Spanish Poetry

Borges would kill you for making Garcia-Lorca central of anything :D

Probably true... but then Borges great rival (Neruda) would almost certainly agree... if he didn't nominate himself for the post.:hand:

Their fight actually started with Garcia Lorca, Borges was against the Garcia Lorca Fashion, Neruda visited Buenos Aires and remarked something about it and well... :D

If I were to try and get a big anthology of Spanish verse, could any of you point me to a comprehensive one (the thicker the better), and preferably one similar to what the Norton is to English, or the Columbia anthologies are to East-Asian literature.

I do not know any with all spanish works, but Borges compilled (with Marguerita Guerreiro if I am not mistaken) one, focused in latin-american poets, which is very useful for less know poets and guachesque poetry. Probally the one you will find easily in Canada.

From air to air, like an empty net,
I went wandering between the streets and the atmosphere, arriving and saying goodbye
leaving behind in autumn's advent the coin extended
from the leaves, and between Spring and the wheat,
that which the greatest love, as within a falling glove,
hands over to us like a large moon.

(Days of live brilliance in the storminess
of bodies: steel transformed
into the silence of acid:
nights unraveled to the last flour:
assualted stamens of the nuptial native land.)

Someone waiting for me among the violins
found a world like a sunken tower
digging its spiral deeper than all
the leaves the color of hoarse sulfur:
and deeper still, into geologic gold,
like a sword sheathed in meteors,
I pulnged my turbulent and tender hand
into the most genital terrestrial territory.

. . . .


Btw, I know that this is a Spanish-language poetry thread, but can anybody recommend me a good translation of Pessoa? Preferably one of his Book of Disquiet.

Sorry, I have only translations of Pessoa to portuguese :D

*bump*

Luis de Góngora

Romances

I.

The loveliest creature
in all our town,
but yesterday married,
now widowed, alone,
seeing that her lover
to the wars is going,
says to her mother,
who hears her complain:
Give me leave to cry
on the seashore.

Mother you gave me
away so soon
to such brief pleasure,
to such long pain;
since you bound me
to one who's gone,
taking the keys
that end my freedom,
Give me leave to cry
on the seashore.

Let my eyes from now on
to tears convert
the agreeable practice
of looks that enchant,
for what occupation
can they have more,
since he who was peace
is gone to the war?
Give me leave to cry
on the seashore.

Don't seek to stop me,
or hold me to blame,
one may be just
but the other's extreme;
if truly you love me,
why do me this harm?
Or would you prefer me
dead or struck dumb?
Give me leave to cry
on the seashore.

Who wouldn't cry,
sweet mother of mine,
even had she
a heart of stone,
who wouldn't shout
to see wither and wane
the greenest years
of my youthful seasons?
Give me leave to cry
on the seashore.

Let the nights hide away,
since the eyes are gone
that kept mine always
open 'til dawn,
let the nights not see
me so alone,
now half my bed's
not needed again.
Give me leave to cry
on the seashore.

from Romances
Luis de Góngora, 1561–1627
tr. John Dent-Young

VIII

When I behold the blue horizon merge
And lose itself afar within a gauze
Of restless, golden dust, my fancies urge,
That I could break all ordinary laws
And it seems possible to tear away
My eager spirit from this wretched clay,
To float with golden mists, dissolved in bright
And myriad atoms of celestial light.

When I behold, at night, the trembling stars
Within the dark recesses of the sky,
So that my fancy vividly compares
Their lustre with an ardent, burning eye,
It then seems possible to wing in flight
To where they shine and bathe within their light,
To kindle with them in a blazing sea
And in a kiss confound identity.

Although within a sea of doubt I plash
And spurn beliefs, which with my reason clash,
Yet they proclaim, these anxious doubts of mine,
A certain trace of origin divine.

-From The "Rimas" of Gustavo A. Becquer, tr. Jules Renard 1908

Stukles, that is a bad translation I think... The very first like, transforming niña to creature sounds odd...

