Religion-in-SF: "Redemption Ark" by Alastair Reynolds

The threat of the inhibitors reappears with all its danger in “Redemption Ark”, leading to the total extinction of humanity as it happened in the remote past with the rest of the intelligent cultures that tried to spread across the galaxy. The weapons contained in “Nostalgia for infinity, the ship of the ultras that already appeared in “Revelation Space”, continues to orbit the planet Resurgam, acquiring vital importance, to the point of provoking a bloody race in its pursuit to ensure its possession in the face of the coming war. Different factions of the divided humanity in war, will try to ensure its control, which will cause various space clashes where the author shows once again a prodigious imagination. Meanwhile the inhibitors, or the wolves, as they are known by the faction of the Combined, undertake in the solar system of Resurgam their quiet genocidal task of titanic proportions, which will lead to consider the evacuation of the planet, with scarce means and little cooperation from the government and the population.

I'm not sure about the universe being indifferent. We live in it and its laws are what we have adapted to. Conditions change here on Earth as well as round the Universe but we would still have to adapt to the same laws where ever we were. If we look at science now the new frontier isn't so much the material universe,but the mathematical. The visible could be described as a tidal wave of probabilities painting across a moving canvas (to mix metaphors). At this level we can ask is that tide indifferent or is it full of intent. On a human level I would suggest that its very hard to answer that question because we cant be inhuman. In other words even our attempts at having no intent are part of our intent. I'm reminded of the orange. It just happens to be the right size to be eaten and the pips spat around. Was it intent that produced a fruit that feeds others in order the orange itself can propagate? What of the rules that produced this convenient arrangement and the unlikely events needed to bring it about? Do these speak of intent? In my view there are two masters in the Religion-in-SF field today, Gene Wolfe and China Miéville. Miéville agrees about Wolfe. I don`t know if Wolfe thinks the same about Mieville. Strikingly Mieville is an atheist and Wolfe a Catholic. What I like about both of them is their openness to the literally infinite range of possibilities for the human, post-human and alien. The sense that the universe is not just stranger than we know but stranger than we can know. Which is also why I think Tarkovsky`s “Solaris” and “Stalker” are full of mystery - in both cases we are faced with something absolutely beyond anything we can even name let alone understand. That sense of astonishment and bewilderment can bring with it an understanding that our daily mundane existence is also astonishing and bewildering and full of infinite possibilities. In “Stalker and “Solaris there are no special effects at all. But the earth and the sea are transformed into alien places simply by being closely and minutely observed. And “Stalker” ends with a tiny, un-noticed, trivial miracle, an almost imperceptible intrusion of ??? God??? the Beyond??? Real Reality??? The Akien ??? into our world. Stalker seems to me to capture the sense of the absolute otherness which is required for a real concept of the Divine. It does this without any special effects or CGI. The film reminded me of the lines from Rilke`s Duino Elegies: “Denn das Schöne ist nichts als des Schrecklichen Anfang, den wir noch grade ertragen, und wir bewundern es so, weil es gelassen verschmäht, uns zu zerstören.” (For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are still just able to endure, and we are awed because it serenely disdains to destroy us.) The Stalker himself is a man like Jeremiah, a man broken by his encounter with something real but beyond words and names. The film shows us a postindustrial landscape literally transfigured by the fact of observation. I loved the fact that the aliens - if that is what they were - came and left and changed everything and said nothing. The final scene, the tiny un-noticed "miracle" performed by the Stalker`s child is a moment of pure perfection. Reynolds SF stands sort of between Wolfe and Miéville. Reynolds tries to create a universe full of mystery, and usually leaves it up to the reader to imagine the reality behind the veil. Religion in SF is a fun topic, and much misunderstood. Whether or not you see religion and science as at odds, SF is a fertile toolkit for exploring religious and religious-studies themes.

Alastair Reynolds successfully tries to create a universe full of mystery, and usually leaves it up to the reader to imagine the reality behind the veil. Probably the best Revelation Space novel of the bunch. Last but not least, we're faced with the unfathomable "doorstopper effect" that distorts space-time and causes novels of 300 or 400 pages ending up as huge tomes that barely fit on our shelves. In this case, the "doorstopper effect" was moderately strong and the novel ended with almost 800 pages (!). A shame.

Re-Imagining Rilke's Metaphor in Portuguese: "O Livro das Imagens" by Rilke, Maria João Costa Pereira

Published 2005.

One of main reasons for having enrolled in German classes was just to be able to read Rilke in the original. That's how much I loved him. I still do. “Das Buch der Bilder” (The book of Images/O Livro das Imagens) was the book that showed me, back in the day, I still had a long road ahead me before I could say I was able to read Rilke in German. Since then I’ve read lots of translations and also the original many times over. The bilingual translation to which I keep coming back is the one I just re-read, Maria João Costa Pereira’s. This is the one that I always have close at hand me (I’m not sure which translation I like best when it comes to English; Stephen Mitchell's translation, which for some reason unknown to me is the most famous Rilke translation is just so uninspired and dull). I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. “Understanding” Rilke first-hand, so to speak, needs a strong command of German. There’s no way around it. Those who feel like they have their whole life ahead of them to reflect and ponder and wait for the questions to reveal their true meanings and for the fruit to ripen on the tree-- as opposed to the adult who feel like they have no time to ponder, have already wasted the years as it is, and would really, really like to just grab the fruit and run with it however green and sour it may be. A friend of mine rejects Rilke, saying he’s phony. I don't get that feeling at all. I believe, it’s today's generation of so-called modern poets that strike me as somehow faking it. I think Rilke's spirituality, especially as expressed in “The Book of Images”, “Das Stunden-Buch” (The Book of Hours) and “Geschichte vom lieben Gott” (Stories of God), is rather simple and heartfelt. I have engaged Rilke in reading and writing over more than thirty years, through translations of his work and poems of my own, but none of it has managed to lay him to rest in my soul. The whole-wide world is here to be felt and I’m in the world to feel it. I can feel it because of my awareness of transiency, i.e., because I know death. Death is therefore Rilke’s theme of themes. But for him (and for me) feeling is not enough; Rilke must also say. In saying, the rest of us is given to understand what is to be felt. In this way, the Rilke’s work extends my consciousness. I've always maintained that poetry is, essentially, untranslatable, but it’s also wonderfully democratic. Everyone can have a shot at it, everyone can make of it what they will. Strangely, it offers me the kind of approach I should take to all poetry. I don’t mean that poetry shouldn't or can't be translated. You couldn’t more far from the truth. It's just that what I mean by 'translation' should be understood as “re-working” or “re-imagining”. 

