I've been enjoying the podcasts over at Geegaw and was inspired to start my own reading series. My first podcast features a poem I wrote, "Our Special Visitor." I probably won't read my own work very often but I was feeling celebratory tonight.
Adriana Jacobs: Our special visitor
One of my favorite poems by Leah Goldberg appears as the third poem in a five-poem cycle titled "Harchek meod" (Very Far Away) (included in her 1964 volume of poems 'Im ha layla ha-ze). Here's the poem in transliterated Hebrew:
Ze lo ha-yam
Ze lo ha-yam asher beyneynu,
Ze lo ha-tehom asher beyneyu,
Ze lo ha-zman asher beyneynu
Ze--anu sheynu asher beyneynu.
Here's a literal translation:
It is not the sea
It is not the sea that (is) between us,
It is not the abyss that (is) between us,
It is not the time that (is) between us
It's--us the two of us that (are) between us.
A few years ago, I attempted to translate this one section. As with many Goldberg poems, this one adheres to a specific formal structure; however, the rhyme pattern is not that challenging, since each line ends with the same phrase "between us." The problem is that "between us" falls considerably short of the mellifluous "beyneynu." The last line is also tricky. I suppose you could translate it more grammatically as "It's--us, the two of us, between us" but then the repetition of "us" becomes weighty (to my ear). You could argue that the weight of "us" works on a figurative level but then you lose entirely the relation "us" has to sea, abyss and time. The point is that "us" is fluid, immaterial, inconstant. Weight implies fixity, location, place. I knew that "us" had to go but I had no idea what else would work. I set aside the poem and waited.
I found the solution to my translation impasse in The Arcade Fire's "Ocean of Noise." I was listening to it the other day and just happened to be paying closer attention than usual to the lyrics. Here's the stanza that sparked my eureka moment:
No way of knowing
What any man will do
An ocean of violence
Between me and you.
There it was: "between me and you." Now it seems so obvious. I realized that if I contracted "It is" and made a few other changes, I could keep the lines pretty compact (as they are in the original) and also preserve the wonderful fluidity and openness of the "oo" sound in "beyneynu." Here's the translation that resulted:
It's not the sea
It's not the sea between me and you
It's not the abyss between me and you
It's not time between me and you
It's--you and me between me and you.
It's not quite there...I'd like to add a syllable in the third line but maybe I should just let this one go as is. I tackled the rest of the cycle but those parts still need a lot of tuning. Other English translations of this particular poem are out there but I try to block those out when I'm translating. This poem has long fascinated me and I felt that the only way I could understand it, or try to understand it, was by translating it. Also, I'm currently working on a dissertation chapter on Goldberg and her own translation practices and when I need a jolt of motivation, I find that translating poems of hers that I love sets me back on track.
Recent Comments