The first Duino elegy (in Filipino)

Unang Elehiya
ni Rainer Maria Rilke


Sino, sa aking pagtangis, ang makikinig mula sa orden
ng mga anghel? Maski ang isa sa kanila’y dagli akong itutop
sa kanyang dibdib: Ako’y titiklop sa tanang kapangahasan.
Isa itong kariktang di maitawid sa kagampan. Ito’y simula ng katakutan
na ating sasambahin pagkat tayo’y kanyang lilipulin.
Nakagigimbal ang arkanghel.
Kagyat ako’y nagtimpi at tinikom ang hikbing awit ng
pagsinta. Ah, sino pa ang malalapitan?
Ni tao, ni anghel ay hindi, maging ang hayop na maalam ay dama
na hindi tayo kailanman magiging palagay
dito sa ating kinalakhang mundo. Marahil ang maiiwan na lamang
ay ilang puno sa parang, na siyang dudungawin ng ating
paningin. Marahil ang lakarin kahapon
at ang kinagisnang ugali na panatag na sa atin,
mananatiling tapat at di maiisipang mawalay.
Ah, ang gabi: naririyan sya, may taglay na hanging puspos
ng kawalang hangganan, kumukurot sa ating mukha.
Sinong makatatanggi sa kanya, habang tayo’y
nahihimlay sa kalmada na pinakaaasam
ng nagtatagong damdamin. Ganuon ba
kadali para sa magkaniig? Minarapat nilang magkubli
sa sumamo ng bawat isa. Hindi mo pa ba nalaman?
Iwaksi ang kawalan sa pagdipa ng iyong mga kamay,
patungo sa bawat pagitan ng hininga, nang makamit ng mga ibon
ang bugso ng hangin at lukso ng paglipad.

Oo, ang tagsibol ay nangailangan sa yo. Minsan
may talang dinarasal ang iyong pagtangì; may daluyong
nagmula sa nakalipas, humampas patungo sa iyo;
may biyoling ipinaubaya ang kanyang sarili,
sa pagtapat mo sa harap ng bintana. Ang lahat
ay tinakda. Mamarapatin mo bang tahakin ito?
Manapat ika’y di mapakali sa pag-asam,
na tila sinadyang dumating ng pinakamamahal?
(Saan mo kaya siya maisisilid, kasama
ng makabagong ideya, labas masok at magdamag
naglalaro sa iyong isip?)
Sa sandaling mangulila, awitan mo ang silakbo ng pag-ibig;
pagkat kapusukan nila'y kulang pa sa walang katapusan.
Halos nanibugho ka sa kanila, silang mga nalihis,
silang umibig nang higit sa busog na pag-ibig.
Paulit-ulit na pupunan ang papuring walang kinahinatnan.
Tandaan: ang bayani ay nabubuhay. Ang kanyang pagbagsak
ay daan lamang patungo sa huling pagsilang.
Ang kalikasan naman, kapos at muling aanyaya ng manliligaw,
na tila walang lakas para lumalang ng mga
bagong sugo. Pinag-isipan mo ba ng husto
itong si Gaspara Stampa, nang sa gayon, ang dalagang iniwan
ng kanyang mahal ay mabubuhay sa darang ng isa pang
pag-ibig, habang sa sarili ay sasambit, “Kailan ako magiging ikaw?”
Ang matagal nang dalamhati ay hindi ba dapat
pakinabangan na natin? Di ba’t oras na para pakawalan
ang ating mga sarili sa tanikala ng puso at pagtitiis,
ito’y nanginginig, katulad ng palasong tinitikis ang batak ng búsog
upang sa sandaling paalpasan, ito’y hihigit pa sa
sarili? Marahil wala na tayong patutunguhan.

Tinig, mga tinig. Makinig ka aking puso, gaya ng mga
banal na taimtim nakapakinig: hanggang sa ang tambuli
ay magpalutang sa kanila; kahit binalewala nila, nagpatuloy
silang lumuhod, ang mga wala nang pag-asa:
nakinig nang buong-buo. Hindi nangangahulugang malalampasan
mo ang boses ng Dyos—malabo ito.
Pakinggan mo ang boses ng hangin, ang mensaheng isinahugis
ng katahimikan. Mula sa mga kabataang nasawi,
ito’y bumubulong papalapit sa iyo. Tuwing sasamba ka sa katedral
ng Roma o Napoli, hindi ba marahang nakikiusap
sa iyo ang kanilang mga tadhana?
O kaya nama’y isang elehiya ang iniatas sa iyo
kagaya nung isang taon, nakaukit sa lapida ng Santa Maria Formosa.
Ang tulong na ipagkakaloob ko sa kanila, ang paghuhugas
sa di makatarungan nilang pagkamatay—magkaminsa’y
pumipigil sumandali sa pag-akyat ng kanilang espiritu.

