The Drowned Girl

Vom ertrunkenen Mädchen

Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956)

Vom ertrunkenen Mädchen
Als sie ertrunken war und hinunterschwamm Von den Bächen in die großeren Flüsse Schien der Opal des Himmels sehr wundersam Als ob er die Leiche begütigen müsse. Tang und Algen hielten sich an ihr ein So daß sie langsam viel schwerer ward. Kühl die Fische schwammen an ihrem Bein Pflanzen und Tiere beschwerten noch ihre letzte Fahrt. Und der Himmel ward abends dunkel wie Rauch Und hielt nachts mit den Sternen das Licht in Schwebe. Aber früh ward er hell, daß es auch Noch für sie Morgen und Abend gebe. Als ihr bleicher Leib im Wasser verfaulet war Geschah es (sehr langsam), daß Gott sie allmählich vergaß Erst ihr Gesicht, dann die Hände und ganz zuletzt erst ihr Haar. Dann ward sie Aas in Flüssen mit vielem Aas.
The Drowned Girl
When she was drowned she floated on and on Down the streams and brooks and into the great big river The opal light of heaven most splendidly shone As if impelled to do the body a favour. Grappled and held by the water-weeds and the slimes, Slowly and out of proportion her weight increased. Fishes swam coolly along beside her limbs. Last haul! as a ferry for green-stuff and water-beast. In the evenings the sky was as dark as smoke With the stars by night it kept the light in play But the brightness came on early when morning broke So she still had the start and the finish of the day. As her pallid corpse lay foul in the water there By God himself she was little by little forgotten: First her face, then her hands, then finally her hair. She was just more meat in the water, decayed and rotten. Published in Agenda 2014, vol. 48/2
A selection from YouTube...

Translation: Copyright © Timothy Adès

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Sonnet of the Sweet Complaint

Soneto de la dulce queja

Federico García Lorca (1898-1936)

Soneto de la dulce queja
Tengo miedo a perder la maravilla de tus ojos de estatua y el acento que de noche me pone en la mejilla la solitaria rosa de tu aliento. Tengo pena de ser en esta orilla tronco sin ramas; y lo que más siento es no tener la flor, pulpa o arcilla, para el gusano de mi sufrimiento. Si tú eres el tesoro oculto mío, si eres mi cruz y mi dolor mojado, si soy el perro de tu señorío, no me dejes perder lo que he ganado y decora las aguas de tu río con hojas de mi otoño enajenado.
Sonnet of the Sweet Complaint
Let me not lose your wondrous eyes of marble, nor your voice that blows your breath, a solitary rose, between my teeth at pale moonrise. A stranded trunk without a shoot, dreading and greatly sorrowing, I have not clay nor flower nor fruit to feed my worm of suffering. Are you my secret treasury, my tears of pain, my cross? Am I the lapdog of your mastery? Let me not lose what I have gained: And let your river flow adorned with my sere leaves that fall estranged.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybZYsUIRuSE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAzF9seSQVk - 3'40"

Translation: Copyright © Timothy Adès

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We'll be sleeping side by side

Nous dormirons ensemble

Louis Aragon (1897-1982)

From: Le fou d'Elsa
Nous dormirons ensemble
Que ce soit dimanche ou lundi Soir ou matin minuit midi Dans l'enfer ou le paradis Les amours aux amours ressemblent C'était hier que je t'ai dit Nous dormirons ensemble C'était hier et c'est demain Je n'ai plus que toi de chemin J'ai mis mon cœur entre tes mains Avec le tien comme il va l'amble Tout ce qu'il a de temps humain Nous dormirons ensemble Mon amour ce qui fut sera Le ciel est sur nous comme un drap J'ai refermé sur toi mes bras Et tant je t'aime que j'en tremble Aussi longtemps que tu voudras Nous dormirons ensemble.
We'll be sleeping side by side
Sunday, Monday, any day Dawn or dusk, midnight, midday, Damned in hell or sanctified, Loves alike and loves allied, As I told you yesterday, We’ll be sleeping side by side. Now, tomorrow, yesterday You alone to be my way, In your hands my heart I lay, Lively, with your heart to guide: Long as human time shall bide We’ll be sleeping side by side. What has been shall be, my sweet: Heaven is on us like a sheet. I embrace you, mortified, Trembling, lovelorn, petrified. For as long as you say yea, We’ll be sleeping side by side.

