSELLE
1.
Cadet Rousselle has three homes
That have neither rafters nor beams.
They are to shelter swallows.
What can you say of Cadet Rousselle?
Ah! Ah! ‘Tis quite so.
Cadet Rousselle’s a fine fellow.
swallows
2.
Cadet Rousselle has three outfits:
Two yellow; the other grey paper.
He puts it on when it’s freezing,
Or when it’s raining or hailing.
Ah! Ah! ‘Tis quite so.
Cadet Rousselle’s a fine fellow.

This is a poster of a famous French Comedian playing the role.








3.
Cadet Rousselle has three hats,
Two round and not very pretty;
And the third two-cornered
That fits the shape of his head.
Ah! Ah! ‘Tis quite so.
Cadet Rousselle’s a fine fellow.

A bicorne hat.








4.
Cadet Rousselle has three pretty eyes,
One looks at Caen, the other at Bayeux
Without a very clear view,
So the third is his lorgnette.
Ah! Ah! ‘Tis quite so.
Cadet Rousselle’s a fine fellow.

lorgnette







5.
Cadet Rousselle has a rapier,
Very long, but very rusty.
It is said he seeks no quarrel,
But with the sparrows or swallows.
Ah! Ah! ‘Tis quite so.
Cadet Rousselle’s a fine fellow.

rapier







6.
Cadet Rousselle has three shoes,
He puts two on his two feet.
The third has no sole,
So is used to hunt his beauty.
Ah! Ah! ‘Tis quite so.
Cadet Rousselle’s a fine fellow.

7.
Cadet Rousselle has three sons,
One is a thief; the other, a rogue.
The third is a skinny stick;
He looks like Cadet Rousselle.
Ah! Ah! ‘Tis quite so.
Cadet Rousselle’s a fine fellow.

8.
Cadet Rousselle has three fat dogs,
One runs after hares; the other, after rabbits.
The third runs away when called,
Like a dog of cowardly habits.
Ah! Ah! ‘Tis quite so.
Cadet Rousselle’s a fine fellow.

9.
Cadet Rousselle has three pretty cats,
That never chase and capture rats.
The third has no eye-balls,
And climbs into the attic without candles.
Ah! Ah! ‘Tis quite so.
Cadet Rousselle’s a fine fellow.

10.
Cadet Rousselle married his three girls
In three different neighborhoods.
The first two have no looks.
The third has no gray matter.
Ah! Ah! ‘Tis quite so.
Cadet Rousselle’s a fine fellow.

This is a modern postcard from Auxere.
(I have censored it a bit.)












11.
Cadet Rousselle has three coins.
They are for paying his creditors.
When he must show his assets,
He closes them tightly in his purse.
Ah! Ah! ‘Tis quite so.
Cadet Rousselle’s a fine fellow.

deniers




12.
Cadet Rousselle becomes an actor,
Just as another makes himself an author.
In the café when he plays his role,
The blind do find him drole.
Ah! Ah! ‘Tis quite so.
Cadet Rousselle’s a fine fellow.

A Québécoise poster for a performance.









13.
Cadet Rousselle will not die.
For, before taking that step
He must learn orthography,
To make his epitaph himself.
Ah! Ah! ‘Tis quite so.
Cadet Rousselle’s a fine fellow.

14.
Cadet Rousselle was a warrior
In the fashion of a turncoat,
And when he marches to victory,
He turns his back on glory.
Ah! Ah! ‘Tis quite so.
Cadet Rousselle’s a fine fellow.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
A movie poster.
 
 
 
 


 

These are my translations of the song (June-July, 2010).  Where the original may have a specific reference to someone in French history, I have substituted a general term to which American readers can relate.
 
Cadet Rousselle is based upon a real person, an eccentric character who became bailiff of Auxere in the 18th century.  According to Wikipedia, In 1792, Gaspard de Chenu wrote the song, which was spread beyond Auxere by revolutionary volunteers who joined the Armée du Nord. 
 
Here is a cartoon version of the song for French children: Cadet Rousselle
 
Here is a Cajun zydeco version from Lousiana: Cadet Rousselle, Cajun
 
You can see how thoroughly Cadet Rousselle has penetrated French consciousness.  It penetrated mine when I was child.  I believe I learned the nursery rhymes either from My Book House or The Children's Big Book of Mother Goose, both of which mother bought for her children and read to us.
The Children's Big Book of Mother Goose;

Pablo Neruda He Dies Slowly

HE DIES SLOWLY

He dies slowly who transforms his habits into slavery, repeating every day the same trips and who never changes the ruts, who never risks dressing in a new color and never speaks to someone unfamiliar.

He dies slowly who makes the television his guru.

He dies slowly who avoids passion, who prefers black over white and points over dashes to an eddy of emotions, it is precisely those that rescue the shine of the eyes, the smiles of yawns, hearts to stumbles and feelings.

He dies slowly who doesn’t turn the tables upside down when he is unhappy in his work, who never risks the certain for the uncertain in order to go after a dream, who never lets himself at least one time in his life flee the sensible advisors.

He dies slowly who never travels, who never reads, who never listens to music, who never finds thanks in the same.

He dies slowly who destroys his self-esteem, who does not help himself.

He dies slowly who spends his days grumbling about his bad luck or the incessant rain.

He dies slowly who abandons a project before he begins it, doesn’t question an assumption that he doesn’t know or doesn’t respond when he’s asked about something he knows.

We avoid death in gradual payments, remembering always that to live demands an effort much greater than simply breathing. Only impassioned patience will achieve a splendid happiness.


-- Pablo Neruda (translated by Jerry Blanton 10/27/06)


I enjoy translating from French and Spanish and Latin--the three languages with which I am most familiar.  Translating is a slow process for me. I follow these basic steps: (1) I read through in the original language until I'm sure I have the gist of the original. (2)  I note any words or idioms I am not sure of and look them up, sometimes in more than one dictionary. (3) If I feel frustrated, I will go to an on-line translating service and let them give me a standard translation.  (4)  Once I have a basic translation that is viable, I then work to create English sentences or lines that flow and carefully choose English diction that gives the tone and flavor of the original. (5)  I work to create a sense and feeling that is similar to the original language.  (6)  If the translation is a poem--and this is very hard to do--I try to mimic the rhythm and rhyme; but I have learned that it is better to give up the prosody if the attempt damages the meaning and mood.  (7)  I set it aside and return to it later just as I do anything I write.  I always find ways and means to improve the product on the second or tenth revisit.

Sometimes, just for amusement, I take my translation and have a translation service render it back into the original language.  The result is usually humorous.

When I am reading in a language other than English, I try to get a dual-language edition.  I read in the foreign language first and then check my understanding with the English translation.

Here are two dual-language editions of Neruda's poetry. The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems (Bilingual Edition) (English and Spanish Edition) ;  Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair: Dual-Language Edition (Penguin Classics) (Spanish and English Edition)