las olas que faltan para morir

Como el náufrago metódico que contase las olas
que faltan para morir,
y las contase, y las volviese a contar, para evitar
errores, hasta la última,
hasta aquella que tiene la estatura de un niño
y le besa y le cubre la frente,
así he vivido yo con una vaga prudencia de
caballo de cartón en el baño,
sabiendo que jamás me he equivocado en nada,
sino en las cosas que yo más quería.

Luis Rosales (AUTOBIOGRAFÍA)









Like the methodical shipwrecked man
who counts how many waves he needs to die
and he counts them and he counts them again,
to avoid mistakes, until he gets to the last one
the one that is the height of a small child
and he kisses it and covers its forehead
that is how I have lived with a strange sort of care
like a cardboard horse in a bath
knowing that I have never made any mistakes
apart from the really important ones.


translation by Rachel Fox

autobiographical

from luis rosales

as i am shipwrecked
castaway
counting the waves
one by one
book-keeper
of tides
methodical
empirical
as the white crests
fall and die

and to count
to return to
the safety of the count
to have method
to avoid mistakes
to be unequivocal
to catalogue
until that last one
the last wave
in a calming sea
gentle as child
kisses the shore
extinguished

so i have always lived
with a vague care
a prudence
so i illustrate myself
simple, precise
adrift
sure in all things
un-mistaken
except in those precious
un-nameable
beyond count
beyond measure
my fingers flail
in the grasp
of the blue ocean

'translation' by swiss

I'd like to thank Rachel and Swiss for this collaboration - their very different approaches to translation prove once again what a Sisyphic challenge poetry translation is and how controversial the translator's choices can be. I too have tried my own hand at it lately and yes, I agree with you, Rachel, it is a maddening affair. And, still puzzled by the many philosophical and poetical issues at stake, I remember Novalis tonight:

'The transforming translations [which, by the way, are not yet the ideal ones, these being only the 'mythical translations', but because they are impossible to achieve anyway, I left them aside], if they are to be authentic, require the highest poetic spirit. They easily lapse into travesty, like Bürger's iambic Homer, Pope's Homer, and the French translations in their entirety. The true translator of this kind must in effect be the artist himself, able to render the idea of the whole in this or in that manner as he pleases. He must be the poet of the poet, able to let him speak simultaneously according to the poet's idea and to his own. The genius of humanity stands in a similar relation to each individual man'.