Published
2003.
NB: VGM =
Vasco Graça Moura; "Os Sonetos de Shakespeare" = The Shakespeare Sonnets.
I’ve always wanted to
read VGM’s take, not only because of the sonnets, but also because of VGM’s
“translation”. What VGM did was not really a translation. Why? Read on.
Before I proceed with
the review, it’s necessary to clarify that the system versification of English
is different from the method used in Portuguese. In English, the prosodic unit
is the foot, which contains a number of syllables; in the typical foot, there
is only one stressed syllable. The most used by Shakespeare verse, the iambic
pentameter, consists of five feet, each foot being one iamb - an unstressed
syllable followed by a marked one. In the poetry of the Portuguese language,
the verses are divided into syllables, some sharper, and other unstressed.
Because in the iambic pentameter we have five feet of two syllables each, there
is a rooted belief among translators and scholars of the English-speaking poems
in pentameter verse should be translated into decasyllables, thus allowing a formal
equivalence between the two systems. However, many translators have chosen the
Alexandrine, on the grounds that the English is much more concise than the
Portuguese and therefore to express all ideas contained in the original - that
is, so there is semantic equivalence – we would need to use longer lines. From
that point of view, the most important being: “In a poetic translation should we go for formal correspondence or semantics? Must we choose one of the two or can both
be achieved?
Vasco Graça Moura’s
translation has several glaring omissions, the most important of them occurring
in verse eight from Sonnet 1, "Thyself
thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel" translated as "cru inimigo de ti, teu ser desamas".
There is nothing in the sonnet that can justify the inclusion of
"Cru" (raw) in addition to "teu
ser desamas". Another big glaring misinterpretation happens in the
last verse: "To eat the world's due"
becomes "Comas tu o devido"; I don’t understand to what/whom “devido”
refers.
VGM made lots of lexical
changes, and one of them seems to have been caused by another interpretation
error: "buriest thy content",
i.e., “bury your content” has been translated as "te enterras a contento". Strange choosing…
Every time I write
about Shakespeare, I try putting into words why I love Shakespeare so
differently than other writers. I’ve
read many of the plays year after year.
But I never tire of them, they never become familiar...they are always a
visit to a mysterious world. That world
teaches me a great deal about people, all different kinds of people. But it also teaches me all kinds of things
about myself, all layers of myself as if I enter a Dream World, i.e, Shakespeare's Dreams. But
I also encounter spirits beyond this world.
Because of Shakespeare, I love fairies.
Sadly, our culture always reduces that word to homosexuality. Shakespeare of course may have meant that
interpretation on one level, he may also have been referring to alchemists or
Rosicrucians. But I also think that he,
like Yeats, believed in a supernatural world, and knew people who saw
"real" fairies and or practiced magic as in Prospero's Book. So when I "enter" a Shakespearean play, it is
like reading the Bible or the scriptures of other religions. I know that I will have to stretch myself to
deal with all the forces of the universe from the most ethereal and beautiful
to the crass and stupid and crude.
Shakespeare asks us to explore the whole realms of all the universe, not
just the ones where we feel comfortable.
And we are always exploring, in awe, discovering what is ultimately
mysterious which neither we nor he can fully understand. But he takes us by the hand and leads us into
these amazing mysteries that show us what it means to be human...and
divine...and evil...and in love, and in grief.
During the last years,
I finally realized that Shakespeare was writing most of his plays to an
audience who had lived through the plague.
20,000 people died in London in just one year of plague. I knew that fact, I guess, with my mind; but
I finally allowed that grief into my heart.
Shakespeare was writing Romeo and Juliet and Midsummer Night's Dream
perhaps after his own 11 year old son had died, Judith's twin, Hamnet. So he writes these plays to try to resurrect
his own son, to give life to his only son. Shakespeare gives these plays to an
audience filled with grieving mothers and husbands and brothers and friends who
have lost people on the level of English people in a war like WWII. These people are learning how to live in the
midst of grief which shakes the foundations of their lives. Maybe that is why I always feel I am in a mystery,
confused, needing jokes, and yet horrified by cruelty and transported as if by
magic. I am never clear about what
Shakespeare thinks. But I know that I am
at the foundation of all life when with Lear I hold Cordelia in my arms. And no one, not even death or a stupid
government or religious wars can ever take her from me...never, never, never,
never, never. The pentameter rocks us
like a lullaby in our inconsolable grief until we find rest.