Using the original as a template, the translator should strive to preserve as much of the language as is consistent with the poet's intent, as the translator understands it. Language, any language, but Rilke’s German in particular, comes with an enormous ballast in tow. I’ve said elsewhere, Rilke and Celan have reinvented German, but it’s especially true when it comes to Rilke. In a poem, where the poet has weighed and chosen every word with care, judging its strength, its undercurrents and innuendos and reverberations in that language, to “exactly” re-imagine the poem in another language is, I believe, an impossible task. Maria João Costa Pereira’s definite translation of the “Das Buch der Bilder” had more to do than simply choosing synonyms and preserve the order and sense of the original poem which is what we see all of time when it comes to rendering Rilke into another language. Maria João Costa Pereira was able to imagine how Rilke would have written the poems had he been writing in Portuguese. In effect, by translating Rilke she made new poems. Maria João Costa Pereira’s charged the battery; she did not drain it. To accomplish this, she ripped out the innards of Rilke’s poems and rebuilt them, i.e., the whole, the unity and coherence of text and communication, cannot be re-expressed in a different language without first breaking the poems apart. That’s what Maria João Costa Pereira was divinely able to do. If she were still among us, after all these years, I think this would be the time I’d write to her just to tell her how her rendering of “The Book of Images” into Portuguese changed my life and the way I read and “understand” Rilke in German. 

My favourite poem from the collection: Der Lesende (The Reader), first the portuguese rendering, next the original in German:

"The Book of Images" is imbued with a deep sense of religiosity and spirituality. Every time I re-read Rilke I discover an affluence of images that expands my understanding of the divine beyond cliches that cannot satisfy me. "The Book of Images" is not "Letters to a Young Poet". What I'm able to glimpse from the "Book of Images" is a sense of the Divine with a capital D. For several weeks, I've used Rilke's poems, like Psalms, for morning and evening prayer (e.g., "Die Blinde"/The Blind. "Requiem"). I have found in them an extraordinary sacred release. I've also found that they highlight my churchgoing rather than calling me away from it. I'm quite familiar with Rilke's anti-Christianity "leanings". When I'm reading Rilke the word that comes to mind is instead "spirituality." Death is as important as life, in fact, it's a continuum. In this day and age, reading Rilke is something of an anachronism. Rilke is for me the reward that keeps on giving. The more I read Rilke, the more I've found it hard at first to even understand, let alone put into words, what it was I regard so mesmerizing about him. It’s only in later life, as I’ve come not just to understand myself better, but to mature into the person I didn’t know I would become, that I can sketch some of the reasons. The shift comes from within, i.e., from the unconscious, rather than from the processed conscious. When I tend to over-think something it spoils the effect. I much prefer to be waiting to be changed by events. That's what's at the heart of a(n) creator/artist. The difficulty of dealing with what’s taken in can be what pushes the creator to create in some way – in order to put the baffling stuff back outside again, in one form or another.

Trilingual Soul: Reading and Writing in English, German and Portuguese

(www.incultureparent.com)

In reply to some questions from my “avid” and “eager” readers, I’m sure that yes, studying English and German at a tender age did indeed seem an ‘exotic’ choice to a lot of people at the time. I had already a go at this theme before, but I'll have another go just to press and clarify the point. 

I remember a particular German class, because a friend of mine dared me to attend the Goethe Institute; die Einstufungstest placed us both at the beginning (grade 0); a few years later I’d finished the course and she didn’t (I've always been a stickler for hanging in there when the going gets tough). I first began learning about English (German), its language, literature and culture in the early 80s (90s), when most of what people here in the Portugal knew about England and Germany came from news reports about what Thatcher said to Reagan (the demolition of the Berlin Wall when it comes to Germany), so not exactly a reliable indicator of what most ordinary Portuguese were thinking and feeling. Back then, if you were studying English/German it usually meant you’d end up working in the tourism industry in one capacity or another or you became a teacher. My own leanings were rather different – my heroes were Shakespeare, P. D. James, Philip Larkin, Christopher Priest, T. S. Eliot, Waugh, Greene, Tolkien, Lewis, Le Carré, Blake, George Eliot, etc. (Celan, Rilke, Hölderlin, Heine, Kafka, Trakl, Goethe, Grass, etc.) I think it’s safe to say that my immersion in things English/German either changed me completely or brought completely to the surface aspects of my intellect and character that had always been there but that needed the influence of the English and German spirit-stuff to set them free. There is nothing to compare with language for getting a glimpse into another culture, and another mode of thought. In a sense it is something that cannot be computed, because so much is subtlety, and inclination. As well as English, I have always felt a close affinity with German novelists and the German way of thinking. I'm, not sure why. 

I also regret that I don’t know either Japanese or Mandarin, because there are so many Japanese- and Chinese-language writers I wish I could read at least a little of in their original language, because I love the speculative cinema of Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong, and I know I’d gain even more from these films if I could get a proper sense of how their languages are structured.

It doesn’t matter which language one chooses to learn; it will never be a waste of time. Understanding a second (and third) language, even a little, will always broaden one’s cultural horizons, and bring new inspirations. I’ve always claimed that reading and writing in English and German freed me up to express thoughts and emotions I would have felt uncertain or reserved about expressing in Portuguese. So I would say this is a very particular decision that each trilingual (quadrilingual, etc.) person has to make. The most important thing though is that this should be a free choice; no one should come under pressure to write in Portuguese, English, or German. Variety in terms of language should be cheered, encouraged and promoted through adequate and skillful translations. That’s why when people ask me why I write mainly in English and German and not in Portuguese, I just shrug my shoulders and ignore them. The next time I’m asked the same question, instead of just saying: "sod off", I’ll just direct them to this post. And That’s All Folks.

