By Jorge Luis Borges

Translated by Aaron Goekler

Shroud of the dove

that the hebrews summon to the initiation of the twilight

when the shadow slackens not the evening

and the arrival of the night warns

like a lingering and ancient music,

like a pleasant declivity.

It’s in that hour when the light

has the fineness of sand,

that I found an unknown street,

naked in the bare breadth of terrace,

whose niches and partitions exhibited

the same muted colors of the sky

that touched the ground.

Everything—the mediocrity of the houses,

the modest ballustrades and door-knockers,

perhaps the hope of a girl on the balconies

entered into my vain heart

with the clarity of a teardrop.

Maybe that hour of the silver evening

would give some tenderness to the street,

making it as real as a verse

forgotten and then recovered.

Only afterwards did I reflect

that the faraway street was somebody else’s,

that every house is a candelabra,

where the lives of its inhabitants burn

like isolated candles,

with our every following steps

on the path to the Golgothas.

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For the original Spanish as well as Alexander Coleman’s translation, which appears in Penuin Classics’ Selected Poems of Borges, go here:

http://musessquare.blogspot.com/2010/08/jorge-luis-borges.html

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On the whole, I’m more confused by Coleman’s translation than anything. In only a few places do I prefer his phrasing. His translation of some words seems too simplified, his use of language unimaginative. Even worse, in some places, he adds his own embellishments where Borges did not, for example describe a girl “dreaming on a balcony.” I definitely see some weakness with my initial stab, presented here, but I feel comfortable letting this one speak for itself.

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.

By Jorge Luis Borges

Translated by Aaron Goekler (translamateur)

Convinced of demise

by many noble certainties of dust,

we delay and sink our voice

between the slow lines of pantheons,

whose rhetoric of shadow and marble

promise or prefigure the desirable

dignity of having died.

Beautiful are the sepulchers,

the naked know-hows and the fatal doom dates,

the conjunction of the marble and the flower

and the fresh garden courts

and the many yesterdays of history

are today arrested and alone.

We confound that peace with death

and yearn for our end

and await the dream and indifference.

Vibrant in swords and passion

and asleep in the ivy,

life exists alone.

Space and time are forms unto themselves,

magical instruments of the soul,

and when it is that they stop,

so will the soul stop with space, time and death,

as the cessation of light

expires the simulacrum of mirrors

that the evening was ending.

Kind shadow of the trees,

birded wind about the undulating branches,

soul that spreads in other souls,

were a miracle that sometime stops being,

incomprehensible miracle,

although its imaginary repetition

haunts our days with wicked horror.

These things I thought in Recoleta Cemetary,

Recoleta Cemetary

By Jorge Luis Borges

Translated by Stephen Kessler

Convinced of decrepitude

by so many certainties of dust,

we linger and lower our voices

among the long rows of mausoleums,

whose rhetoric of shadow and marble

promises or prefigures the desirable

dignity of having died.

The tombs are beautiful,

the naked Latin and the engraved fatal dates,

the coming together of marble and flowers

and the little plazas cool as courtyards

and the many yesterdays of history

today stilled and unique.

We mistake that peace for death

And we believe we long for our end

when what long for is sleep and indifference.

Vibrant in swords and in passion,

and asleep in the ivy,

only life exists.

Its forms are space and time,

they are magical instruments of the soul,

and when it is extinguished,

space, time, and death will be extinguished with it,

as the mirrors’ images wither

when evening covers them over

and the light dims.

Begnign shade of trees,

wind full of birds and undulating limbs,

souls dispersed into other souls,

it might be a miracle that they once stopped being,

an incomprehensible miracle,

although its imaginary repetition

slanders our days with horror.

I thought these things in the Recoleta,

in the place of my ashes.

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The link below contains Borges’ original spanish text of this poem:

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First Impressions

This translation was much more pleasant to read back over than my first posted translation of Borges’ “Las Calles,” which may in part be due to the fact that I just like “La Recoleta” more as a poem. It presented a different set of interesting challenges for which I either found an interesting solution or was thrown for a loop. However, my translation turned out to be pretty close to Stephen Kessler’s published translation that I compared mine with afterward.

