Thursday, December 18, 2014

Camilo Pessanha: "Imagens que passais pela retina"

Man, it's been almost three months since I last translated a Pessanha poem. This corpse has been slacking- though mainly in this regard, as I've been reading a fair amount of stuff in Portuguese, I'm still going taking Portuguese classes, and my entry to Macau Antigo's sixth anniversary contest garnered me a prize. I wish I could claim the same level of involvement with Chinese; I've been studying it regularly, but it's a lot easier to engage more extensively with Portuguese on a daily basis.

Passando para assuntos mais importantes, apresento-lhe uma tradução inglês de um poema de Camilo Pessanha. Todos os avisos normais aplicam: minhas palavras não são bastante poetica (ou são muito literal), não entendo bem o significado do poema, etc.

Aproveite-o, caro leitor!

---

Imagens que passais pela retina
Dos meus olhos, porque não vos fixais?
Que passais como a água cristalina
Por uma fonte para nunca mais!...

Ou para o lago escuro onde termina
Vosso curso, silente de juncais,
E o vago medo angustioso domina,
— Porque ides sem mim, não me levais?

Sem vós o que são os meus olhos abertos?
— O espelho inútil, meus olhos pagãos!
Aridez de sucessivos desertos...

Fica sequer, sombra das minhas mãos,
Flexão casual de meus dedos incertos,
— Estranha sombra em movimentos vãos.





***

Images that pass across the retina
Of my eyes, why don't you stay put?
You pass like crystalline water
from a fountain, to nevermore!...

Or to the dark lake where ends
Your course, silent in the rushes,
And the agonizing empty fear dominates,
— Why do you go without me, why don't you take me?

Without you what are my open eyes?
— The mirror useless, my eyes pagan!
Aridity of desert after desert...

Even the shadow of my hands,
Random flexing of my uncertain fingers,
— Strange shadow in vain movements.

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

關雎 / "The Ospreys"

Since I'm kinda burned out with reading 莊子 Zhuangzi, which makes up a sizable part of the classical Chinese textbook I've been working through for the past two years, I recently picked up a different textbook, 古汉语入门, published by the Beijing Language and Culture University Press and given to me by Dr. Jianjun Zeng. One of the neat things about this book is that it comes with a CD of readings of all the texts, which in the case of poetry makes learning characters easier. Of course, since this is 文言文 classical Chinese we're talking about, "easier" is a relative term:  the ancient meaning of a character is not guaranteed to parallel its modern meaning, and there are all kinds of invisible grammatical issues to deal with, not to mention the centuries (or millennia) of textual analysis, self-reference, and other things that come with the territory. As was pointed out in an essay on the difficulty of Chinese,

A passage in classical Chinese can be understood only if you already know what the passage says in the first place. This is because classical Chinese really consists of several centuries of esoteric anecdotes and in-jokes written in a kind of terse, miserly code for dissemination among a small, elite group of intellectually-inbred bookworms who already knew the whole literature backwards and forwards, anyway.

 It's a little hyperbolic, but only a little.

The poem below, 關雎 , is the first poem of the 詩經 Classic of Poetry, AKA the Book of Songs or Book of Odes, and its meaning has been the subject of debate for centuries. Yours truly, who is no 名士, has nothing to contribute in that respect, but I have produced an English rendition that I hope you, dear reader, enjoy. The more I read the original the more stark it feels, and I've tried to recreate that here.

微臣
史大偉


---


關雎


關關雎鳩 在河之洲
窈窕淑女 君子好逑
參差荇菜 左右流之
窈窕淑女 寤寐求之
求之不得 寤寐思服
悠哉悠哉 輾轉反側
參差荇菜 左右采之
窈窕淑女 琴瑟友之
參差荇菜 左右芼之
窈窕淑女 鍾鼓樂之

***

"The Ospreys"

"Guan guan"- the cry of ospreys on the river sandbar
The graceful, virtuous woman is a fine match for a gentleman

Here and there she picks water plants of different sizes
He seeks the graceful, virtuous woman night and day

Seeking but not finding, night and day he yearns for her
Endless nights of tossing and turning

Here and there she plucks water plants of different sizes
The graceful, virtuous woman, befriended by zither and harp

Here and there she chooses water plants of different sizes
The graceful, virtuous woman, pleased by bells and drums

Monday, October 27, 2014

"Provincetown, off-season"

Here's a poem I wrote last week while Tracey and I were traveling around southern New England. I wrote a couple others, but this was the best of the bunch.


"Provincetown, off-season"

A far piece to get here,
through villages nigh smug
in their quaintness, and then a stretch
of shuttered family resorts and lifeless restaurants.
Any deeper into the fall-- God forbid
one come in winter!-- and everything here
would be locked up, too, but we made it
just in time
to be only slightly disappointed.

Were we the shopping sort, the town would
reek of pointlessness;
but as we are not,
the glow of lamps in people's homes, the
thoughtless curvature of the streets,
lights on the Pilgrim Monument, and
the taste of a pocketed Narragansett tallboy
all go hand in hand
with the creeping air of desolation
and the click of drag queens' heels on the pavement.



(written 21-22 October 2014, edited 27 October 2014)

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Scott's Stash: Cursed

The storage box wherein all the CDs my brother gave me a long while back still gets opened from time to time, either because I get tired of what's on my hard drive and in my LP collection, or I'm in the mood to listen to something new that is also old while driving, since I probably ain't never gonna give up physical media. (老頭混蛋萬歲, motherfuckers.) Anyway, I was digging through said box the other day and ran across Cursed, by German death metal band Morgoth. I suspect this one of those albums that my brother got, for whatever reason, from Drew, because it isn't something I imagine him buying.

I'll keep this short, because there isn't a lot to say. My overall impression was neither positive nor negative, because Cursed is a perfectly serviceable album. Released in 1991, I can't imagine anyone being overly stoked when they first heard it, but I can also see it getting something along the lines of an honorable mention in year-end lists. There are some good riffs here and there, and the vocalist, Marc Grewe, often makes me wonder if I'm listening to a side project of Chuck Schuldiner's. A few songs have doomy passages that I dig, too, but overall Morgoth doesn't leave an impression, save that of a band that put out a record that couldn't stand up against those released by their Scandinavian (viz. Where No Life Dwells by Unleashed) or Floridian (e.g. Morbid Angel's Blessed Are the Sick) cousins that same year. 

That said, you could still put on Cursed at a party, or as background music at a meeting of non-metalheads, and probably draw some looks or disparaging comments from non-hessians and associated boring fucks. If, say, you're too busy pumping the keg at said party to rebut every snide remark, yet refuse to let someone else control the music, then Cursed is a safe bet: you, the metalhead, won't hate listening to it, but you won't get pissed if you get distracted by doing your friends the inestimable favor of pouring them drinks.

The above may be damning Morgoth's Cursed with faint praise, but according to the Encyclopedia Metallum, they got increasingly shitty as the '90s progressed, so I think a review wherein one's band is compared to Death and not mocked for later missteps is an of ex post facto thumbs up. And really, dudes, it's a decent record; if you come across it, give it a listen, but I can't recommend seeking it out.

On that note, time for some fuckin' Morbid Angel and annual fretting over (one of) the heavy metal novels I intend to write, I Was A Teenage Beast of the Apocalypse.  Later, dudes!

Monday, October 13, 2014

How to spend a Saturday afternoon (and then write about it two days later)

Bom dia, dudes. For best results w/r/t reading the following, do as yours truly: fetch yourself a fairly high-ABV beer and sip it slowly, letting the booze wash over but not drown you. Here we go.

Work on the novel proceeds apace, albeit not as quickly as I'd like. (This is a sentence I should probably have stashed away in a text file on my desktop for rapid cut/paste purposes, given how often I seem to use it, even in correspondence with myself.) I've been busy editing a book for a former professor, but more than that I'm having a hard time keeping focused on the early 16th century: I'm continually reminded, via the books I read, that all the cross-cultural action in the Indian Ocean and environs really starts heating up in the latter half of that century. Still, I'm not going to abandon Anacleto and Agnese Stornello. We've gone through a lot, and as difficult as it's been to tell their story, I'm going to see it through.

Speaking of reading, my friend Linda recently convened the first meeting of a sci-fi book club, which was a lot of fun, and we're going to be reading Dan Simmons' Hyperion next. I picked up a copy at Kaboom Books, Houston's best used book store, and will start it as soon as I finish C.R. Boxer's Fidalgos in the Far East 1550-1770*, which I'd wanted to read forever and is overflowing with great stories about the Portuguese empire's outposts east of India, i.e., Macau, Timor, and, while it lasted, Nagasaki. Boxer is a really good writer, and it's a damned shame that his work is mostly out of print and therefore runs to the costly end of the spectrum; in the Portuguese-language sphere, the similarly prolific Padre Manuel Teixeira suffers the same fate. During the same visit to Kaboom I also found a couple early '70s Clark Ashton Smith paperbacks, which I think represent the first of his books I've held in my own hands. Color me excited. Also on the reading list is The Dead of Night: The Ghost Stories of Oliver Onions, from which comes the title of the excellent weird/horror/supernatural fiction blog The Stars at Noonday and of which I've begun the first story, "The Beckoning Fair One". Since last night I've been waiting for bedtime so I can find out how it ends.

Perhaps the day will come when I have a ton of money and will reprint some of the many books that have existed and fallen into undeserved obscurity. Demand won't be high, but who cares? There has to be at least one or two other dudes out there willing to pay to read decent editions of little-known tomes. I know that for a fact, since I'm one of them.

I'd originally intended to talk about music as well as books, but I've got enough music-related thoughts piled up to justify another couple posts, one of which will be the return of the "Scott's Stash" series. Something'll be up within a couple days, so stay tuned.

再見, caro leitor!

-D.A.S.


*N.B. Between the time I started writing this post and when it actually hit the World Wide Web, I finished Boxer's book. Predictably, it was great.




Friday, October 03, 2014

Bullshit

"Ugh, I'm looking forward to tomorrow night, when everything's done. I have too much bullshit scheduled."

"Why? Everything you have to do tomorrow- karate class, Portuguese class, working at the beer store- is stuff you like."

"It's still bullshit!"

If you can't tell, dear reader, I really hate doin' shit. To the point, apparently, where I can't refer to any activity in strictly positive terms. I do like each of the things listed above, though.





Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Camilo Pessanha: "Quando voltei encontrei os meus passos"

It's been a while since I translated a Camilo Pessanha poem. I started on this one a couple months ago and polished it up today, though it could still use work, as is always the case. In keeping with my recent thoughts on literal vs. poetic translation- mainly inspired by conversations with my wife- I've taken a little more liberty with this poem, though I've left in Pessanha's beloved dashes and ellipses. I encountered another discrepancy between the original Clepsidra text and the one used in the volume translated by Rui Cascais; naturally, I've followed the original.

Diverta-se, folks, and, as always, obrigado por ler a minha escrita.

---
 
Quando voltei encontrei os meus passos
Ainda frescos sobre a húmida areia.
A fugitiva hora, reevoquei-a,
— Tão rediviva! nos meus olhos baços...

Olhos turvos de lágrimas contidas.
— Mesquinhos passos, porque doidejastes
Assim transviados, e depois tornastes
Ao ponto das primeiras despedidas?

Onde fostes sem tino, ao vento vário,
Em redor, como as aves num aviário,
Até que a asita fofa lhes faleça...

Toda essa extensa pista — para quê?
Se há-de vir apagar-vos a maré,
Como as do novo rasto que começa...

***

When I returned I found my steps
Still fresh on the wet sand.
I recalled the fugitive hour,
— So revived! In my dimmed eyes...

Eyes turbid with tears held back.
— Halting steps, why did you play the fool
so misled, and then return
To the point of the first goodbyes?

Where you went mindlessly into the fickle wind,
Around, like the birds in an aviary,
Until the soft wings die...

All this long path- for what?
If the tide comes to wash you away,
Like the new trail that begins...