Baixo Contínuo Music: "A Brief Guide to William Shakespeare Without the Boring Bits" by Peter Ackroyd

People live their lives at such a faster pace these days, and all multi-threading, that it takes a real effort to consciously slow down and listen and watch to something. It's part of the joy, I suppose, at least for me. I think this problem of attention (or lack thereof) has as much to do with cultural expectations regarding how Shakespeare should be read, watched, you name it. I can listen to some “Baixo Contínuo” from the baroque period lasting for a couple of hours, but some people come and go, fall asleep, eat dinner, etc. At theatres and opera houses, boring opera or play can be wonderful to watch the world go by with. At least that’s what I hear. I quite understand that attention is context-dependent - maybe 'Baixo Contínuo music' was intended to be not listened to. Bach pieces composed for flute and harpsichord are a good example. Finding crappy books like this one is a bit like turning off love. Sometimes for the sake of the whole, one is prepared to cherish even the ragged fingernails and that odd snorting sound when she laughs, but we see the relationship is doomed from the start. A great deal of the Shakespeare books that aspire to greatness — and indeed achieve it — demand patience in our tackling of them. Is that too much to ask? In literature, I'm thinking of Rilke, Celan, Mann, and of course, Shakespeare. Onstage drama: “Measure for Measure” has hardly any plot but is full of beautiful poetry, which requires very good understanding of what’s going on — something singularly lacking in this book. When it comes to great works of fiction, does anyone really claims to have read only their lookalikes? All of Rilke, Celan, Hölderlin, the Titus Groan trilogy, several Dickens works et al, can we really read them by skipping the longer chunks and “gibberish” parts?

If you don’t like the way they talk and all the fancy words in Shakespeare, this book is for you.

NB: I bought it in a book fair, almost for nothing.

I’ve Been Rabbit-holing and I Just Came Out On the Other Side a Changed Man: “The Life of William Shakespeare: A Critical Biography” by Lois Potter and J. Paul Guimont (narrator)

Published 2013 (audio version, the one I’ve used; print edition published 2012).

Imagine yourself at the Globe to see a Shakespeare play, preferably Hamlet (my favourite…). Keep on imagining standing among the crowd, quite near the stage, on a rainy evening.  You look around and see people from all walks of life, from different countries and cultures, all mesmerized by the Bard's words...almost 400 hundred years later.   Imagine laughing so heartily with the rest of the audience, practically falling off your wooden chair. The actors are absolutely amazed and unbelieving at the rapturous applause they receive. You cheer them to the rafters. You start to have an inkling of how audiences of Shakespeare's own time must have received his plays. My reading of Shakespeare makes me “re-live” stuff like these. I feel his writing will allow me to deepen my own self-knowledge as well.

Just like water heated to 50º degrees does not increase the caloric intake, human thought peaks, in certain Men, to the highest intensity. Shakespeare, Rilke, Hölderlin, Celan, Kafka, Bach, Heine represent the 50º degrees of genius. In each century two or three undertake the ascension. From down below, we attempt the daunting task of following them. These Men climb the mountain with great difficulty, they penetrate the clouds, they vanish, and they reappear. They’re spied upon by us mere mortals.

What they do is was so very, very good at doing what they did, and they did so much of it so well that it really is quite unbelievable.  Their work is so good that many people do not believe that they were not touched by the Gods themselves. This is particularly true with Shakespeare. Some do not believe he alone wrote all the plays that are attributed to him, but the fact is that he almost certainly did do so, as hard as it can be to believe when you study Shakespeare.  Potter’s intertextual reading of his works shows that beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Some creative people have been so far beyond their own time that they haven't always been completely understood during the years that they lived.  Bach, for instance, was a person like this.  His work just sounds finished in a way that other works are not. It's difficult to describe, but even people who don't know much about music recognize that there is something special about what Bach did.  You can feel it in your bones. Shakespeare works the same way.  The fact that the language has changed a good deal since Shakespeare's time makes it more difficult for me to see that at first, but with some pointers, I can clear away the confusion caused by that to recognize that his work is finished and special in that same way. Shakespeare holds up a literary mirror to the face of humanity and has forced us all to stare into its reality. That's what special about Shakespeare. For those of us who like to dabble in writing stuff, Shakespeare shows what genius can do with words and characters and situations.  His works are just overflowing with fantastic little titbits laying around to enjoy, but it does require that I know what it is that I’m looking at, and for that, sometimes I need the guidance of someone who already knows how to do it. And that’s where Potter’s glimpse into the mind of Shakespeare comes in. What a wonderful “read” it was. How fortunate I am, and how grateful, that I was able to find this book. Potter was able to open up some of the most profound thoughts and meditations on Being that have ever seen/heard recorded regarding Shakespeare. Once again, that most comforting and energising feeling that "I am not alone" when I read (or listen to) Shakespeare. Potter draws upon prior texts, genres and discourses on Shakespeare, Marlowe, Johnson that I didn’t even knew existed! In this regard, Potter’s book needs several re-readings. There are textual, intertextual, and sub-textual references aplenty that will take me more than one reading to fully understand. This meant go rabbit-holing which I did...The outputs of these wonderful adventures tapped into my understanding of Shakespeare. Go figure...

I’ve read quite a big amount of books on Shakespeare. Being able to write a biography of a figure at once so well-known and so little documented must have been a challenge.  His chapter “The Strong’st and Surest Way to Get: Histories” was quite a revelation [I’m (re-)reading the Histories at the moment) as well as Potter’s insights into the relation between Shakespeare, Thomas Middleton and Jonson. And when I thought I knew everything was there to know about Shakespeare, Potter comes along and rehashes old stuff into strikingly new ways. Oh my.

It was a pleasure to travel alongside Potter on this wonderful adventure!

Dass nur im Grab ich Frieden finden kann: "Poesias" by Manuel Maria Barbosa du Bocage

Published 1943.

