 Margaret Atwood
Original poems followed by their translations into Spanish
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He is here, come down to look for you. It is the song that calls you back, a song of joy and suffering equally: a promise: that things will be different up there than they were last time. You would rather have gone on feeling nothing, emptiness and silence; the stagnant peace of the deepest sea, which is easier than the noise and flesh of the surface. You are used to these blanched dim corridors, you are used to the king who passes you without speaking. The other one is different and you almost remember him. He says he is singing to you because he loves you, not as you are now, so chilled and minimal: moving and still both, like a white curtain blowing in the draft from a half-opened window beside a chair on which nobody sits. He wants you to be what he calls real. He wants you to stop light. He wants to feel himself thickening like a treetrunk or a haunch and see blood on his eyelids when he closes them, and the sun beating. This love of his is not something he can do if you aren’t there, but what you knew suddenly as you left your body cooling and whitening on the lawn was that you love him anywhere, even in this land of no memory, even in this domain of hunger. You hold love in your hand, a red seed you had forgotten you were holding. He has come almost too far. He cannot believe without seeing, and it’s dark here. Go back, you whisper, but he wants to be fed again by you. O handful of gauze, little bandage, handful of cold air, it is not through him you will get your freedom. ORPHEUS (1) You walked in front of me, pulling me back out to the green light that had once grown fangs and killed me. I was obedient, but numb, like an arm gone to sleep; the return to time was not my choice. By then I was used to silence. Though something stretched between us like a whisper, like a rope: my former name, drawn tight. You had your old leash with you, love you might call it, and your flesh voice. Before your eyes you held steady the image of what you wanted me to become: living again. It was this hope of yours that kept me following. I was your hallucination, listening and floral, and you were singing me: already new skin was forming on me within the luminous misty shroud of my other body; already there was dirt on my hands and I was thirsty. I could see only the outline of your head and shoulders, black against the cave mouth, and so could not see your face at all, when you turned and called to me because you had already lost me. The last I saw of you was a dark oval. Though I knew how this failure would hurt you, I had to fold like a gray moth and let go. You could not believe I was more than your echo. ORPHEUS (2) Whether he will go on singing or not, knowing what he knows of the horror of this world: He was not wandering among meadows all this time. He was down there among the mouthless ones, among those with no fingers, those whose names are forbidden, those washed up eaten into among the gray stones of the shore where nobody goes through fear. Those with silence. He has been trying to sing love into existence again and he has failed. Yet he will continue to sing, in the stadium crowded with the already dead who raise their eyeless faces to listen to him; while the red flowers grow up and splatter open against the walls. They have cut off both his hands and soon they will tear his head from his body in one burst of furious refusal. He foresees this. Yet he will go on singing, and in praise. To sing is either praise or defiance. Praise is defiance. A WOMAN´S ISSUE The woman in the spiked device that locks around the waist and between the legs, with holes in it like a tea strainer is Exhibit A. The woman in black with a net window to see through and a four-inch wooden peg jammed up between her legs so she can’t be raped is Exhibit B. Exhibit C is the young girl dragged into the bush by the midwives and made to sing while they scrape the flesh from between her legs, then tie her thighs till she scabs over and is called healed. Now she can be married. For each childbirth they’ll cut her open, then sew her up. Men like tight women. The ones that die are carefully buried. The next exhibit lies flat on her back while eighty men a night move through her, ten an hour. She looks at the ceiling, listens to the door open and close. A bell keeps ringing. Nobody knows how she got here. You’ll notice that what they have in common is “between the legs”. Is this why wars are fought? Enemy territory, no man’s land, to be entered furtively, fenced, owned but never surely, scene of these desperate forays at midnight, captures and sticky murders, doctor’s rubber gloves greasy with blood, flesh made inert, the surge of your