Miguel Teruel (Spain)

On Richard Berengarten

I have had the pleasure, together with Paul Derrick, of translating a good number of Richard’s poems into Spanish. Of course, translators are privileged readers, for our task requires a close understanding of the inner workings of the texts we reconstruct. My purpose in this short note is to share my experience, and expound the insights I have garnered while translating Richard’s writing.

Firstly, as for contents, the wonderfully wide range of Richard’s interests has been a prompt to explore so many diverse territories: from the massacre at Kragujevac to the black light of Greece, from Finnegan’s bawdy laughter to the well and the geese and the wisdom of the I Ching . . . In these varied spaces readers are invited by way of allusion to engage with many other authors, so one returns from exploration enriched with fruitful connections. With vision enlarged and uplifted, as this breadth of scope is constantly traversed by compassion and hope in the human predicament.

And then the challenge of form . . .  Richard is a taut poet, and his vertical art is tight with the energy of organic structure. Villanelles, (hidden) sonnets, numerological patterns, visual poems . . . Form modulates language into poetical action, and translators need free verse (and bilingual editions) to recapture the flow of energy. We can’t rhyme the translation, so we aim at translating the rhyme, the rhythm, the pause and the enjambment, the topographical layout of the poem . . .

Richard is also a translator. This is relevant in his approach to language, and in his concept of poetry (from words into silence and back into words, in every language imperfect), but also in his propinquity to translators. I like his ventures, when he musters collaborators for translations of his poems, as he recently did for Margutte.com with his poem on Olesya, the Ukrainian singer.

I have had the pleasure of translating his poems, but also the opportunity of discussing with him details of our translations. I felt fortunate, the recipient of a rare gift.

And in my memory I treasure lingering images of hands, of trees, of words like “bloody”, “nada”, “ubuntu” . . .

Universitat de València, 9 March, 2023

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