Many eons ago, I was delighted with a book selling girl behind one of the counters in a book pavilion at the Lisbon Book Fair. Because of that I wrote a poem that I gave to her. Distant times those were. To tell you the truth, the girl did not deserve that poem, and the poem itself was not that great, well, the usual. In any case, the thing went down like this: in order to have a natter with her, I bought from her this same Bocage edition that I now got from a friend. Who would have thought that many years later I’d hold this same book in my hands? As soon as I picked it up, memories came flooding back. I still remember almost being taken from a thief as I perused books at her bookstand, touching them without really looking at them while at the same I kept looking at her eyes that could be seen from any place in the fair, as a “model like you’re…but oh sadness!”.

I can now hear some of my learned friends saying, after having read the above paragraph, “you expose yourself too much!” What they really wanted to say is, “I admire your courage.” Since I started publishing stuff on my blog, those are the kind of comments I hear more often. Who cares about what I write? No one. I’ve always believed that one shouldn’t remove the personal from the texts. That’s why I said, somewhere else, that what I write is (almost) always embedded in my own personal history. That’s what makes what I write intelligible to me.

And just because I can, below an attempt at translating the untranslatable into German of one of my favourite poems by Bocage:

“Camões, großer Camões, wie ähnlich

Ist mein Geschick dem deinen, wenn man sie vergleicht!

Der gleiche Grund ließ uns vom Tejo weggehn

Und frevelhaft dem Meer-Giganten trotzen.

Wie du am Ganges-Strome dich befandest,

Befind ich mich im Elend einer grauenhaften Not.

Ich sehne mich wie du umsonst nach eitlen Freuden

Und weine so wie du, sehnsüchtig Liebender.

Gleich dir vom harten Schicksal hintergangen,

Erflehe ich vom Himmel meinen Tod, in der Gewissheit,

Dass nur im Grab ich Frieden finden kann.

Mein Vorbild bist du, doch oh Jammer

Mag ich dir auch an bösem Schicksal gleichen,

Ich gleich dir nicht an Gaben der Natur.”

This is one of the reasons why I think German is not only the most beautiful language I learned, but it’s also the love of my life. Much more than Portuguese and English. The German language makes me organize things in my head in a way very different when compared with the Latin and English languages. There’s an enormous cognitive benefit by installing this “tool” in our brains. When installed, the doors of consciousness that open up are tremendous. I’m not only talking about the possibility of reading Rilke, Celan, Hölderlin, Goethe, Kafka in the original. The point is that what these writers put on paper are thoughts inseparable from the language itself in which they were written. No one, I repeat no one, having read Rilke in Portuguese or English has any idea what this represents in terms of the insurmountable geniality of Kafka, Celan and of course Rilke (my favourite trio of German writers). Some translations are simply ludicrous. Lately I've been on a winning streak...

Do we want to live without the real dimension of what these Men left to the world? It’s never too late. Trust me. Learn German. And now, my beloved readers are thinking, "But he just read a book of Poetry of one the most distinguished Portuguese Poets, but he's still haranguing us on the fact that we all should learn German! How can that be??" Well my friends, you should have been paying close attention to what I've been writing for almost 10 years on this very same blog, i.e., for those of you who are still with me after all are these years...

NB: "Dass nur im Grab ich Frieden finden kann." This is "Hamlet" tapping into Bocage...I won't bother explaining. Go read your "Hamlet" please.

Creating a Private Space: "Briefe an einen jungen Dichter/Cartas a Um Jovem Poeta/Letters to a Young Poet" by Rainer Maria Rilke, José Miranda Justo

Published 2016 (Portuguese translation and afterword by José Miranda Justo).

“Dieses vor allem: fragen Sie sich in der stillsten Stunde ihrer Nacht: ‘muss ich schreiben?’ Graben Sie in sich nach einer tiefen Antwort. Und wenn diese zustimmed lauten sollte, wenn Sie mit einem starken und einfachen ‘Ich muss’ dieser ernsten Frage begegnen dürfen, dann bauen Sie Ihr Leben nach dieser Notwendingkeit.”

This book has been my favourite book for twenty years or more. When I was attending the Goethe Institute I had access to its library which is huge. I could request any book I wanted, and the services of the Goethe library would provide me with it. It was literally manna from heaven...Consequently, I never had a copy for myself. Until now. This gorgeous edition translated from German into Portuguese (bilingual edition), produced something worth having. It's a fine addition to my German library at home. On top of that the translation is far from serviceable. Apart from this translation, I only had come into contact with the translation done my Vasco Graça Moura which is a different beast altogether.

I think the first time I wrote about Rilke was in 2008.  What more can I say that I haven’t said before? Apparently still lots remained to be said and written…

Rilke’s poems are considered quite difficult to translate from the German, and frankly, I even have trouble understanding them in English and Portuguese. His letters, on the other hand, are quite comprehensible and even inspirational. That's why, when given the chance, I always recommend this book to some of my literate friends. Some of them "get it", some don't. That's Rilke for you. But what shines out of everything he writes, be it in German, English or in Portuguese, rendered by anyone, is the astonishing purity and largeness of his poet’s heart, even when he's writing prose, as it's the case here. That's one of the reasons why I love bilingual editions of something that lives particularly close to my heart. I get to follow the text line by line as I think about the choices done by the translator. Besides enjoying the original, I'm able to think about the translation as well, namely about the solutions found by the translator.

What does Rilke have that other poets do not possess? Talent is not enough, and vocabulary is not enough. What about rhyming words and phrases…? What Rilke achieved and what he advises us to seek is a state of Nirvana where certain characteristics synchronize to produce a poem that is at once lyrical and philosophical, understated yet powerful, terse yet tactful, and most importantly, honest and heartfelt.

I've always read the letters as if they were already detached from the persons they were sent to, and now they can be also addressed to each one of us...

One of the most valuable lessons I took away from reading these letters more than 20 years ago, was trying to create a private space to be creative. It goes without saying that in this day and age (it was true 20 years, and it’s still true), I’ve had people trying to pry me out with “accusations” of being anti-social (“bicho do mato” as we say in Portuguese; I’m not sure about the translation, but it means something like “someone who has never seen daylight”). In creative growth I consistently run into the idea that you do that in your twenties and then you simply produce. Not so. I want to produce, and also be creative in other areas, be it in software developing, in poetry, or in prose. I still want to be creative in my old age, if I get to live that far, no matter the area I’m involved in…

And now, as Rilke said, “Und wo ein Großer und Einmaliger spricht, haben die Kleinen zu schweigen.” Therefore, I remain silent.