own uneasy power. This is no museum. Who invented the word “love”? NIGHT POEM There is nothing to be afraid of, it is only the wind changing to the east, it is only your father the thunder your mother the rain In this country of water with its beige moon damp as a mushroom, its drowned stumps and long birds that swim, where the moss grows on all sides of the trees and your shadow is not your shadow but your reflection, your true parents disappear when the curtain covers your door. We are the others, the ones from under the lake who stand silently beside your bed with our heads of darkness. We have come to cover you with red wool, with our tears and distant whispers. You rock in the rain’s arms, the chilly ark of your sleep, while we wait, your night father and mother, with our cold hands and dead flashlight, knowing we are only the wavering shadows thrown by one candle, in this echo you will hear twenty years later. METEMPSYCHOSIS Somebody’s grandmother glides through the bracken, in widow’s black and graceful and sharp as ever: see how her eyes glitter! Who were you when you were a snake? This one was a dancer who is now a green streamer waved by its own breeze and here’s your blunt striped uncle, come back to bask under the wicker chairs on the porch and watch over you. Unfurling itself from its cast skin, the snake proclaims resurrection to all believers though some tire soon of being born over and over; for them there’s the breath that shivers in the yellow grass, a papery finger, half of a noose, a summons to the dead river. Who’s that in the cold cellar with the apples and the rats? Whose is that voice of a husk rasping in the wind? Your lost child whispering Mother, the one more child you never had, your child who wants back in. ________________________________ © Margaret Atwood ________________________________ SPANISH VERSIONS by Amparo Arróspide EURIDICE El ha venido a buscarte y está aquí, canción que te llama y quiere que vuelvas, canción de dicha y de pesar a partes iguales, promesa hecha canción, promesa de que todo será, allá arriba, distinto a la última vez… Hubieras preferido seguir sintiendo nada, vacío y silencio; la estancada paz del mar más hondo, al ruido y la carne de la superficie, acostumbrada a estos pasillos pálidos y en sombras, y al rey que pasa por tu lado sin pronunciar palabra. El otro es diferente y casi lo recuerdas. Dice que canta para ti porque te ama, no como eres ahora, tan fría y diminuta: móvil y a la vez quieta, como blanca cortina o soplo en la corriente de una ventana a medio abrir junto a una silla donde nadie se sienta. Te quiere “real",un cuerpo opaco, sentir cómo se espesa (tronco de árbol o ancas) y el golpe de la sangre tras los párpados al cerrarlos la llamarada solar…sin tu presencia no podrá sentir este amor suyo…Mas la súbita revelación de tu cuerpo enfriándose en la tierra fue saber que le amas en cualquier lugar hasta en este sitio sin memoria, este reino del hambre. Como una semilla roja en la mano que olvidaste que aprietas, llevas tu amor…El necesita ver para creer y está oscuro. “Atrás, atrás...", le susurras, pero quiere que vuelvas a alimentarlo, Eurídice, puñado de tul, pequeña venda, soplo de aire frío, no se llamará Orfeo tu libertad… _ ORFEO (1) Delante mío caminabas, atrayéndome hacia la verde luz que alguna vez me asesinó con sus colmillos. Insensible te seguí, como un brazo dormido y obediente pero no fui yo quien quiso volver al tiempo Había llegado a amar el silencio, pero mi antiguo nombre era una cuerda o un susurro tendido entre nosotros. Y estaba tu amor, las viejas riendas de tu amor, tu voz corpórea…Ante tus ojos mantenías la imagen de tu deseo, que era yo, viva otra vez. Y por esta esperanza tuya continué, y así fui tu alucinación, floral y oyente tú me creabas al cantarme y una piel nueva me crecía en mi otro cuerpo, envuelto en niebla, y tenía ya sed, y manos sucias, y veía ya, perfilados contra la boca de la gruta, el perfil de tu cabeza y de tus hombros cuando te diste vuelta para llamarme y me perdiste…Así que no llegué a ver tu rostro, sólo un ovalo oscuro, y a pesar de sentir todo el dolor de tu derrota, debí rendirme, como se rinden las mariposas de la noche. Tú creíste que sólo fui el eco de tu canto. ORFEO (2) Sabiendo lo que sabe del horror de este mundo, ¿seguirá cantando? No se dedicó únicamente a pasear los prados: bajó con los que no tienen boca, los que no tienen dedos, los de nombres prohibidos, los cuerpos devorados en guijarros grises de una costa desierta que todos temen, con los dueños del silencio El, que quiso inútilmente resucitar a la amada con su canto, seguirá allí, en el estadio lleno de los muertos que elevarán sus rostros sin ojos para escucharle, mientras crecen las flores y revientan, rojas, contra los muros. Le habrán