Music: 渡辺香津美 THE COURT OF THE CRIMSON KING - Kazumi Watanabe - Katsutoshi Morizono

Open your mind, your heart to other cultures
Abra su mente, su corazón a otras culturas
You will be a better person
Usted será una mejor persona
RM

Kazumi Watanabe

Japan

Music: 渡辺香津美 THE COURT OF THE CRIMSON KING - Kazumi Watanabe - Katsutoshi Morizono

You have an alphabetical guide in the foot of the page in the blog: solitary dog sculptor
In the blog: Solitary Dog Sculptor I, the alphabetical guide is on the right side of the page
Thanks

Usted tiene una guía alfabética al pie de la página en el blog: solitary dog sculptor
En el blog: Solitary Dog Sculptor I, la guia alfabética está en el costado derecho de la página
Gracias




Ricardo M Marcenaro - Facebook

Blogs in operation of The Solitary Dog:

solitary dog sculptor:
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Para:
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My blogs are an open house to all cultures, religions and countries. Be a follower if you like it, with this action you are building a new culture of tolerance, open mind and heart for peace, love and human respect.

Thanks :)

Mis blogs son una casa abierta a todas las culturas, religiones y países. Se un seguidor si quieres, con esta acción usted está construyendo una nueva cultura de la tolerancia, la mente y el corazón abiertos para la paz, el amor y el respeto humano.

Gracias :)



 

Poetry - Poesia: Blanca Varela - Distantes y nunca tan próximos - Distant and Never so Close

Open your mind, your heart to other cultures
Abra su mente, su corazón a otras culturas
You will be a better person
Usted será una mejor persona
RM

Blanca Varela

Perú

Distantes y nunca tan próximos
by Blanca Varela


distantes y nunca tan próximos
caminamos sobre una tierra que zozobra
acostados en ella o simplemente de pie
sentimos el corcoveo del tiempo

no se trata de llamas temibles
ni de mares ingobernables
en esta tierra la mente y el cuerpo
tienen el mismo vaivén
en el aire que carece de peso
ya que nada es diferente en la memoria
de lo que hemos visto o imaginado

soñamos como vivimos
esperando sin certeza ni ciencia
lo único que sospechamos definitivo
el acorde final en esta vaga música
que nos encierra

a veces la duda
explícita como una flor
con pétalos y señales nos induce
a girar en nuestros ejes
a tener sed
a beber entintado labios imaginados
en el odre más viejo y mortal

lugar oscuro sitio de luz
sería el cielo en el ojo que se mira
en la mano que se cierra
para asirse a sí misma
en lo inmensamente abierto

a la postre como quien cierra un ataúd
o una carta
un rayo de sol
como una espada asomará para cegarnos
y abrir de par en par la oscuridad
como una fruta asombrosamente herida
como una puerta que nada oculta
y sólo guarda lo mismo




Distant and Never so Close
by Blanca Varela


distant and never so close
we walk on/over an earth/land which sinks/capsizes/founders/collapses
lying (down) on it or simply on foot
we sense/feel the bucking/plunging/prancing about of time

it is not about fearful flames
nor ungovernable seas
on this earth/land mind and body
have the same swaying/to-ing and fro-ing/lurching/backwards and forwards motion/ups and downs/coming and goings
in the air which lacks weight
now that/since nothing is different in memory
from what we have seen or imagined

we dream as we live
waiting without certainty or science
the only thing we suspect definite/definitive/final
the final chord in the vague music
which envelops/encloses us

sometimes doubt
explicit like/as a flower
with petals and signs induces/persuades us
to turn/spin/swivel/pivot/wheel on our axes/axles
to be thirsty
to drink stained with ink/inked/ imaginary/imagined lips
in/at the oldest and most mortal wineskin

dark place/spot site/place/room/space of light
it would be the sky in the eye which looks at itself
in the hand which closes/heals
to take hold of itself/seize itself
out in the immensely open

in the end/when all is said and done as he who closes a coffin
or a letter
a ray of sunlight/sunbeam/ray of sun
like a/as a sword will rise up to blind us
and bit by bit open the darkness
like a fruit surprisingly/unexpectedly wounded
like a door/gate which hides nothing
and only guards the same thing





Notes

‘yet never so close’: ‘y’ is used contrastively, ‘yet’ rather than ‘and’. The phrase recalls ‘so near and yet so far’ in English. We resisted the temptation to transpose Varela’s expression into what is now a cliché, keeping the life of her specific words but echoing, with ‘yet’, the familiar form of the English. Why not ‘distant and yet never so close’? Because it’s a mouthful.

‘walk a sinking earth’: we’ve avoided the wordier phrasal verbs, ‘walk upon’, ‘walk across’. They would have restricted the image to a literal meaning when the poet is using ‘the earth’ in the more metaphorical sense of ‘this life’. The use of ‘walk’ without a preposition or adverb in order to enhance suggestion occurs in Shakespeare: ‘I am thy Father’s Spirit Doom’d for a certaine terme to walk the night’; and Milton: ‘The dear might of him, that walk’d the waves.’

‘a sinking earth’: the Spanish expression, ‘una tierra que zozobra’, calques as ‘an earth that sinks’. These expressions with ‘que’ are extremely common in Spanish, yet also inconspicuous. Too many of them read clumsily in an English poem. Here, the adjectival ‘sinking’ saves the line.

