Monday, August 25, 2008

I’m off to school after breakfast and the walk seems to take forever because I’m so tired from staying up late chatting the night before. We have our poem done, so I don’t have anything to worry about except for how awful our translation might be.

For this first attempt at a literal translation the entire class has worked on the same poem, Monsserrato 20, which is Alberti’s ode to his home in Rome. We are working from the text of one of Alberti’s collections called Roma, Peligro para Caminantes. This text has the poems in their original Spanish as well as Italian. It’s very useful to be able to compare the Spanish text to the Italian because the translation was done by a close friend of Alberti’s and worked with the poet closely while completing the collection. The Italian text is not always a perfect match to the Spanish, which actually bolsters us a little bit. It’s difficult and very intimidating to translate someone else’s work without feeling like you’re taking liberties you have no business taking.

Here is the original Spanish text:

Monserrato, 20

Desciendo la escalera de mi casa,
mirado de relieves. ¿Dónde sueño?
Dioses del mar y atletas coronados,
cabezas de guerreros, bailarinas
cimbreadas de finos tallos ágiles,
Leda ciñendo al cisne complacida,
letras insignes, lápidas y nombres…
¡Oh Roma deseada, en ti me tienes,
ya estoy dentro de ti, ya en mí te encuentras!
Me agrando o adelgazo por las calles y plazas
de este barrio que habito, junto al río,
barrio que me recibe embanderado,
como una barca, de tendidas ropas,
movido en cada puerta por millares de dedos,
de los que surgen, mágicos,
áureos ángeles, santos, cornucopias,
muebles nuevos con gracia envejecidos,
multiplicadas imaginaciones…
Ya estoy dentro de ti, ya a todas horas
en ti me muevo, nueva lengua tuya,
Roma en la noche, oscura voz de fuente,
Roma en la luz, clara canción de día.
Quiero perderme en medio de to aliento,
ser aire popular entre tus aires.
Ando buscando compañia, voy
entre gatos, columnas asombradas,
basuras, muros de potentes hombros,
puertas de colosales estaturas,
atónito, adorándote, riendo,
renegando, regando los rincones,
viéndome muerto, peatón humilde,
o jubiloso de sentirme a salvo,
renacido a la vida a cada instante.
Ando buscando compania, pero…
¿Quién se para mirándome, de pronto,
en el Campo de’ Fiori? ¿Quién insiste,
fija, tierna y burlona la mirada
entre un mar de verdures y pregones?
¿Qué me mira, señor? Nunco lo he visto.
Lo saludo con todo mi respeto.
¿Qué oculta en esa mano? –Lo imprevisto.
Es un soneto. Mi ultimo soneto.
Ma ttutt’a ttempi nostri! E ccaristìa
e llibbertà, e ddiluvi, e ppeste, e gguerra,
e la Spagna, e la Francia, e ll’Inghirterra…
—Veo, señor, que está usted muy al día.
—Es el 2200… —¡Ave María!
—…79. Mi ultimo soneto.
Me estremece encontrarle en esta plaza.
Te conozco. —Voi sete furistiere…
—Te lo digo en secreto, yo ando a caza
de un soneto también, de otro soneto.
—Povera Roma, oh Dio! Miserere!
—Por este encuenro, ¡un frasco de buen vino!
—Indove voi trovà ppiú mmejjo cosa?
—En tu lengua inmortal, más peligrosa
que las Tijeras del señor Pasquino.
Deja, mi Belli amigo, que en tus manos
te ponga ahora, ya perdido el miedo,
sus sonetos romanos
un hijo de los mares gaditanos,
nieto de Lope, Góngora y Quevedo.