Taking Liberties

While this poem presented many opportunities to creatively engage with the language and find an interesting path of interpretation, I am particularly fond of one passage that I molled over a bit before coming up with an interesting solution in lines 27-28. Here, I translated, “Sombra benigna de los árboles,/ viento con pájaros que sobre las ramas ondea” to “Kind shadow of the trees,/ birded wind about the undulating branches,” where Kessler more directly interpreted, “Begnign shade of trees,/ wind full of birds and undulating limbs.” Though Kessler’s plain and clear reading works, I feel that “birded wind about the undulating branches” captures the mystical aesthetic of Borges’ imagery in a more inventive way. Perhaps “birded” is not a “real” word, but in an act of arrogant defiance, I proudly eschew the narrow-sighted trappings of prescriptive linguistic philosophy.

Lost in Translation

However, there are other instances of taking liberty in my translation that did not quite work out as I had imagined they would. One example haunts my days in lines 8 and 9. Again I was slightly dumbfounded by the passage which reads, “Bellos son los sepulcros,/ el desnudo latín y las trabadas fechas fatales,” where after many minutes of intense overthinking, word-checking and futile squandering, I came up with, “Beautiful are the sepulchers,/ the naked know-hows and the fatal doom dates.” Kessler’s reading rights my wrongs with, “The tombs are beautiful,/ the naked Latin and the engraved fatal dates.” Here, I overthought the word “latín,” assuming the word not to be a cognate of “Latin,” the language which may appear on gravestones of Roman Catholic graves in a Buenos Aires cemetaries. Furthermore, I completely missed the fact that what was being described in this passage was a headstone. Albeit, I still enjoy how my lines read, despite the obvious misinterpretation.

In a less obvious example, in lines 14-16, I translated “Equivocamos esa paz con la muerte/ y creemos anhelar nuestro fin/ y anhelamos el sueño y la indiferencia” to “We confound that peace with death/ and yearn for our end/ and await the dream and indifference,” where Kessler more accurately read the lines as, “We mistake that peace for death/ and we believe we long for our end/ when what long for is sleep and indifference.” I remember not knowing what to do with “creemos anhelar,” resolving to leave the concept of belief about the action of “longing” out of the phrase, but clearly, Kessler’s translation more clearly demonstrates what Borges was conveying. Again, I still think that my reading here works in its own flawed way, though I would clear that up on a second draft.

Conclusions

Where my first rough translation comparison with “Las Calles” or “The Streets” was slightly unnerving and cringe-inducing, here, a certain joy accompanied reading back this translation of “La Recoleta” primarily because I am pleased with how the act of meeting the language of the poem on my terms succeeded in a way that reading Kessler’s version could not. Even when our phrasing of certain passages differs only slightly, it is pleasing to see how the different routes of interpreting the same meaning elucidate the subtleties of the original. Thanks for reading.

By Jorge Luis Borges

Translated by Aaron Goekler

The streets of Buenos Aires

Are already my entrails.

Not the eager streets,

Uncomfortable from crowds and bustle,

Without/unlike the unenthusiastic streets of the barrio,

Each usually invisible,

Shrouded in semi-darkness of the sunset

And over there more outside

Removed from the merciful/pious trees

Where austere houses are barely ever explored,

Crushed by immortal distances,

To lose themselves in the deep vision

Of the sky and the plain.

They are for the lonely a promise

Because thousands of single souls inhabit

Unique before God and in time

And without a doubt precious.

The West, the North and the South

Have unfurled—and are then native—the streets:

I hope in these verses that sketch

Are these flags.

Please click “Read the rest of this entry” to read Stephen Kessler’s translation, the original Spanish text and my lengthy commentary

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For the poem in its original Spanish as well as Stephen Kessler’s translation (which I will compare my translation with), go here:

http://matthewsalomon.wordpress.com/2008/08/19/jorge-luis-borges-las-calles/

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Thoughts

Looking at this first rough translation of Borges, now that I’m a few weeks into this project, is a little jarring. I would not now allow myself to leave it in this state before comparing with the published translation that appears on each right-hand page of my Penguin Classics edition of Borges’ Selected Poems. My inclination upon rereading this is to fix, smooth out and streamline; to demonstrate the confidence required in solving the problems I came across. However, I’m presenting this translation where I left it several weeks ago when I removed the page covering Stephen Kessler’s published translation. These rough translations can act as a sort of time capsule for my development in the act of translating.