Talagang kaiba kung wala nang tatao sa mundo
na susunod sa mga kinagisnang di madaling natutunan,
na pipitas sa rosas at mga bagay patungkol sa manigong
kinabukasan, na hihilig gaya ng dati sa malilikot na kamay, at sadyang
kalilimutan ang ibinansag na ngalan, tulad ng
pag-iwan sa laruang di na umaandar.
Kaiba kung hindi na papangarapin ang pangarap. Kaibang
mamalas ang mga bagay na dating pinagbuklod, ngayo’y
nagkawatak-watak sa lahat ng dako ng daigdig. Mahirap mamatay,
madaming pagkakaabalahan bago matamasa ang kakaunting
walang hanggan.—Kahit ang mga nabubuhay, mali
ang pakiwari sa talim ng tama at mali.
Malimit (anila) di matanto ng mga anghel kung sila’y nasa piling
ng mga patay o buhay. Saan mang hantungan,
walang humpay, tinatangay ng buhawi ang nagdaraang
panahon, at kinukulong ang kanyang hikbi sa gitna ng dagundong.

Sa katapusan, wala na tayong silbi sa mga pumanaw:
namulat sila ng mga bagay na makamundo, tulad ng unti-unting
pagkawalay sa gatas ng ina. Habang tayong may pangangailangan pa
sa malalalim na misteryo, tayo na kumukuha ng matinding
lakas sa dalita, kaya na ba nating wala sila?
Wala na bang saysay ang alamat na naitala kung saan,
sa matinding hapis kay Linos, ang maigting na pagkamanhid ay tinulos
ng mapangahas na pasok ng tugtog—biglang tumayo at lumakad papalayo
ang binatang matipuno; mula sa nagitlang espasyong iniwan nya,
sa unang pagkakataon, ang kumpas ng kawalan
ay sumasaatin: pumapatnubay, nakikiramay, at nakikiisa.



(salin mula sa Ingles ni Stephen Mitchell at ni William H. Gass)

"Against the Irreversible" (W. G. Sebald)

When he crossed the border into exile in Belgium, and had to take on himself the Jewish quality of homelessness, of being elsewhere, être ailleurs, he did not yet know how hard it would be to endure the tension between his native land as it became ever more foreign and the land of his foreign exile as it became ever more familiar. Seen in this light, Améry's suicide in Salzburg resolved the insoluble conflict between being both at home and in exile, "entre le foyer et le lontain."
                         - W. G. Sebald, On the Natural History of Destruction

Sebald's claim of the inadequacy of postwar German literature extended not only to the subject of destruction from air bombings but to the entire postwar experience. For him, the literary world then was characterized by a "huge moral deficit" that was gradually being addressed by a handful of writers slowly emerging from their labyrinths of silence. One of these writers was Jean Améry (1912-1978), the subject of Sebald's third essay in On the Natural History of Destruction. Améry started late into writing about his personal experiences of the war. He entered the literary debate in the 1960s when his essays on "exile, resistance, torture, and genocide" appeared. He wrote from the perspective of the victim, which is to say "the guilty one," guilty for being tortured and silenced and for having the memory to remember it all. Sebald's analysis of Améry's works often relied on role-playing and on the findings of William Niederland, a psychoanalyst. Sebald detected in Améry the "anguish of memory which is partly vague, partly full of a still acute fear of death." One could detect in Sebald's essay sympathy for a writer trying to come to terms with his own failure to memorialize (rationalize) what happened to him in the torture chamber. The attempt to articulate unspeakable emotions through language, Sebald observed, possibly led Améry to adopt the genre of essay in order to embrace the freedom of exposition. This was perhaps the only freedom one can enjoy when expressing the pain of suffering. Sebald quoted a passage of Améry's that exemplified the strategy of understatement (and irony) that the writer used to avoid "pity and self-pity." (Niederland found such avoidance to be typical of the accounts of torture victims.) Because the reconstruction of memory required a set of language which can dislocate the shoulders, the passage had to end in linguistic perversity: "... I had to give up rather quickly. And now there was a cracking and splintering in my shoulders that my body has not forgotten to this hour. The balls sprang from their sockets. My own body weight caused luxation; I fell into a void and now hung by my dislocated arms which had been torn high from behind and were now twisted over my head. Torture, from Latin torquere, to twist. What visual instruction in etymology!" This passage Sebald saw as reaching the breaking point of composure, as consciously "operating on the borders of what language can convey." When writing about the physicality of pain, the writer had to become the torturer himself. Torture has "an indelible character," Sebald quoted Améry: "Whoever was tortured, stays tortured." Whoever was killed in spirit, died ever after. And the long delayed terminus was never slow in coming. After writing the essays, which include At the Mind's Limits (1966) and On Suicide (1976), Améry's voluntary death was no twist of fate.

