Category: Time

Março

… e estes marços doendo como pedras nos rins, charadas que não invento e nem sei de memória

se há memória além de um domingo de março azul, perfeito. todas as areias rolaram sobre de todas as possíveis clepsidras só o olho-farol, olho brilhante antigo,

a me guiar nas trevas do regresso, não haverá, não haverá porto, viajante, nenhuma Ítaca te espera,

nenhuma Cólchida, nem mesmo os arrecifes no cais de tua infância. apenas a morte suave de olhos tristes tão rápida e indolor, tão limpa guilhotina

… e estas tardes de março viageiras. Sei o peso da ausência, sei a dor das lembranças tatuadas na carne, coladas e desfolhadas como pele queimada que se arranca. nenhuma presença é mais real que a falta, corpo de solidão deslizando entre móveis, marfins, folhas soltas de um livro, marca da prata, desenhos no tapete, cavalos, leão de pedra, lembranças que se acendem em faróis iluminando o outro lado do abismo, o precipício, o vazio, onde tudo se acaba.

March

…and these aching Marches like kidney stones, riddles I don’t invent nor recall from
memory

if there is memory beyond a blue Sunday in March, perfect. all sands ran through all possible hourglasses, only the lighthouse-eye, that shining antique eye,

to guide me home in the darkness, there will not be, there will not be a port, traveler, no Ithaca waits for you,

no Colchis, not even the reefs at the wharf of your childhood. just the delicate death of sad eyes so fast and painless, so clean the guillotine.

…and these traveling March afternoons. I know the weight of absence, I know the pain of memories tattooed on flesh, taut and peeling like skin burnt and blistered. no presence is more real than absence. lonely body slipping between furniture, ivories, loose pages from a book, silver crest, designs in the rug, horses, stone lion, keepsakes alight in lighthouses illuminating the other side of the abyss, the precipice, the empty, where everything runs out.

Myriam Fraga up until her passing in February 2016 was, and continues to be, one of the leading literary figures of Salvador da Bahia. Born in Salvador in 1937, Fraga counts among her contemporaries the writers Sônia Coutinho and Fernando de Rocha Peres, artist Calazans Neto, and filmmaker Glauber Rocha. She was the long-time friend of the world-famous Jorge Amado and his writer wife Zelia Gattai, as well as the visual artist Carybé. Her first book of poetry, A ilha, was published in 1964 by Edições Macunaíma, Glauber Rocha’s press. She produced over 10 volumes of poetry plus several children’s books on popular figures in Bahian culture. Fraga led the helm at the Fundação Casa de Jorge Amado (the organization responsible for his archival materials) as the institution’s executive director since its inception in 1986. In 2015, she was named the vice president of the Academy of Letters of Bahia.

The major motifs of Fraga’s expansive body of work include the ocean—and by extension islands, voyages, and shipwrecks—; the city, most often Salvador da Bahia; ancestrality; and mythology of such diverse incarnations as African fables, biblical legend, and Greek epic. She tightly weaves this imagery to contemplate on memory and the collective history of Salvador, Brazil, and the world.

This poem is part of a collection entitled Calendário, or Calendar, which includes a poem for each month of the year. “March,” in particular, is a coming to terms with the death of the poet’s father.

Mattina

Santa Maria La Longa il 26 gennaio 1917.

M’illumino
d’immenso.

Natale
Non ho voglia
di tuffarmi
in un gomitolo
di strade
Ho tanta
stanchezza
sulle spalle

Lasciatemi così
come una  cosa
Posata
in un
angolo
e dimenticata

Qui
non si sente
altro
che il caldo buono
Sto
con le quattro
capriole
di fumo
del focolare

“Santa Maria La Longa il 26 gennaio 1917” was the tragic scenario where the poet was writing these lines: at the front, during the First World War. Santa Maria La Longa is a small town in northeastern Italy, in the region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia. This land has an ancient history; it’s inhabitants predate the Romans. The landscape is flat and there are many canals for the irrigation of the fields. It is a rural place, where for centuries the land has been transformed and shaped by manual work. At the time when the poet was composing, this ancient relationship between human beings and territory was troubled by the war: trenches instead of canals, corpses in place of seeds. In this dramatic situation, when daylight shines and the soldiers see it, it suddenly occurs to them what it feels to be alive. This poem is an image of light, it depicts a moment of illumination, in which the poet expresses the infinite happiness of feeling alive. Ungaretti’s language is skimmed of adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, and reduced to its fundamental components: names and verbs. Ungaretti defines this language “the naked word”, which according to him is the only language able to describe the human tragedy of the war.

Morning

Santa Maria La Longa January 26 1917.

