Γ΄ Ιστοσυνάντηση Ποιητικής Μετάφρασης

Φίλες και φίλοι

Σας καλωσορίζω στην Γ΄ Ιστοσυνάντηση Ποιητικής Μετάφρασης. Όπως και τις προηγούμενες φορές, διαλέξαμε πέντε ποιήματα από τα Αγγλικά. Ασχοληθείτε με όποια (και όσα) από τα πέντε θέλετε, και στείλτε τις ελληνικές εκδοχές σας στη διεύθυνση e-mail που θα βρείτε στο προφίλ μου. Τα ποιήματα, μαζί με τις μεταφράσεις τους, θα παρουσιαστούν σε ξεχωριστά ποστ και με τη σειρά που εμφανίζονται εδώ. Το πρώτο θα αναρτηθεί κάπου μετά την 25η Μαρτίου, οπότε φροντίστε να έχετε στείλει τις μεταφράσεις σας ως τότε. Αν δείτε ότι χρειάζεστε περισσότερο χρόνο, επικοινωνήστε μαζί μου για να το καθυστερήσω λίγο. Ο σκοπός, άλλωστε, είναι να το απολαύσουμε όλοι — για διασκέδαση πρόκειται, όχι για δουλειά.

Αυτή τη φορά, δεν ήμασταν πολυσυλλεκτικοί στις επιλογές μας. Με αφετηρία μια ιδέα της Mauve All (η οποία πρότεινε και τρία από τα πέντε ποιήματα που τελικά επιλέξαμε), αποφασίσαμε (ο Π κι εγώ) να κάνουμε μια «θεματική» Ιστοσυνάντηση. Έτσι, θα στρέψουμε την προσοχή μας σε πέντε αμερικανίδες ποιήτριες του 20ού αιώνα.

Σας θυμίζω ότι μπορείτε να κατεβάσετε τις πρώτες δύο Ι.Π.Μ. σε μορφή pdf — σχετικά λινκ θα βρείτε στη δεξιά στήλη — ή να δείτε τα πρωτότυπα ποστ μαζί με τα σχόλιά τους, επιλέγοντας την κατηγορία «Ιστοσυναντήσεις».

Καλή διασκέδαση!

_________________________


1. Elinor Wylie - A Proud Lady (1921)


Hate in the world's hand
Can carve and set its seal
Like the strong blast of sand
Which cuts into steel.

I have seen how the finger of hate
Can mar and mould
Faces burned passionate
And frozen cold.

Sorrowful faces worn
As stone with rain,
Faces writhing with scorn
And sullen with pain.

But you have a proud face
Which the world cannot harm,
You have turned the pain to a grace
And the scorn to a charm.

You have taken the arrows and slings
Which prick and bruise
And fashioned them into wings
For the heels of your shoes.

From the world's hand which tries
To tear you apart
You have stolen the falcon's eyes
And the lion's heart.

What has it done, this world,
With hard finger-tips,
But sweetly chiseled and curled
Your inscrutable lips?

_________________________


2. Hilda Doolittle (H.D.) - At Baia (1921)


I should have thought
in a dream you would have brought
some lovely, perilous thing,
orchids piled in a great sheath,
as who would say (in a dream),
"I send you this,
who left the blue veins
of your throat unkissed."

Why was it that your hands
(that never took mine),
your hands that I could see
drift over the orchid-heads
so carefully,
your hands, so fragile, sure to lift
so gently, the fragile flower-stuff--
ah, ah, how was it

You never sent (in a dream)
the very form, the very scent,
not heavy, not sensuous,
but perilous--perilous--
of orchids, piled in a great sheath,
and folded underneath on a bright scroll,
some word:

"Flower sent to flower;
for white hands, the lesser white,
less lovely of flower-leaf,"

or

"Lover to lover, no kiss,
no touch, but forever and ever this."

_________________________


3. Adrienne Rich - Storm Warnings (1951)


The glass has been falling all the afternoon,
And knowing better than the instrument
What winds are walking overhead, what zone
Of grey unrest is moving across the land,
I leave the book upon a pillowed chair
And walk from window to closed window, watching
Boughs strain against the sky
And think again, as often when the air
Moves inward toward a silent core of waiting,
How with a single purpose time has travelled
By secret currents of the undiscerned
Into this polar realm. Weather abroad
And weather in the heart alike come on
Regardless of prediction.
Between foreseeing and averting change
Lies all the mastery of elements
Which clocks and weatherglasses cannot alter.
Time in the hand is not control of time,
Nor shattered fragments of an instrument
A proof against the wind; the wind will rise,
We can only close the shutters.
I draw the curtains as the sky goes black
And set a match to candles sheathed in glass
Against the keyhole draught, the insistent whine
Of weather through the unsealed aperture.
This is our sole defence against the season;
These are the things we have learned to do
Who live in troubled regions.

_________________________


4. Elizabeth Bishop – Insomnia (1955)


The moon in the bureau mirror
looks out a million miles
(and perhaps with pride, at herself,
but she never, never smiles)
far and away beyond sleep, or
perhaps she's a daytime sleeper.

By the Universe deserted,
she'd tell it to go to hell,
and she'd find a body of water,
or a mirror, on which to dwell.
So wrap up care in a cobweb
and drop it down the well

into that world inverted
where left is always right,
where the shadows are really the body,
where we stay awake all night,
where the heavens are shallow as the sea
is now deep, and you love me.

_________________________


5. Anne Sexton - Her Kind (1960)


I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.