‘bucking’: an odd image in the Spanish, and in the English too; an extremely physical realization of conceptual thinking. Varela enlivens a broadly meditative tone with these surprises, which need to be registered in the translation.

‘the air that lacks weight’: as with the ‘sinking earth’ earlier, we’d attempted to hide ‘that’ with ‘weightless air’. But ‘weightless’ describes an air that simply doesn’t have weight rather than one that lacks it (‘carece’), so we reinstated ‘that’. A clash of two principles — natural English versus the specific meaning of the Spanish.

‘the only thing we suspect beyond question’: we contemplated utter defeat with this line. It’s compressed, but to expand it creates ambiguity: ‘the only thing that we suspect is beyond question.’ Does this mean ‘the one thing that we are suspicious of is beyond question’?; or ‘the only thing that we imagine to be beyond question’? The Spanish means the latter; as does the English we’ve settled on, although perhaps the syntax is still unruly: ‘suspect beyond question’ could imply ‘suspect further than question’.

‘envelops’: ‘which closes round us’ would accentuate the sense of being hemmed in that ‘nos encierra’ communicates. ‘Envelops’, while expressing this meaning, also picks up on a more delicate perception which is present in the ‘vague music’ of the previous line.

‘to thirst’ — ‘to be thirsty’ would be a more colloquial alternative, and ‘to thirst’ does have a bit of the poetic (in inverted commas) about it. Nevertheless, ‘to be thirsty’ is confined to the physical experience where ‘to thirst’ expands into the broader meaning of ‘to desire’, the active one in the poem. One tends to shie away from any expression with archaic/poetic associations as hopelessly vague; yet one person’s vague is another person’s suggestion, an aspect of language that poems exploit with their own precision.

‘stained with ink’: a slightly explicatory rendering of ‘entintado’, but it registers the important perception of an experience that occurs through written language.

‘a dark place / a space of light’: the two synonyms of ‘place’ — ‘lugar’ and ‘sitio’ - present a choice. Since English is more tolerant of repetition than Spanish when the same meaning is repeated, one could use ‘place’ twice, creating an incantatory form which would be consistent with the line’s content. Yet ‘space of light’ nicely accentuates the contrast beween light of the air, with its suggestion of freedom, and darkness of the earth, while nevertheless preserving the vivid sense of physical location from the Spanish. An example of the fortuitous enhancement that can occur in translation when it attends to the target as well as the source language.

The transposition in this passage of the Spanish syntax (which is more flexible than English) has forced us to rethink the lineation. As Varela eschews punctuation and capital letters her poems clearly intend to exploit a degree of syntactic ambiguity, although her lineation groups words into sense units that temper this effect. We’ve attempted to preserve both her openness and her use of the pause to notate the movement of a meditative thought process.

‘out in the immense open’: literally ‘in the immensely open’. The immensely open what? The Spanish neuter article ‘lo’ allows the adjective ‘abierto’ to function as a noun. We have no such device in English. We do have the expression ‘out in the open’, in which ‘open’ functions as a noun, so we built the line around it. It’s still not as tidy as the Spanish.

‘when all’s said and done’: with ‘distant yet never so close’ we avoided the set colloquial expression, ‘so near and yet so far’, since it’s a cliché. Here, we wanted to register the full colloquialism of ‘a la postre’ since its conversational tone registers a note of resignation. With different lines, different principles apply.

‘y solo guarda lo mismo’: that neuter article, ‘lo’, again. The same what? We couldn’t end the poem with the limp ‘the same thing’. ‘Nothing more’ seemed to replicate Varela’s combination of assertion and acceptance.

The poem is taken from Blanca Varela’s most recent collection, Concierto animal (1999)


Thanks to:
http://www.poetrytranslation.org

Poetry - Poesia: Blanca Varela - Distantes y nunca tan próximos - Distant and Never so Close


You have an alphabetical guide in the foot of the page in the blog: solitary dog sculptor
In the blog: Solitary Dog Sculptor I, the alphabetical guide is on the right side of the page
Thanks

Usted tiene una guía alfabética al pie de la página en el blog: solitary dog sculptor
En el blog: Solitary Dog Sculptor I, la guia alfabética está en el costado derecho de la página
Gracias




Ricardo M Marcenaro - Facebook

Blogs in operation of The Solitary Dog:

solitary dog sculptor:
http://byricardomarcenaro.blogspot.com

Solitary Dog Sculptor I:
http://byricardomarcenaroi.blogspot.com

Para:
comunicarse conmigo,
enviar materiales para publicar,
propuestas comerciales:
marcenaroescultor@gmail.com

For:
contact me,
submit materials for publication,
commercial proposals:
marcenaroescultor@gmail.com

Diario La Nación
Argentina
Cuenta Comentarista en el Foro:
Capiscum

My blogs are an open house to all cultures, religions and countries. Be a follower if you like it, with this action you are building a new culture of tolerance, open mind and heart for peace, love and human respect.

Thanks :)

Mis blogs son una casa abierta a todas las culturas, religiones y países. Se un seguidor si quieres, con esta acción usted está construyendo una nueva cultura de la tolerancia, la mente y el corazón abiertos para la paz, el amor y el respeto humano.

Gracias :)