NB: Justo's afterword is also something worth reading. I've read a lot of Rilke, but I'd never thought about his work in those terms. Enlightening... 5 stars for the original, and 5 stars for the translation and afterword.

Erhabene Poesie: "A Borboleta Vermelha" by Helena de Sousa

Published 2016.

“A Borboleta Vermelha” = “The Red Butterfly”

Bear with me, because this preamble is going to take a while.

The issue: "Free Verse vs. Blank Verse vs. Rhymed Verse".

Upon reading this volume, the poem that immediately resonated within me was “Limonada” (Lemonade), and I'll use it to make my reasoning:

“Limonada”

I can see you as you are…

White burning flame

Coming with the tides of sea

Dazzled look upon the mist in the sky

Honored heart lost in the translation of times

I can see you as you are…

Summer flavored laughter

Impetuous spirit tied in chains

I can see you as you are…

Free in the deepness of the blue sea

I can see you…

Naqueles breves momentos

Em que as palavras de Rilke ainda ecoavam no ar

O meu coração palpitava em desassossego

E os teus olhos enchiam-se de emoção,

Permanecemos assim firmes na praia

Com o espírito cheio e inquieto

Contemplando a vastidão do mar

Como dois amantes

Envolvidos no abraço do vento…

In, “A Borboleta Vermelha”, Helena de Sousa, Chiado Editora, 2016

NB: The poem mixes Portuguese and English to my fullest satisfaction…The translation of the 2^nd stanza into Portuguese can be quasi-translated (non-poetic translation) into something like this:

“In those brief moments

Where the words of Rilke still echoed in the air

My heart pounded in unrest

And your eyes filled with emotion,

We remained firm on the beach

With the spirit filled and restless

Contemplating the vastness of the sea

Like two lovers

Involved in a wind embrace...”

To cut things short, I'll give you an example of each kind of verse.

Everyone worth his or salt, knows William Blake invented free verse. One of the best examples by Blake I know it's this poem:

"I wandered through chartered streets
Along the banks of the chartered Thames, flowing through London
Every face I see,
Is marked with weakness and woe."

Does it work? It sure does. Not too long ago I've heard someone saying free verse had no quality. Well, that depends on the poem itself. Not all free verse poems have quality. That's obvious. What we shouldn't do is stating that because it's free verse it has no quality whatsoever.

As to blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter), everyone familiar with Shakespeare knows what I'm talking above. I'll give just an example from the play I've just finished reading, Henry V, where the Chorus conjures up for the audience the atmosphere of the English camp on the night before the battle of Agincourt. As you can see, the rhythm of the verse comes through even if you’re just reading it:

"Now entertain conjecture of a time
When creeping murmur and the poring dark
Fills the wide vessel of the universe.
From camp to camp through the foul womb of night
The hum of either army stilly sounds,
That the fixed sentinels almost receive
The secret whispers of each other’s watch:
Fire answers fire, and through their paly flames
Each battle sees the other’s umber’d face;
Steed threatens steed, in high and boastful neighs
Piercing the night’s dull ear, and from the tents
The armourers, accomplishing the knights,
With busy hammers closing rivets up,
Give dreadful note of preparation."

(Extracted from my Annotated Edition by A. L. Rowse)

As you can see, there are no rhymes (not even rhymed couplets).

On the other hand, rhymed verse, for example, can be consubstantiated by the poem "O livro e Flor" (The book and the flower) by Cabral do Nascimento, one of my favourite Portuguese poets:

"Um livro volumoso
De alta cogitação.
Obra de autor famoso,
Estilo precioso.
Boa encadernação."
(Rhymes in bold)

There's no way I'm up to the task of translating this into English and German in a way that I can maintain the rhymes:

"A large book
of high thoughts.
Famous author's work,
precious style.
Good binding."

Or in German:

"Ein Dickes Buch
mit erhabenen Gedanken.
Das Werk eines beruhmten Autors.
Erlesener Stil.
Guter Einband."

The translations into languages other than Portuguese, I think they can still be read in a very satisfatory manner. You tell me.

As you can see from the examples above, it's not a matter of its being free verse or not when evaluating whether a poem works. There are just as many bad poems using end rhyme and meter as there are bad poems in free verse. Free verse has to rely on other kind of literary devices to make it work, namely by using anaphora and metaphor, for example.

Coming to my example, "Limonada", we can see Helena Sousa making use of anaphora (using the phrase "I can see you") to give the poem a rhythmic feel while emphasizing certain themes. The elegantly and concrete phrases and wonderful descriptions which enabled me not only to read/hear the poem, but to "see" it as well. The use not only of concrete images, but the use of metaphor, can turn the poem into a whole as a metaphor for something beyond the words on the page.

Rilke has long been my soul’s companion and few seem to understand his depth. Like Shakespeare, and a few others, his words feel like they are my own memories. This is not something I tell people often, but I spent a few years reading all of Rilke, especially the Elegies. Poetry is always at the back of my mind. Why? Because it reminds me of when I had the time and energy to lose myself in books and art and think about anything and everything. When a Poetry book like this one comes along, I get in poetry mood. I’ve always believed Rilke’s poetry probably saved my sanity. I see him as being some kind of old and dead and a white man but, I mean, every angel is terrifying…If someone pointed a gun at my head making me “choose” my 3 favourite poets, Shakespeare, Rilke, and Celan, would probably be the ones. I know I can read them with the intent of understanding their work, but also read them and just live in the words which are beautiful all on their own, too. Sometimes I want an escape from meaning and I just want to hear beautiful words bound together so wondrously.

Helena's poetry is embedded with a kind of dreamy earnestness that only seems to exist when we read it. 

