Mark Strand, dos poemes i mig (i 3)

Ja no caldria continuar amb Strand, però no puc deixar un poema a mitges, així que acabo amb la traducció de la segona part de “Traducció, 5”. Es pot traduir? No es pot traduir? Preguntes inútils perquè la qüestió, fins que tothom sigui omnilingüe, és com.

Afegeixo l'original sencer i, per si algú, sigui poeta o no es vol entretenir amb la lectura o la traducció, tanco aquest petit cicle amb “The Great Poete Retorn”, publicat al “The New Yorker” l'any 1995 i posteriorment, l'any 99, al volum Blizzard of one: poems.

“Vós descobrireu”, digué Borges, “que Wordsworth rebutja

ser traduït. Sou vós qui haurà de ser traduït, qui

haurà de convertir-se, encara que el temps s'eternitzi, en l'autor

de “The Prelude”, això és el que va passar amb Pierre Menard quan

va traduir Cervantes. Ell no volia compondre un altre Don Quijote

-cosa que és fàcil- sinó Don Quijote. La seua admirable intenció

era produir unes pàgines que coincidissin -paraula per paraula,

lletra per per lletra- amb les de Miguel de Cervantes.

El mètode inicial que imaginà era relativament senzill: Conèixer

bé l'espanyol, recuperar la fe catòlica, guerrejar contra els moros

i el turcs, oblidar la història d'Europa entre 1602 i 1918, i ser

Miguel de Cervantes. Compondre Don Quijote a principis

del segle disset era una empresa raonable, i necessària,

potser fatal; a principis del segle vint, era quasi impossible.”

“No gairebé impossible”, li vaig dir, “sinó absolutament impossible,

perquè par traduir hom ha de deixar de ser.” Vaig tancar

els ulls per un segon i em vaig adonar que si deixava de ser,

mai podria saber-ho. “Borges...” vaig estar a punt de dir-li

que la força d'un estil hauria de mesurar-se per al seua resistència

a la traducció. “Borges...” Però quan vaig obrir els ulls, ell i el

text on estava dibuixant havien desaparegut.

-------- o ---------

I was in the bathtub when Jorge Luise Borges stumbled in
the door. "Borges, be careful!" I yelled. "The floor is slippery
and you are blind." Then, soaping my chest, I said, "Borges,
have you ever considered what is implicit in a phrase like
`I translate Apollinaire into English' or `I translate de la Mare
into French': that we take the highly idiosyncratic work of
an individual and render it into a language that belongs to
everyone and to no one, a system of meanings sufficiently
general to permit not only misunderstandings but to throw
into doubt the possibility of permitting anything else?"
"Yes," he said, with an air of resignation.
"Then don't you think," I said, "that the translation of
poetry is best left to poets who are in possession of an
English they have each made their own, and that language
teachers, who feel responsibility to a language not in its
modifications but in its monolithic entirety, make the worst
translators? Wouldn't it be best to think of translation as a
transaction between individual idioms, between, say, the
Italian of D'Annunzio and the English of Auden? If we did,
we could end irrelevant discussions of who has and who
hasn't done a correct translation."
"Yes," he said, seeming to get excited.
"Say," I said. "If translation is a kind of reading, the
assumption or transformation of one personal idiom into
another, then shouldn't it be possible to translate work done
in one's own language? Shouldn't it be possible to translate
Wordsworth or Shelley into Strand?"
"You will discover," said Borges, "that Wordsworth refuses
to be translated. It is you who must be translated, who must
become, for however long, the author of The Prelude. That
is what happened to Pierre Menard when he translated Cervantes.
He did not want to compose another Don Quixote --which
would be easy-- but *the* Don Quixote. His admirable
ambition was to produce pages which would coincide --word
for word and line for line-- with those of Miguel de
Cervantes. The initial method he conceived was relatively
simple: to know Spanish well, to re-embrace the Catholic
faith, to fight against the Moors and Turks, to forget
European history between 1602 and 1918, and to *be* Miguel de
Cervantes. To compose Don Quixote at the beginning of the
seventeenth century was a reasonable, necessary, and perhaps
inevitable undertaking; at the beginning of the twentieth
century it was almost impossible."
"Not almost impossible," I said, "but absolutely impossible,
for in order to translate one must cease to be." I closed
my eyes for a second and realized that if I ceased to be, I
would never know. "Borges..." I was about to tell him that
the strength of a style must be measured by its resistance to
translation. "Borges..." But when I opened my eyes, he,
and the text into which he was drawn, had come to an end.

-------- o ---------

When the light poured down through a hole in the clouds,
We knew the great poet was going to show. And he did.
A limousine with all white tires and stained-glass windows
Dropped him off. And then, with a clear and soundless fluency,
He strode into the hall. There was a hush. His wings were big.
The cut of his suit, the width of his tie, were out of date.
When he spoke, the air seemed whitened by imagined cries.
The worm of desire bore into the heart of everyone there.
There were tears in his eyes. The great one was better than ever.
“No need to rush,” he said at the close of the reading, “the end
Of the world is only the end of the world as you know it.”
How like him, everyone thought. Then he was gone;
And the world was a blank. It was cold and the air was still.
Tell me, you people out there, what is poetry anyway?
Can anyone die without even a little?