I am bright
with infinitude.

the Nativity
I do not wish
to plunge
into a tangle
of streets
Such
weariness
weighs down my back

Leave me like this:
a thing
posed
in a
corner
and forgotten

Here
nothing is felt
but
kind heat
I remain
with the four
pirouettes
of smoke
from the hearth

I want to thank Professor Ronald Martínez for his precious suggestions in translating these poems into English.

The war is a catastrophe that deprives all human beings of time: it denies the pleasure of memories of the past, it impedes the development of a satisfying present, and inhibits the dreaming of a better future. However, not everything is lost: few places remain safe. Among them is the one described in the second poem by Ungaretti, that intimate place close to the fireplace, where one can stay alone in the quietness. There, self-defenses fall, and the pirouettes of the burning fire create a sort of spell that overtakes the chaotic reality. Close to the fire, the poet feels an extemporal dimension in which he wishes to stay without feeling time passing, like an inanimate object.

I believe that the intimate and interior-temporal dimension expressed in these two poems is essential to approach Ungaretti’s imagery, and both my translations and comment develop this idea.

Златен круг на времетo

Старинска ѕвездо, ѕвездо на пророци и чуда, –
распрсни се во стихот, потони во најцрн мрак.
Повеќе трае во крвта оваа светлина луда
и овој невидлив пламен што нема ни име ни знак.

 
Сениште ѕвездено, ѕвездо на студена мора, –
исчезни со сите наречници со сите митови падни.
Под ова стебло од зборови зараснати во столетна кора
се пали страшен оган и горат корени гладни.

 
Кој си ти што идеш со лузни од правта на векот дален,
со едно дамна во неврат отшумено време,
и место лика на некој очајник жален
ностиш суров закон за себе и своето племе?

 
Гласи сe со виј од молк, проговори со поглед нем,
засводен во својот говор со јазли семоќно власни,
и како ненужен воин со очи од црнозем
обѕрни се во кругот златен и победоносен згасни.

Старинска ѕвездо, ѕвездо на пророци и чуда,–
распрсни се во стихот, потони во најдлабок збор,
додека трае во крвта оваа светлина луда
овој подземен оган, овој непрегор.

The Golden Circle of Time

Olden star, star of prophets and wonders, –
burst into verse, sink down into the blackest darkness.
This mad light lasts more in blood
and this invisible flame that has no sign nor name.

Starry ghost, star of a cold nightmare, –
disappear with all the fortunetellers with all the fallen myths.
Under this trunk of words planted on a hundred year crust
a dreadful fire is being lit and hungry roots are burning.

Who are you that comes with scars from the dust of a distant age,
with a time long unsounded into irreversibility,
and instead of the air of a poor man in despair
you bring a cruel law for yourself and your kin?

Voice yourself with a scream of silence, speak out with a mute glance,
arched in your speech with nods powerfully threaded,
and like an unnecessary warrior with black earth eyes
look around in the golden circle and victoriously fade out.

Olden star, star of prophets and wonders, –
burst into verse, sink down into the deepest word,
while this mad light lasts in the blood
this underground fire, this eternal ember.

Aco Šopov (1923-1982) and I were born in the same city; we grew up under the myopic eye of the same medieval ruins, under that beloved hill, the Isar.  He, as Yugoslavia was being born, and I, as it was dying. Šopov made it to Africa as the Yugoslav Ambassador to Senegal (1971). He was a partisan in World War II, and founding member of the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts (1967). He died in the same country where he was born, in Skopje, on the 42nd parallel north. As I am reading Šopov’s poem in downtown Chicago (and where else should you be? – Marija says to me), the “L” is rumbling in the background. The Red Line is circulating above my head, always the same route, different passengers every time. The Chicago Loop. The rusty belt of the Windy City.  I am reading this poem, with all of my academic literary baggage weighing me down. But I realize that I am reluctant to apply any of it to these words, written in Macedonian, a language that smells of wet soil, knee wounds, and petroleum lamps, and of trouble, slightly. This is not like reading Montale, my Genoan friend who, unknowingly, is the poet of Lake Michigan. This is not Cesário Verde and his mad Lisbon. These words are the last thread of the umbilical cord to the “rodina” or “birth land” or “Heimat” or “patria” that scars if not severed during childhood. Scars ache when it is about to rain, my baba used to say. This is a poem of home and Šopov a poet of elementary school memorization.

