Versindaba kompetisie vir vertaalde gedigte (48)
Ricardo Reis. Vertaling van Portugees in Afrikaans. Vert. deur De Waal Venter.
Die gode gee niks meer as die lewe nie.
Die gode gee niks meer as die lewe nie.
Laat ons dan alles verwerp wat ons oplig
na asemlose hoogtes, ewig maar sonder blomme.
Al wat ons hoef te aanvaar, is wetenskap,
en so lank die bloed in ons fonteine nog pols
en liefde nie verskrompel nie,
laat ons aangaan,
soos glas lig-deurskynend
druppelend in die treurige reën,
warm gebak in die son,
effens weerkaatsend.
***
Não consentem os deuses mais que a vida.
Ricardo Reis (Fernando Pessoa)
Tudo pois refusemos, que nos alce
A irrespiráveis píncaros,
Perenes sem ter flores.
Agtergrond:
Ricardo Reis is een van die belangrikste heteronieme van Fernando Pessoa. Hy het in heeltemal ’n ander styl as die ander heteronieme asook Pessoa self geskryf. In “Poetry International” is daar die volgende aantekening:
Ricardo Reis
A physician and classicist, whom Pessoa defined as a “Greek Horace writing in Portuguese”, Ricardo Reis composed metered, non-rhyming odes about the vanity of life and the need to accept our fate. He was born in 1887 in Oporto, which became the focal point of the surviving monarchist forces after the founding of the Portuguese Republic, in 1910. In 1919 the monarchists took control of Oporto but were forthwith defeated, at which point Reis, a royalist sympathizer (his last name means ‘kings’), fled to Brazil, where he presumably lived out the rest of his days, though there is, among the thousands of papers left by Pessoa at his death, an address for a Dr. Reis in Peru.
Bronverwysing:
Poetry International Archives. poetryinternational.org