This  is not my first attempt to translate, but it is my first attempt to translate verse or poetry. I think that at the beginning of this project, I often mistook the structural differences in phrasing between Spanish and English with the differences in explication between prose and poetry. That is to say that I was not forceful enough with my own interpretation of what was being said rather than what the words add up to ultimately say. My self-deception took the form of a fidelity to the line as a unit of phrase rather than a studied gestalt of the sentence that spans the breadth of several lines, usually large sections of the poem.

First Impressions

My first impressions are that phrasing and cohesion across enjambed lines is weak and stilted. I also left a couple of words half-translated here and there such as “Without/unlike” and “merciful/pious,” which is a lazy practice that I have since left behind. In other places I reproduced Borges’ mechanics with a little too much fidelity. For example, the line “have unfurled—and are then native—the streets” is an all too direct translation of Borges’ original “se han desplegado—y son también la patria—las calles.” Kessler’s translation reads smoothly and makes more sense: “Unfold the streets—and they too are my country.” In general, I did not take enough liberties in representing what was being said.

Taking Liberties

After making my first rough translation, upon looking at Kessler’s translation, I was surprised by how many liberties he took in conveying meaning and reproducing an English equivalent in this poem. Even now, I’m apprehensive to invert lines of sentences within the poem the way he does from the beginning. Where I interpreted “The streets of Buenos Aires/ are already my entrails,” he inverted to “My soul is in the streets/ of Buenos Aires.” I acknowledge, however, that neither method is correct, though I admit that I seldom lack the cojones to go that far.

Elsewhere, Kessler even changes the action of the original passage to suit the meaning, such as “To the West, the North and the South,/ unfold the streets—and they too are my country” where I (as before mentioned) translated directly: “The West, North and the South/ have unfurled.” Kessler changed Borges’ description of an action to a command and I think it works beautifully here.

Another passage where I think he took liberty successfully lay in the succeeding and final lines of the poem (“Within these lines may I trace/ Let their flags fly”) where I again strove too literally and failed (“I hope in these verses that sketch/ are these flags”).

In only a few places did I not side with Kessler in taking linguistic liberty in translation. Usually, I develop this preference when I feel that a translated line is over-packed or lacking artfulness. The line I feel this the most is his translation of the fifth line, “but the neighborhood streets where nothing is happening.” “Where nothing is happening” may have been implied and ultimately may convey the meaning of “sino las calles desganadas del barrio,” but I felt it weighted down the cadence of the verse. Albeit, my “without/unlike the unenthusiastic streets of the barrio” is not much better.

Lost in Translation

I did get a couple of things wrong. With line 10’s original “donde austeras casitas apenas se aventuran,” I translated to “Where austere house are barely ever explored.” I saw my error in Kessler’s, “Where austere little houses scarcely venture.” Here, as is often the case, I mistook the reflexive form of “aventurar” for the present perfect. Though I could leave as it is and claim poetic license, I think Kessler’s correct translation works better.

Elsewhere, I was too completely lost on the phrasing to make head or tail of meaning. For example, in line 8, I translated “y aquellas más afuera” to “and over there more outside,” where Kessler more deftly worded “And the ones even farther out.”

And of course, the last two lines just threw me for a spin. In lines 20 and 21, I translated “ojalá en los versos que trazo/ estén esas banderas” to “I hope within these verses that sketch/ are these flags,” where Kessler again more deftly worded “Within these lines may I trace/ Let their flags fly.” I must have missed “estén” as a command, however odd in this context, taking it for the present form.

Conclusions

While this first rough translation feels considerably more rough than some of the subsequent ones I’ve completed in last few weeks, overall, I really enjoyed the challenge of verse translation and found it to be a lot more bite-sized and than the novel length translations I’ve started and am still working on. Also, my predictions were correct in that having an established translation to later compare with is only going to strengthen my skills as a translator. I really felt the momentum to keep going with this project right after finishing the first translation.

With my rough translations of poems by Jorge Luis Borges that comprise the first onslaught of posts, I sought to do a very straight translation from the Spanish, blind to the published translation that appeared on the adjacent page, until I was finished.

The commentary section, I suspect and intend, will comprise of my observations on the differences between the two translations and may, god willing, result in a revised and enlightened second draft.

Let me know what you think!