Christal Cooper
*Photo description, copyright information and web site
information is located at the very end of this piece.
Guest Blogger Marlon L
Fick:
Translating
Catalan Poetry
In the Fall of 2015, the editor of Tupelo Press,
Jeffrey Levine, suggested that I and my wife, Francisca, collaborate in
translating Catalan poetry. The two of us were viewed as capable of such a
project: Francisca Esteve is a native speaker of Catalan, one who came of age
in Franco’s time and who, along with nine million other speakers of Catalan,
suffered from laws forbidding her language. On the other hand, my activities as
a translator have principally been with Spanish and French, with forays into
German and Chinese. In the 1960s and 70s, Francisca met regularly (at the same
café frequented by George Orwell, by the Plaza del Pi in Barcelona) with her
friends in the anti-fascist underground to talk strategy and plan ways to
subvert the Franco government. If you were lucky, overheard speaking Catalan, a
Tricornio (the police with three pointed hats), would shake a finger and shout,
“Speak Christian!” (meaning, Castilian Spanish); if unlucky, prison. Her job
was to smuggle and disseminate books and pamphlets in the Catalan language.
During this time, Franco murdered an additional one million people in his
prisons, adding to the civil war’s death toll of two million.
Now Franco is gone. Barcelona, the capital of
Catalonia, flourishes with numerous publishing houses dedicated to Catalan. In
addition, Catalan continues to be spoken in Cataluña (and its four provinces),
València, Balearic Islands (Mallorca and Minorca) and Andorra. Catalan
developed about the same time as the other romance languages—French, Italian—in
the thirteenth century, and by coincidence, the Anglo Saxon and French/Latin
hybrid of English during the time of Chaucer.
The thirteenth century mystical and erotic poet, Ramon Llull, the author
of The Book of Love and the Beloved (Llibre D’Amic I Amat), was the first
great master. A poet of his magnitude is a necessary condition for a language
to fully bloom. English had Shakespeare; Russian, Tolstoy; Spanish, Cervantes,
etc….
The task of translating in the magnificent
shadow of Catalan’s rich past is daunting and humbling. However, since my wife
is a natural speaker, and since my Spanish and French are strong and my
training is in the history of poetics, we agreed to take up Tupelo Press on the
challenge.
In May of 2016, we traveled to Cataluña and València to meet with
dozens of poets, among them Joan Margarit, Màrius Sampere, David Castillo,
Jordi Valls, Josep Piera, Maria Josep Escrivà, Francesc Parcerisas, Manuel
Forcano, Antoni Marí, and Feliu Formosa.
Others we contacted by mail: Teresa
Pascual, Ponç Pons, Cèlia Sànchez-Mústich, Laia Noguera, Anna Gual, Jordi
Virallonga, Narcís Comadira, Mireia Vidal-Conte, Àngels Gregori i Parra, Rosa
Font, and Antonia Vicens.
Long, intense, and delightful conversations ensued.
Josep Piera met us at in the train station of Gandìa, València, around 11:00
A.M., we began talking (about history, poetry, poetic movements, the history of
València, politics, paella…) and before any of us realized, it was suddenly
three o’clock in the morning!
Similarly, Jordi Valls met us on several
occasions at Bracafé by the Plaza Cataluña, thereupon taking us on long walking
tours of the city, teaching us, peripatetically, the interrelations of art,
architecture, history, and poetry.
Others, like Antoni Marí, graciously filled
us in on Petrarch’s contributions to Catalan Literature.
Joan Margarit and I
exchanged our views on poets and translations; we received from Margarit and
Sampere and Parcerisas extremely good advise on what sort of direction our
anthology should take. Margarit, for example, explained why Pere Gimferrar,
although a brilliant poet in Spanish, did not represent Catalan literature. But it was Carme Sampere, Marius’ wife, who
helped us contact the important women writing in Catalan. Sampere’s generation (he was born in 1928)
tended to dismiss talented women owing to a culture of machismo, although he
himself shows no signs of such bias.