La más bella niña
de nuestro lugar,
hoy viuda y sola,
ayer por casar,
viendo que sus ojos
a la guerra van,
a su madre dice,
que escucha su mal:

No me pongáis freno
ni queráis culpar,
que lo uno es injusto,
lo otro por demás.
Si me queréis bien,
no me hagáis mal,
harto peor fuera
morir y callar,

Dejadme llorar
orillas del mar.

Dejadme llorar
orillas del mar.

Pues me distes, madre,
en tan tierna edad
tan corto el placer
tan largo el pesar,
y me cautivastes
de quien hoy se va
y lleva las llaves
de mi libertad,

Dulce madre mía,
¿quién no llorará,
aunque tenga el pecho
como un pedernal,
y no dará voces
viendo marchitar
los más verdes años
de mi mocedad?

Dejadme llorar
orillas del mar.

Dejadme llorar
orillas del mar.

En llorar conviertan
mis ojos, de hoy más,
el sabroso oficio
del dulce mirar,
pues que no se pueden
mejor ocupar,
yéndose a la guerra
quien era mi paz,

Váyanse las noches,
pues ido se han
los ojos que hacían
los míos velar;
váyanse y no vean
tanta soledad,
después que en mi lecho
sobra la mitad,

Dejadme llorar
orillas del mar.

Dejadme llorar
orillas del mar.



And someone like Yeats should have translated Becquer...

RIMA XXXVIII

Los suspiros son aire y van al aire!
Las lágrimas son agua y van al mar!
Dime, mujer, cuando el amor se olvida
¿Sabes tú adónde va?

..........

Sighs are air and go to the air!
Tears are water and go to the sea!
Tell me, woman, when love's forgotten
Do you know where it goes?

JCamillo... yes, the original reads far more poetically... even without access to anything near a grasp of Spanish. That's, of course, what my initial rant was about: the lack of access to great Spanish poets... at least the older ones. Now San Juan de la Cruz seems to have been well served by Nims and Roy Campbell and there are outdated and out of print volumes with some decent poetic translations such as the example MortalTerror drew upon (from an online source?). I have a number of e-books of foreign poetry in translation because they are not anywhere else available in actual bound copies.

Longfellow offers this intro to one such anthology:

SONG

by: Gil Vicente (c. 1470 - c. 1536)

IF thou art sleeping, maiden,
Awake and open thy door.
'Tis the break of day, and we must away
O'er meadow, and mount, and moor.

Wait not to find thy slippers,
But come with thy naked feet;
We shall have to pass through the dewy grass
And waters wide and fleet.

--Translated by H.W. Longfellow

San Juan is not easy to find even in spanish, I must tell. I do not know translations in portuguese either. The thing about spanish to english is that spanish poetry is too figurative, symbolic, with a strong baroque side. That is a bit of the importance of Borges and even Neruda, they are much more clear, polished, classical...

Now, Gil Vicente wrote more in portuguese than spanish, as much at the time the languages are very close. Quem tem Farelos, from where came this song, is considered portuguese, not spanish. Both him and Camões worked in both languages, but today they belong to the portuguese tradition.

In the case of Gongora, I did not like some of vocabulary options, Gongora is a bit exagerated at some points, the search for effect considerable, and the translator seems to have tried to give fluidity to it... the effect is quite different.

Yes... I remember reading a book on Mannerism some many years back in which Gongora was described as something more of a Mannerist than a Baroque poet... employing intentionally convoluted vocabulary and structures and exaggerated leaps in symbolism and metaphor... not unlike John Donne's odd comparisons to the flea. Oddly enough, in older English poetry it is the neo-classicists of the 18th century such as Pope and Gay and Swift... and even the earlier Dryden... that are far less popular than the more Baroque Shakespeare, Donne and Spenser... or the later Romantics.

Dryder, this is a guy who make me think it would translate well spanish poetry. Donne too... or even, the guys like Donne if they were catholic. Swift could translate Quevedo.
It is pretty much the entire controversy that Borges caused with Quixote, he was defending an english path more closer to english path. But that is somehow a spanish tradition, to consider their language not good enough, prefering portuguese, as if spanish is mundane. I am studying arabic and starting to think a good translator of arabic would be good of spanish.