cortado las manos y pronto desgajarán su cabeza del cuerpo en un estallido de rechazo furioso: y aunque lo sabe proseguirá su canto de alabanza porque cantar es alabanza o desafío. Y toda alabanza es desafío. POEMA NOCTURNO No hay nada que temer, es sólo el viento que ahora sopla hacia el este, es sólo tu padre..........el trueno tu madre..........la lluvia En este país de agua con su luna ocre y húmeda como un champiñón, sus muñones ahogados y sus pájaros largos que nadan, donde crece el musgo por todo el tronco de los árboles y tu sombra no es tu sombra sino un reflejo, tus padres verdaderos desaparecen al bajar la cortina y quedamos los otros, los sumergidos del lago con nuestras cabezas de oscuridad de pie ahora y en silencio junto a tu cama…Venimos a arroparte con lana roja, con nuestras lágrimas y susurros distantes. Te meces en los brazos de la lluvia, el arca fría de tu sueño, mientras aguardamos, tu padre y madre nocturnos, con las manos heladas y una linterna muerta, sabiendo que somos solamente las sombras vacilantes que proyecta una vela, en este eco que oirás veinte años más tarde. METEMPSICOSIS/METEMPSYCHOSIS Tu abuela se desliza por los helechos, vestida de luto, grácil y aguda como siempre: ¡mira cómo le brillan los ojos! ¿Quién eras tú cuando fuiste serpiente? Aquel fue un bailarín y ahora una verde serpentina ondulada por su propia brisa y he aquí a tu tío, persona brusca y a rayas, que regresa a vigilarte y relajarse bajo las mecedoras del porche. Cuando se despoja de su vieja piel la serpiente proclama la resurrección a todos los creyentes aunque hay quienes se cansan pronto de nacer y renacer… para ellos es el soplo que tiembla en la hierba amarilla, un dedo de papel, la mitad de un lazo, la cita para acudir al río muerto. ¿Quién se refugia en la bodega fría con las manzanas y las ratas? ¿De quién es esa voz de pellejo que se crispa al viento? ...Del hijo que perdiste y que susurra “Madre",el que jamás pariste y quiere volver a entrar. SIN NOMBRE/NO NAME Una pesadilla te asalta con frecuencia: llega un hombre herido, por la noche, a tu casa -situas el agujero en el pecho, a la izquierda…Su sangre al brotar mancha tu puerta, al apoyarse, casi desvaneciéndose…Quiere que le dejes entrar. Es como el alma de un amante muerto y resucitado hambriento aún sólo que no está muerto. Y aunque el vello en tus brazos se eriza y un aire frío que de él proviene cruza tu umbral, no has visto a nadie más vivo que él cuando te toca, apenas roza tu mano con la izquierda suya, su mano limpia, y un “por favor” susurra, en cualquier idioma…Tú no eres médico ni nada parecido. Has llevado una vida normal, lo que un observador llamaría “sin tacha”.Detrás, en la mesa, hay un cuenco con fruta, una silla, un cuchillo, un plato con pan…Es primavera, y el viento de la noche huele, húmedo, a marga removida y a flores tempranas. La luna irradia su belleza que como belleza ves al fin, tan cálida y ofreciéndolo todo. … Sólo hay que tomarlo. Oyes ladrar perros distantes. La puerta está entreabierta o entrecerrada: así permanece y tú no puedes despertar. CARTA DE PERSEFONE/LETTER FROM PERSEPHONE Escribo esta carta, yo, Perséfone, a las madres zurdas con sus mantones de flecos negros y delantales de flores de los años cuarenta, con sus zapatillas rosas, las uñas lacadas de rojo y los nudillos débiles que tocaron el piano alguna vez…Sé de vuestras plantas domésticas que se marchitaban, de vuestros muslos gordos que apretábais con cintas, hendidos por la mitad y sé de las batallas de mutilados que llamabais sexo, bajo sábanas de hospital de las que nunca se habló…Sé de vuestras propias madres inválidas, de vuestro aburrimiento y el brillo enfurecido del parquet, sé de vuestros padres, que hubiesen querido hijos varones, hijos que vuestros cuerpos al fin pronunciarían, estas palabras previsibles, estos tartamudeos de la carne… Conversación/A Conversation El hombre camina por la playa del sur con gafas de sol, camisa informal y dos bellas mujeres. Es fabricante de máquinas para arrancar las uñas de los pies y enviar descargas eléctricas a los cerebros o los genitales. Sólo las vende: no ensaya ni presencia. “Mi querida señora", le dice, “Con esa clase de gente no hay modo: no entienden otra cosa”."¿Y qué podía hacer yo?", dice ella, “¿Por qué estaba este hombre en la fiesta?” QUEMA DE LECHUZAS/OWL BURNING Unos centímetros más abajo se acaba el suelo como puerta con cerrojo. Una helada dura y adiós lo no cosechado. ¿Con qué derecho chupa una vieja las negras raíces, el rojo jugo que deben ser para los niños? Practicaba la magia, claro está. Cuando se tiene tanta hambre hacen falta garfios y garras. A medianoche retenía el aliento, descruzaba los dedos y le salían plumas de lechuza por todo el cuerpo, como moho en la carne, sólo que más rápido. Yo misma la vi cazando ratones a la luz de la luna, silenciosa como la sombra de la mano que proyecta una vela. Buen disfraz, sin embargo la reconocí al día siguiente por la pluma blanca en el pelo. Ardió muy bien, grasa gorda al fuego, con grises gritos, devolviendo al aire lo que nos quitó mientras nos resecaba. Podría haberse salvado con su voz de lechuza blanca, pero antes le cortamos ciertas partes para que no volase, como los dedos, esas alas secretas… La miramos arder hasta el hueso, y nos emborrachamos después. Su corazón nos sirvió de brasa para reavivar la lumbre. Así es nuestra cultura, nada que les importe a ustedes, gente de pies suaves que ignoran lo que es vivir pegados a la piedra.