Rilke

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'
hierarchies? and even if one of them pressed me
suddenly against his heart: I would be consumed
in that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing
but the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure,
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains
to annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying.

                                                         - from the Duino Elegies (1923),
                                                           Rainer Maria Rilke,
                                                           translation by Stephen Mitchell
 


The opening of Rilke's classic sequence of elegies. Beautiful, isn't it? Beautiful and scary at the same time.

I recently acquired a book called Reading Rilke: Reflections on the Problems of Translation by William H. Gass. It's classified as both biography and autobiography, an interesting combination. The subtitle alone makes me excited. And it's about translating poetry, one of my interests. A browse of the table of contents will give you some mysterious titles for chapters. They already sound like lines of a poem:
 

Lifeleading
Transreading
Ein Gott Vermags
Inhalation in a God
Schade
The Grace of Great Things
Erect No Memorial Stone
The Duino Elegies of Rainer Maria Rilke

The final chapter, Gass's full translation of Duino Elegies, is the cherry topping. Add to that the translations of some of Rilke's other poems scattered throughout the text, then I can't wait to down the pages of this book.

Gass's translation first came out in 1999; Mitchell's in 1982. In Gass's bibliography a list of 16 more translations of the same poem are given. This German poem surely resists the many rewordings of it, but it also survives miraculously in these interpretations.

A look at the end of Reading Rilke gives the same lines but with a different flavor:

Who, if I cried, would hear me among the Dominions
of Angels? And even if one of them suddenly
held me against his heart, I would fade in the grip
of that completer existence—a beauty we can barely
endure, because it is nothing but terror's herald;
and we worship it so because it serenely disdains
to destroy us. Every Angel is awesome.

I would certainly prefer an awesome Angel over a terrifying one. But not in this poem. "Terrifying" is simply a better choice and this poem ought to be that, terrifying. The poem inhabits various states of terror and tenderness and confusion. There is a searching edge to the voice. Mitchell's version reads well in terms of the forward movement of the lines and the rhythmic elegance of despair.

I am attempting a translation of "The First Elegy" into Filipino, my vernacular language. As my German is nil, I will use the English texts of both Mitchell and Gass. It will thus be a translation of translations. The inaccessibility of German to me is the main reason why I will be translating more the sense of the poem (from English), rather than the words.

I hope to be able to post my own version before the end of the month. August coincides with the Buwan ng Wika, or the National Language Month, in the Philippines. This exercise then will be my way of celebrating the Filipino language. I shall start like this:

Sino, sa aking pagtangis, ang makikinig mula sa orden
ng mga anghel? ...

Third epilogue for variations: "Literature + Illness = Illness" (Roberto Bolaño)

The August issue of Harper's contains an excerpt from Roberto Bolaño's "Literature + Illness = Illness," an essay collected from The Insufferable Gaucho (El gaucho insufrible, 2003) which comes out this month from New Directions. The book contains 2 essays and 5 stories - two of which, the title story and "Álvaro Rousselot’s Journey," already appeared in The New Yorker. It's translated by Chris Andrews. You need to subscribe to view it online. The same essay, translated as "Literature + Sickness = Sickness" by an unnamed translator, was published in News from the Republic of Letters in 2005.

Sections of the essay have titles like “Illness and freedom”, “Illness and French poetry”, “Illness and travel”, and “Illness and Kafka.” The two versions are quite different in approach that one wonders if two patients were made out of one sick person. But no, it's obvious that both essayists are terminally ill. Here's a bit of comparison:


SICKNESS AND LITERATURE
(from News from the Republic of Letters)

No wonder the lecturer beats about the bush. Take the following case. The speaker is going to talk about sickness. There are all of ten people in the theater. Each of them waits there with a dignified expectation worthy of a better subject. The lecture is scheduled for seven or eight in the evening. Nobody’s eaten a thing. So when seven o’clock comes round (or eight, or nine) everyone is sitting there with their cell-phones turned off. It’s a pleasure to speak to people with such good manners. Nevertheless, the lecturer doesn’t show up, and finally one of the organizers of the event announces that he can’t come: at the very last moment he’s fallen grievously ill.