After reading Helena’s poetry book, I felt this is the essence of the reference. I see in her poetry references that may read space, the “object” that the word or phrase may be – as a form of binding. And it may be another “object” (be it a beach, laughter, sea, Rilke, or something else entirely) and its memory.

Just because I can, here goes one of my favourite stanzas from Rilke (from the 9^th elegy):

“O nicht, weil Glück ist dieser Voreilige Vorteil eines nahen Verlusts.

Nicht aus Neugier, oder zur Übung des Herzens,

Das auch im Lorbeer wäre…

Aber weil Hiersein vie list, und weil uns schneinbar alles fas Hoesige braucht, dieses Schwindende, das seltsam unsangeht.

Uns, die Schwindendsten. Ein Mal jedes, nur ein Mal. Ein Mal und nicht mehr. Und wir auch ein Mal. Nie wieder. Aber dieses ein Mal gewesen zu sein, scheint nicht widerrufbar.”

(Extract taken from my edition of “Gesammelte Werke - IRIS®-Leinen” von Rainer Maria Rilke)

It’s quite untranslatable, don’t you think?

One of Floberla Espanca’s poems also comes to mind when I think about Helena’s poetry. Here is a poetic translation from Portuguese into German of the first stanza which I did back in the day  (in those days, German was almost my first language...):

“Ich träume, ich wär die auserwählte Dichterin,

die, die alles sagt und alles weiss,

und mit der reinen und vollkommenen Eingebung

in einem Vers die Unermesslichkeit umfasst.”

My quasi-translation (non-poetic translation) into English of this stanza, for the benefit of my English speaking friends:

“I dream I’m the chosen poetess,

The one that says it all and knows it all.

The one has the pure and perfect inspiration,

The one who gathers in a verse all the vastness!”

Disclaimer: I received an advance reader's copy (ARC - Uncorrected Manuscript Proof) of this book from the author in exchange for my honest review. All opinions expressed are my own, and no monetary compensation was received for this review.

I was also one of the proofreaders involved in the process prior to publication.  This has in no way affected/biased my review.

Gesang ist Dasein: "Rilkeana" by Ana Hatherly

Published 1999.

In the past I’ve bought this book two times. Last week I bought it again, for the third and last time. I lent the other two, but for the life of me I cannot remember to whom they went. The one I’ve just bought won’t leave home…

Every time I read this book (I’ve read it several times) I always come back to Rilke (no surprise there…). But more than coming back to Rilke, I always wonder what Poesy does for me that Prose doesn’t. What does it represent, i.e., what kind of world does it depict, and what kind of operational forms does it use to transform our everyday experience into something esthetic pleasing, and so forth. I’ve looked for the answer everywhere (and I mean really everywhere: poets, in the poesy itself, interviews with poets, etc.) After this “quest”, I came back to Rilke, i.e., I decided to drop anchor. I’ve re-read Rilke several times, in several languages (in German most and foremost, but also in English, and in Portuguese). Reading Rilke, Trakl, Heine fell into disuse. Not to me. They’re not “fast food” poesy-wise. Their digestion is difficult and they don’t leave us at rest with the world. When I read them I’m not exactly looking for Daseinsfreude, the joy of the days to come. What I find in Rilke is a poet who traverses the ruins and debris to find the sublime greatness of the human soul. They are the poets of misery, sadness, impotence, terror, anguish, and darkness. We all have a few of those within ourselves…

In Portugal Rilke has always been a major influence: Sophia de Mello Breyner e Andresen, António Ramos Rosa, Herberto Helder, Fiama Hasse Pais Brandão, and Fernando Guimarães to name just a few. For a People worshipping Fado, that’s to be expected.

In the Elegies we have those ethereal beings we call angels. In our western tradition they represent the redemption of Man. They save us, they pick up our debris and what's left of us. And yet, these angels, who are the mediators between life and death, the invisible (transcendence) and the visible (Earth), are also terrible beings because they carry within themselves an intrinsic darkness. Rilke's angels celebrate existence and language through the only way available to them: the singing ("Gesang ist Dasein"). In Rilke Singing and Being are merged. This merging is what allows me to find a door into Rilke's poesy. The language of Poesy should be nothing but mystic in its essence. Why? We can only be "saved" through the use of poetic language, aiming at the wholesomeness of our nature, i.e., at an absolute and redeeming utterance-ness of being.

Hatherly was able to produce echoes of Rilke in Portuguese in a way I haven’t seen done before. In a very Rilkean way, she uses the beginnings of the 10 Elegies to sort of deviate, but not really doing it in the end.

Rilke’s 10 line beginnings that Hatherly uses to “deviate from/recreate” his poesy:

-          Wer, wenn ich schriee (I)

-          Jeder Engel ist schrecklich (II)

-          Eines ist, die Geliebte zu singen

-          O Bäume lebens

-          Wer aber sind sie, sag mir, die Fahrenden

-          Feigebaum, seit wir lange schon ists mir bedeutend

-          Werbung nicht mehr, nicht Werbung, entwachsene Stimme

-          Mit alle Augen sieht die Kreatur das Offene

-          Warum, wenn es angeht, also die Frist des Daseins

-          Dass ich dereinst, an dem Ausgang der grimmigen Einsicht

She also translates into Portuguese “Die Engel/The Angels/Os Anjos” (from the book “Das Buch der Bilde/o Livro das Imagens”):

Todos têm uma boca lassa

E as claras almas sem limites.

E em seus sonhos por vezes perpassa

Uma saudade (talvez de pecado).

Quase todos parecidos uns com os outros

Nos jardins de Deus estão calados

Como se fossem inúmeros intervalos

Em sua força e sua melodia.

Mas quando desdobram suas asas

Despertam uma tal vibração

Como se Deus com sua vasta criadora mão

Folheasse o obscuro Livro do Início.

The original written by Rilke is much prettier:

(

Sie haben alle müde Münde

und helle Seelen ohne Saum.

Und eine Sehnsucht (wie nach Sünde)

geht ihnen manchmal durch den Traum.

Fast gleichen sie einander alle;

in Gottes Gärten schweigen sie,

wie viele, viele Intervalle

in seiner Macht und Melodie.