EURYDICE
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Yet this selection is not specifically related to humour but to horror, even if there is a kind of grotesque humour in MA's controlled despair.
The second trend leading to this selection was the fact that MA never concealed her feminist views and defence of women's rights. Even through her fictional work, including her collections of short stories such as "Good Bones" (Toronto, 1992) with small delicious pieces such as "Let Us Now Praise Stupid Women", MA's view was passionately feminist in her peculiar poetical awareness. Therefore, being myself a feminist student, this further led to continual reading.
The mythological subject, as so often in M. A.´s work, is completely recreated by her new approaches, where female characters come out of the shadows and step forward to the foreground to tell their own story, a story which usually replies to, counteracts and contrasts with the legendary (male) version.
So I had this kind of extramural' "tutorials" with both translators of MA's poetry into Spanish, Lidia from Malaga and José Manuel de Prada. I remember that I had some questions for him, José Manuel, who was also under MA's spell and encouraged me to go on with the translation of Morning in the Burned House, even if unpaid and with little possibilities of being published. This was due to marketing needs, as there was already a number of MA's poetry titles on sale and publishers at the time were not aware of other systems to encourage translation.
So literary translations that have not been previously agreed upon with a paying publisher are still daring enterprises in Spain. Anyway, there was this question I asked José Manuel, sitting at a small table in the middle of a Madrid terraza, wrapped up by traffic and a cracking sun: How to translate "Little Magazines"? He explained to me the meaning, which was all the contrary to what I had thought . Then he left for Barcelona, but we continued exchanging views by email and phone. You see, main differences were semantic, involving the cultural environment of MA as a writer.
Following a well known and prestigious method (Robert Bly), poems were translated in several drafts: first draft as verbatim as possible, as close to the "literal" meaning of the original as possible, second draft after re reading of poem to check gaps particularly semantic gaps, third draft and so on, until you feel you have captured the true meaning of the poem, from the writer's perspective and from your own as a translator reader... Until you feel...Yet perhaps more important, when you feel satisfied as a poet... an almost impossible task if you happen to be a perfectionist!
There were no main differences in the translation method followed, except for the fact that I had more models to study from, i e the vast number of her fictions already translated into Spanish, French, Catalan, ...Yet with works so diverse as Surfacing and Good Bones, translating was always a promising challenge.
Poetry L & T:
How did you first become fascinated with the poetry of Margaret Atwood, Amparo?
Amparo:
Perhaps I should have further introduced this personal selection or minianthology containing some of her best poems in my opinion explaining how I did first become fascinated with the poetry of MA, considering myself as an archetypal or even standard reader (as well as translator and translations' reader). This fascination started perhaps when I first read The HandMaid's Tale (in a superb Spanish translation), years ago. Fascinated then and now not only by science fiction but by historical questioning of events and the paradoxical relation between history and fiction, or reality and its fictional and historical recording, this reading of The Handmaid's Tale was kept at the background, when I envisaged my thesis on Gonzalo Torrente Ballester, a Spanish writer joined to Atwood by age group and mastery of (diverse) languages, as well as their peculiar, subtle sense of humour. Reading her poems afterwards only reinforced this previous shock (of being in the presence of a real writer).