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

"On the Passing of Lloyd Martin Smith"

 "On the Passing of Lloyd Martin Smith"


Plenus annis abiit, plenus honoribus - Pliny the Younger



Pall Mall straights,
smoked down to the last knuckle
and chased with bad coffee.

(Go ahead and take a gander
all the way to the bottom of your cup
if you don't believe me.)

Good thing a man ain't judged
by the quality of the cup he pours,
but rather by the spirit in which
it's made
and offered.

Anyway,
alas:

Nigh three decades of practical
advice, plain speech, judgment
laid out just like that
or reserved, when that was
called for,
have ended.

There'll be no more talk of
Vietnam, Newton High,
CB radio, books, the flora
and fauna of East Texas,
memories of Annell,
Marine Corps shit, uranium mining
in New Mexico,
all the things that made/make
life interesting
while seated at the counter, ashtrays
filling, coffee cups emptying,
books always within reach.

Death doesn't snatch life away
quite as quickly as we think.
Shit hits the fan before we
know it, sure, but history shows
that it doesn't always
rob our memory blind.

Dirt curving from county to private
roads; the cattle guards we built
in '91, long since filled in;
the rich, sweet, never quite identifiable
taste of well water; the woods
worthy of their own poetic cycle.

Memory bleeds
like the wound it is,
but we can stanch it
with Pall Mall straights
and bad coffee
here on this dining room table.

Admire the model trains,
the deer rifle,
the shortwave radio,
the heaping plates of fried venison
and okra, then set them aside

and let's do what we can:
forgive the bad coffee,
and send the man's spirit
out among the pines,
where it belongs.










Wednesday, August 13, 2014

This is the last day of 34 years' worth of days.

Since I'll be 35 in six and a half hours or so, I thought I'd chime in with some observations about life as a dude who hasn't quite reached the median age for white males of his particular nationality.

 (Some of these things are knowledge gained since my 30th birthday; most of them are slight variations on the same slack-jawed opinions I've held for a decade or more. In some cases, those opinions are watertight to the point of being balls-out facts, and should be identifiable as such; arguments against will be regarded as evidence of mental deficiency on the part of the arguer. Under no circumstances should anything I say be taken as gospel, save for those words which are pure scripture, of which there are far more than one would imagine.)

-English is a pretty awesome language, primarily because it knows how flexible it can be in terms of grammar and its absorption of foreign words and terms. Other languages are just as flexible, however; thinking only of those of which I feel I have a decent understanding, Spanish, Portuguese, and Mandarin are all equally chock full of loanwords and comparative homonyms. (Please don't let my own ignorance stop you, dear reader, from finding examples of your own.) English has particular words that are utterly amazing: among my favorites are sigh, wreckage, hoard, sword, eave, roof, lamp, betwixt... the point is, it doesn't matter. Every language has a bevy (add that to the aforementioned list of awesome English words) of words that are just fucking awesome, and the full comprehension of which requires some knowledge of the native tongue. Long story short, learn thine own tongue well, and learn others as equally as circumstances allow.

-Heavy metal, as Helloween and I have both stated repeatedly, is the law.

 -Sleep (the band, and the experience, too, though the latter isn't under discussion here) is still deserving of a church dedicated to their music. If I ever find myself alone in the world and in possession of serious funds, I will erect a temple in which the massive hymn known to the world as "Dopesmoker" or "Jerusalem" is always played, to be accompanied by censers of the finest ganja swung by priests of the highest, and highest, caliber.
 
-With age, friendship becomes an increasingly valuable commodity, supplanted as it can be by family ties, work, and distance. I've long valued friendship as one of the greatest of human endeavours, since it is not based solely upon biology or habit, and is one of the most underrated and under-described of relationships. It's a shame, seeing as how since friendship requires- or at least implies- an equality rarely required of other relationships. Friendship can be boon or bane, but for those who take part of it, the benefits or disadvantages do not matter, and that is wherein lies its greatness: hearts and minds are tethered, by choice, to a common purpose, and severing such a bond is no easy task.

-H. Bruce Franklin's introduction to Herman Melville's Mardi is wont to make one put said novel down before reading it. Fortunately, for those with stronger literary constitutions, the book is somewhat easier reading than the insane introduction would have one believe. (I may change my mind once I'm further along in the book, of course.)

-If you want to lift weights at home, use kettlebells.

-Smoking is fantastic, but it's probably a good idea to quit.

-Read more.

-Read more. (Redundant, surely, but it's the best advice I could ever give.)

-MC Lars rules. So do MC Frontalot, YTCracker, and Adam Warrock: all of them have written songs that have helped yours truly get through some hard times, and I all but guarantee that if you look, you'll find one that'll help you too. Nerdcore is rising, perpetually. Disagree? Format c:/ and move along.

-I've learned to dress well over the past few years. One aspect of putting your sartorial shit together is shoes. The Corpse recommends Sawa Shoes, which may cost a few more bones than you're used to paying for casual footwear, but trust me, motherfucker, they're as comfortable and durable as they come, and far more stylish that you are capable of appreciating at first glance. These shoes are awesome, end of story.

-"Don't be a dick, be a dude!" You will always underestimate, usually without knowing it, how much you value folks. Not just friends, but family, coworkers, acquaintances, enemies, significant others, friends' significant others, relatives, pets, waitstaff, mail carriers, apartment managers, bartenders, neighbors, the dudes (m/f) at convenience stores. Say hey to them all, treat them as people, give 'em the thumbs up or a high five. We're all dudes, and a world with more dudes than dicks is a better world.

- Be kind to animals. Whether or not you eat them, you can't go wrong acknowledging the inherent dignity of nonhuman species. Decency toward animals, I've found, usually reflects in decency toward humans. (Note that I say "usually".)

-"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. Love is the law, love under will."

34 down, 51 to go. Later, folks, and thanks for sticking around with me for as long as you have.

Your friend,
D.A. Smith

Thursday, August 07, 2014

Possessed by the Wrath of the Ale Whores of the Staffordshire Hoard, or, Some Thoughts on Symbel

A couple years ago, when I wrote about the Astral Rune Bastards album I liked so much, I mentioned that Sceot Arcwielder, the dude responsible for it, was a member of Bretwaldas of Heathen Doom. He's also the sole member of Symbel, an outfit (if a one-man operation can be called such) whose songs specialize in, to quote part of their first album's title, "hymns and counsel of Anglo-Saxon heathenry". I've enjoyed Symbel since I started listening to them, though if forced to choose a Sceot Arcwielder project I'd probably pick Bretwaldas. Symbel has been patchy in its output, with too many memorable choruses or riffs watered down by generic pagan/black metal passages. Ale Whores of Mercia and We Drink- Hymns and Counsel of Anglo-Saxon Heathenry are by no means bad, but they're not masterpieces, either: they're unsophisticated and raw, and the songwriting and performance sometimes just barely competent, as one would expect from such an atavistic celebration of pre-Norman England. If you aren't already into this kind of metal, style- and production-wise, Symbel could be either a great or terrible introduction, and I encourage you to find out for yourself. Read the next paragraphs before you do so, however- not because it invalidates Symbel's early work, but because I have more to say about what comes after the aforementioned albums.

In 2013 Symbel released Gyddigg- Possessed by the Fury of Wod. The production is better, the songwriting stronger (but still not perfect, as many songs are longer than they probably need to be), and the dedication to pre-Christian heathenry as vital as ever. Heavy metal's penchant for history is one of my favorite things about this kind of music, and Symbel, for all their faults, don't fail to deliver the historical goods. The dude from Astral Rune Bastards who spent so much time watching the X-Files and looking for UFOs in an English field also clearly spent way more time in museums, archives, and the English countryside learning about the history of his country- experience he applied to Symbel.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in the song "Folded Cross", which was released only a couple days ago as part of the Hammerwych EP. Based on the recent discovery of the Staffordshire hoard of Anglo-Saxon artifacts, "Folded Cross" is Symbel evolved. The production is along the lines of that heard on Gyddigg, which makes sense as it was part of those recording sessions, yet there's something about this song as a whole that just fucking nails it- "it" being that intangible chord buried so centrally in the hearts of all metalheads that when struck forces fists into the air, beers down gullets, and hearts to surge with excitement and passion. I like to think of myself as a rational, reasonable dude, but "Folded Cross" makes me want to pledge my proverbial sword to the pagan king of Mercia, who is the subject of the song, and stand against the encroaching Christian masses. That's what good heavy metal does.

Symbel may never rank among the greatest of pagan metal bands, but who cares? Paganism isn't about conformity, and it's certainly not about polish. If it was, chumps would still be erecting temples to Athena, Saturn, and all the other god/desses who demanded as much time, effort, and devotion as the impaled Nazarene (GET IT? GET IT?) who has commanded so much of the world's attention for the past two millennia. As far as I'm concerned, gods are only as good as the art they inspire, and by that standard, whatever deities Sceot Arcwielder worships are doing themselves a favor by imparting increasingly promising gifts of music upon this particular mortal follower. Symbel rules, and it looks as if that will be the case for a while. Here's to more heathen drinking metal!

Later,

D.A. Smith


Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Camilo Pessanha: "Foi um dia de inúteis agonias."

I've been sitting on this translation for a couple weeks, trying to produce a version that isn't so literal, but Pessanha's imagery doesn't lends itself to easy translation since it's highly symbolic and I won't claim to know what the symbols represent, seeing as how I'm the world's worst English major and the symbols aren't necessarily geared toward English-speakers in the first place. I consider all my translations works in progress, though, so the day may come when I revise them. If I do so, they'll end up on my homepage, with notice given here.

If you don't speak Portuguese, yet find yourself intrigued by the original poem and/or doubting my translation thereof, you may feel compelled to learn enough of that awesome language to read the poem yourself- or you could consult Adam Mahler's collection of Pessanha translations, as it turns out that not only are there are others out there translating the poems of Macau's preeminent opium addict, but they're doing a fine job of it, too (complete with notes about Pessanha's life that I've never seen in English). Alas, his selection of poems is slight- the one below isn't included- but I'd wager that there will be more in the future, given the translator's love of Pessanha's work.

The most important thing, of course, is that you enjoy the poetry itself, and so I give you the untitled poem that begins "Foi um dia de inúteis agonias." I hope I've done Senhor Pessanha justice.

Boa leitura, amigos, e até breve!


史大偉

---

Foi um dia de inúteis agonias.
Dia de sol, inundado de sol!...
Fulgiam nuas as espadas frias...
Dia de sol, inundado de sol!...

Foi um dia de falsas alegrias.
Dália a esfolhar-se, — o seu mole sorriso...
Voltavam os ranchos das romarias.
Dália a esfolhar-se, — o seu mole sorriso...

Dia impressível mais que os outros dias.
Tão lúcido... Tão pálido... Tão lúcido!...
Difuso de teoremas, de teorias...

O dia fútil mais que os outros dias!
Minuete de discretas ironias...
Tão lúcido... Tão pálido... Tão lúcido!...

***


It was a day of useless agonies.
A day of sun, flooded with sun!...
The cold swords shone, naked...
A day of sun, flooded with sun!

It was a day of false pleasures.
The leafless dahlia, — her indolent smile...
The crowds returned from the festivals.
The leafless dahlia, — her indolent smile...

A day more impressionable than other days.
So clear... so pallid... so lucid!
Diffusion of theorems, of theories...

The day more futile than other days!
Minuet of discreet ironies...
So clear... so pallid... so lucid!

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Camilo Pessanha: "Depois da luta e depois da conquista"

June 24 marks the day in A.D. 1622 that an outnumbered and outgunned Portuguese force, composed of some determined Jesuits, a large number of slaves, and very few actual soldiers, repulsed a Dutch attack on Macau. You can read about it here in Portuguese, or here and here in English. The day was celebrated as a public holiday until Macau was returned to Chinese control in 1999.

Believe it or not, I had all but forgotten about Dia de Macau (which, by the way, is also the feast day of Saint John the Baptist, a fact that takes on a grim aspect when you read about Dutch attackers being decapitated by Portuguese-owned slaves), so my decision to translate the particular poem below, with all its martial overtones, is purely coincidental. Enjoy, and boa leitura!


