Monday, October 29, 2007

Nocturnal flower



You that have heard the heartbeat of the night,
you that have heard, in the long, sleepless hours,
a closing door, the rumble of distant wheels,
a vague echo, a wandering sound from somewhere:

you, in the moments of mysterious silence,
when the forgotten ones issue from their prison -
in the hour of the dead, In the hour of repose -
will know how to read the bitterness in my verses.

I fill them, as one would fill a glass, with all
my grief for remote memories and black misfortunes,
the nostalgia of my flower-intoxicated soul
and the pain of a heart grown sorrowful with fêtes;

with the burden of not being what I might have been,
the loss of the kingdom that was awaiting me,
the thought of the instant when I might not have been born
and the dream my life has been ever since I was!

All this has come in the midst of that boundless silence
in which the night develops earthly illusions,
and I feel as if an echo of the world's heart
had penetrated and disturbed my own.

Rubén Darío, "Nocturne".


But in the translation it loses a lot, here the original:

Los que auscultáis el corazón de la noche
los que por el insomnio tenaz habéis oído
el cerrar de una puerta, el resonar de un coche
lejano, un eco vago, un ligero ruido...

En los instantes del silencio misterioso,
cuando surgen de su prisión los olvidados,
en la hora de los muertos, en la hora del reposo,
sabréis leer estos versos de amargor impregnados...

Como en un vaso vierto en ellos mis dolores
de lejanos recuerdos y desgracias funestas,
y las tristes nostalgias de mi alma, ebria de flores,
y el duelo de mi corazón, triste de fiestas.

Y el pesar de no ser lo que yo hubiera sido,
la pérdida del reino que estaba para mí
el pensar que un instante pude no haber nacido,
y el sueño que en mi vida desde que yo nací.

Todo esto viene en medio del silencio profundo
en que la noche envuelve la terrena ilusión,
y siento como un eco del corazón del mundo
que penetra y conmueve mi propio corazón.

Rubén Darío, "Nocturno".

5 comments:

runnerfrog said...

Hi, good Tai. Aha, this particular one wasn't well represented in its translation. Rubén Darío was a true master of the sound of spanish in poetry; hero in Nicaragua.
Lately I've been surprised of how many people likes the sound of romance languages. Strange that I prefer german for opera instead of italian; many said that german is only good to give orders, I believe they are wrong: a mostly consonantic language can do magic in a mostly vocalic art, Wolfgang proved it outstandingly well.

Katie Bowen said...

Everything sounds better in Spanish.

runnerfrog said...

Which Spanish? :-) We have so many accents and expressions down here that can barely understand each other. This is the tower of Babel! hihi
I have this "theory" that if you move your hands enough you can become a spanish-speaker. :-)
Thanks.

Katie Bowen said...

I like Spanish from Argentina, although I wouldn't be able to tell the difference from town to town. I also like the Spanish in Spain, but of course, that's Catalan pero es no importante porque yo no entenendo nada!

Adéu! (That's Catalan)

runnerfrog said...

Mmh, parece que sí entiendes algo.
Una abraçada. (thats catalan too, AFAIK).

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