An addendum, of sorts

After my last post, I got to thinking and decided to post a translation of Senhor Andrade's poem. I decided to do my own translation because I hadn't translated anything for awhile and I figure I could probably use the practice. I'm not going to retype the Portuguese version, you'll just have to look at my last post if you'd like to see it. So here goes:

In the middle of the path there was a stone
there was a stone in the middle of the path
there was a stone
in the middle of the path there was a stone.

I will never forget this occurrence
in the life of my fatigued retinas.

It will not be forgotten that in the middle of the path
there was a stone
there was a stone in the middle of the path
in the middle of the path there was a stone.
- Carlos Drummond de Andrade (translation by Bill)

Some people may disagree with my translation, so I would like to explain some of my decisions.

The first thing I'd like to explain is my translation of "tinha". Roughly "tinha" is translated as "I/you had" or "I/you used to have". I chose to translate it as "there was" in this case because I think it's more in keeping with the feeling of the poem in Portuguese. Perhaps I'm misinterpreting the meaning of the Poem, and maybe that is why I seemed to have such a different view than my teacher who is a native Brazilian, but it's what I understand when I read the poem, so in essence I'm translating my understanding.

The second thing I'd like to look at is some of my English word choices. For caminho, I chose path. I suppose I could have used way, road, street, direction, etc. Something about the word path, however, seemed appropriate. I tend to use the word path when thinking in a metaphysical way. I feel that "path" implies multiple layers of thought that some of it's synonyms do not and this lends itself to greater imagery and depth as you contemplate the poem. I also chose the word "stone" to take the place of "pedra". I originally thought pebble because of the "p", but I think stone is more correct. The word, "pedra", is kind of generic; given neither size nor shape. I feel pebble would be to specific to fit this poem accurately. "Stone", however, allows the reader to give his own personal dimensions to the object.

The words that I had the most trouble with were in the second stanza. In the first line I decided to use "occurrence", but I'm still not entirely sold on it. I'd also thought to use: happening, incident, and event. My first instinct was to use event, in fact that was the first word that came to mind, but it seemed to short to fit. I eventually whittled it down to occurrence and happening. I still feel like happening could work, but I decided to go with occurrence for now. The second line gave me some trouble as well. The phrase "fatigued retinas" doesn't seem right to me, but I think this rather raw translation is in keeping with the spirit and intent of the poem. I considered other words, but none of them seemed quite right. I thought of changing retinas, but most of the words that I thought of have direct translations into Portuguese, so I didn't want to use them because senhor Andrade didn't use them. For instance, I thought of using, "tired eyes", but that could have been easily expressed in Portuguese as "olhos cansados". I decided that Andrade was looking for a deeper meaning, and I didn't want to lose that. I seem to get a sense that the use of "retinas" implies a depth. It's the back of his eyes that are tired, and not just tired, they're fatigued. Perhaps to say they're tired of looking at the path before him? It's this lack of clarity that has led me to keep the "raw" translation, because I would rather have a crude translation that keeps the interpretation open than to force a reader to read my interpretation.

The last part that I had difficulty with was the first line of the last stanza. I originally translated it to match up with the first line of the second stanza, but the two lines are written differently in Portuguese. It's actually a very subtle distinction, and one that is perhaps lost in English. In the third stanza Andrade adds a reflexive "me" to esquecerei. The reflexive "me" would, I think, roughly translate as "myself", but one of my grammar books pointed out that it's often used to represent a passive voice. I decided to try and take this tact and attempted to make the first line of the third stanza passive. I'm not really sure if I succeeded in my attempt. Perhaps an English scholar could critique this for me. If nothing else, I did find a way to differentiate the two while maintaining the meaning.

Hopefully my translation hasn't butchered the simple complexity of this poem. Also, I hope you understand why I made the choices that I made and that those choices are acceptable. If you've never translated something before, I hope this has opened your eyes a bit to the world of communication. I know that even though I'm not a professional translator, the exercise of translating has taught me a great deal about communication and people in general.

No meio do caminho

I apologize for my absence. I haven't felt like writing this last little bit. Sometimes I find myself in these little ruts where I just feel out of sorts for awhile. I've decided that I've ignored this site long enough, and even though I still don't feel like writing, I've decided to share something I wrote awhile ago, but never shared. Perhaps typing it out will help me to get back to normal. Many of you won't be able to fully understand this post, because it's based on a poem that was written in Portuguese by Carlos Drummond de Andrade entitled, "No meio do caminho". I'll start by citing the poem and then share what I wrote.

No meio do caminho
No meio do caminho tinha uma pedra
tinha uma pedra no meio do caminho
tinha uma pedra
no meio do caminho tinha uma pedra.

Nunca esquecerei desse acontecimento
na vida de minhas retinas tão fatigadas.

Nunca me esquecerei que no meio do caminho
tinha uma pedra
tinha uma pedra no meio do caminho
no meio do caminho tinha uma pedra.
-Carlos Drummond de Andrade

Now for what I wrote:

Tinha uma pedra no meio do caminho.
That's what the poet wrote.
"What does it mean?", she asked.