---


Depois da luta e depois da conquista
Fiquei só! Fora um acto antipático!
Deserta a Ilha, e no lençol aquático
Tudo verde, verde, — a perder de vista.

Porque vos fostes, minhas caravelas,
Carregadas de todo o meu tesoiro?
— Longas teias de luar de lhama de oiro,
Legendas a diamantes das estrelas!

Quem vos desfez, formas inconsistentes
Por cujo amor escalei a muralha,
— Leão armado, uma espada nos dentes?

Felizes vós, ó mortos da batalha!
Sonhais, de costas, nos olhos abertos
Reflectindo as estrelas, boquiabertos...


***

After the fight and after the conquest
I alone remained! It was an unpleasant act!
The island deserted, and on the aquatic sheet
Everything green, green, — extending beyond sight.

Why did you go, my caravels,
Laden with all my treasure?
— Long webs of cloth-of-gold moonlight,
Inscriptions to the diamonds of the stars!

Who undid you, inconsistent forms
For whose love I climbed the wall,
— An armed lion, a sword in my teeth?

Happy you are, oh slain in battle!
You dream, on your backs, your open eyes
Reflecting the stars, staring...

Tuesday, June 17, 2014

"Fonógrafo" de Camilo Pessanha

Time for another Pessanha poem in English.  This may mark the first time I've included punctuation of my own in the translation. Pessanha's can be pretty idiosyncratic, but it usually doesn't require elaboration; however, in the case of "Quebrou-se agora orvalhada e velada" I felt the need to add a comma to make it work in English.

As for the poem itself, there's something sinister about the first stanza that brings Thomas Ligotti to mind, and I really dig the last two stanzas' synaesthetic quality, which feels like quintessential Pessanha to me. I believe the title has been in use since the first publication of Clepsidra, and what a title it is- I wonder what kind of record(s) Pessanha might have listened to that led to this poem.


Since I'm on the subject of poetry, João Botas over at Macau Antigo recently posted about the stone tablets found at the Camões grotto in Macau. The tablets contain a number of poems in Portuguese, English, Italian, Spanish, and Latin about Camões himself and Macau. When I was there I didn't take the time to read them properly, but I found it pretty neat that they even existed: I'm obviously not the only one taken with 澳門 and its connection to Portugal's national poet.

Boa leitura, friends.

---

Fonógrafo


Vai declamando um cómico defunto.
Uma plateia ri, perdidamente,
Do bom jarreta... E há um odor no ambiente.
A cripta e a pó, — do anacrónico assunto.

Muda o registo, eis uma barcarola:
Lírios, lírios, águas do rio, a lua...
Ante o Seu corpo o sonho meu flutua
Sobre um paul, — extática corola.

Muda outra vez: gorjeios, estribilhos
Dum clarim de oiro — o cheiro de junquilhos,
Vívido e agro! — tocando a alvorada...

Cessou. E, amorosa, a alma das cornetas
Quebrou-se agora orvalhada e velada.
Primavera. Manhã. Que eflúvio de violetas!


***

Phonograph


A defunct comic spouting off.
An audience laughs, madly,
at the old fool... and there is a smell in the air.
The crypt and dust, — of the anachronistic topic.

The register changes, here is a barcarole:
Lilies, lilies, waters of the river, the moon...
Before its body my dream floats
Over a marsh, — ecstatic corolla.

It changes again: trills, refrains
Of a golden clarion — the scent of jonquils,
Vivid and acrid! — playing the reveille...

It ceased. And, amorous, the soul of the trumpets
Is broken now, dewy and veiled.
Spring. Morning. What an effluvium of violets!

Sunday, June 08, 2014

"Interrogação" de Camilo Pessanha

Not much to say about this one. Among Camilo Pessanha's poems, this one is strikes me as being one of the more straightforwardly romantic. That said, the sense of sad, bitter longing present in so much of his work is on display here as well, more or less stripped of symbolist imagery. I have no idea where the title comes from.

I couldn't find a satisfactory way to translate the first line of the second stanza, which reads weirdly in Portuguese too, and the shifting verb tenses don't make a lot of sense to me, but I hope you enjoy the poem anyway.

***

Interrogação

 
Não sei se isto é amor. Procuro o teu olhar,
Se alguma dor me fere, em busca de um abrigo;
E apesar disso, crê! nunca pensei num lar
Onde fosses feliz, e eu feliz contigo.

Por ti nunca chorei nenhum ideal desfeito.
E nunca te escrevi nenhuns versos românticos.
Nem depois de acordar te procurei no leito
Como a esposa sensual do Cântico dos Cânticos.

Se é amar-te não sei. Não sei se te idealizo
A tua cor sadia, o teu sorriso terno...
Mas sinto-me sorrir de ver esse sorriso
Que me penetra bem, como este sol de Inverno.

Passo contigo a tarde e sempre sem receio
Da luz crepuscular, que enerva, que provoca.
Eu não demoro o olhar na curva do teu seio
Nem me lembrei jamais de te beijar na boca.

Eu não sei se é amor. Será talvez começo...
Eu não sei que mudança a minha alma pressente...
Amor não sei se o é, mas sei que te estremeço,
Que adoecia talvez de te saber doente.

---

Interrogation


I don't know if this is love. I seek your gaze,
If any pain wounds me, in search of refuge;
Nevertheless, believe me! I never thought of a home
Where you would be happy, and me happy with you.

For you I never cried an unmade ideal.
And I never wrote you any romantic verses.
Nor after waking up did I seek you in bed
Like the sensual wife of the Song of Songs.

I don't know if this is loving you. I don't know if I idealize you
Your healthy color, your tender smile...
But I feel myself smile to see that smile
That penetrates me so, like this winter sun.

I pass the afternoon with you and always without fear
Of crepuscular light that enervates, provokes.
I do not let my gaze linger on the curve of your breast
Nor did I remember to kiss your mouth.

I don't know if this is love. Maybe the beginning...
I don't know what change my soul foresees...
I don't know that love is what it is, but I know you make me tremble,
That I might have sickened to know you ill.

Tuesday, June 03, 2014

Not poems.


I was going to talk about how I've managed to avoid smoking cigarettes for over two months, but that's boring. I may give in any day, which would consign me to the massive pile of would-be ex-smokers. If I end up there, so be it; if I don't, or do, I have no reason to discuss it. Nothing will make me feel better about giving up smoking, and nothing will make me feel okay about smoking.

All I've posted lately has been poetry, none of it mine and all of it better than anything I could write. Maybe someone wishes I would write something else. As the days accrete, I grow increasingly convinced that, as bad as I am at it, I am better suited to translating other people's poetry than I am offering up my own; but, being a self-involved shit like pretty much every other member of my generation and species, I will continue to post my own work here when I have something I think is worthwhile.

In the interim, allow me to suggest the following things that might enrich your life, dear reader.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, one of the best TV shows ever aired, along with
Twin Peaks and The X-Files. (Not web pages, obviously.)

Mercer Arboretum.

Ursula K. Le Guin's website.

The Macau Streets homepage.

And that's it.




Sunday, June 01, 2014

"Madalena" de Camilo Pessanha

Time for another Camilo Pessanha poem. This one has given me more trouble than others, and while I'm not really satisfied with parts of my translation I don't think I'm capable of improving on it at this point. Perhaps when my Portuguese is better and I have a better grasp of Pessanha's poetics.

As has been the case with my other translations of Pessanha's poems, I've tried to stick as closely to the original as I can. This results in the loss of the rhyme and rhythm of the original, and my translation- and pretty much anyone's, I'd wager- suffers for it, but there's no way to maintain the rhyme scheme in English. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it.



Madalena

          ...e lhe regou de lágrimas os pés, e os
          enxugou com os cabelos da sua cabeça.

          Evangelho de S. Lucas




Ó Madalena, ó cabelos de rastos,
Lírio poluído, branca flor inútil...
Meu coração, velha moeda fútil,
E sem relevo, os caracteres gastos,

De resignar-se torpemente dúctil...
Desespero, nudez de seios castos,
Quem também fosse, ó cabelos de rastos,
Ensanguentado, enxovalhado, inútil,

Dentro do peito, abominável cómico!
Morrer tranquilo, — o fastio da cama...
Ó redenção do mármore anatómico,

Amargura, nudez de seios castos!...
Sangrar, poluir-se, ir de rastos na lama,
Ó Madalena, ó cabelos de rastos!

***

Magdalene

          ...and she washed his feet with tears, and
          dried them with the hair of her head.

          Gospel of Saint Luke



Oh Magdalene, oh trailing hair,
Polluted lily, useless white flower...
My heart, old useless coin,
Indistinct, the features worn down,

Shamefully pliant in resignation...
Despair, nudity of chaste breasts,
Those who also were, oh trailing hair,
Bloody, soiled, useless,

Within your breast, abominable comedian!
To die peacefully — the tedium of bed...
Oh redemption of anatomical marble,

Bitterness, nudity of chaste breasts!...
To bleed, pollute yourself, crawl through the mud,
Oh Magdalene, oh trailing hair!




Saturday, May 24, 2014

Laxmanrao Sardessai: "O Mistério Aclara-se" / "The Mystery Grows Clear"

As promised/threatened, here is the translation of another Portuguese-language poem. This one comes from the Goan author Laxmanrao Sardessai (1904-1986), who wrote short stories and essays in Marathi and Konkani, as well as poetry in Portuguese. More of his poems can be found at the Archive of Goan Writing in Portuguese.

My criteria for choosing Laxmanrao Sardessai over another poet were effectively nonexistent, almost random, and the next time I translate a Goan poem it may well be from another writer. This may be the first time this poem has appeared in English; if so, I hope I've done Sardessai's work justice. Any and all blame for poor translation should, as always, be apportioned solely to yours truly.

Obrigado, caro leitor.

---

"O Mistério Aclara-se"

O mistério aclara-se
E ai vejo definido o meu ideal,
No céu, no mar e na terra
Vejo a mesma mão,
Invisível e misteriosa,
Modelar o destino da humanidade.
No azul do oceano
No verde da terra
A mesma graça vejo
Estender-se na sua simplicidade
E o mistério aclara-se,
E aclara-se o meu espírito,
Confuso perante a difusão
De cores e linhas,
De formas e matéria
E suas infinitas intrincâncias.
Evapora-se a ilusão
E desponta no horizonte,
Vasto e claro,
O sol uno e brilhante,
A dirigir os meus passos
Para a divina realidade!

***

"The Mystery Grows Clear"

The mystery grows clear
And there I see defined my ideal,
In the sky, in the sea and in the earth
I see the same hand
Invisible and mysterious,
Shape humanity's destiny.
In the blue of the ocean
In the green of the earth
I see the same grace
Extend itself in its simplicity
And the mystery grows clear,
And my spirit grows clear,
Confused by the diffusion
Of colors and lines,
Of forms and matter
and their infinite intricacies.
The illusion evaporates
And emerges on the horizon,
Vast and clear,
The sun one and bright,
Directing my steps
Toward the divine reality!


Monday, May 12, 2014

"Olvido" de Camilo Pessanha

Here's another of Camilo Pessanha's poems. Once again, the title appears in one version of Clepsydra, while in another no title is used and the poem is referred to by its first line.

Some time ago I ran across the Archive of Goan Writing in Portuguese, much of which is poetry and, perhaps more unusual, much of which was written after 1961, when India reclaimed Goa from Portugal. I haven't combed through it in anything but a cursory manner yet, but I suspect I'll find something in there I want to translate. If/when I do, I'll post it here. I also intend on collecting all of my translations on my homepage, but I probably won't get around to that until next week.

In unrelated news, it's been over six weeks since I last smoked a cigarette. I do believe I've finally managed to quit.


 ***

Olvido

Desce por fim sobre o meu coração
O olvido. Irrevocável. Absoluto.
Envolve-o grave como véu de luto.
Podes, corpo, ir dormir no teu caixão.

