What is poetry?

In the old days, I used to torture people by my translations of polish poems. They suck, but it was a way of improving my, still bad but at this time even worse, english.




Julian Slonimski
Apostate
(Night.In front of the tent. Persian desert.)

Pass me the cup of wine, Prokopius.
The wound hurts less now.
I have never seen so many stars in the sky.
Home stars from Gaul and from over Rome,
How hostile do they shine today over the desert.
Stay with me. I would like to breathe once again
(With?) the cold of the night. i'd always feared
The limitless desert sands, but now
The irrational fear has gone away. there's no place
For fears conceived by imagination
When I'm filled to the bottom of my heart
With certainty of implacable, near death.
Everyday worries, tiny anxieties
Are as jackals, vultures and hienas
Which scared away, escape in panic
When a lion approaches its victim.
They say that a human, before he dies,
Sees the desperately abbreviated history of his life
What are the images of my memory that come back to me?
I don't see the face of my uncle Constantius,
But how closely and how greviously do I see
Childish bodies of my murdered brothers
White, as if all the blood had sank
Into darkly stained bed-clothes.
I was saved when me and Gallus
were hidden by the faithful slave behind the curtain.
And again I see whiteness. Whiteness of high marble stairs
Of the house where bishop of Aretuza gave us safe shelter;
It was Him who first educated me in christianity,
Taught me humility and praised poverty,
While willingly accepting on episcopal court
Copious tribute, ordered by law;
Sheep, oil, grain, lax and wine,
Carried by loady ships,
Rich products of unnamed lands,
Winter roses and spring snows.
Poverty! I know it from churches of Antioch,
From golden basilicas of Constantinople.
It was him who approved of Wallentrojans' slaughter,
Death of Aremus and duke of Egypt,
Whipped to death by eunuchs.
Sinless murders, because in confessional
Brigand gave the murdered absolution,
And always found some dark line of text
Which gave right of higher type
To the crime comitted for revenge or greed.
He ordered to love your own enemies.
Love enemies? How to love them?
What will be left for friends?
Perhaps hate? Is this the worth of feelings?
Even as a child I was told
To pray to crippleness and uglyness,
When on socles of overthrown Gods
Painted puppets were placed,
Figures of saints with plaster faces,
Deformed by visible suffering.
Was I supposed to waste my young years
In a gloomy vestibule of a closed temple,
To renounce the world, not being sure
Of what the death and unearthly life will bring us?
Can I choose the unrestrained
lust of delight that awakens sadness?
I've chosen fate of a soldier. Your fate.
Because it's a male thing to fight against injustice,
To defend the honour. Unnamed crime
Is like a poison hidden in wine.
Who dares to call me apostate?
Who's the traitor here, and who remained faithful?
Where is everything I'd believed in willingly?
Oh Eusebius, dear Procopius,
Today, in the hour of reckoning with life,
I don't regret the fight and I don't regret the failure,
But I'm afraid that I've missed something harder,
Something that above the human nature,
Over faults of animal herd,
Is like air, like rays
Of unknown sources flowing down on us.
Galilean. I see whiteness again.
Colours spinning round are flowing together.
Everything I've believed in, I've hated,
is deformed in this last thought.
March of events is strangely shortening, and thoughts
that accompanied past deeds
Stand alone, as if aside,
Some amongst enemies, some amongst friends.
Of row of my past days
Some go away, grow and move to the head
Of the defeated army of days of my life.

