Thursday 5 June 2008

blue rain in town




Iubesc ploile, iubesc cu patimă ploile,
Înnebunitele ploi şi ploile calme,
Ploile feciorelnice şi ploile-dezlănţuite femei,
Ploile proaspete şi plictisitoarele ploi fără sfârşit,
Iubesc ploile, iubesc cu patimă ploile,
Îmi place să mă tăvălesc prin iarba lor albă, înaltă,
Îmi place să le rup firele şi să umblu cu ele în dinţi,
Să ameţească, privindu-mă astfel, bărbaţii.
Ştiu că-i urât să spui "Sunt cea mai frumoasă femeie",
E urât şi poate nici nu e adevărat,
Dar lasă-mă atunci când plouă,
Numai atunci când plouă,
Să rostesc magica formulă "Sunt cea mai frumoasă femeie".
Sunt cea mai frumoasă femeie pentru că plouă
Şi-mi stă bine cu franjurii ploii în păr,
Sunt cea mai frumoasă femeie pentru că-i vânt
Şi rochia se zbate disperată să-mi ascundă genunchii,
Sunt cea mai frumoasă femeie pentru că tu
Eşti departe plecat şi eu te aştept,
Şi tu ştii că te-aştept,
Sunt cea mai frumoasă femeie şi ştiu să aştept
Şi totuşi aştept.
E-n aer miros de dragoste viu,
Şi toţi trecătorii adulmecă ploaia să-i simtă mirosul,
Pe-o asemenea ploaie poţi să te-ndrăgosteşti fulgerător,
Toţi trecătorii sunt îndrăgostiţi,
Şi eu te aştept.
Doar tu ştii -
Iubesc ploile,
Iubesc cu patimă ploile, înnebunitele ploi şi ploile calme,
Ploile feciorelnice şi ploile-dezlănţuite femei...

Ana Blandiana, D
escântec de ploaie




I love the rain, I passionately love the rain,
the mad rains and the gentle rains
the chaste rains and the rains like unbridled women,
refreshing rains and endless boring rains.
I love the rain, I passionately love the rain.
I like to wallow in its tall white grass,
I like to break its threads and walk with them
in my teeth
so that men watching me grow dizzy.
I know it isn't so nice to say,
'I am the most beautiful woman on earth',
it isn't nice and maybe it isn't even true,
but allow me, when it rains, only when it rains,
to say the magic words,
'I am the most beautiful woman on earth',
the most beautiful because it is raining,
and the fringes of rain in my hair become me.
I am the most beautiful woman
because the wind blows
and my dress desperately struggles to hide my knees.
I am the most beautiful woman because you
are far away, and I am waiting for you,
and you know I am waiting.
I am the most beautiful woman because I know how to wait,
and still I wait.
There's an intense scent of love in the air.
People passing by sniff the rain to catch its traces.
In such a rain, one can fall in love in an instant.
All those who pass by are in love
and I am waiting for you.
I love the rain, I passionately love the rain,
the mad rains and the gentle rains
the chaste rains and the rains like unbridled women.

Ana Blandiana
(Magic Spell of Rain)






14 comments:

  1. nice poem!

    i'm amzed how much romania resembles scotland in the rain!

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  2. Thanks for leaving your comment. I wonder, too, yet I sometimes think it doesn't matter because we have to keep on, no matter. We really can't hope to speak for everyone, even a whole category of people, eg., Japanese women. Or anybody else. But we can try to be honest to what we feel and hope for the best.
    http://yuri-kageyama.blogspot.com

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  3. Belle image avec la poème parfaite.

    Vraiment, tu n’as jamais étudié l’anglais? Ma chère, tu m’éblouis. Ah, si seulement la plupart de mes étudiants américains écrivaient l’anglais aussi bien que toi!

    Did you translate the Blandiana poem? If so, well done!

