“The South”
The South
By Jorge Luis Borges
Translated by Aaron Goekler
After one of your courtyards has seen
the long-standing stars,
after the bank of
those dispersed lights
that my ignorance has not apprehended to name
or discern the order of constellations,
to have felt the circle of water
in the secret reservoir,
the fragrance of jasmine and the honey suckle,
the silence of the sleeping bird,
the arc of the threshold, the humidity,
–these thing, perhaps, are the poem.
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for William S. Merwin’s translation, check out: http://matthewsalomon.wordpress.com/2008/08/24/jorge-luis-borges-el-sur-the-south/
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Well, it has been a while since I’ve posted–mainly because I didn’t understand how much work maintaining a blog would be at the beginning, although I have been translating in bursts and spurts since then. Perhaps it’s that I had far too lofty ambitions for my ability to produce a continually in-depth commentary section on each translation. Since then, I have resolved to focus the commentary section on my own reaction to reading the published translation after I made my own.
I don’t particularly remember translating this poem, but I do remember comparing it to William S. Merwin’s translation. I tried contacting W.S.M. through whatever channels I could conjure, receiving a response from a friend of his, who had not seen him in over a year, but was aware of his declining health and pledged to notify me if and when he had more information or contact.
Looking at W.S.M.’s translation now, I see that my initial efforts tended towards an overly literal approach, translating virtually every word for its English equivalent and while I managed to connect clauses, however haphazardly into an acceptably coherent poem, I could have worked the syntax to make more sense. I like W.S.M. delicate finesse, his balance between the literal and accurate translation and his own sense of how it operates as a piece of language. My old self that translated this poem could have learned something from W.S.M. And maybe I did. I guess we’ll see in the coming posts.