There are parts I really do not like, but I really like the part comparing anxieties to jackals and hienas and death to the lion that scares them away, as well as days of emperor Julian's life compared to the marching soldiers of his defeated army.

the poet is Julian Slonimski, a polish-Jewish poet, one of the Skamander poet group, which I consider the best polish poets in XX century. He wasn't the best poet of this group, though.
I really do not remember who was Wallentrojan. Julian the Apostate, who "speaks" in this poem,
recalls his past. His family was murdered after the death of emperor Constantine, by the army,
allegedly by instigation of emperor Constantius, who wanted to get rid of his further relatives.
I doubt he was to blame: he kept Julian and his brother Gallus, children who've survived the slaughter, and raised them. Educated by pagan philosophers, Julian secretely abandoned christianity. When they grew up, Constantius made Gallus cezar (which was kind of vice-emperor). Gallus, however, has proven a horrible tyrant, which lead to his execution. Julian was named cezar then, and sent to Gaul. Some claim Constantius hoped he'd fail and thus he'd get a reason to execute him. Julian was successful, though, and revolted against Constantius.
Constantius was dieing at this point, and he appointed Julian his successor, to prevent further civil war.

Julian, when he became emperor, attempted to re-establish "modernised" paganism as the ruling religion. He made a great expedition against Persia. He hoped that he will achieve a great success which will help him to lure RE back to paganism. But due to his pride and strategic mistakes, it was a complete disaster, and the emperor himself received a lethal wound during the long retreat. He allegedly exclaimed "Galileae, vicisti" (Galilean, You've won!), then, as his death ment end of paganism in the Roman Empire. Some claim he was hit by a spear of a christian Arab fighting on persian side, some even claim he was killed by someone fighting on his own side.
The next emperor, Jovian, was a christian. He had to give up several strategic important positions (Nisibis was the most important of them), resign of Armenia and other lands, to assure safe return of the army. Sadly, it was Jovian, not Julian, who was blamed for this treaty.

Pace for two (by me Zenon_pt, AKA Batista)

Come, come dance with me
At the sound of stars
Of your forgotten past.

Come, come with me vibrate
Every time we hold
And we can find them together.

Come, but come with me,
In to the five mounts of the truth
To plant the happiness
In the fields of life
Along the river of comfort.

Come on, come
And you will see the new world arriving
Forget the sadness that you had
In that charmy smile from destiny.

Come on. I said so. Come on.
And the fruit of the moment will be stone
For our home that we want to have
In the mist of tomorrow.

@ JEELEN
Do you understand Portuguese?

If so I will send you my nickname over a forum we have on Lusofonia web named:
www.luso-poemas.net

But here it's the site that you can chenk my original in Portuguese.

hum...
Well Pessoa had English poetry, that I do know. Did you already saw a book could "Mensagem"?
About others Portuguese poets... Let see...
Bocage, he was from my home town poet in the 1770-1800's;
Cesário Verde, could be a good choise but still is the late's 1870-80's;
Eugénio de Andrade, more the 20th Century;
Mia Couto, could be another good choise.

In the middle of the road

[FONT=Courier,sans-serif] In the middle of the road there was a stone
there was a stone in the middle of the road
there was a stone
in the middle of the road there was a stone.

Never should I forget this event
in the life of my fatigued retinas.
Never should I forget that in the middle of the road
there was a stone
there was a stone in the middle of the road
in the middle of the road there was a stone.

-- Carlos Drummond de Andrade

(Translation by Elizabeth Bishop, from http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/1471.html.)

Also, there is a great documentary on O amor natural: http://icarusfilms.com/new97/o_amor_na.html.Carlos Drummond de Andrade (October 31, 1902 - August 17, 1987) was perhaps the most influential Brazilian poet of the 20th century. More translations of his poems can be found at http://motherbird.com/Andrade.html.
[/FONT]

Well, that was a stone in a frozen pond... Actually, when I first read this poem I found it quite unremarkable (hence the posted links), but it goes to show one can write poetry about virtually anything. Apart from that this particluar poem illustrates the way poets observe or view the world, i.e. with eye for detail. Now, I may return to the subject of poems in Portuguese, but for the moment I'm looking at a review of a new translation of Vergil's Aenid by Sarah Ruden in the New York Review of Books, issue 18-25 March.


http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=22436

Meanwhile, here's a link to Leonard Cohen's rendition of a Garcia Lorca poem:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSWgnSE8A-I

Zenon_pt said:

Well Pessoa had English poetry, that I do know. Did you already saw a book could "Mensagem"?

Click to expand...