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  4. really swiss, how could it possibly resemble? I am puzzled! :-) this here is an ugly communist building and you can see the shape of our Dacia-cars, built after an old Renault make - before they were just about the only cars to be seen in the streets. when a french friend came to visit me in the early 90s she was shocked: you have renaults here, only renault! :-) oh no we had also a smaller type, a citroen-imitation, but not so popular. of course now it is totally different, but somehow this picture (four years old) captured a mood beginning to belong to the past...

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  5. James! ne te moque pas de moi s'il te plait! :-) mais c'est malheureusement vrai, je n'ai etudie que le francais et l'allemand, en fait ce qu'on appelle ici "lettres" avec cette double specialisation en langues et litteratures modernes. et bien sur que je veux lire tes poemes en francais, tu pourrais m'envoyer les liens s'il te plait?

    may I ask you what you teach? and no, of course I couldn't have managed such a beautiful translation, actually I found it on the blog of an american student with all the wrong information: "Anna Baladian, a russian poet". I got a bit angry! :-)
    btw, what do you mean by: "that's how I found your blog"? I thought you came here via Sorlil.

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  6. Roxana, Je ne me moquerais jamais de toi!:-) And, seriously, I'm very impressed that you have learned the language (a hard one!) all by yourself. I had thought that you might be a teacher of English, since I really don't see anything wrong with your English, at all. I'm not joking, many of my students really don't write as well.

    I teach expository writing classes for first and second year college students. That is a dull job that I don't like a lot. I have, in the past, taught poetry-writing classes, and I would love to do that again, someday, but those jobs are hard to find. Do Romanian universities have creative writing programs?

    On n’a pas de spécialisation en “letters” ici, mais je me suis spécialisé en français et en philologie --- ce qui n’est pas si différent, peut-être. Après mes études sous-graduées, j’étais journalist pendant une dizaine d’années, puis je me suis entré en une programme de création litteraire.

    The study of French was so different when I was a student. We read a lot of literature, but most Americans then had never heard of Derida or Barthes or Foucault. Nowadays, it seems the students spend most of their time on theory. Also, my college was very small, and I don't think we studied everything that we should have studied, to tell the truth.

    I know from your profile that you are in Craiova and that your profession is education. Are you a teacher at the university there? Tell me about yourself.:-)

    I like the translation of the Blandiana poem a lot. Does it reproduce the feel of the Romanian?

    Are you familiar with a poet named Mariana Marin? I am currently working on a review of a book of her poems, titled Paper Children. Really strong work. She often has a bleak view of life, but there are moments of hope that seem all the more important for the bleakness....

    Come to think of it, I guess I did first come to your blog through sorlil.... But I was also looking for sites about Romanain literature and language at the same time, and that's maybe why I followed the link from her blog....
    Anyway, I'm glad that I made it here, however it happened!

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  7. I have to second that your English is quite good. American students may not be a great rubric for measurement, but maybe Anhaga's students are above average ;)

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  8. i'll take some pictures ; )

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  9. yes, James, it is a very good translation I believe, I like it almost as much as the original :-) I couldn't find out who made it, though... We don't have writing classes, at least this isn't the "official" name for it but we can have something like "redaction de texte" instead. And I think there are now two or three universtities offering a M.A. in Creative Writing, which is a field still quite new here. I myself am very skeptical about the concept of creative writing, but this would be the beginning of a very long discussion that we will have to have one day :-) I will go back to you for the rest of it, I'm a little bit tired now. thank you for your answer and your kind words :-), I'm always happy to hear from you.

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  10. Bryan, hi, thank you for telling me this :-) I'll refrain from commenting on the american students' level - I still remember what a friend of mine told me about their reading of madame bovary in a phd preparatory class :-) but you wouldn't want to hear the horror stories I could deliver on this subject here. after we were forced to give up the entry exam in order to attract more students, we cannot even talk of "level" anymore.

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  11. swiss, that's exactly what I was trying to get to :-)

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  12. yes, J :-)
    did you like the poem?

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