Nur wenn sie ihre Flügel breiten,

sind sie die Wecker eines Winds:

als ginge Gott mit seinen weiten

Bildhauerhänden durch die Seiten

im dunklen Buch des Anbeginns.

)

My attempt at translating directly from German into English for the benefit of my English-speaking friends:

The Angels

They all have tired mouths

And bright, boundless souls.

And a longing (as if for sin)

Sometimes goes through their dream.

They all nearly look alike;

In God’s Garden they are quiet,

Like many, many intervals

In his strength and melody.

Only when they spread their wings

Are they wind awakeners:

As if God with his wide sculptor’s hands

were browsing through the pages

of the dark book of beginnings.

Can it get any better than this?

Ana Hatherly, Portuguese Poet-Painter, May 8 1929 - August 5 2015

Let her poetry talk...

AS LÁGRIMAS DO POETA

Um poeta barroco disse:

As palavras são

As línguas dos olhos

Mas o que é um poema

Senão

Um telescópio do desejo

Fixado pela língua?

O voo sinuoso das aves

As altas ondas do mar

A calmaria do vento:

Tudo

Tudo cabe dentro das palavras

E o poeta que vê

Chora lágrimas de tinta

Once again my attempt at translating the untranslatable:

(

THE POET'S TEARS

One baroque poet said:

The words are

The eyes’ tongues

But what is a poem

If not

A telescope of desire

Set by language?

The meandering flight of the birds

The tall waves of the sea

The letup of the wind:

Everything

Everything fits into words

And the poet who sees

Weeps tears of ink

)

My favourite poetry book written by her: "Rilkeana" (poetry with echoes of Rilke)

Vasco Graça Moura's Day - 17.05.2015

What does translation involve? Is it only rendering of a text? I think not. The main thing is the negotiation between two cultures.  Poetry itself is the berth of estrangement (SF being the other branch) and translation, when it estranges by allowing the ‘foreign’ to have a palpable presence in the text, further makes it new. But does this sacrifice simplicity, transparency and readability? Poetry often asks for the servitude of the self and translation for the capitulating of one voice to another. But can this result in a poem true to its origins, without the necessary connection to the writer’s self and experience?

Vasco Graça Moura was one of the translator-poets that made me realize for the first time that translating was one of the hardest things to do. I know that from personal experience...He also showed me that translation is possible, i.e., rendering a text into a another language is like a puzzle waiting to be cracked, like a math problem. Sometimes all that is needed is inspiration.

In a certain Summer, a long time ago, I'd read so much German poetry and prose that I thought only German utterances would come out of my mouth once I tried to speak something out loud. During that Summer I was reading (and translating) more and more verse at Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian's Gardens. I lived in a perfect trance - I don't think anyone ever had such a wonderful youth as I had - of poetry. I discovered many new poets. I'd been reading Hölderlin, Rilke, Benn, Goethe, Eich, Enzensberger, Freiligrath (I still remember almost by heart his "Hamlet": "Deutschland ist Hamlet! - Ernst und stumm in seinen Toren jede Nacht..."), Gleim, Grass, Handke, Heine, Heym, Marti, Kunze, etc. Celan had not been discovered by me yet). I'd always read a great deal of German Poetry, and I was just in the right mood at the time. There were the Gulbenkian Gardens, the sound of the birds, and I was young, and I fancied myself very much in love with my future wife, and this flood of marvelous poetry washing over me was almost unbearable. I was writing in translation reams and reams of verse through it all. It was in one of those German poetry binges that I discovered Vasco Graça Moura's poetry in translation. I bought that book recently at Feira do Livro de Lisboa 2015 ("50 Poemas de Gottfried Benn/50 Poems by Gottfried Benn") and browsing it in 2015 what wonderful memories it brought me. I can still remember reading some of the poems from the book out loud...

This conference comemorating one year of VGM's passing, made me travel back in time. It was wonderful to hear stories from the panelists regarding his take on life, society, literature, etc. Pacheco Pereira's and Eduardo Lourenço's recollections about VGM were the ones I liked the most.

Shakespeare said, "But thy eternal summer shall not fade". That particular Summer will not surely fade in my mind as well...

VGM is no longer physically with us, but his poetry is for all eternity. 

Ticiano de Vasco Graça Moura

eu desespero nos museus: há sempre 

gente a mais e quadros realmente

bons a menos, mas nos melhores há sempre

uma miraculosa descoberta, passeando

no Louvre, uma vez, de mãos dadas, e a custo

atravessando magotes excitados de turistas,

disse à minha mulher que estava ali, à nossa

frente, uma prova na pintura italiana

do século XVI, a evidência de que só

o ticiano se importava com as mulheres

de maneira ostensiva e radical.

(...)

in "Poesia: 1997-2000" by Vasco Graça Moura, Quetzal, 2000

My own attempt at translating this in 2015 looks somethjng like this:

Ticiano von Vasco Graça Moura

In den Museen packt mich die Verzweiflung. Immer

gibt es zu viele Leute und zu wenig wirklich gute

Gemälde. Aber bei den besten gibt es immer tölle

Entdeckungen zu machen. Jüngst, bei einem Bummel

im Louvre, Hand in Hand, und nur mit Mühe

uns einen Weg durch viele eifrige Touristen bahnend,

sprach ich zu meiner Frau: es gebe da vor uns ein Merkmal in der Malerei der Italiener

des sechzehnten  Jahrhunderts. Offensichtlich habe sich nur Ticiano für Frauen interessiert

so richting ausgefällig radikal.

(...)

The rendering of the poem in its entirety is still in the works...

NB: SF = Speculative Fiction.