Translation: Copyright © Timothy Adès

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Sonnet 24

Sonnet 24

Jean Cassou (1897-1986)

Sonnet 24
*Briques et tuiles, etc* - Verlaine Plomb, zinc, et fer, ô les charmants petits enfers pour les amants! Mer et desert: l'événement n'a rien à faire pour le moment. À tous nos coups le néant joue échec et mat. L'histoire close plus jamais n'ose produire un Acte.
Sonnet 24
[Verlaine's Belgian jaunt with Rimbaud] Lead, iron and tin, snug sulphur-mines for Valentines to sizzle in! Ocean and sand: the great event is impotent as matters stand. All that we do the void has checked, checkmated too. The final page has no Effect that it can stage.
In '33 Sonnets of the Resistance', Arc Publications

Translation: Copyright © Timothy Adès

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She Loves

L'amoureuse

Paul Eluard (1895-1952)

L'amoureuse
Elle est debout sur mes paupières Et ses cheveux sont dans les miens, Elle a la forme de mes mains, Elle a la couleur de mes yeux, Elle s'engloutit dans mon ombre Comme une pierre sur le ciel. Elle a toujours les yeux ouverts Et ne me laisse pas dormir. Ses rêves en pleine lumière Font s'évaporer les soleils Me font rire, pleurer et rire, Parler sans avoir rien à dire.
She Loves
On my two closed eyes she stands And her hair is in my hair And her shape is of my hands And her shade is of my eyes She is swallowed in my shadow As a stone against the skies Her eyes are ever open She will never leave me sleeping At her dreams in light of day Suns evaporate away I go laughing laughing weeping Speaking nothing can I say

Translation: Copyright © Timothy Adès

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Trojan Genealogy

Genealogías troyanas

Alfonso Reyes (1889-1959)

from 'Homer in Cuernavaca'. 'Alfonso Reyes Miracle of Mexico': Shearsman Books
Genealogías troyanas
Zeus lo engendró, lo hubo alguna de las Pléyades: tal es la dignidad de Dárdano el epónimo. Su vástago, Erictonio, en Dardania fue rey - a - des- ¬pecho de quien lo toma por su ateniense homónimo. Su hijo Tros, el padre de Ilo, impuso ley - a – des ¬perdigadas comarcas de aquel lugar anónimo; y de Tros y de no heredó la epopeya - des- pués los nombres de “iliano” y “troyano” el sinónimo. Ilo tuvo, entre otros, un nieto ilustre: Príamo, viejo rey de la Ilíada, decente aunque polígamo. Crió cincuenta príncipes; mas Paris, mala pécora, le salió mujeriego y vano y sin escrúpulo ... - Puedo seguir; no sigo: me canso del esdrújulo y, cerrando los párpados, dejo caer la péñola.
Trojan Genealogy
Zeus begat Dardanus out of a Pleiad. He’s god-fathered, star-mothered Hero Eponymous. Next Erichthonius inherited Troy, a dis- creet distance off from his Athens homonymus. Tros, before Ilus, a King and a lawyer, dis- pensed honest rule in his broad, yet anonymous, Troad. The Iliad’s vast epopoiia des- cribes Troy, or ‘Ilium’: these are synonymous. Ilus’s grandson, King Priam the glorious, sired fifty princes: not primly uxorious! One, though, was Paris, the vain Alexander, a rotten, unscrupulous heel and philanderer... Stop, superfeminines! Done my full complement... sated and somnolent, sheathe my small implement.
'Esdrújulo' means a word stressed on the antepenultimate!

Translation: Copyright © Timothy Adès

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Complex

Complejo

Alfonso Reyes (1889-1959)

Complejo
Amigos, dondequiera que voy me sigue un oso, Un oso que se ve con el rabo del ojo. Ni soporta ser visto de frente, ni lo puedo descubrir cuando quiero mirado en el espejo. No se oyen sus pasos, porque van con los míos. Es como una amenaza constante: es un testigo. Nada busca; pero me tiene medio loco saber que dondequiera que voy me sigue un oso.
Complex
My friends, no matter where I go I’m followed by a bear. He’s only glimpsed obliquely by a sneaky sidelong glance, He won’t permit a frontal view, he has no tolerance; I may seek him in the mirror, but I never see him there. I cannot hear his footsteps: when I tread, he’s treading too: A constant threat, a witness to whatever I may do. He isn’t after anything; it fairly spooks me, though, To know I’m followed by a bear, no matter where I go.