I haven't, but thanks for reminding me. Here's an example of Fernando Pessoa's poetry written in English:

On an ankle

A sonnet bearing the Imprimatur
of the Inquisitor-General
and other people of distinction and decency

I had a revelation not from high,
But from below, when thy skirt awhile lifted
Betrayed such promise that I am not gifted
With words that may that view well signify.

And even if my verse that thing would try,
Hard were it, if that word came to be sifted,
It find a word that rude would not have shifted
There from the cold hand of Morality.

The gaze is nought; mere sight no mind hath wrecked.
But oh! sweet lady, beyond what is seen
What things may guess or hint at Disrespect?!

Sacred is not the beauty of a queen...
I from thine ankle did as much suspect
As you from this suspect what I mean.

?(1907)

(Minor correction applied, retrieved from http://pintopc.home.cern.ch/pintopc/WWW/FPessoa/INPoems.html, which also includes a caricatural sketch of Pessoa.)

More on Vergil later.

Also by Fernando Pessoa:

Às vezes tenho ideias felizes,
ideias subitamente felizes, em ideias
e nas palavras em que naturalmente se despegam...

Depois de escrever, leio...
Por que escrevo isto?
Onde fui buscar isto?
Seremos nós neste mundo apenas canetas com tinta
com que alguém escreve a valer o que nós aqui traçamos?...

In translation:

Sometimes I have happy thoughts,
thoughts, suddenly happy, in thought
and in the words into which they loosen themselves naturally...

After writing, I read...
Why did I write this?
Where did I find this?
From where did this come to me? This is better than me...
Would we be nothing but pens with ink in this world
with whom someone truly writes which we scribble here?...

(18.12.1934)


(From Álvaro de Campos: Poesias; Pessoa used several pseudo- or heteronyms. Other than Álvaro de Campos he also published as Albero Caeiro and Ricardo Reis.)

One last poem, with which I'll leave Portuguese poetry for now, and which, despite its title, may be quite appropriate now:

Natal

Nasce um deus. Outros morrem. A Verdade
nem veio nem se foi: o Erro mudou.
Temos agora uma outra Eternidade,
e era sempre melhor o que passou.

Cega, a Ciência a inútil gleba lavra.
Louca, a Fé vive o sonho do seu culto.
Um novo deus é só uma palavra.
Não procures nem creias: todo é oculto.

In translation:


Christmas

A god is born. Others die. Veracity
has come nor gone: there are new Error classes.
We now have a different Eternity,
and better is always what passes.

Blind, Science plows on with no end.
Mad, Faith lives its dream of cult.
A new god will make no amend.
Do not search or believe: all is occult.

(1922?)

(From Fernando Pessoa Cancioneiro. "Verdad" ofcourse literally translates to Truth; to keep the rhyme of the original, I substituted it for Veracity instead.)

@Jeelen you could send me a PM to help you over the Portuguese translation. No problem.
But "As veces tenho ideias felizes," is "Às vezes"
And "Kouca" is "Louca"

Here's one of the poems of Fernando Pessoa in Mensagem - Mar Português (Portuguese Sea)

"Ó mar salgado, quanto do teu sal

São lágrimas de Portugal!

Por te cruzarmos, quantas mães choraram,

Quantos filhos em vão rezaram!

Quantas noivas ficaram por casar

Para que fosses nosso, ó mar!

Valeu a pena? Tudo vale a pena

Se a alma não é pequena.

Quem quer passar além do Bojador

Tem que passar além da dor.

Deus ao mar o perigo e o abismo deu,

Mas nele é que espelhou o céu"


English version:

"Oh salty sea, so much of your salt
Is tears of Portugal!
Because we crossed you, so many mothers wept,
So many sons prayed in vain!
So many brides remained unmarried
That you might be ours, oh sea!


Was it worthwhile? All is worthwhile
When the spirit is not small.
He who wants to go beyond the Cape
Has to go beyond pain.
God to the sea peril and abyss has given
But it was in it that He mirrored heaven."