Reading the 154 sonnets
in a row, I've been thinking over the last week about the very transparent link
between the second balcony scene in R & J and two sonnets -- 50 -- 51
("How heavy do I journey on my
way..." and "Thus can my
love excuse the slow offence..."). It is almost as though Romeo could
have written both sonnets as he was fleeing to Mantua -- both knowing that he
has to be hasty, and hating the speed, and imagining the speed and joy with
which he would be returning one day... They are also connected by the idea of
"relativity of time" (Juliet says in the second balcony scene: I must
hear from thee every day in the hour,
For in a minute there are many days -- and that variable perception of
time depending on the state of mind is also the theme of the sonnets).
I thought I'd just type
in one of my favourite Shakespeare sonnet.
I'll type it from memory in hopes that any mistakes I make might be
helpful in pointing out where I might be misreading the lines (perhaps
stressing the wrong syllables, or getting the rhymes wrong:
Sonnet 33
Full many a glorious morning have I seen
Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye
Kissing with the golden face the meadows green
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy
Anon permit the basest clouds to ride
With ugly rack on his celestial face
And from the forlorn world his visage hide
Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace.
Even so, my sun one early morn did rise
With all triumphant splendor on my brow,
But out alack! he was but one hour mine:
The region cloud has masked him from me now.
Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth,
Suns of the world may stain when heaven's sun staineth.
As I said, I've often
wondered whether this particular sonnet is about Shakespeare's son, Hamnet. I
have no “evidence” to support this idea, but the possible pun in line 9, as the
sonnet makes a shift, the pun on sun/son, is one of the most common puns
throughout Shakespeare's plays (the man never thought of a pun he could resist
writing down). If the sonnets were
written in the early 1590s, as is usually thought, the timing would be right. Hamnet died in 1596, at the age of 11. One of the most beautiful passages in all of
Shakespeare, from the play King John, is sometimes thought to be the father's
tribute to that son:
Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;
Then, have I reason to be fond of grief?
Prologue to Act II,
begins:
"Now old desire
doth in his death bed lie,
And young affection
gapes to be his heir;
That fair, for which
love groan'd for, and would die,
With tender Juliet
matched, is now not fair."
Etc. (read it, read it
read it!)
Being a lover of Shakespeare's
sonnets, I was mesmerised by the very beautiful ("unpublished")
sonnet that is the Prologue to Act II. Reading VGM’s decisions, I also decided
to take this sonnet and appraise it.
This sonnet is
expressive, powerful and magnificent. It describes succinctly how Romeo and
Juliet have progressed from previous loves and family feuds (as
"foe") to where they are now.
It also explains their
dilemma (as foe) and why neither wants to give a firm commitment of love (at
the start) - "Being held as foe, he may not have access". Juliet with
"means much less" needs another ploy to meet with Romeo to discuss
their plans. We find she uses the nurse as her agent.
This prolonged agony
and exchange is the making of the romantic drama that follows.
How much simpler (but a
much poorer story) it would have been had Romeo just jumped up on the balcony,
embraced her and they had eloped (galloped off into the sunset!).
And my attempt at
sonnetering using the iambic pentameter:
Poor Manuel is
disappointed,
A car break-down on the
way
His introduction to
Shakespeare goes un-anointed,
But Stratford-upon-Avon
is there to stay.
Man you need to
persevere,
Life's too short for
frustration.
So get your act into
gear,
Following Shakespeare
is your station.
Shakespeare is
performed everywhere
There is no need to
pine and stare.
Jump on the internet,
go to a movie
These formats can be
quite groovy.
There's no need to let
disappointment survive
Get out and let your
enthusiasm thrive.
(A sonnet by any other
name would smell as sweet!)
Reading the sonnets the
question I always pose to myself is not why did Shakespeare use the iambic
pentameter, but rather why he did in some verses break the pattern. Does this
matter? Who cares if one syllable or another is stressed? What difference does
it make if one line rhymes and another doesn't? Reading the 154 sonnets in a
row can reveal particular meanings and emphases, particularly when there is a
variation. If one looks at the line opening of sonnet 66: "Those lips that Love's own hand did make",
I noticed that the first word begins with a stressed syllable, breaking the usual
pattern. What did he want to say by drawing our attention to the pattern here?
Perhaps we are supposed to feel how truly in love the speaker of this line is. Who knows?
5 stars for the sonnets. 3 stars for the translation. 4 stars overall.
And the question
remains:
