posted
hace mucho que no vengo a jatraquear... creo que me preguntaron de donde era, pues naci en Mexicali, creci en Calexico y vivo en San Diego. ?y tu?
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posted
Let's try to include translations for our monolingual and "differently lingual" audience.
Ode 1.5
Quis multa gracilis te puer in rosa perfusus liquidis urget odoribus grato, Pyrrha, sub antro? cui flavam religas comam,
simplex munditiis? heu, quotiens fidem mutatosque deos flebit, et aspera nigris aequora ventis emirabitur insolens,
qui nunc te fruitur credulus aurea; qui semper vacuam, semper amabilem sperat, nescius aurae fallacis! miseri, quibus
intemptata nites! me tabula sacer votiva paries indicat uvida suspendisse potenti vestimenta maris deo.
Ode 1.5
What slender boy bathed in a flowing smell Courts you, Pyrrha, on roses Within some pleasant cave? Whom do you braid that golden hair for,
Simple and neat? Ah, how often He'll weep at how faith and gods change, And he'll marvel, unaccustomed, At this rough sea that's blackened by the wind.
Credulous, he enjoys you now, golden one. Hoping you'll be always free, always beautiful, He's unaware of the changing wind! Unfortunate are those whom you,
Untried, dazzle. The votive plank On the temple wall shows how I escaped: I've hung up my wet clothing In honor of the god of the sea.
-Horace (my translation)
[ December 08, 2005, 10:22 AM: Message edited by: David Bowles ]
Posts: 5663 | Registered: Jun 2000
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posted
Last quarter I taught a unit on Greek literature, and the principal poet we examined was Sappho, most of whose work was destroyed deliberately by the Catholic Church (because she was bisexual... not going on that rant, I promise). We only have one complete poem of hers (everything else is fragmentary, but powerful nonetheless). My problem was that all the translations I could find abandoned the Sapphic stanza in which this poem, a hymn of supplication to Aphrodite, was originally written. So I compiled all the versions, found a transliteration of the Aeolic Greek original with a word-for-word translation, and I created my own "translation," which I'd like to share with you. Sappho was one of the first female poets in the world we know of (the other is the Akkadian priestess Enheduanna), and her work resonates with the concerns, emotions and relationships typically of women of her time and station in the Eastern Greek world.
A Prayer to Aphrodite
On your dappled throne, Aphrodite, deathless, Ruse-devising daughter of Zeus: O Lady Never crush my spirit with pain and needless Sorrow, I beg you.
Rather come, if ever some moment, years past, Hearing from afar my despairing voice, you Listened, left your father's great golden halls, and Came to my succor,
Yoking sparrows, lovely and swift, to drive down, Leaving heaven, chariot sailing mid- sky Over black earth, feather-thick wings densely Beating the clear air,
Quick arrival. You, O my Blessed Goddess, Ageless lips then beautifully smiling at me, Asked me what had caused me such pain and made me Cry out again now:
"What's the secret wish of your crazy, wild heart? Whom must Love compel with Her wily ruses Back into the glittering net of your arms? Sappho, who hurts you?
If she flees, she'll follow you soon as I say; If she snubs your gifts, she will give you much more; If she loves you not, then I swear she will love— Even unwilling."
Come to me now, free me from bitter worry, All I long for, deep in my spirit, do it! You yourself be, here on this field of battle, Sappho's lone ally.
—Sappho (the only poem preserved in its entirety that was written by her. It was quoted in full in Literary Composition by the Greek rhetor Dionysos of Halikarnassos)
[ December 08, 2005, 10:24 AM: Message edited by: David Bowles ]
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Camino le tue strade silente, Battezato sotto la sveglia d'una luna Con una carezza intima, Come la tocca d'un amico che e stato Asento da troppo.
Nel buio, posso sentire tuo ritmo, Un polso intimo, che accena le piedi A ballare al battita d'un tamburo con una voce Come la cadenza della mia cuore.
Night in Cuneo
I walk your silent streets Baptized beneath the gaze of a moon Whose caress is strikingly familiar Like the touch of a friend who has been Absent too long.
In the darkness I can feel your rhythm, An intimate thrum and pulse, beckoning my feet To dance to a drum whose voice matches the Beating of my own heart.
Wow. I thought I was fluent in Italian. I've been schooled. By myself.
