Translating (or even privately reading) modern free verse in a language that has many cognates and grammatical similarities to English is partly a matter of choosing an English match for each word in the original and stringing those words together. You must accept the inevitable distortions, because the sounds and senses of the two languages cannot match perfectly. The original may also present larger choices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is an early Lorca poem about the city where we’re living for three months. The Darro River is 800 meters from the house that we’ve rented and is about one meter wide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe Guadalquivir River\u201d\n \nA little ballad of three rivers for Salvator Quintero\nBy Federico Garcia Lorca<\/em>\n \nThe Guadalquivir River\ngoes between oranges and olives.\nThe two rivers of Granada\nCome down from snow to wheat. \n \nAh, love,\ngone and not come back!\n \nThe Guadalquivir River\nHas garnet stubble.\nThe two rivers of Granada\none weeping and the other blood\n \nAh, love\noff in the air! \n \nFor sailing ships,\nSeville has a road;\nIn the water of Granada\nSighs alone could paddle.\n \nAh, love,\nGone and not come back!\n \nGuadalquivir, high tower\nAnd wind in the orange groves. \nDauro and Genil, little towers\ndead over the ponds\n \nAh, love\nOff in the air! \n \nWho will say that the water carries\nA will-of-the wisp of cries!\n \nAh, love,\nGone and not come back!\n \nCarry orange blossom, carry olives, \nAndalusia, to your seas.\n \nAh, love\nOff in the air! <\/pre>\n\n\n\nThe Spanish text is here<\/a>. For the refrains, Lorca uses relative clauses that begin with “que,” starting with: “Ay, amor \/ que se fue y no vino …” That could mean a love who<\/em> or a love that<\/em>. Spanish permits this ambiguity, which might have been especially attractive for Lorca, for whom a “who” would have been a man. Like Rolfe Humphries, who translated this poem for Poetry<\/a>, I opted for a past participle, to retain the ambiguity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I chose “sighs alone could paddle” for “s\u00f3lo reman los suspiros,” partly because I liked the echo of paddle<\/em> and stubble<\/em>, and partly because the English monosyllable “row” is too easily misread as a noun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Humphries must have found the literal meaning of the following verse confusing or unconvincing:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Guadalquivir, alta torre\ny viento en los naranjales.\nDauro y Genil, torrecillas\nmuertas sobre los estanques<\/pre>\n\n\n\nHow can small rivers be “little towers” or “turrets,” and what does it mean for turrets to be dead over ponds? Humphries loosely offers:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Guadalquivir, high tower,\nWind among orange blossoms,\nDarro and Genil, lowly\nAnd dead among the marshes.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nI like Humphries’ verse better than my translation, but I am not sure his conveys Lorca.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By the way, I love that the Guadalquivir is just the Wadi al-Kabir, the Big River, transliterated into Spanish.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Translating (or even privately reading) modern free verse in a language that has many cognates and grammatical similarities to English is partly a matter of choosing an English match for each word in the original and stringing those words together. You must accept the inevitable distortions, because the sounds and senses of the two languages […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,41,1,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cities","category-spain","category-uncategorized","category-verse-and-worse"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28706"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28906,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28706\/revisions\/28906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}