By August, we had received as gifts hundreds of
books to survey, in addition to the hundreds we purchased ourselves. The most
common question a poet or potential reader asks is “What is your criteria for
selection?” All of the aforementioned have already established their fame at home,
many of them are already known internationally. Yet I am less interested in
accolades than I am in the poem I see on a page. There is a brilliant poet in
Barcelona, but the references in his poems are so local, that translating his
poetry would entail a long list of explanatory footnotes, and his poems would
have become lost in translation.
As we translated (which we are still doing
currently) we grew a vision: we would only translate poems that both of us
liked, whether the enjoyment grew from the richness of the language or from a
particular theme. I want to be moved. In
addition, my wife’s background is in painting, not poetry. To be sure, she is
smart, but this anthology represents her first introduction to the world of
poetry (in any language). So I rely on her freshness. If an intelligent reader,
not academically trained in poetry, is moved by a poem, I sit up and take
notice. My own half-century of involvement in poetry may be valuable, but I
cannot claim to see poetry “for the first time.” This is an element of magic
that I decided we could make essential to our process. One day, she emerged
from her office in a state of childlike joy and amazement, clutching a volume
by Sampere, exclaiming, “Sampere wrote a poem about stoplights that you have to
read!”
Regarding our method, Francisca first reads and
glosses the poetry, often tracking down dialect differences between Catalan in
Catalonia and Catalan differences in Valencia or Mallorca. She is usually aware
of the differences without a dictionary since she was born in Castellón de
Rugat, València. Her parents took her to Barcelona with she was three months
old. Her mother, Valenciana, continued to speak Catalan from that region. Her
teachers, who were nuns, were all from Minorca. So Francisca has a grasp of all
three dominant dialects of Catalan. When we encounter dialect differences, in
the poetry of Pons (Minorcan) and Piera (Valenciano), Francisca hears her
mother’s voice again, or the voices of the Sisters. We both study the poem in Catalan. We discuss
the poem in Spanish and in English. She tells me her version of the poem and I
write my version in English. After we’ve done this, I read back my version to
her, verbally translating my English into Spanish as she carefully follows the
original text in Catalan. This is a process known as “back translation,” a
method dreamed up by Saint Cyrus, the man responsible for translating the
Vulgate Latin Bible in the fifth century. In this way, we are confident that we
have insured fidelity. However, we do not end there. Once we are confident, we
send our version back to the poet, some of whom do know English (Parcerisas is
quite famous for his translations of English renaissance poets, including
Shakespeare and Donne). The other poets who do not know English share our
translations with a trusted friend and then formally approve of the
translation, or, in some cases, suggest changes.
We have tried to avoid mistakes made by a well
known and extremely prolific translator of Catalan Literature, D. Sam Adams. Mr.
Adam’s translations are often so literal and so word for word that he loses the
drift of the whole poem. His translations are published by The Institute of
North American Studies. It is an unfortunate venue due to its obscurity. By
working with Tupelo Press, we may be assured that Catalan literature will reach
a far broader audience. Also, I have been told that I am not, like Adams, an
“academic translator.” As a poet, with
some success, my translations stand a better chance at appearing seamless,
although as for that, the act of poetry is more often a cousin to failure than
to success. But it is a failure that redeems us. Translators routinely
experience frustration and pain when encountering impossible, beautifully lyric
lines that repeat a word with multiple uses. Josep Piera writes “I vol la veu
que veu al vol,” which, sadly, becomes “and the voice wants to see flight,” a
line without its original chiasmus since there are no English words which
double their signification the same way.
Similarly, he writes, “Cau la nit com un cau,” again translated without
its original lyric breadth: “Night falls like a lair.” For this reason,
translation editions should always be bilingual.