Here is our English translation as completed by the entire class:

I descend the stairs of my house,
looked at by bas reliefs. Where am I dreaming?
Gods of the sea and crowned athletes,
heads of the warriors, flexible
dancers swaying with fine, limber waists,
Leda in pleasure wrapping herself around the swan,
noble letters, plaques and names…
Oh dearest Rome, in you, you have me,
I am already inside of you, already in me you find yourself.
I grow and shrink in the streets and plazas
of this neighborhood that I live in by the river
that receives me with flags unfurled,
beaconed to from each doorway by thousands of fingers
moved by every door through thousands of fingers,
from these appear
golden angels, saints, cornucopias
new furniture with gracefully grown old,
fantasies…
I am already inside of you, now at all times
I move around inside you, your new tongue,
Rome at night, dark voice of the fountain,
Rome in the light, clear song of the day.
I want to lose myself in the middle of your breath,
To be the wind of the people among your other winds.
I am looking for company, I walk
amongst cats, astonished columns,
piles of trash, walls with big shouldered,
doors of colossal stature,
astounded, adoring you, laughing,
cursing, watering the corners,
seeing myself dead, a humble pedestrian,
now jubilant to feel safe,
reborn with each instant.
I am looking for company, but...
Who stops looking at me, suddenly
in the Campo de Fiori? Who insists,
fixed, tender and teasing the gaze
between a sea of vegetables and street venders?
Why are you looking at me, sir? I’ve never seen you.
I greet you with all my respect.
Why is he hiding in that hand? –The unforeseen.
It is a sonnet. My latest sonnet.
Ma ttutt’a a ttempi nostri. E ccaristia,
e llibbertà, e ddilubia, e ppeste, e gguerra,
e la Spagna, e la Francia, e ll’Inghirterra.
-I see, sir, that you are very up to date.
-It is 2200…-Holy cow!
-…79. My final sonnet.
It surprises me to find you in this plaza.
-I know you. –You are a stranger …
-I tell you in secret, I am stalking
a sonnet also, another sonnet!
-Poor Roma, oh God! Miserere !
We celebrate this encounter,a flask of good wine!
-Indove voi trová ppiú mmejjo cosa?
-In your immortal language, more dangerous
than the scissors of Sir Pasquino
My dear friend Belli, he leaves,
without fear, entrusted in your hands
his roman sonnets
this child of the Cadiz seas,
grandson of Quevedo, Lope and Góngora.


It’s nice to have the input of the whole group in order to come to a common understanding of how to represent the poem in English. I do start to think about how different it will be when we break into our smaller groups to work on our assigned poems and sonnets. Each group has two Spanish students and one Italian student. We will translate two poems of free verse and two sonnets.

We will be posting our work online in an online forum hosted by the University of Washington. This will allow both our professors and our fellow students to read all of the work done by the class as well as leave suggestions. Our classroom at the University of Cádiz also has wireless internet, so those of us with laptops can access the poems during class, as we go over them.

I think this particular poem is an interesting one to start with. It’s an easier structure because it’s free verse, so we don’t have to worry about syllabic count or much rhyming. However, it’s especially difficult because Alberti includes dialogue and Roman dialect which make this piece a little more conceptually challenging. For me, the most difficult aspect of the poem is understanding the verb tenses and sentence structures correctly. It’s been four years since I’ve taken a Spanish class, which puts me at a disadvantage because all of the other Spanish students have taken class recently, and most have completed much higher levels than I have. They are working with a much stronger foundation in Spanish grammar, which is a little intimidating for me. I suppose what I’m banking on is my love of the language and my belief that some things are written in stone, not in sand, and it will come back to me.

I want to post this poem specifically because of how beautifully I think it conveys Alberti’s relationship with Rome. Being Gaditano (from Cádiz), Alberti had a passionate relationship with the sea and a deep love for his home. Rome is dramatically different from little Cádiz in every way it seems, and even after being displaced from his native land for so long, Alberti writes fondly of the beauty and of the ugliness of the city. I’m particularly moved by how, as an ex-pat, Alberti embraces Rome without losing his identity as a Spaniard. The duality this requires, straddling two selves, seems impossibly hard for me. Especially as I can’t stop thinking about how much I would love to move to Spain. But how does one resolve the conflicting pulls to love where you are from and where you are going?

After class I’m home for lunch with the whole family and we’re eating lentils! Isabel explains to me that her grandson loves lentils and since he’s eating with us, she’s made them especially for him. I notice that my generous bowl of lentils has been lovingly served without the giant chunks of chorizo that dot everyone else’s plates. I tell Isabel that I love to cook lentils at home and we chat about the differences in our preparation. Then the rest of the family sits down and the conversation turns loud and jovial as the two grandsons clown around, calling Mirella “la gorda mentirosa.”

