#sorescu

Minunatul Sorescu

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I wanted to post a translation of a Sorescu poem (the one with mud); it's mostly automatic, I will correct it time-permitting.

“A language in which one is not allowed to create new words is in danger of suffocating.” (Canetti)

“A language in which you have ceased to write weighs on you like a corpse.” (Cioran)

The Cowardly Coffin

(translated from the original Romanian into English):

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It let itself be laid carefully in the grave

By skilled, brawny men

Inured to this.

(”Hold it there! A bit more to the right!

That’s it, OK! Let go! No, no, not all the way.”)

When I finally touched bottom in the grave

(it had to be widened, since they dug it rather narrow),

The coffin gave a sudden shudder,

A start.

And shot high above

Dragging the gravediggers along.

Caught in the straps.

The procession was astounded.

What material could the coffin be made of?

Or was there something horrifying

At the bottom of the grave?

The newspapermen required a clarification

And blamed the upcoming elections.

The coffin, which appeared quite ordinary,

Rough-planed planks nailed with 10-penny nails,

Knocked over several crosses,

Banged into the church steeple,

Swung about through the air

(The gravediggers climbed down from trees,

A plum or two in their mouths),

And after a while

Returned, contrite, to the rim of the grave.

It waited for flowers to be thrown.

And fresh earth.

The woman, commencing to weep all over again,

Filed by it.

“Let’s get with it, man! Give it another try!

Play out some more rope,

And you, you hold it down.

Two of you men sit on its lid

To make it heavier.

Others of you, jump on when it touches the ground,

To counterbalance it.”

A little this way, a little that way, very carefully.

It descended like lead to the other world.

Then, of a sudden, a tremor--

And with a sort of stifled moan,

The narrow end first, as if from a launching pad,

Aerodynamic it blasted off again.

As late as nightfall, with all manner of tricks,

It would not be buried.

Now it’s flying crazily in the sky,

Soon to be shot down

By some rocket or another

2020 NPM #5: Carbon Paper by Marin Sorescu

Prolific Romanian poet and playwright Marin Sorescu (1936-1996) benefited greatly from the country’s loosened censorship starting in 1960, and published 20 volumes of poetry. I have commented in past years on the difficulty of appreciating poetry in translation. Sometimes it works because the subject is universal and the structure is direct. Sometimes it works because the translator is exceptionally good.  In the case of today’s poet, and his piece, Carbon Paper, both things may be true. One stanza is a little thick with imagery, but the rest is fairly clear.The premise is a simple metaphor:

Someone overnight sticks a gigantic

piece of carbon paper on my door.

Everything I am thinking immediately

Comes through on the other side of the wall.

(I realize for the younger crowd, you probably have no idea what carbon paper is. Back in ancient times (or at least the 20th Century CE) in the pre-App era, when we were typing something on a “typewriter,” (I used to help make them at IBM) a carbon-black-coated sheet of tissue was placed between two pages, and if you did it right, whatever you typed on the front piece of paper was echoed on the second piece.  - End history lesson).

So basically the premise is that everyone else knows what he is thinking. He hears them approach his apartment to listen, and then leave. Some people sympathise with his thoughts, some are upset.One line open to a little debate is

                for I have a

clear idea of it all.

Does it mean he can see everyone’s reactions to his thoughts? Or that his thoughts are so expansive, he has a vision of everything there is? I think the second one. He concludes with the admission that,

Only about my soul

I know nothing.

And another metaphor that hopefully most people still understand:

My soul that perpetually

slides away from me between days

like a cake of soap

in the bath.

Which I presume means that even for someone who has infinite vision, knowledge, and maybe even understanding, one thing remains unfathomable. No matter how desperately you grasp at it, it still slips away.