In reading and conversations, we soon learned
that Catalan Literature is dominantly a poetry of lyric tradition. Most does not attempt to tell a story; indeed
the existence of some narrative poetry in Catalan is a borrowing from the English
and American tradition. Also, the chief
external influence on Catalan tradition comes from the French, in particular,
the French Symbolist movement. Catalan
poets are profoundly familiar with Verlaine, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Laforgue,
etc. When asked to define the movement,
I find myself at a loss. A symbol, by its very essence, is a centrifugal force
of meaning, spinning just beyond our grasp. Just so, the symbolist may write
lines that extend beyond the edges of clarity to a hazy area between the world
of reference and the beyond. The
influence of the symbolists affected Catalan as much as it did the British and
Americans—notably Yeats and Eliot.
While the influence of the French Symbolists has
not dissipated even now, a second influence crept into Catalan letters,
latently, after the death of Franco. The American beat generation. Younger Catalan poets, like David Castillo,
are wild about our miscreants, valorizing their anarchy. In the summer of 2016, both the Pompidou, in
Paris, and the Contemporary Art Museum of Barcelona held special exhibitions
dedicated to the Beat Generations.
Burroughs, Ginsberg, and Kerouac are idolized among some of the younger
poets, only recently discovering them.
My own personal misgivings about such an influence have more to due with
the lives these poets led than with their actual work: some of them used drugs
excessively and preached anarchy, but the baseness of their lives reaches even
into sex trafficking, a crime for which they were run out of Morocco. Not to mention, they were uniformly misogynistic.
It was my great misfortune to have known some of them personally and rather
well. They are not my role models, but it would be an oversight not to mention
their influence here.
*Translations
from Catalan by Francisca Esteve and Marlon L. Fick
Ponç Pons
A Christmas Letter to My
Father
I
was never a hunter. I liked to visit Biniguarda
with
you to see the dogs run or the partridges sing.
When
we came back to Lô, we walked and listened to church bells.
The
world was joyful and safe because you held my hand along the way.
At
home with my mother, watching her cook, we found my brothers
and
there was great joy and so many of us, and we all had dinner
and
listened to the radio.
Saturday
evening, I took a bath in a wash tub, and later you held me
in
the rocking chair.
With
the humble faith of the poor, you told me, “Poncet, one day we will
be
rich. We have land in Havana!” but to me that wasn’t important
because
I had you. At home you filled me with kindness with your blue eyes.
I
was the baby of the family, the one who listened the most to your stories
about
witches and dragons, or your fear filled chatter about the civil war.
Many
evenings you returned exhausted from the factory and spent
extra
time on your feet cutting pieces of leather, up in your bedroom
till
late. I read, voraciously, all of the old books about that famous uncle
from
your side of the family, the one who was the confessor for two popes
and
other ecclesiastics in Rome.
I
see you always satisfied.
You
were wearing an apron and you had a pencil in your ear.
I
often went to see you at Ca’s Toribios
and
you kissed me, happy, and your mustache was scratchy.
When
your salary was so meager it dissolved in the can,
you
hugged mother and with a lively gesture you smiled at her,
“Maria,
everything will be clarified!” and she clarified everything,
and
we grew up happy.
You
made us Menorcans, and with facts for examples, you told us
that
we had to be good people.
Don’t
get lost in the woods.
When
you hear the bells as it gets dark
and
you come back alone
on
the paths of the dead, I will give you my hand
and
I will come to your side
to
hear your stories and hear you talk to me without fear
of
the civil war.
I
hope you are fine and there are newspapers in heaven
and
you can hunt any time.
You
didn’t care so much about politics.
If
you see God, tell him that He didn’t clarify anything,
that
between war and hunger, He left a frightening world.
Christmas
is a sad time for me, and it’s as if the nativity scenes were missing
their
old joy. Their little stars are dim and
the figurines of shepherds are not smiling.
Always
there is a worm that gnaws at me, and it hurts.
Since
you’ve been gone, I’ve felt the weight of a terrible emptiness
and
I don’t want you to die, father, anymore.
Joan Margarit
In the Middle of the
Night
In
the middle of the night
the
air is freezing,
so
cold the nightingale won’t sing.
With
my forehead pressed against the window,
I
ask my two dead daughters
for
forgiveness
because
I rarely think about them anymore.
Time
has left dry clay over the scars. And besides,
when
one loves someone, forgetfulness follows.
