The janus-like
nature of Vallejo's first collection has often
attracted comment. This, and the fact that his subsequent volume,
Trilce, is one of the greatest masterworks of 20th Century hispanophone
poetry, has tended to obscure the intrinsic qualities of the earlier
book.
The
poet was 26 when Los heraldos negros was
published, and still to some degree
in thrall to his literary heritage – a heritage however that itself had
been massively disrupted in the final years of the 19th century by the innovations
of the Nicaraguan Rubén Darío – who served as the medium
for the introduction of French symbolism into Spanish poetry. The forms used
in this early book are unsurprising for a young man finding his way. The contents
of these conventional forms, however, are really
most
unusual, with many poems featuring adventurous neologisms, often based
on Quechuan
roots.
Those
neologisms and the reclaiming of Incan roots for his poetry separates
Vallejo from the suave quasi-symbolisme of Darío and points
forward firmly to the extraordinary Trilce and
also the Spanish literary vanguardia in general.
The translator here, Rebecca Seiferle, makes a good case for Vallejo's
subversive procedures in this work, and is quite combative in her introduction
about the poet's former translators and their appropriation of him for
their own poetic ends. Those translators however were mainly involved in
Trilce and the posthumous poems usually
referred to collectively as the Poemas humanos. In the
case of
The Black Heralds, there are, as far
as I am aware, only 2 previous complete
versions:
one by Schaaf
and Ross for the Latin American Literary Review Press back in 1990
(a second edition appeared in 2003), and another by Barry
Fogden for Allardyce Barnett here in England in 1995. The Fogden version
is good but is English-language only, whereas the book under review
is bilingual, and
has a good introduction plus useful notes and apparatus. The Schaaf/Ross
edition, which I saw only some time after the Seiferle edition, is
no competition for either of the other translations and contains
no editorial matter other than a chronology of the poet's life.
It doesn't compete because, although I can see little wrong with
the versions in a lexical sense, they are inert on the page as
poetry — the verses just don't move as poetry should do.
Now,
I would suggest that, if you are a student of Hispanic literature,
there is no argument: just go out and buy this book, because
you need it, unless
your Spanish is good enough to cope with the original text unaided (in
which case you should
go for the Cátedra paperback from Madrid, which is cheap and well-edited,
even if the text may not be unimpeachably definitive). If you have no
Spanish and
are just inquisitive, on balance I'd go for this one. You might find the
texts odd. That's because they ARE very odd. They can read awkwardly in
English because sometimes they are awkward in the original. They can sound
over-wrought,
over-written, and downright tortured. They're all that and more in the
original. Vallejo was the real thing – astoundingly original, but
a man grounded in his own literary tradition, a tradition which feels more
than a little
alien when read unprepared from an Anglo-American background. The ornate
rhetoric of some of the poems is alien to those brought up on Anglo-American
verse but, if
you let it linger, then let it flow, you'll find yourself getting inside
it and appreciating it on its own merits, whether or not it has anything
to offer to contemporary Anglophone poetic practice. Take The
Poet to His Beloved (El
poeta a su amada):
Beloved,
tonight you've been crucified
On the two curbed timbers of my kiss;
And your pain has told me that Jesus has cried.
And there's a Good Friday sweeter than that kiss.
You've
looked at me so often, this rare night
Death has been happy and has sung in its bone.
It's become official, this September night,
My second fall and the most human kiss.
It's
a young man's poetry, impassioned, full of wild imagery,
but all encased (in
the Spanish) in a standard A/B/A/B rhyme scheme.
Rebecca
Seiferle does an excellent job with her introduction, placing the
work in context and explaining the complications
of the texts clearly.
Her notes
are full and to the point. And, to come to the real point, her
translations are excellent.
Her versions
are by and large a little preferable to Barry Fogden's, though
I imagine that American readers will prefer Ms Seiferle's
by
a clearer margin,
given
the more American diction of her translations.
For
a clear comparison, let's look at the first two stanzas of the
title poem, which opens the book:
Hay golpes en la vida, tan fuertes… Yo no sé!