Translating at the Limits of Translatability or My Personal Journey with Celan: “Não Sabemos mesmo O Que Importa”/”Wir wissen ja nicht, was gilt”/”We Don’t Really Know What Matters” by Paul Celan, Gilda Lopes Encarnação (translator)

Published 2014

One day I got to my class and after 10 minutes without other classmates arriving, my teacher Winfried Scheulen and I agreed to talk about anything worth our fancy. Being Poetry one of my long-term interests, I asked him who his favourite poet in the German Language was. I was expecting something along the lines of Rilke, Hölderlin, Hesse, but what came out of his mouth was Paul Celan. My journey of discovery regarding Celan started that day. The next day I went out and started canvassing all the bookstores in Lisbon trying to find something with Celan written on the cover, which I did: two wonderful bilingual collections (German vs Portuguese) by one of our most distinguished Professors of German Studies: João Barrento. It was through these collections (“Sete Rosas Mais Tarde”/”Seven Roses Later” with Yvette Centeno and “A Morte É Uma Flor”/”Death is a Flower”) that Celan became instantiated in me: 

Later on I got to read many more stuff in German concerning Celan, but I’ve always been keen on understanding on what it means to translate, especially when we are talking about someone as untranslatable as Celan, and this two collections were where it all started for me.

Celan is for me synonym with Hermetism. One might say this is not a “problem” with Celan but with all Poetry in general. Celan (like Rilke and Hölderlin did before him), transformed (or were transformed by) the German Language to fit their need to explain their Weltanschauung through poetry.

To talk about Celan is to talk about “Atemwende” -, a title very difficult to translate into Portuguese; there were several attempts: “Mudança de Ar”, “Sopro, Viragem” (Barrento’s choice), “Mudança de Respiração”, “Viragem na Respiração” (Gilda Encarnação’s choice) -, which in the beginning eluded me in its difficulty at translatability. This fixation was so great that I ended up translating the all thing using, at the time, my very awful command of the German Language (and with a lot of help from several dictionaries). Incidentally this work is still up in the attic; in an Horatian mode, it’s still waiting for its maturation to see the light of day… It was only when I made the attempt at producing my own version at translating Celan’s poetry (at that time)  that I truly suffered the impact of the task. This grappling with Celan’s poetry resulted in a very impetuous, and uncontrolled approach which was the only way to deal with something that shook me to my inner core. To deal with it I had to migrate the original to my own mother-tongue. Gilda Encarnação’s version made me come back to it:

Du darfst mich getrost mit Schnee bewirten: sooft ich Schulter an Schulter mit dem Maubeerbaum schritt durch den Sommer, schrie sein jüngstes Blatt.

Podes, consolado, servir-me neve: sempre que, ombro a ombro com a amoreira, percorria o Verão, a sua folha mais recente me gritava.

(my version)

Encarnação’s version:

Du darfst mich getrost mit Schnee bewirten: sooft ich Schulter an Schulter mit dem Maubeerbaum schritt durch den Sommer, schrie sein jüngstes Blatt.

Podes sem receio Acolher-me com neve: Sempre que ombro com ombro Atravessava o Verão com a amoreira, Gritava a sua mais tenra Folha.

Comparing the two versions, my own attempt does not strike too discordant a note.

Now, on to the issues I had with Encarnação’s translation (just a few examples):

1 - "laß es wandern” = “deixa-o errar“ (page 61). “wandern” in its strictest sense means “to go for a walk” (andar, caminhar in Portuguese); upon reading Encarnação’s translation of this verse I was to lead to believe that we were talking about “making mistakes” (“errar” in Portuguese). There’s nothing in the verse that might put us on that particular instantiation of the original;

2 - “Wär ich wie du” = “Fora eu como tu” (“Were I like you”) (page 65). It’s erroneous to say the least.  I’d have used “Se eu fosse como tu” (“If I were you”);

3 - “Bei Wortschein” = “ao luar do verbo” (page 131). I’d have translated this as “à Luz da Palavra” using a very common theological expression, be it Portuguese or, for that matter, English (“at the word’s light”);

4 – “Von Ungeträumtem geätzt, wirft das schlaflos durchwanderte Brotland den Lebensberg auf.” = “Pelo insonhado corroída, a terra do pão insonemente percorrida atira o monte da vida ao ar” (page 141). Celan “wants” to express the inability to put into words some sort of violent experience that might be beyond what may be dreamed. To rightly interpret (and translate) this verse one would have to understand the keyword “Lebensberg” (a “gathering of experience” and not “a pile of life”/”um monte de vida” in Encarnação’s version). Using this as a clue I’d have translated “Von Ungeträumtem geätzt” as “corrompido pelo não-sonhado“/“corroded by the undreamed”). This way it sounds like I’m now reading Portuguese and not some kind of Ersatz-Portugiese;

5 - “Ausgeschlüfte Chitin sonnen.  Die Panzerlurche nehmen die blauen Gebetmäntel um, die sand-hörige Möwe heisst es gut, das lauernde Brandkraut geht in sich” = Sóis de quitina brotados do ovo. Os batráqueos blindados põem os paramentos azuis pelos ombros, a gaivota submissa à areia aplaude-o, a vigilante erva-fogo entra em si” (page 231). I’d have used the expression “recém-chocado”/”newly-hatched”. “Brotado do ovo” sounds weird in Portuguese.

My take on this particular stanza:

“Sóis de quitina recém-chocados. Os anfíbios blindados envolvem-se em paramentos azuis, a gaivota dependente da areia responde na afirmativa, a furtiva folha-fogo rumina.”

(“Chitin suns newly-hatched. Armoured amphibians wrap themselves up in blue liturgical vestments, the sun-dependent gull calls out in the affirmative, the furtive fire-leaf stops and thinks”). 

A common expression in German “in sich gekehrt” should have been the clue for this part of the poem…

I could have given a few more examples, but you get the gist. When translating Celan one shouldn’t go for the rhyme. Celan is not a rhyme type of poet. Celan inhabits another space-time continuum…Celan’s poetry needs a translator-poet which I’m not. I think In Portuguese only Vasco Graça Moura who translated Rilke, Gottfried Benn, Walter Benjamin, H. M. Enzensberger, etc. would have been able to render Celan’s German into Portuguese. Alas, he’s no longer among us to enlighten us as to the “details” of Celan’s poetry. We still have Barrento’s renderings into Portuguese, so all is not lost…

Bottom-line: 3 stars for Gilda Lopes Encarnação’s translation, and 4 stars for the afterword “À luz da U-topia”/”In the light of U-topia”/Im Licht der U-topie”, which gives us 3.5 stars. Not bad for an attempt on Celan’s poetry.