A fronte já sem rugas, distendidas
As feições, na imortal serenidade,
Dorme enfim sem desejo e sem saudade
Das coisas não logradas ou perdidas.

O barro que em quimera modelaste
Quebrou-se-te nas mãos. Viça uma flor...
Pões-lhe o dedo, ei-la murcha sobre a haste...

Ias andar, sempre fugia o chão,
Até que desvairavas, do terror.
Corria-te um suor, de inquietação...

***

Oblivion

Descending at last over my heart
Oblivion. Irrevocable. Absolute.
Covering it as solemnly as a mourning veil.
You may, corpse, go sleep in your coffin.

The face now without wrinkles, features
distended in immortal serenity,
Sleeps at last without desire and without longing
For things unobtained or lost.

The clay in which you modeled a chimera
Shattered in your hands. If a flower grows...
Put your finger on it, and behold, it withers on the stem...

You went wandering, the ground always disappearing,
Until you went mad with terror.
You ran with the sweat of disquiet...

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

"Estátua" de Camilo Pessanha

I'm in the midst of reading Paulo Franchetti's O Essencial sobre Camilo Pessanha, which dissects most of the myths surrounding the man, e.g., his reasons for leaving Portugal, his supposed unwillingness to write down his poems, his terrible personal hygiene, the level of his knowledge of Chinese, his relationship with his son and the concubine he had in place of a wife, and so on. Franchetti argues, based on available evidence, that for various reasons some of the people charged (often by themselves) with guarding Pessanha's legacy saw fit to distort the truth and give posterity the image of a heartbroken man who lived in squalor among the Chinese, ignored the mores of Portuguese colonial society, and had little time for anything but opium. Of course, it's never that simple.

Franchetti also delves into the literary aspects of Pessanha's work, which is where I am now. I'm sure it, along with the criticism in Rui Cascais' book, will give me more to think about when I next sit down to read and translate Pessanha's poems. I recommend Franchetti's book to anyone who, like me, not only enjoys Pessanha's poetry but finds the man himself fascinating. You'll have to read it in Portuguese, though; não há uma tradução inglês.

Anyway, here's another poem from Clepsydra for you to enjoy. Like all the others I've translated, I'm not completely happy with the results, but that's how it goes, isn't it?

Oh, and here's another estátua de Camilo Pessanha.

Adeus, dudes.

---


Estátua

Cansei-me de tentar o teu segredo:
No teu olhar sem cor, — frio escalpelo,
O meu olhar quebrei, a debatê-lo,
Como a onda na crista dum rochedo.

Segredo dessa alma e meu degredo
E minha obsessão! Para bebê-lo
Fui teu lábio oscular, num pesadelo,
Por noites de pavor, cheio de medo.

E o meu ósculo ardente, alucinado,
Esfriou sobre o mármore correcto
Desse entreaberto lábio gelado...

Desse lábio de mármore, discreto,
Severo como um túmulo fechado,
Sereno como um pélago quieto.

 ***

Statue

I tired of trying to expose your secret:
Under your colorless gaze, — a cold scalpel,
My look crumbled, debating it,
Like the wave on the crest of a cliff.

Secret of this soul and my exile
And my obsession! To drink it,
Was to kiss your lips, in a nightmare,
In nights of terror, full of fear.

And my burning kiss, hallucinating,
Went cold on the marble proper,
These half-open frozen lips...

These marble lips, discreet,
Severe as a sealed tomb,
Serene as a quiet sea.

Tuesday, April 08, 2014

Mais poesia de Camilo Pessanha, e outras coisas

Last month I had the good fortune to return to Hong Kong and Macau, this time in the company of my brother. He'd never been to either city, and I'd been itching to go back, especially since I'd learned a veritable shitload about the history of Macau over the past year and a half. We had a great time, and I'm glad I finally got to travel with Scott. As I've said before, I'd live in Hong Kong, and even Macau, for a while without much in the way of reservations; maybe especially Macau, since there I could improve my Portuguese and learn Cantonese to boot.

I spent a couple days in Macau on my own before Scott arrived in Hong Kong. There was a lengthy list of things I wanted to see and do, and I saw and did most of them, since Macau isn't very big and I got to follow my own schedule. (To a point, that is, since a lot of places in Macau don't open until 11 AM or so.) Among my goals were visits to the Livraria Portuguesa and the Arquivo Histórico de Macau, both of which I accomplished. I signed up for my cartão de leitor for the Archive in advance, and spent a couple hours there reading random books, primarily those by Padre Manuel Teixeira, who ranks with Camilo Pessanha as one of the most fascinating figures of 20th-century Macau in my book. Speaking of books and Padre Teixeira, at the Livraria Portuguesa I picked up the only thing of his I found there, the two-volume, 1200-page Toponímia de Macau, after reading some of it at the Archive. That's a lot of pages dedicated to the street names of a small city, dudes.

Books were pretty much the only souvenirs I brought home, apart from some rolls of film I shot with my Holga. (Unsurprisingly, the photos didn't come out particularly well.) That was the plan all along, though. I was excited to find several books on Camilo Pessanha, including one that might be the only extant work on the man's poetry in English. I didn't buy everything I could, as I didn't have room in my rucksack, but it's a start.

I'll ruminate more on Macau and HK another time, but for now I wanted to post another translation of a Pessanha poem. Due to the differences between various editions of his work, titles and exact wording differ, but the text below comes from an online edition of Clepsydra which matches that used in In A Country Lost: the Poetry of Camilo Pessanha, the aforementioned English translation I bought in Macau. The only exception is that the online version uses the title "Caminho", whereas the same poem In A Country Lost has no title at all.

Thanks to Rui Cascais for providing English translations against which to compare mine, and learn more about the Portuguese language in the process. Muito obrigado!

---
Caminho

I.

Tenho sonhos cruéis; n’alma doente
Sinto um vago receio prematuro.
Vou a medo na aresta do futuro,
Embebido em saudades do presente...

Saudades desta dor que em vão procuro
Do peito afugentar bem rudemente,
Devendo, ao desmaiar sobre o poente,
Cobrir-me o coração dum véu escuro!...