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
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Es con voz de la Biblia, o verso de Walt Whitman, que habría que llegar hasta ti, Cazador! Primitivo y moderno, sencillo y complicado, con un algo de Washington y cuatro de Nemrod. Eres los Estados Unidos, eres el futuro invasor de la América ingenua que tiene sangre indígena, que aún reza a Jesucristo y aún habla en español.
Eres soberbio y fuerte ejemplar de tu raza; eres culto, eres hábil; te opones a Tolstoy. Y domando caballos, o asesinando tigres, eres un Alejandro-Nabucodonosor. (Eres un profesor de energía, como dicen los locos de hoy.) Crees que la vida es incendio, que el progreso es erupción; en donde pones la bala el porvenir pones.
No.
Los Estados Unidos son potentes y grandes. Cuando ellos se estremecen hay un hondo temblor que pasa por las vértebras enormes de los Andes. Si clamáis, se oye como el rugir del león. Ya Hugo a Grant le dijo: «Las estrellas son vuestras». (Apenas brilla, alzándose, el argentino sol y la estrella chilena se levanta...) Sois ricos. Juntáis al culto de Hércules el culto de Mammón; y alumbrando el camino de la fácil conquista, la Libertad levanta su antorcha en Nueva York.
Mas la América nuestra, que tenía poetas desde los viejos tiempos de Netzahualcoyotl, que ha guardado las huellas de los pies del gran Baco, que el alfabeto pánico en un tiempo aprendió; que consultó los astros, que conoció la Atlántida, cuyo nombre nos llega resonando en Platón, que desde los remotos momentos de su vida vive de luz, de fuego, de perfume, de amor, la América del gran Moctezuma, del Inca, la América fragante de Cristóbal Colón, la América católica, la América española, la América en que dijo el noble Guatemoc: «Yo no estoy en un lecho de rosas»; esa América que tiembla de huracanes y que vive de Amor, hombres de ojos sajones y alma bárbara, vive. Y sueña. Y ama, y vibra; y es la hija del Sol. Tened cuidado. ¡Vive la América española! Hay mil cachorros sueltos del León Español. Se necesitaría, Roosevelt, ser Dios mismo, el Riflero terrible y el fuerte Cazador, para poder tenernos en vuestras férreas garras.
Y, pues contáis con todo, falta una cosa: ¡Dios!
TO ROOSEVELT
Only with a voice from the Bible, or with verses like Walt Whitman’s could one reach you, Hunter! Primitive and modern, simple and complex, with a bit of Washington and four parts Nimrod. You are the United States, you are the future invader of a naïve America that has indigenous blood, that still prays to Christ Jesus and still speaks in Spanish.
You’re the haughty and strong exemplar of your race: you're educated, you’re capable; you oppose Tolstoy. And breaking horses or killing tigers, you're an Alexander-Nebuchadnezzar. (You’re a professor of energy, as the crazy ones say nowadays.)
You think life is fire, that progress is eruption; wherever you place a bullet you place the future.
No.
The United States is powerful and big. When it shudders, there is a deep tremor that passes along the enormous vertebrae of the Andes. If you cry out, it sounds like a lion’s roar. As Hugo told Grant— “The stars are yours.”
(The Argentinean sun, rising, has just begun to shine, and the Chilean star is coming up…) You are rich. You join to the cult of Hercules the cult of Mammon; and lighting the way to easy conquest, Liberty lifts her torch in New York.
But our America, which had poets since the ancient times of Netzahualcoyotl, which has guarded the footprints of great Bacchus, which once the panic alphabet did learn; which studied the stars, which knew that Atlantis whose name reaches us resounding in Plato, which from the remotest moments of its life has thrived on light, fire, perfume, love, the America of the great Moctezuma, of the Inca, the fragrant America of Christopher Columbus, the Catholic America, the Spanish America, the American in which noble Cuahtemoc once said, “Am I upon a bed of roses?” That America, which trembles with hurricanes and lives for Love, ye men of Saxon eyes and barbarous souls, lives. And dreams. And loves, and thrums; she is the Sun’s own daughter. Beware. Long live Spanish America! A thousand of the Spanish Lion’s cubs run free. You would need, Roosevelt, to be God himself, the terrible Rifleman and almighty Hunter, to snare us in your iron claws.
For, though you have all you need, you lack one thing: God!
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