Translation: Copyright © Timothy Adès

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Trees

Árboles

Alfonso Reyes (1889-1959)

Árboles
Los álamos y los sauces, los enebros, los encinos, los robles, los abedules, hayas, mangles, cedros, pinos… Árboles, árboles, árboles, parasoles de beduinos, o policías formados al borde de los caminos. Trocad las hojas, los frutos; equivocad los destinos, que no es la pera en el olmo cifra de los desatinos. Que yo sé de algún rosal que mudó rosas por trinos, y sé de los italianos que acaban en argentinos. Cuando se nos canse Dios de leyes, normas y sinos, hará de los vinos panes, hará de los panes vinos.
Trees
Cedars, beeches and birches, mangroves, various conifers, willows, ilex and quercus, poplars and pines and junipers... Trees, trees, trees, parasols for the badawi, or a line of police, a border along the highway. Barter your leaves and your fruit; mix and mistake your destinies: pears on an elm are not always a mark of madnesses. I know a rosebush whose roses were traded for chirrups and trills, and people in Buenos Aires who come from the Apennine Hills. When God is weary of orders, of laws and boundary-lines, he’ll make the wines into bread-loaves and the bread-loaves into wines.

Translation: Copyright © Timothy Adès

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A Metaphor

Una Metáfora

Alfonso Reyes (1889-1959)

from 'Homer in Cuernavaca'
Una Metáfora
“Las cigarras de voz de lirio”, dice Homero... Le pesa al preceptista, le duele al traductor. La audacia del poético y voluntario error de escolios y de notas ha juntado un rimero. Algo hay en Apolonio que es del mismo acero, y algo en el viejo Hesíodo que tiene igual sabor. No creo que se pueda decir nada mejor, y juzgue cada uno lo que dicte su fuero. ¿Pues no ha osado un moderno hablarnos del clamor rojo de los clarines, y no es valedero si otro habla del negro redoble del tambor? Transporte sensorial, Vocales de color, Sinestesia - perdónese el terminajo huero -, Suprarrealidad, Cantos de Maldoror ... ¡Se asusta el avispero! Mientras zozobra el crítico, digamos con valor: - ¡Bravo por “las cigarras de voz de lirio”, Homero!
A Metaphor
‘The lily-voiced cicadas’ is a saying found in Homer: it gives the teacher problems, the translator melancholia. The boldness of this lyrical and voluntary bloomer has piled up quite a congeries of glosses and of scholia. There’s a tag of Apollonius that has the selfsame mettle, and something in old Hesiod whose tang might correlate. I don’t believe that any turn of phrase can turn out better, let each of us pass judgement as our conscience may dictate. Didn’t some daring modern type bring up the ‘scarlet clamour of trumpets’? Didn’t someone else, with perfect sense and grammar, go on about the black pounding rhythm of the drummer? The transference of senses and the colours of the vowels - excuse the hollow jargon if I talk of synaesthetics - The Songs of Maldoror; the surreal, the super-real... We’re stirring up the hornets’ nest! Their heart is hardly Dada’s, so let’s say it loud and clear against the fretting of the critics:- Bravissimo, Homer, for the lily-voiced cicadas!

Translation: Copyright © Timothy Adès

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Spontaneous Truce

Tregua Espontánea

Alfonso Reyes (1889-1959)

from 'Homer in Cuernavaca'
Tregua Espontánea
Insólita quietud en la troyana tierra! Bajo su toldo, Aquiles olvida sus pasiones; se oye temblar la lira, se escuchan sus canciones; y un hálito de paz adormece la guerra. El tumbo de las olas por el espacio yerra. Con discos y venablos juegan los mirmidones en los embarcaderos; y pacen los bridones loto y palustre apio traídos de la sierra. Yacen las negras flotas en muda formación. De una y otra hoguera suben las humaradas, y lejos se divisan las murallas de Ilión. Desata sus sandalias ocioso Agamemnón, y revista Odiseo sus naves embreadas, únicas que lucían proas de bermellón.
Spontaneous Truce
Unusual stillness in the land of Troy. Achilles at his tent forgets his passions: his harp shivers with songs: Patroclus listens. A breath of peace is warfare’s lullaby. Across the void the breakers’ rhythm spills; down by the ships, there’s sport for Myrmidons, discus and javelin; the stallions eat clover and marsh-parsley from the hills. The black flotillas lie drawn up in silence. Round and about, a few camp-fires are smoking; the distant walls, just visible, are Ilion's. Sandals slip off the feet of Agamemnon; Odysseus checks his hulls that need no caulking, the only ones with prows of bright vermilion.

Translation: Copyright © Timothy Adès

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