Porque a dor, esta falta d’harmonia,
Toda a luz desgrenhada que alumia
As almas doidamente, o céu d’agora,

Sem ela o coração é quase nada:
Um sol onde expirasse a madrugada,
Porque é só madrugada quando chora.


II.

Encontraste-me um dia no caminho
Em procura de quê, nem eu o sei.
— Bom dia, companheiro — te saudei,
Que a jornada é maior indo sozinho

É longe, é muito longe, há muito espinho!
Paraste a repousar, eu descansei...
Na venda em que poisaste, onde poisei,
Bebemos cada um do mesmo vinho.

É no monte escabroso, solitário.
Corta os pés como a rocha dum calvário,
E queima como a areia!... Foi no entanto

Que chorámos a dor de cada um...
E o vinho em que choraste era comum:
Tivemos que beber do mesmo pranto.


III.

Fez-nos bem, muito bem, esta demora:
Enrijou a coragem fatigada...
Eis os nossos bordões da caminhada,
Vai já rompendo o sol: vamos embora.

Este vinho, mais virgem do que a aurora,
Tão virgem não o temos na jornada...
Enchamos as cabaças: pela estrada,
Daqui inda este néctar avigora!...

Cada um por seu lado!... Eu vou sozinho,
Eu quero arrostar só todo o caminho,
Eu posso resistir à grande calma!...

Deixai-me chorar mais e beber mais,
Perseguir doidamente os meus ideais,
E ter fé e sonhar — encher a alma.

---
Path


I.

I have cruel dreams; in my diseased soul
I feel a vague, premature dread.
I go in fear along the edge of the future,
Absorbed in longing for the present...

Longing for this grief that in vain I seek
To rudely drive from my breast,
It must, at the fading above the sunset,
Cover my heart in a dark veil!...

Because of pain, this lack of harmony,
All the disheveled light that illuminates
Souls madly, the sky just now,

Without it the heart is almost nothing:
A sun where the dawn may pass away,
Because it is only dawn  when it weeps.


II.

You met me on the road one day
In search of what, not even I know.
—Good day, friend— I saluted you,
As the journey is longer going alone.

It is far, very far, and there are so many thorns!
You stopped to rest, I sat down...
In the tavern in which you halted, where I halted,
We each drank from the same wine.

It is on the rough mountain, solitary,
Cutting the feet like rocks on a Calvary mount,
And burning like sand!... It was, however,

That we wept with each other's pain...
And the wine in which you wept was shared:
We had to drink the same tears.


III.

It did us good, very good, this delay:
It fortified exhausted courage...
Here are our walking sticks,
The sun is already rising: let's go.

This wine, more virgin than the dawn,
We'll have nothing so pure on the journey...
Let's fill our gourds; down the road,
from here on this nectar invigorates!...

Each on his own side!... I go alone,
I want to face the whole road on my own,
I can bear the vast quiet!...

Let me weep more and drink more,
Madly chase my ideals,
And have faith and dream — fill up the soul.


Friday, January 24, 2014

Camilo Pessanha's "Paisagens de inverno"

Today's been cold, and everything was covered in ice until the past hour or two, so it's fitting that this is my latest amateur translation of a Camilo Pessanha poem.

Aside from the usual spelling changes, there are some differences between this poem as it appears in the 1920 Ediçoes Lusitania version of Clepsidra, which is what I have in the form of a scanned copy, and later versions of the book, which can be found online. (The 1920 text is also available.) They're not huge differences, so I just picked a version (the newer one) and went with it. Also noteworthy is that the older edition of Clepsidra didn't have a title for either part of this poem, and the second part doesn't immediately follow the first. I'll have to do some digging into the book's publication history and find out why that is.

Divirta-se!
 
***

Paisagens de inverno

I.

Ó meu coração, torna para trás.
Onde vais a correr, desatinado?
Meus olhos incendidos que o pecado
Queimou! — o sol! Volvei, noites de paz.

Vergam da neve os olmos dos caminhos.
A cinza arrefeceu sobre o brasido.
Noites da serra, o casebre transido...
Ó meus olhos, cismai como os velhinhos.

Extintas primaveras evocai-as:
— Já vai florir o pomar das macieiras.
Hemos de enfeitar os chapéus de maias. —

Sossegai, esfriai, olhos febris.
— E hemos de ir cantar nas derradeiras
Ladainhas... Doces vozes senis... —


II.

Passou o Outono já, já torna o frio...
— Outono de seu riso magoado.
Álgido Inverno! Oblíquo o sol, gelado...
— O sol, e as águas límpidas do rio.

Águas claras do rio! Águas do rio,
Fugindo sob o meu olhar cansado,
Para onde me levais meu vão cuidado?
Aonde vais, meu coração vazio?

Ficai, cabelos dela, flutuando,
E, debaixo das águas fugidias,
Os seus olhos abertos e cismando...

Onde ides a correr, melancolias?
— E, refractadas, longamente ondeando,
As suas mãos translúcidas e frias...



Winter Landscapes

I.

O, my heart, turn back.
Where are you going to run, so bewildered?
My blazing eyes that sin
Burned — the sun! Come back, nights of peace.

The elms along the roads are bent with snow.
The ash has cooled over the coals.
Nights in the mountains, the old hovel...
O, my eyes, you brood like old men.

You evoke extinct springtimes:
— The apple orchard is already in bloom.
We have to decorate the Maia hats.—

Rest, cool down, feverish eyes.
— And we have to go sing in the final
Litanies... sweet senile voices...


II.

The autumn already passed, the cold already returned...
— The autumn of her wounded laugh.
Algid winter! The sun oblique, frozen...
— The sun, and the limpid waters of the river.

Clear waters of the river! Waters of the river,
Fleeing under my tired gaze,
Whither are you taking my vain attention?
Where are you going, empty heart of mine?

Tarry, her hair floating,
And, under the fleeting waters,
Her eyes open and daydreaming...

Where will you run, melancholies?
— And, refracted, rippling at length,
Her hands, translucent and cold...