There are so many concerns when translating—especially when translating literature. All the more, poetry.
The other day, my daughter and I were discussing the work of French poet Robert Desnos, who—so said the Introduction to the collection I’d been reading to her—was perhaps the “greatest [French] lyricist” of the 20th century.
“But,” I said to my daughter, “the translations don’t seem to capture his lyricism.”
“Maybe the translators were focused on bringing across the images,” she noted. “It’s hard to do both.”
And yet.
In learning Spanish and French, I sometimes put my hand to translating poems. I always look up the words I don’t know. But I don’t always put them straight from the dictionary into my English poem. I do take liberties. The liberties are in service of other parts of the poetic experience.
Neruda, to me, is a poet who presents the challenge my daughter identified. His images are striking. His rhythms, his lyric sense, his linguistic echoes always seem tied to the sea, or the garden, or the murmur of voices.
How to bring this across? I try. If you don’t like one part of my translation, perhaps you’ll like some other part that touches a more subterranean place where poetry is at play along different lines.
Take what you love. Feel free to leave the rest along the shore.
Nace
Yo aquí vine a los límites
en donde no hay que decir nada,
todo se aprende con tiempo y océano,
y volvía la luna,
sus líneas plateadas
y cada vez se rompía la sombra
con un golpe de ola
y cada día en el balcón del mar
abre las alas, nace el fuego
y todo sigue azul como mañana.
—Pablo Neruda
Born
I came here to the end of things
where there is nothing to say,
all is understood through season and ocean,
and the moon, returning,
her lines a-silver
and every moment the darkness is broken
with a wave-cascade
and every day on the balcony of the sea
wings unlock, born is the fire
and the whole world follows, blue as tomorrow.
—L.L. Barkat translation of Neruda’s “Nace”
Photo of Chile by Cristian Castillo, Creative Commons, via Unsplash.