Translation Torment

As most of you know, I don’t just love poetry – I pretty much worship at its alter each and every day.  That being said, sometimes I get a little curious about how other people interpret poems I am familiar with.  So once in a while, I pick up a translation.  Upon reading a translation of some of Pushkin’s collection the other day, I thought I would faint.  Not from enchantment – from horror.  There were misspelled words – in the English!  That, coupled with downright nonsensical grammar and interpretations that were so far left field of the original that Pushkin himself would undoubtedly say, “whose poem is that?”

It’s not the first time I have had an experience like this.  Every time it downright depresses me.  I feel as if the gods of the past have been positively spat upon in a vile way beyond blasphemy – for in essence you are eating their souls and spitting them out as if they were moldy roadkill.

Could I translate it better?  Yes, of course.  Would I?  Never.  I am completely unworthy to approach such golden words which in turn open the gates to the greatest souls that ever wandered our primitive lands.  It would be like attempting to polish an already gleaming golden throne with cheap furniture polish.  The privilege lay in letting the words traverse my eyes – the windows to my soul – so as to alight my inner being.  Once the light is on, I can rummage about within me to try and bring out the best things that are uniquely “me” hidden away in this corner and that.

I can well imagine that not only Pushkin, but countless others would not even recognize their works in translation.  In fact, their astonishment would likely be so acute as to compel them to quit writing altogether so as not to risk being mauled by future inadequate attempts to unravel their beautiful golden braids into a mess of indigestible spaghetti.

Contemplating My Personal Footprint

Massaging my foot the other night I began to contemplate where my anchor to Earth has tread this past half century.  It started off kicking about in my mother’s womb – a secret, sacred, dark place that I and only I have ever known – or ever shall.  Upon seeing the light of day, it dragged me from this place to that as my branches lengthened, hardened and reached their summit at approximately twelve years of age.  In that time, of most significance, was probably the fact they touched my father’s lips.  My feet were the only ones he ever kissed.

As one matures and life grows more and more real in one’s conscious perception, that one reaches for shoes each and every day to help shield us from uneven surfaces, abrasions and other unexpected pitfalls waiting for us at practically every second of every day.  Despite the intermediary, my feet have at least come within millimeters of surfaces significant to the history of my species.

They gently caressed the cobblestones at Yad Vashem – the very stones that those in the Warsaw Ghetto struggled to traverse as they strained to survive the siege that would swallow most of them. Undoubtedly many expelled their final breath upon those very stones.

Quietly my feet tiptoed through the alleys of the Old City of Jerusalem amongst aggressive peddlers and distracted devotees on their ways to worship.  Traversing the very stones of legend and lore – of King’s, soldiers (both ancient and modern), hopeful beggars, the hopeless seeking hope, evildoers seeking absolution, and those who believe they are that absolution as they take leave of their senses all together as with each step they take they transform into that in which they most fervently believe.  Well…in their minds (or more accurately mindlessness) at least.

My soles have stood firmly before the palaces of empires, both crumbling and climbing (behind the gates of course, but present nonetheless).   Marching up the stairs of temples to democracy and descending stairs of war-scared relics of fallen totalitarian monoliths – both ancient, modern and soon to come.

My means of roaming have fearlessly tread most of the four corners of the earth, but have halted in earnest at a safe distance behind the point of no return before too many a grave.  It is my feet and my feet alone which will eventually carry me beyond that point where my beloved father will be able to kiss my feet yet again.

Radicalization Of A Different Sort

Too often you hear the sound bite that so and so was “radicalized online.”  I turned to my mother the last time I heard it and said, “wouldn’t it be lovely if for once the narrative changed and they proclaimed that someone was intellectualized online?”

Pretty much everyone has closed the door on that possibility – seemingly sinking beneath an ever deepening quagmire of hate, porn and puppy pics.  Nevertheless, it seems imprudent.  Rather than stopping the leak like the “Little Dutch Boy Who Saved Holland”, I would propose we tell the child to remove his thumb and not fear the flood to come.  One could only hope that the deluge would decimate the trash to the abyss of the invisible floor of the sea itself and carry the curious atop its waves like explorers to new lands of discovery and propitious evolution.

It brings to mind a poem by the Russian minimalist poet Vsevolod Nekrasov which consists of nothing more than a single blank sheet of paper with the word “будет” (boo-deht) written on the bottom.  It means essentially “will be.”  The point being, you don’t know what the future can bring unless you make the effort to turn the page.