Light
has the same hardness
as
days that fall from frozen cypress trees.
I
place a log, stir the ashes,
and
the flames flare up from the coals.
As
I’m starting the coffee, your mother,
from
the bedroom, smiling, and with your voice, says
“What
a wonderful smell. You have risen so early this morning.”
Marius Sampere
Three
I
am completely alone with God. Both
of
us occupy and complete a room.
That’s
why I can’t explain
the
little noise from someone else
who
is eating
in
the room, and who is so full, so satiated
with
God and me.
First,
I examine the place inch by inch,
then
the surface of the table.
And
there it is…
a
primitive nest just in the wedge
maintaining
the balance of the four legs.
There
is where I find the termite,
the
third.
Photo
1
Marlon
Fick
Photo
2
Tupelo
Press web logo photo
Photo
3
Jeffrey
Levine web photo from tupelo press.
Photo
4
Francisca
Esteve and Marlon Fick in Paris, France. July 2016
Copyright
granted by Fick and Esteve
Photo
6
George
Orwell’s Press Card ID in 1943.
Public
Domain
Photo
7
Plaza
del Pi in Barcelona
Fair
Use Under the United States Copyright Law.
Photo
8
Franco
on October 23, 1975
CCASA
2.0
Photo
9
Poster
of the murdered victims and missing of Franco’s massacres.
Public
Domain
Photo
10
Map
of Cataluña and its four provinces.
CCASA
2.0
Photo
11
Ramn
Llull
Public
Domain
Photo
12
Jacket
cover of The Book of Love and the Beloved
Photo
13
Tupelo
Press Facebook photo
Photo
14
Joan
Margarit and Marlon Fick
Copyright
granted by Fick and Esteve
Photo
15
Marius
Sampere and Marlon Fick
Copyright
granted by Fick and Esteve
Photo
16
Marlon
Fick, David Castillo, and a friend
Copyright
granted by Fick and Esteve
Photo
17
Jordi
Valls
Photo
18
Josep
Piera
Photo
19
Maria
Josep Escriva
Photo
20
Francesc
Parcerisas and Marlon Fick
Copyright
granted by Fick and Esteve
Photo
21
Manuel
Forcano and Marlon Fick
Copyright
granted by Fick and Esteve
Photo
22
Antoni
Mari
Copyright
granted by Fick and Esteve
Photo
23
Francisca
Esteve and Feliu Formosa
Copyright
granted by Fick and Esteve
Photo
25
Ponç
Pons
Photo
26
Celia
Sànchez-Mústich
Photo
27
Laia
Noguera
Photo
28
Anna
Gual
Photo
29
Jordi
Virallonga
Photo
30
Narcis
Comadira
Photo
31
Mireia
Vidal-Conte, web logo photo
Photo
32
Angels
Gregori I Parra
CCASA
4.0
Photo
34
Antonia
Vicens
Photo
35
Josep
Piera and Marlon Fick
Copyright
granted by Fick and Esteve
Photo
36
Jordi
Valls and Marlon Fick
Copyright
granted by Fick and Esteve
Photo
37
Antoni
Marí and Marlon Fick
Copyright
granted by Fick and Esteve
Photo
38
Joan
Margarit web logo photo
Photo
39
Francisca
Esteve, Màrius Sampere, Marlon Fick, and Carme Sampere
Copyrigjht
granted by Fick and Esteve
Photo
40
Marlon
Fick and Francisca Esteve
Copyright
granted by Fick and Esteve
Photo
42
Francisca
Esteve and her painting
Photo
44a
Saint
Cyrus.
Photo
44b
The
Vulgate Latin Bible
Photo
46
Josep
Piera
Photo
47a
Paul
Verlaine
Photo
47b
Charles
Baudelaire
Photo
47c
Arthur
Rimbaud
Photo
47d
Jules
Laforgue
Photo
48a
David
Castillo
Photo
48b
William
S. Burroughs
Photo
48c
Allen
Ginsberg
Photo
48d
Jack
Kerouac