“Prophets,” “blackest darkness,” “blood,” “flame,” “ghost,” “cold nightmare,” “fortunetellers,” “fallen myths,” “dreadful fire,” “burning,” “scars,” “dust,” “despair,” “cruel law,” “mad light,” “blood.” A semantic field (I was taught to say) that encompasses possibly the entire history of the Balkan Peninsula. I read “blood,” and the red background of the Macedonian flag comes to mind which, we were told in school, represents the suffering of our people throughout centuries of foreign rule and the blood they spilled for freedom. I read “golden circle” and “olden star” and I am a five-year-old trying with great effort to outline carefully and color the yellow Socialist star that was then replaced by the Vergina Sun, to then burst and spread onto the blood-red background, like a distant cousin of Tibet. Freedom, they told us it represents. What of the prophets, the fortunetellers, the wonders? What of scars from past battles, cruel laws, regimes, and Mančevski’s Dust (2001)?
Time in the Balkans, so it seems, is circular. Just like the name of this neighborhood where I am standing and of the train routes above my head. “The circle is not round,” we hear in the same director’s Before the Rain (1994). Different people, different ideologies, same outcome, same ever-returning conflicts. The poet wants to tame time, he orders the warrior to “burst into verse,” to “sink down into the blackest darkness,” to “disappear with all the fortunetellers,” to “voice” itself, to “speak out,” “look around” and “victoriously fade out.” The verse itself has to become the only host of time, time has to “sink down into the deepest word.” So we learn how to speak anew, this time politically correct, we write, we read foreign literatures, we emigrate, venture distant shores in an attempt to keep the boiling blood in check, to forget the babbling of the fortunetellers, coffee cup readers, archeologists, to realize that not enough time has passed and that right now the only way we can respond to a childhood poem is with another poem. But as I am reading Šopov’s poem in downtown Chicago, I cannot help but think of Upton Sinclair and John dos Passos, and of the fact that Chicago also lies on the 42nd parallel north. Where else could I be, Marija?

Adiamento

Depois de amanhã, sim, só depois de amanhã…
Levarei amanhã a pensar em depois de amanhã,
E assim será possível; mas hoje não…
Não, hoje nada; hoje não posso.
A persistência confusa da minha subjectividade objectiva,
O sono da minha vida real, intercalado,
O cansaço antecipado e infinito,
Um cansaço de mundos para apanhar um eléctrico…
Esta espécie de alma…
Só depois de amanhã…
Hoje quero preparar-me,
Quero preparar-me para pensar amanhã no dia seguinte…
Ele é que é decisivo.
Tenho já o plano traçado; mas não, hoje não traço planos…
Amanhã é o dia dos planos.
Amanhã sentar-me-ei à secretária para conquistar o mundo;
Mas só conquistarei o mundo depois de amanhã…
Tenho vontade de chorar,
Tenho vontade de chorar muito de repente, de dentro…
Não, não queiram saber mais nada, é segredo, não digo.
Só depois de amanhã…
Quando era criança o circo de domingo divertia-me toda a semana.
Hoje só me diverte o circo de domingo de toda a semana da minha infância…
Depois de amanhã serei outro,
A minha vida triunfar-se-á,
Todas as minhas qualidades reais de inteligente, lido e prático
Serão convocadas por um edital…
Mas por um edital de amanhã…
Hoje quero dormir, redigirei amanhã…
Por hoje qual é o espectáculo que me repetiria a infância?
Mesmo para eu comprar os bilhetes amanhã,
Que depois de amanhã é que está bem o espectáculo…
Antes, não…
Depois de amanhã terei a pose pública que amanhã estudarei.
Depois de amanhã serei finalmente o que hoje não posso nunca ser.
Só depois de amanhã…
Tenho sono como o frio de um cão vadio.
Tenho muito sono.
Amanhã te direi as palavras, ou depois de amanhã…
Sim, talvez só depois de amanhã…

O porvir…
Sim, o porvir…

Adjournment

The day after tomorrow, yes, only the day after tomorrow…
Tomorrow I’ll spend the day thinking about the day after tomorrow,
And only so will it be possible, but not today…
No, not today, nothing; today, I can’t.
The confusing persistence of my objective subjectivity,
The sleep of my real life, interrupted,
The anticipated and infinite fatigue,
The world-weary fatigue of even riding a trolley…
This alleged soul…
Only the day after tomorrow…
Today I want to prepare,
I want to prepare for thinking tomorrow about the next day…
That day alone will be decisive.
I already have a plan laid out, but not today, I’m not making any plans…
Tomorrow is the time to plan.
Tomorrow I’ll sit down at my desk and conquer the world,
But I’ll only conquer the world the day after tomorrow…
I feel like crying,
Suddenly I feel like crying, from the inside…
You don’t want to know more, you don’t, it’s a secret, I won’t say.
Only the day after tomorrow…
When I was a kid the Sunday circus amused me every week.
Today I’m only amused by the Sunday circus of my childhood’s weeks…
The day after tomorrow I’ll become someone else,
My life will triumph,
All my real qualities—bright, well-read, and practical—
Will be summoned by decree…
But only by tomorrow’s decree…
Today I want to sleep, I’ll write tomorrow…
What performance, today, would revivify my childhood?
I would only buy the tickets tomorrow,
For the performance must be done only the day after tomorrow…
Not before…
The day after tomorrow I’ll have a public stance that tomorrow I’ll rehearse.
The day after tomorrow I’ll finally become what today I couldn’t ever be.
Only the day after tomorrow…
I’m sleepy as a stray dog’s chill.
I’m quite sleepy.
Tomorrow I’ll tell you every word, or the day after tomorrow…
Yes, perhaps only the day after tomorrow…

