Last year, when I had the pleasure of translating Cuban writer Abilio Estévez's first novel Tuyo es el reino (Thine Is the Kingdom) from Spanish into English, it occurred to me that much has been written about the difficulties of translation but little about its joys. The 300-plus pages of this luminously written work allowed me to tackle one of the great challenges of literary translation: how to find a balance among the various registers of an author's voice, capturing the musicality of the words as sounds (their meter and alliteration) while making accessible the cultural and historical allusions of the text. Working on Thine Is the Kingdom, written in a Baroque style and replete with images from Cuban and European art, literature, and history, in many ways was like solving an enormous crossword puzzle. The solution I offered in one place limited the solutions I was able to use in half-a-dozen others.

There is also the crucial task of maintaining consistency across 300 dense pages of artful prose. For example, the reader soon learns that one of the book's key characters, La Condesa Descalza (The Barefoot Countess), is about to appear when any one of a set of motifs occurs in the text — the jingling of her silver bracelets, the perfume of her sandalwood fan, the knocking of her cane on the gallery floor, or the simple use of the words loca (crazy) or de burla (mocking). Juggling the variations on these motifs, I was halfway through the book before I settled on my final translation of her appearance in the novel's opening sentence:

Translators tend to split into two camps, advocates of literal translations versus those supporting looser versions. My own sympathies have always been with the literalists; I am a secret admirer of the ascetic ideal notoriously espoused by Nabokov, who brilliantly lampooned "paraphrasistic" translation as "offering a free version of the original, with omissions and additions prompted by the exigencies of form, the conventions attributed to the consumer, and the translator's ignorance." In his translation of Pushkin's Eugene Onegins, Nabokov boasted that he had "sacrificed everything (elegance, euphony, clarity, good taste, modern usage, and even grammar) that the dainty mimic prizes higher than the truth."

Yet in my translation of poetry I have long been aware that the rhythm and musicality of the words form part of their "literal" sense, so I strive to match meter as much as any other aspect of meaning. Indeed, English is such a naturally rhythmic language that to ignore meter — even in translating the most prosaic prose — strikes me as almost criminal. Rhyme, on the other hand, comes far less naturally to English, and I readily ignore it — or transmute it into alliteration or strong meter, the musical reportoire of this language. Yet retaining the precise meter of the original at the expense of the subtler rhythms of meaning can also be false to the original.

In a famous poem by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, "Sátira filosófica" (Philosophical Satire), the 17th century Mexican poet questions why women should be held guilty for the sins provoked by men, as in this verse:

The poem is an odyssey of images, as the narrator searches for her own identity in the images of Black women that surround her: the Olympic athlete, the object of white desire in Cuban popular culture and colonial history, the branded slave, the mother. Which of these women is me? she asks. In the end she finds her reflection not by looking in the mirror but by looking out the window into the black Cuban night to find her commonality with the real women behind the images.

Fortunately for me, Nancy's poetry is strongly rhythmic and strongly imagistic; rhyme rarely appears. I was surprised at how few lines of the translations she questioned, despite the fact that she is fluent in English. I had worried, for instance, about my paraphrase of her description of a Black woman athlete, a Florence Griffith Joiner, as running "con sus oscuras piernas celestiales/ en su espiral de lunas." A literal translation is difficult because so many words here have important secondary meanings: "with her dark (or obscure) celestial (or heavenly) legs/ in their (or her) spiral of moons (or glass windows, or large mirrors)." Worse, the construction of the phrase is unclear in its English equivalent. My paraphrase reads: "with her dark celestial legs/ spiralling her like moons." When Nancy passed this over, I specifically asked her about my choice. Yes, yes, it's fine, no problem, was her quick and gratifying response.

I worried for a moment when Nancy pointed out the lines that I had left untranslated. But she did so only to thank me for recognizing "la mujer de Antonio/ la vecinita de enfrente" as a song by Cuban balladeer Miguel Matamoros, and "la madre — negra Paula Valdés," as lines by the most renowned of Afro-Cuban poets, Nicolás Guillén. She agreed with my decision to leave them in their original.

Other choices did cause difficulties. For her metaphoric description of the reflection of the narrator's face, "como un endecasílabo importado," I had avoided the literally correct "like an imported hendecasyllable" as ungainly and inexpressive. But my first solution, "like a line of pentameter verse" was both awkward and, as Nancy pointed out, wrong: pentameter (or 5-foot) verse is simply not the same as a hendecasyllable (11-syllable) line. Worse, the point of the metaphor is that the latter is a characteristic verse form from the 17th century Golden Age of Castilian poetry. When Nancy, a poet of the postcolonial Caribbean, refers to this verse form, the key to the image is not its precise name but the fact that it has been imported, like so much of the cultural and historical baggage of Cuba, to serve as a cultured European standard for judging the products of the island. The simple solution that Nancy and I hammered out reads: "like an imported line of poetry."

Similarly, the word "señorito" in the second stanza of the poem encapsulates a whole history of complicated colonial relationships between the island and Spain. Whereas "señor" can mean a noble lord (its original sense), a "gentleman" (as on the public washrooms), or simply a man in the street, the diminutive "señorito" refers to a specific social type: the somewhat spoiled, fastidious offspring of a wealthy landlord. It is also a specifically Spanish type. Anyone described as a señorito in Cuba would necessarily be representing the colonial power, and the term is tinged with a certain distaste. Nancy rightly objected to my first solution here, "the fine young lord," as missing far too many of these overtones. Eventually I came up with the alternative, "the young Andalusian don," which preserves the nuances of señorito by placing his origins in the southern provinces of Spain and by retaining the hint of foreignness implicit in the term.