I responded that it took me
back to his land,
when I walked in the caminhos.

Some were paved,
some cobbled,
but mostly dirt.

The dirt ones stayed with you.
On your pant legs, in the treads of your shoes.
They'd get into your shirts and coat you skin.
You'd breath them in on the hot, dry days.

Sometimes you'd walk on the paths when it was raining
or after they were turned to mud.
You'd slosh through the mud, sometimes ankle deep.
Hard going, walking in mud; your pants get dirty, your shoes heavy.

Maybe on a day like this he saw a pedra in the caminho
and was grateful that for a moment he had a sure dry
place to step, to kick some mud off his shoes
before continuing on.

Maybe I'm right,
probably not,
but she didn't need to laugh
and say that I was wrong

How does she know?
The poet never said.
I stepped. I thought it was a pedra,
but it was only mud.

Bed sheets and Vampires

Here are a couple of very random thoughts:

A few nights ago I was tossing and turning in bed and having an all around difficult time falling asleep. Unfortunately it was almost literally an all around time. Covers and pillows were all over the place as I tried to find a position in which I could fall asleep. As is usually the case in said situation, my mind was pondering many a thought when I struck upon one that I thought was worthy of sharing. The vast majority of the aforementioned thoughts are not worth sharing and are usually disjointed half thoughts that only a pot head or philosopher (did I just repeat myself?) would find of any interest. This idea, however, may or may not be worth something.

It started by my thinking, "What will my future wife think when I have a night like this? I'm liable to be kicked out of bed and sentenced to the couch." At which point I began to ponder what kind of couch I should buy for this future inevitability when I decided instead to think of ways to prevent the problem in the first place, which is to say the bed place, that being the first place that many of us think to visit. So it was that I conceived of a new type of sheet for Queen and King sized beds. It would be just like a normal set of sheets, with a fitted sheet on bottom and a top sheet, appropriately enough, on top. However, in addition to the norm, we would add a panel running perpendicular to the two planes down the middle of the bed, bisecting the whole into two equal halves. The two halves would preferably be the left and the right as opposed to the foot and the head, or bottom and top if you prefer; as the left and right sides of the bed are the typical sleeping arrangement for couples. Now this center panel shan't run the entire length of the bed from top to bottom as this would create an undesirable separation, well hopefully undesirable. Instead the panel will start at the foot of the bed and stretch about half way to three quarters of the way to the head of the bed. This will allow for canoodling while preventing the legs from kicking ones partner in sleep or during a tossing and turning episode. Also, I believe this could have the added benefit of preventing one person from stealing all of the covers during the night as the panel will only allow them to pull the covers so far.

I think there are some drawbacks to this arrangement, but since I have yet to experiment with this conceptual sheet design, I can't say for certain how it will work out. It's probably not a good idea to implement this design in a honeymoon suite for instance, but perhaps it might help a couple a little ways into the arrangement. Like I said, just a random thought, and one in which I lack experience, so hopefully I don't sound too naive.

The second thought that I would like to share is something I thought of today in church. While I was sitting in Sunday School, a fellow by the name of Oliver was making a point about something or other during the course of which he noted that the logo for Bacardi is a vampire bat. This got me to thinking about vampires and I suddenly realized what an amazing symbol vampires are, especially because they have been somewhat glamorized of late. I began by thinking, what is a vampire? A vampire is an undead creature that sucks the blood of normal folk in order to survive, but the blood doesn't give them life it merely sustains them for a short time, with a secondary byproduct being either the death of their victim or the victims conversion into a fellow vampire. I began to think how this represents people who search for happiness and satisfaction in unrighteousness. Having lost the life that comes from God they are forced to prey upon others who are still alive in Christ for temporary satisfaction, either to destroy them or to make them miserable like themselves. I think it's similar to the tales in the movies that just as the vampires consider themselves better off as they are, so to people who are without the light of Christ in their lives think that they are doing the "living" a favor by changing them. This is not to malign non-Christians in any way or to imply that they're vampires. I'm merely using the phrase "the light of Christ" to mean any person who seeks after righteousness, it being somewhat akin to following one's conscience though a bit deeper. If you would like to know more on the subject of the meaning of "the light of Christ" please feel free to so indicate in the comment section below. Speaking of light, I think this lends itself again to the simile. Vampire's by definition can't abide the light. Likewise those that work in darkness shun the light of truth and shrink from it. The light of truth burns them and destroys their craft. I think the persecution and criticism by these people is somewhat akin to vampires trying to suck the life out of their victims. If you allow yourself to be enticed and listen to them, then you give them a chance to suck the spiritual life out of you. At that point, you die spiritually and become even as they are.

I think one of the main differences with this symbolism is that, unlike vampires, people can be reborn spiritually, or in other words they don't have to remain like vampires but can be redeemed. Unlike the movies where the only way to stop the vampires is to destroy them, we are able to put an end to the threat by helping them return to life and true joy. I can only imagine that this symbolism wasn't arrived at randomly, but that it was part of the original idea, whether intentional or not.