Poate că mă visează cineva -
De aceea gesturile
Îmi sunt atât de moi
Şi de neterminate,
Cu scopul uitat
La jumătatea mişcării,
Grotesc,
De aceea contururile mi se şterg
Secundă cu secundă
Şi faptele mi se topesc...
Şi poate cel ce mă visează
E smuls din când în când
Din somn,
Trezit,
Purtat cu sila-n viaţa lui
Adevărată,
De aceea mă-ntunec
Suspendată uneori
Ca de-un fir care se topeşte de nea,
Fără să ştiu
Dacă va mai adormi vreodată
Ca să mi se mai întâmple
Ceva.
Poate că mă visează cineva
Ana Blandiana
Perhaps someone is dreaming me -
That's why my gestures
Are so soft
And unfinished,
With their aim forgotten
Half-way,
Grotesquely,
That's why my outlines get blurred
Second by second
And my deeds melt...
And perhaps the one who's dreaming me
From time to time is plucked
From sleep,
Awoken,
Carried by force into
His true life,
That's why I darken
Suspended sometimes
As from a thread that melts with snow,
Without knowing
If he will fall asleep again
So that something might happen to me
Again.
Perhaps Someone is Dreaming Me
trans Peter Jay and Anca Cristofovici
(thanks swiss)
well remembered. i was just looking her book today! lol
ReplyDeletebut it does remind me that my romanian learning has stalled with the coming of 'spring' so i still can't read it with any proper idea of what it sounds like.
and no, i;m not recording it for comedy value! ; )
Zabardast!
ReplyDeletei love the match you made of photos and poem!
ReplyDeletejust yesterday i was reading her and marveling at her courage and grace.
incredible! everybody seems to read Blandiana this week, how strange :-)
ReplyDeleteoh yes Manu, she is the embodiment of grace and sweetness and courage and of something very precious: being true to one's self. i am totally in love with her.
I found this old videoclip (no, no nostalgia for old communist tv, but you could see something like this as well, from time to time)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydz52xOiuG0&feature=related
- she talks with Andrei Serban about her mistrust when it comes to reciting poetry :-) and then from minute 3.24 on there is a "poem for two voices", a collage from her poems together with dance and two actors reciting, swiss, this would be an interesting idea for our collaboration :-)
(and i would post my reading of the poem in romanian for you, but something has happened to my mike and i can't)
anonymous, so good to hear from you again, i had thought the ___ had managed to silent your tongue, i am happy that it is not the case :-)
ReplyDeleteand such high praise at that, if google can be trusted when it comes to translations...
but now you have to teach me 'thank you' as well.
ah well, that'll be me blowing my morning watching people speaking in romanian. i like tudor arghezi's hats! and when i hear sorescu i have to look in my book and try to imagine which poem is which. there's just enough familiar words to make it very tantalising! lol
ReplyDeletepoem pentru doua voci sounds spookily familar tho! tried fiddling about with a random image generator. interesting.
senzual!
ReplyDeleteWell, yes, I mean no, the __ haven't (btw, who is __?)In any case, we're trying to set up a publication to counter the narrowing down.
ReplyDeleteDamn that google! Spoils all the charm, doesn't it :-(
One of these days, child, I will catch you out!
Er..there are many ways to say thank you. But it's diolch.
Tudor Arghezi is perhaps my favourite poet - but he is almost impossible to translate and i have been searching for his poems in english for a long time and never found anything...
ReplyDeleteand no, you won't get away without making that recording for me, don't even dream about that, swiss :-)
daca zici tu, Marius :-) asa trebuie sa fie
ReplyDeletediolch??? and how on earth you pronounce this? my 'ch' is certainly german in this case which can't be... so, anon?
ReplyDeletehard to say, hard to say. I'm only working on memory but I think it's dee (as in delicious)and then ol (as in olive) then kh as in khalid.
ReplyDeleteI don't know what your 'ch' sounds like. If it's as funny as your Frrrr or your Pfftt then I can't wait for the next sound clip thingy :-)
Anyways, all I can remember is numbers now.
where did you hear my 'frrr' and 'pffft', anon? they were certainly not in those recorded poems! :-)
ReplyDeleteand how should i know how the Kh in Khalid sounds? you should make a recording for me, this 'diolch' thing seems very tricky!
I like these photos' movement toward abstraction, a subtle interplay of color and darkness, the dream taking shape, or dissolving just now --- not without a certain longing to stay in the moment, sharpened by the certainty of its impossibility....
ReplyDeleteyes James, the dream taking shape, or dissolving just now - the tension between the two, always. that moment in-between, and the uncertainty of what comes after, looking at a 'before' which already seems alien as well...
ReplyDeleteyou understand...
Oh, that's what your recording sounded like to me..lots of Frrrr's and Pftt's and God knows what other strange barbarian sounds.
ReplyDeleteOh, I thought you would have known that. I mean, one often hears on the news of some Little (Saudi) Prince or some terrorist called Khalid.
So, so, you're okay with delicious and olive, right? Just the ending. The perennial problem, then: how to end things, how to say a name?..the name that names least names the most.
Recording. Yes, when I start my own blog I might do that. Until then you'll have to wait, I'm afraid. Or since you seem to be so used to dreaming you can dream it!
I love that top photo (well I love the second one too, but the first one most!) - its like a watercolour painting. and suitably abstract. I know what the actual subject is, but I keep imagining different shapes, things in it. Lovely!
ReplyDeleterêve nous devons croire que toute les pensée n'appartiennent que à nous-même; je souffre en silence.
ReplyDeleteyes, with delicious olives i am ok, thank you, anon! but the khalid we hear in the news is spoken differently, i suppose, mostly in english - or in romanian it is a plain - ka - so i only wonder about the sound, i know in arab it is very different, those k and h - i love their sound but i cannot pronounce them properly, very difficult.
ReplyDeletethank you dear sz! yes, i thought too about watercolour - at least in photography i can get them from time to time, because i have never been able to paint decent watercolours, i have always been better with heavy oils :-)
ReplyDeleteallan, pourquoi dis-tu que tu souffres en silence?
ReplyDelete