The timing of these translations was fortuitous, because in Fall 1999 Nancy accepted a long-standing invitation from Ruth Behar to speak at the University of Michigan. In poetry readings at the International Institute and Shaman Drum Bookshop in early October, I followed Nancy at the podium as we read her poems, first in Spanish and then in their English versions. Listening to Nancy read, I was struck by the orality of her poetic style; hers are poems meant to be read aloud. While she read them, I quickly made adjustments in my written text, the better to echo the emphases that her performance gave her words. It was gratifying to see in the audience's response that this appreciative group of critics approved of my efforts, proving that translation can be, like poetry itself, a celebration of the joys of the written and spoken word.
 

Nancy Morejón / PERSONA  ¿Cuál de estas mujeres soy yo?  ¿O no soy yo la que está hablando  tras los barrotes de una ventana sin estilo  que da a la plenitud de todos estos siglos?  ¿Acaso seré yo la mujer negra y alta  que corre y casi vuela  y alcanza record astronómicos,  con sus oscuras piernas celestiales  en su espiral de lunas?  ¿En cuál músculo suyo se dibuja mi rostro,  clavado alli como un endecasílabo importado  de un país de nieve prohibida?  Estoy en la ventana  y cruza la mujer de Antonio;  "la vecinita de enfrente", de una calle sin formas;  "la madre--negra Paula Valdés--".  ¿Quién es el señorito que sufraga  sus ropas y sus viandas  y los olores de vetiver ya desprendidos de su andar?  ¿Qué permanece en mí de esa mujer?  ¿Que nos une a las dos? ¿Qué nos separa?  ¿O seré yo la "vagabunda del alba",  que alquila taxis en la noche de los jaguares  como una garza tendida en el pavimento  después de haber sido cazada  y esquilmada  y revendida  por la Quinta de los Molinos  y los embarcaderos del puerto?  Ellas: ¿quiénes serán? ¿o soy yo misma?  ¿Quiénes son éstas que se parecen tanto a mí  no sólo por los colores de sus cuerpos  sino por ese humo devastador  que exhala nuestra piel de res marcada  por un extraño fuego que no cesa?  ¿Por qué soy yo? ¿Por qué son ellas?  ¿Quién es esa mujer  que está en todas nosotras huyendo de nosotras,  huyendo de su enigma y de su largo origen  con una incrédula plegaria entre los labios  o con un himno cantado  después de una batalla siempre renacida?  Todos mis huesos, ¿serán míos?  ¿de quién serán todos mis huesos?  ¿Me los habrán comprado  en aquella plaza remota de Gorée?  ¿Toda mi piel será la mía  o me han devuelto a cambio  los huesos y la piel de otra mujer  cuyo vientre ha marcado otro horizonte,  otro ser, otras criaturas, otro dios?  Estoy en la ventana.  Yo sé que hay alguien.  Yo sé que una mujer ostenta mis huesos y mi carne;  que me ha buscado en su gastado seno  y que me encuentra en la vicisitud y el extravio.  La noche está enterrada en nuestra piel.  La sabia noche recompone sus huesos y los míos.  Un pájaro del cielo ha trocado su luz en nuestros ojos.

Which of these women is me?  Or am I not the one who's talking  behind the thick bars of a nondescript window  that looks out on the abundance of all these eras?  Might I be the tall, black woman  who runs, who nearly flies,  who sets astronomical records,  with her dark celestial legs  spiralling her like moons?  Which of her muscles reflects my face,  fixed there like an imported line of poetry  from a land where snow is forbidden?  I'm at the window  and there goes la mujer de Antonio,  la vecinita de enfrente, crossing a shapeless street;  la madre--negra Paula Valdés--.  Which is the young Andalusian don who antes up for   her clothes and her vittles  and the smell of vetiver root she scatters as she walks?  What's left in me of this woman?  What holds the two of us together? What separates us?  Or might I be the "early morning wanderer"  who takes taxis on the night of jaguars  like a heron fallen to the pavement  after being hunted  and wasted  and resold  around the Quinta de los Molinos  and the piers of the port?  Who are they, these women? Or are they me?  Who are they, who look so much like me  not only in the color of their bodies  but in the devastating smoke  that rises from our animal hides, branded  by a strange, unceasing fire?  Why am I me? Why are they them?  Who is that woman,  the one in us all fleeing from us all,  fleeing her enigma and her long origin  with an incredulous prayer on her lips,  or singing a hymn  after a battle always being refought?  My bones: are they all mine?  Whose are all these bones?  Did they buy them for me   in that far-off plaza in Gorée?  Is all my skin my own,  or did they trade it to me  for the skin and bones of another woman  whose womb once marked another horizon,  another self, other beings, another god?  I'm at the window.  I know someone's there.  I know there's a woman flaunting my bones and my flesh;  know she's looked for me in her worn-out breast  and has found me, miserable and straying.  Night is rooted in our skin.  Wise night rebuilds her bones and mine.  A bird from the sky has transposed its light into our eyes.  Peñalver, February 1999

 
This article and all translations copyright 2000 by David L. Frye
"Persona" copyright 2000 by Nancy Morejon