Poetry L & T:
Were you shocked by the visceral horror of some of these poems when you first read them?
Amparo:
There is a visceral horror in these poems that shocks when first read, but there is a visceral horror already involved in their original (mythological) backgrounds. Maenads rituals involve brutality. However, Margaret Atwood's mastery does not lie in the fact of depicting brutality and visceral (gore) horror with fewer strokes, but because we realise that horror lies at the chore of human communities. Horror through death, human sacrifice, death penalty, war, killing of women, children and nature...
Poetry L & T:
What were the main differences of language associated with translating Margaret Atwood's poems into Spanish?
Amparo:
Translating her poetry was a very exciting challenge, a kind of journey with friends to thank including Robin Hyssop, José Manuel de Prada and Lidia Taillefer de Haya. Meantime in the course of those years MA herself visited Madrid and I had the opportunity to listen to the fascinating voice of this frail-looking woman in her 70s, but straight as a bamboo cane, with her beautifully framed face, frizzy hair, who read to an audience in the Circulo de Bellas Artes... and both Robin Hyssop and myself became involved in the White Goddesses' project, everything as a result.
Poetry L & T:
A question is suggested by the above poems; what might have happened if Orpheus had succumbed to the Maenads, instead of withstanding their temptations?
Amparo:
Orpheus can't be depicted as a Christian martyr, there was no temptation to be withstood.... One quick association here with the Handmaid's Tale: the infamous scene where a furious crowd of "maids" dismembers a travelling male, found guilty of rape, alive. His body being torn apart in an "orgiastic" rite, exactly as Orpheus in the legend. Is this the re-enactment of a hate rite? Or again, the Maenads' brutality... It might further suggest the importance of myth and legends at the background or intertwined horizon of MA's works both in prose and verse -- a presence that is sometimes more difficult to decipher than others, more explicit, like the series of "mythological" and poems based on legendary characters (a few are included in this selection).
Poetry L & T:
As mentioned, many versions of Orpheus legend say that the head of Orpheus was able not only to go on singing, once parted from his body, but that it also was able to make prophecies. This happened after it had been thrown into the river Hebrus and drifted until it reached the island of Lesbos. I would like to know more about the symbolism of this.
Amparo:
In MA's poems on Orpheus , a poet is defined as a being who praises, therefore stands in defiance, despite world rejection and refusal, an individual who goes on singing in praise despite his foreseeing his own death (or sacrificial murder). Thenarration of the ancient myth is always helpful: Orpheus was indeed murdered by the Maenads, bacchantes who tore his head from his body, during an orgiastic rite. It is also worth remembering that the name itself, Orpheus, means oraia phone, ie “the best voice”. (1)
Poetry L & T:
From a translator's viewpoint, what were the main differences between her fiction and her poetry books, when translating MA's prose and poetry?
Amparo:
Well , first let me assure you that my translated versions of her poems (as a few have been published online) were sent to Ms. Atwood for review and she approved. But a literary translator who attempts to promote her or his particularly chosen "subject" has little or no chance to accomplish this wish, unless willing to face the monetary costs involved. Therefore, this translation manuscript (I mean Morning in the Burned House) suffered the fate of most unpublished translation texts in Spain (by which I mean in traditional print format, the book).
Poetry L & T:
Anything else you'd like to add about your experience as translator?
Amparo:
After this essay was first written, "Interlunar" was translated into Spanish and published under the title "Plenilunio". Therefore, my own original translations continue unpublished, for reasons merely related to publishers' marketing and translations engagements. It should be noted that MA became further involved as a critical intellectual writer when her "Letter to America" was widely published following Bush administrative responses to 9/11. However, the chore of her poems may be regarded as already available for any reader to enjoy, such as in the anthology "Eating Fire: Selected Poetry 1965-1995)", Virago Press, 1998.
Poetry L & T:
Thank you for the interview and the fascinating article, Amparo. You have made me want to read more of Margaret Atwood's work.
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