After lunch I start in on my work, having decided to take a day off from the beach. I don’t get too far into it before Jennifer arrives. We greet each other and then Isabel, ever the hostess, ushers Jennifer into the kitchen for some food. After Jennifer gets settled in, I offer to take her to the beach and for a little walking tour of Cádiz. We walk together to La Caleta and even though it’s late in the day the sun is still strong and the beach is still busy. We stay for only an hour before walking back to the house. I explain to Jennifer that Cádiz is tiny, but it’s easy to get lost when you miss your turn or walk just a little too far. The good news is that you can only be lost for so long before you run into the ocean—it only takes about fifteen minutes to walk across the peninsula.

Jennifer goes out to dinner with Giuseppe and Tony and I get ready on the early side to go for a paseo around Cádiz. This is turning out to be one of my favorite evening activities. Since dinner isn’t usually until ten or so, I almost always have a little time between getting home from the beach and when the group meets up to eat. I like to stroll by the big plazas in the city and see all the families out together. The parents are always dressed nicely and the kids all seem to run in packs. I love how the older Spanish women dress, very elegantly and often with a refined simplicity that seems so European. Perhaps in the south a good tan is the only accessory a woman really needs.

I walk through the usual plazas and head for the small and crowded shopping neighborhood. The hours of six to nine are the primo shopping times for almost any city in Spain. It’s cooler and the shops usually close for siesta, so this is when things get taken care of. I discover that some things are culturally universal: the husband/boyfriend patiently holding shopping bags and waiting while his wife/girlfriend peruses piles and racks of clothes and shoes…

I wander back to Plaza de San Antonio and watch, horrified, as two kids next to me on the bench, a brother and sister both adorably dressed in seer sucker shorts and white collared shirts, smack each other repeatedly while their mother talks on her cell phone. Ah, Spanish parenting. I try her technique and get on my phone to call Courtnuts and Anita, who will meet me in a few minutes. I still can’t tune out these bickering kids. As I’m about to get up and move on, the threat of getting smacked in my own face increasing as the siblings’ fight escalates, I see Jared and flag him down. What luck! He and some of the girls are meeting to get pizza… at Telepizza which is sort of the Pizza Hut of Cádiz. We all split the bargain offer and get three pizzas and two liters of soda. Megan is particularly excited about the gift with purchase because it’s a inflatable floaty-chair, but tragically beach toys go fast in this town and they’re all out.

We all agree that Telepizza isn’t bad as crappy cheap pizza goes and we leave satisfied. There’s very little discussion involved in where to go tonight, the general consensus is to head to the Irish bar by Plaza San Francisco. It’s a short walk and we’re there pretty early as nightlife goes for Spain. In fact, we’re the only people in the bar, but that doesn’t really matter. We’re a big group of American students, in an Irish bar, on a Monday night… we’re loud and flamboyant and everyone is drinking and laughing and playing darts. One of the bartenders speaks great English, but we learn from him (in Spanish, mind you) that this is the hotspot for all of the American students. Because most of the American students in Cádiz come on direct exchange with UW, we’re not surprised to suddenly notice evidence of Seattle guests all over the bar, including a piggy bank with the Space Needle painted on it.

Anita is not feeling the music, which is mostly older American soft-rock, but when she asks for a little hip-hop she is turned down swiftly by the bartender in charge of the tunes. Anita is now determined to make this guy some cds and educate him. Especially if the UW-Cádiz students are arriving in a week—this place needs a little infusion of top-40. Despite the less-than-ideal soundtrack for the night, fun is had by all. We close the place down!

As I get in, quietly sneaking through the front door, I notice that the light to my room is on… Jennifer is still awake! She assures me that she wasn’t waiting up, but rather Giuseppe bought her an espresso at dinner and she actually can’t sleep. Even if that’s not the truth, I feel less guilty and crash out. Class is at ten, after all, and we have a field trip!