Persoonlik is die groot opwinding vir my hierdie maand, en onder andere ook die aanleiding vir vandeesmaand se Blogfokus, die voorraad van “The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry” wat oor ongeveer twee weke by die boekwinkel te wagte is. Dié belangrike bloemlesing, wat deur Ilya Kaminsky en Susan Harris van Words without borders saamgestel is, is ‘n dikke derduiwel van meer as 460 bladsye wat teen ‘n uiters bekostigbare prys beskikbaar gaan wees (R190, indien ‘n mens die verskaffer kan glo …)
Nietemin, wat my laat krepeer het van plesier, is die voorwoord wat Ilya Kaminsky geskryf het waarin sommer ‘n hele aantal kwessies rondom wêreldpoësie en vertaling aangespreek word. (Terloops, dit kan volledig op Words without borders se webblad gelees word …) Die voorwoord se titel is “Correspondences through the air” en in die eerste gedeelte daarvan wys Kaminsky op die vele intertekste wat met verloop van tyd tussen verskillende digkunste tot gekom het. Een voorbeeld hiervan is die bekende Bybelteks van Prediker 3: 1 – 8 en die vele “antwoorde” wat daarop geskryf is. (Dit is juis dié opmerking van hom wat my en Marlise daaraan laat dink het dat die huidige geslag Afrikaanse digters na alle waarskynlikheid die eerste geslag digters is wat werklik met doelgerigte bravade kan begin om die tradisie van ons eie honderdjarige digkuns te ontgin deur met bepaalde klassieke verse “in gesprek” te tree. Vandaar die Blogfokus.)
Nietemin, by wyse van lusmaker ‘n uitspraak deur Petrarcha oor vertaling: “Translation should be similar but not very same [to the original]; and the similarity should not be like that of a painting or a statue to the person represented, but rather like that of a son to a father, where there is a shadowy something-akin to what painters call one’s air-hovering about the face, and especially in the eyes, out of which there grows a likeness that immediately, upon our beholding the child, call the father up before us.”
As illustrasie van wat Kaminsky bedoel met sy “Correspondensces through the air” plaas ek dan ook die variante op ‘n bekende gedeelte uit Prediker onder aan vanoggend se Nuusbrief. Uiteraard sal daar meer uitvoerig oor genoemde bloemlesing berig word wanneer ons ons voorraad ontvang het. Intussen kan jy solank jou bestelling plaas, want dié boek gaan myns insiens ‘n bykans verpligte aankoop vir enige digter wees.
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Op die webblad het daar sedert gisteroggend net twee nuwe plasings bygekom: Desmond Painter skryf oor Philip Glass se musiek en Hennie Meyer het ‘n verbeterde weergawe van sy gedig in Nuwe Stemme 4 geplaas.
En, indien jy wonder wat toe gebeur het met Hissa Hilal, die Arabiese huisvrou oor wie ek in ‘n vorige Nuuswekker berig het nadat sy teen alle verwagting in na die finaal van The Million’s Poet deurgedring het … Wel, die (uitgestelde) finaal het toe tog eergisteraand plaasgevind, maar helaas, Hilal het derde geeindig. Daar was vyf finaliste en die wenner, met ‘n prysgeld van $1.36 miljoen, was ene Nasser al Ajami, ‘n 30-jarige digter van Kuweit. Die volledige berig kan op Arabian Business se webtuiste gelees word.
Daarmee groet ek eers weer tot Maandag. Mag die naweek jou oorrompel met vreugde en geluksaligheid. En onthou tog om hierdie naweek jou “gesprek” oor tydsgrense heen te pleeg vir vandeesmaand se Blogfokus …
Mooi bly.
LE
Ecclesiastes 3: 1 – 8
To everything there is a season.
And a time to every purpose under the heaven
A time to be born, and a time to die;
A time to plant, and a time to pluck that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
A time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to get, and a time to lose;
A time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew;
A time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate;
A time of war, and a time of peace.
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Ecclesiastes
Tymoteusz Karpowicz
there is a time of opening the eyes and closing the bed
time for donning a shirt and shedding sleep
time for drowsy soap and half-awakened skin
time for the hair-brush and for the sparks in the hair
time for trouser-legs, time for shoe-laces time for buttons
for laddered stockings for the slipper’s blindness
time for the fork and for the knife time for sausages and boiled eggs
time for the tram time for the conductress time for the policeman
time for good morning and time for goodbye
time for carrots peas and parsley
for tomato soup and shepherd’s pie
time for trussing chicken and releasing forbidden speeds for thought
time for cinema ticket or a ticket to nowhere
to a river perhaps perhaps a cloud
there is finally a time for closed eyelids and the open bed
time for past present and future
praesens historicum and plusquamperfectum
time perfect and imperfect
time from wall to wall
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Corona
Paul Celan
Autumn eats its leaf out of my hand: we are friends.
From the nuts we shell time and we teach it to walk:
then time returns to the shell.
In the mirror it’s Sunday,
in dream there is room for sleeping,
our mouths speak the truth.
My eye moves down to the sex of my loved one:
we look at each other,
we exchange dark words,
we love each other like poppy and recollection,
we sleep like wine in the conches,
like the sea in the moon’s blood ray.
We stand by the window embracing, and people look up from
the street:
it is time they knew!
It is time the stone made an effort to flower,
time unrest had a beating heart.
It is time it were time.
It is time.
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A Man in His Life
Yehuda Amichai
A man doesn’t have time in his life
to have time for everything.
He doesn’t have seasons enough to have
a season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes
Was wrong about that.
A man needs to love and to hate at the same moment,
to laugh and cry with the same eyes,
with the same hands to throw stones and to gather them,
to make love in war and war in love.
And to hate and forgive and remember and forget,
to arrange and confuse, to eat and to digest
what history
takes years and years to do.
A man doesn’t have time.
When he loses he seeks, when he finds
he forgets, when he forgets he loves,
when he loves he begins to forget.
And his soul is seasoned, his soul
is very professional.
Only his body remains forever
an amateur. It tries and it misses,
gets muddled, doesn’t learn a thing,
drunk and blind in its pleasures and its pains.
He will die as figs die in autumn,
Shriveled and full of himself and sweet,
the leaves growing dry on the ground,
the bare branches pointing to the place
where there’s time for everything.
(Uit: “The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry“, saamgestel deur Ilya Kaminsky en Susan Harris. Words without Borders, 2010. Ecco Press.)