ILLNESS AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
(from The Insufferable Gaucho, translated by Chris Andrews)

No one should be surprised if the speaker loses his thread. Let us imagine the following scenario. The speaker is going to speak about illness. Ten people spread themselves around the auditorium. The buzz of anticipation in the air is worthy of a better reward. The talk is scheduled to begin at seven in the evening or eight at night. No one in the audience has had dinner. By seven (or eight, or nine), they are all present and seated, with their cell phones switched off. It’s a pleasure to speak to such a well-mannered group of people. But the speaker fails to appear, and finally one of the organizers of the event announces that he will not be coming because, at the last minute, he has fallen gravely ill.




[Note: This post edited Nov. 27, 2010. The passage translated by Chris Andrews above was taken from the book, not from the Harper's excerpt.]

Reading diary: April 2010

More quick reviews. But before that, I should mention that this blog is now proud to be in the directory of Filipino Book Bloggers. I invite you to visit the site and link to many enthusiastic book reviews by bloggistas from the Philippines.

APRIL 2010

19. Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes, translated by Richard Howard

"It is the the misfortune (but also perhaps the voluptuous pleasure) of language not to be able to authenticate itself," says Barthes. For that we may need images and photographs to certify the text. Barthes's reflections on photography offer some subversive theories on the persistence of images in the imagination. In the end, however, the writer's memoirs provide a surprisingly affecting portrait of a man coming to terms with his personal loss.

20. Piercing by Murakami Ryū, translated by Ralph McCarthy

A book for the faint of heart, that the heart may skip a beat, or several beats, and then resume its life of pumping. A send-up to the psycho killer setup in movies and books, Piercing is transgressive fiction at its creepiest. And yet it's very funny. That funny-scary combination must be one of the hardest to pull off but Ryū is criminally accurate in puncturing the reader's ready expectations. He is a serial novelist who aims for the kill. I'd like to be victimized by his other books.

21. Paris Trance by Geoff Dyer

Paris is a moveable feast. It is a place for finding love and of losing it. In this novel we find two couples struggling with circumstances of their own making. It's like The Sun Also Rises for the 1990s in which the once-hippie lover will ask at the end of the affair, "Isn't it pretty to think so?"

The book escapes the bathos of nostalgia and ennui by embracing them. The drifting ways in which love ebbs and flows are well told by George Dyer, who lately have been known to produce some hybrid novels of journalism. This novel is of the traditional sort. But it's crisp in its portrayal of longings and loves as it is.

22. An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter by César Aira, translated by Chris Andrews

Aira is an incandescent talent. This novella is beautiful, poetic. The episode just ended too soon. The book's theme is the creation of a masterpiece, and it's very near producing one itself. It unfolds like a canvas of lighted landscapes here traversed by artists in the making.

What I love about An Episode and the other Aira I've read (Ghosts) is that you keep reading the books even after you finished reading them. They linger in your mind like a flash of lightning or something. The story ends with always the maximum impact. In between the flashes of brilliance are musings of the poetical nature.

Ghosts is a bit longer in length. And I think it is just as well made if not better. Aira is a puzzle-maker. I asked myself after reading each of the books: What the hell was that all about? Yet it all made sense in the end. As if the abrupt way the story ended is the only possible way to end a story already unhinged from its frame.

23. Your Face Tomorrow 1: Fever and Spear by Javier Marías, translated by Margaret Jull Costa

Jaime Deza, the protagonist of this novel, has this power of reading people. His mentor, an old man, is the same. They can know people's history and psychology and what they're capable of just by observing them and hearing them talk. Nothing happens much in this the first volume of the story. What is certain is that by the end of the third volume, someone will be betrayed and will pay the price for "careless talk." This is ultimately a spy story, but it's James Bond in the role of a psychologist.

Marías is Marías. His characters talk and talk and think and think. They can be repetitive and exasperating. Very few paragraph breaks and sentences that go on and on and on and on. Some beautiful insights into telling stories and the capacity to betray others with a single word.

I’m bracing for less talk/more action in Act II (Dance and Dream). But I wouldn't be surprised if the spies still battle with their minds here. Dance and Dream is proving to be another mental bloodbath.