The future…
Yes, the future…

Fernando Pessoa (1888-1936) was a Portuguese author, best known as the creator of heteronyms—fictional authors with styles, literary traditions, biographies, and even handwritings of their own. According to Pessoa himself, out of the 136 fictional characters that he created throughout his lifetime, three stand out as the most well-rounded heteronyms: Alberto Caeiro, which he considered the master of them all (even of Pessoa the ortonym—i.e. Pessoa as himself); Ricardo Reis, the heir of the more classic traditions; and the author of this poem, Álvaro de Campos, known for his decadent, polemical, and futuristic styles. Although Pessoa left an archive with over 30,000 manuscripts, he published only a handful of works during his lifetime. Still to date, most of his writings remain unpublished and untranslated, let alone transcribed. According to the biography established by Pessoa, Campos was born in 1890, at 1:30 p.m., and in the fictional world of characters, he would gain notoriety by denouncing Fernando Pessoa’s very existence.

“Adiamento” raises some of the main themes in Pessoan literature: the relativity of time, postponement, and the tension between thought and action. The poem stands as a defense of inaction and opens the possibility of plurality by validating the reality of thought (as opposed to the reality of the external world). It also evinces the fragility of language and the malleability of concepts: will actions be forever postponed given that once tomorrow comes, today’s “tomorrow” will be tomorrow’s “today”? This question is representative of Pessoa’s work overall, and it manifests his long-lasting fascination with paradox. One of the most important goals of this translation was keeping the morphological and etymological implications of the title, especially the fact that the original Portuguese word, “Adiamento”, inscribes the word “day” (“dia”), yet at the same time the whole concept implies a denial of days and time. The word “Adjournment”, with its French root—jour—, fulfills both aspects and maintains the contradiction of an overall concept that postpones (and ultimately erases) its main root.

Na tlennost’

Reka vremyon v svoyom stremlenii
Unosit vse dela lyudei
I topit v propasti zabvenya
Narody, tsarstva i tsarey.
A yesli shto i ostyotsa
Chrez zvuki liry i truby,
To vechnosti zherlom pozhryotsa
I obschei ne uidyot sud’by.

Derzhavin wrote the poem a few days before his death on July 8, 1816. By that time, he was a distinguished poet at the age of 73. The central idea of the poem resonates with Solomon’s thoughts on the meaning of human life in Ecclesiastes, the canonical Wisdom Book in the Old Testament: All is vanity. The allegorical image of time as the river of oblivion is rooted in Greek mythology. The river Lethe flew in the underworld of Hades. Shades of the dead were required to drink it to erase their memories. Allusions to the lyre and the trumpet stand for poetry. And, as Derzhavin concludes in the end, it will inexorably be devoured by ‘the orifice of eternity’ (literal translation of ‘zherlo vechnosti’). This refers us to one of the most quoted allegories of time:  Greek God Kronus, eating his children. Iambic tetrameter of the poem (rhymed a B a B c D c D) creates an impression of a flowing stream. Unlike the poet’s pessimistic view on the fate of his poems, we still remember them today and admire their beautiful clarity.

On Transience

Relentless River, coursing ages,
Usurps all works of mortal hands;
It sinks all worlds, in darkness rages:
Naught shall be saved – not kings, nor lands.
Should any trace endure an hour
Through Lyre’s chord or Trumpet’s call,
Obscured it drowns, by Time devoured,
Purged of its form – the Fate of all.

Translated by Professor Alexander Levitsky and first published in the volume ‘Poetic Works’, Brown University, 2001.

The translation offered here is one of the eight versions, which proves the poem’s mysterious power. I chose it because this translation is the closest one to the original meter. Derzhavin did not write about darkness (third line), originally there was the abyss of oblivion (propast’ zabvenyia), but I agree with the translator’s word choice, because waters in the underworld apparently do not reflect any light. The last two lines in the translation do not reconstruct the image of the orifice, hole or throat (all could stand for the word ‘zherlo’, however Time (written from the capital letter) devoured any trace, marks a clear connection with the same Greek myth used in the original. The original has an acrostic. First letters of each line form two words: ‘Ruina chti’. The literal translation is ‘Honor the Ruin’.