Golpes como del odio de Dios; como si ante ellos,
la Resaca de todo lo sufrido
se empozara el el alma… Yo no sé!
Son
pocos; pero son… Abren zanjas oscuras
en el rostro más fiero y en el lomo más fuerte.
Serán talvez los potros de bárbaros atilas;
o los heraldos negros que nos manda la Muerte.
Rebecca
Seiferle has
There are blows in life, so powerful… I
don't know!
Blows like God's hatred; as if before them,
the undertow of everything suffered
were to well up in the soul… I don't know!
They're
few; but they exist… They open dark furrows
In the most ferocious face and the most powerful loins.
Perhaps they're wooden horses of barbaric Attilas,
or black messengers that Death sends us.
Barry
Fogden, by contrast, has these lines:
You get knocks in life, so vicious… It
beats me!
Blows as if from God's hate; as if under
their rain,
the backwash of everything you've suffered
stagnates in your soul!… It beats me
Not
many; but you get them … They open up dark sluices
in the fiercest face and in the strongest
back.
Perhaps they're the mounts of barbarian
Attilas;
or the black heralds sent to us by Death.
On
balance, I find knocks for golpes less
appropriate than
the everyday translation,
blows,
and It
beats me! seems
to me to be a wrong move, though the
tone might well be right. The fact is
that the original
uses a straightforward
locution
(which
does indeed
literally
mean
I don't
know), and I do not think the slang
phraseology is
fitting here. Likewise furrows is
better than sluices and loins is
preferable to back for
lomo.
I may be misunderstanding something in
the original,
but I
don't see wooden horses as
correct for potros,
or indeed in the context of Attila. The
other oddity here in the Seiferle version
is the decision to translate heraldos in
the last line as messengers instead
of
heralds, as
they
are in her
title.
The
second poem I'll look at is The Black Cup, a much looser work than
the title
poem. Fogden's
version
is
much closer
to the Seiferle
translation
and has several good points. Again
I'll just deal with the beginning, the first
2 stanzas:
La noche
es una copa de mal. Un silbo agudo
del guardia la atraviesa, cual vibrante
alfiler.
Oye, tú, mujerzuela, ¿cómo,
si ya te fuiste,
la onda aún es negra y me hace aún
arder?
La Tierra
tiene bordes de féretro
en la sombre.
Oye tú, mujerzuela, no vayas a
volver.
RS:
The
night's a cup of evil. The shrill whistle
of a policeman pierces it,
like a vibrating pin.
Hey, you, slut, how come,
if you're gone,
the wave's still black and
still makes me burn?
The
Earth has edges of coffin in its shadow.
Hey, you, slut, don't come
back.
BF:
The
night is a cup of evil. A piercing
police whistle runs
it through, like
a vibrating
pin.
Listen, you whore—how
is it, if you're gone
now,
the wave is still
black and still has
me burning?
The
Earth has coffin-rims in the darkness.
Listen, you whore:
don't come back.
Now
this is
tough. Ms
Seiferle's
use of slut is much
preferable
in context
to
the word 'whore',
but Fogden
scores very
well with police
whistle (vs.
whistle
of a policeman,
which
sounds awkward).
Fogden's coffin-rims are
good, better
than
the opposing
roundabout
locution. On
the other
hand pierces in
the RS version
is better
than
runs it
through,
and the invocative
'Hey' is better
than the literal
'Listen' for
'Oye', which
is indeed a
Spanish slang
equivalent
for 'Hey'.
So,
both versions have their
good
points but,
in general,
Rebecca Seiferle's
translation
scores on
grounds of usefulness,
all-round
quality,
facing text, and fine
covering
apparatus. In short
it's the
one to have,
and is an
all-round fine achievement.
Any quibbles
that I have
are relatively
minor, and
can be laid
aside if
you are in need of a thorough
guide to early
Vallejo: and
I think early
Vallejo is
essential
to an understanding
of the extraordinary
later piece,
Trilce,
without which
Spanish
poetry would
be a much
poorer place.
