Oh well. Sometimes you just have to do something stupid: so here's a shot at "Anoche cuando dormía..." (Antonio Machado, 1903)
Last night as I was sleeping
I dreamed -- blessed illusion! --
that a fountain was flowing in my heart.
Tell me, water, by what hidden channel
do you come to me: spring of new life
that I never drank?
Last night as I was sleeping
I dreamed -- blessed illusion! --
that I had a beehive in my heart,
and golden bees were manufacturing
white wax and sweet honey
out of old grievance.
Last night as I was sleeping
I dreamed -- blessed illusion! --
that a burning sun shone in my heart:
burning because it gave the warmth
of a red hearth; sun because it dazzled,
and brought tears to my eyes.
Last night as I was sleeping
I dreamed -- blessed illusion! --
it was God that I had in my heart.
There are three obvious things that have to be kept in translating this poem: 1) it needs to be in a popular verse form, something like English ballad measure, with regular meter and rhyme; 2) it needs to be in natural language, with only a few mild poeticisms, and 3) its parallelisms are fundamental and must be preserved.
Okay, so two out of three? It was beyond my powers to render this in any common English rhyme: I had to settle for a rough three-beat rhythm that was a least a little like the Spanish, and no rhyme at all. Yeats could have done it, maybe: but Yeats had his own work to do.
2 comments:
I liked your treatment enough to read it all the way through. Even though I love words sometimes I slide off of poems. When I can read to the end then the poem is for me.
Oh good! Yeah, I used to avoid poetry whenever possible: it's a taste I acquired relatively late. And of course there's so much variety in poetry, that even people who would like one subset of it often don't stumble across what they'd like.
Post a Comment