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Wed 2 Feb, 2005 02:07 pm
Recently I found again this poems in english by Jorge Luis Borges (Argentine poet, essayist, and short-story writer whose works have become classics of 20th-century world literature, born in Buenos Aires and died in Geneva, Switzerland). I met him when I was just 14 and he died one year later. I was too young to understand his works. Now, I feel proud of being an spanish reader, an argentinian. Tell me, if you want to, what dou you think of this Borges poems.
To Beatriz Webster de Bullrich
The useless dawn finds me in a deserted streetcorner; I have outlived
the night.
Nights are proud waves: darkblue topheavy waves laden with all
hues of deep spoil, laden with things unlikely and desirable.
Nights have a habit of mysterious gifts and refusals, of things half
given away, half withheld, of joys with a dark hemisphere.
Nights act that way, I tell you.
The surge, that night, left me the customary shreds and odd ends:
some hated friends to chat with, music for dreams, and the
smoking of bitter ashes. The things my hungry heart has no
use for.
The big wave brought you.
Words, any words, your laughter; and you so lazily and incessantly
beautiful. We talked and you have forgotten the words.
The shattering dawn finds me in a deserted street of my city.
Your profile turned away, the sounds that go to make your name,
the lilt of your laughter: these are illustrious toys you have
left me.
I turn them over in the dawn, I lose them, I find them; I tell them
to the few stray dogs and to the few stray stars of the dawn.
Your dark rich life...
I must get at you, somehow: I put away those illustrious toys you
have left me, I want your hidden look, your real smile
—that lonely, mocking smile your cool mirror knows.
II
What can I hold you with?
I offer you lean streets, desperate sunsets, the moon of the ragged
suburbs.
I offer you the bitterness of a man who has looked long and long
at the lonely moon.
I offer you my ancestors, my dead men, the ghosts that living
men have honoured in marble: my father's father killed in
the frontier of Buenos Aires, two bullets through his lungs,
bearded and dead, wrapped by his soldiers in the hide of a
cow; my mother's grandfather —just twentyfour— heading
a charge of three hundred men in Peru, now ghosts on vanished
horses.
I offer you whatever insight my books may hold, whatever manliness
or humour my life.
I offer you the loyalty of a man who has never been loyal.
I offer you that kernel of myself that I have saved, somehow
—the central heart that deals not in words, traffics not with
dreams and is untouched by time, by joy, by adversities.
I offer you explanations of yourself, theories about yourself, authentic
and surprising news of yourself.
I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the hunger of my
heart; I am trying to bribe you with uncertainty, with danger,
with defeat.
Che, pibe que gracia...and to think it's even more eloquent in the Mother tongue...
Lengua madre :
I
El alba inútil me encuentra en una esquina desierta; he sobrevivido
la noche.
Las noches son olas orgullosas: olas de oscuro azul y de pesada
cresta, cubiertas por clamores de honda destrucción, gravadas
de cosas improbables, deseables.
Las noches tienen una costumbre de dones misteriosos y rechazos,
de cosas dadas a medias y a medias retenidas; de dichas con un
sombrío hemisferio. Así actúan las noches, te lo digo.
El oleaje, esa noche, me dejó los fragmentos, los extraños
jirones de siempre: algunos odiados amigos con quienes charlar,
música para los sueños y el humo de amargas cenizas. Las
cosas que no sirven para mi hambriento corazón.
La gran ola te trajo.
Palabras, algunas palabras, tu risa; y tú, tan incesante y negligentemente
hermosa. Hablamos y has olvidado las palabras.
El alba astillada me encuentra en una calle desierta de mi ciudad.
Tu contorno se alejó, los sonidos que van a hacer tu nombre, el
eco de tu risa: éstos son los ilustres juguetes que me dejaste.
Los disperso en el alba, los extravío, los encuentro; hablo de ellos
a los pocos perros perdidos y a las pocas estrellas desoladas
del alba.
Tu oscura fértil vida.
Debo llegar a ti de algún modo: rechazo los juguetes ilustres que
me dejaste, quiero tu mirada oculta, tu verdadera sonrisa -la
solitaria irónica sonrisa que sólo tu frío espejo conoce.
II
¿Con qué puedo estrecharte?
Te ofrezco esbeltas calles, ocasos desesperados, la luna de los
carcomidos suburbios.
Te ofrezco la amargura de un hombre que ha mirado largamente
la luna solitaria.
Te ofrezco mis antepasados, mis muertos, los espectros que los
vivos honraron en mármol: el padre de mi padre, muerto en
la frontera de Buenos Aires; dos balas atravesaron sus pulmones,
barbado y muerto, envuelto por sus soldados en un
cuero de vaca; el abuelo de mi madre -apenas veinticuatro
años- encabezando una carga de doscientos hombres en el
Perú, ahora fantasmas en caballos desvanecidos.
Te ofrezco cualquier acierto que mis libros puedan encerrar,
cualquier valor o ingenio de mi vida.
Te ofrezco la lealtad de un hombre que nunca ha sido leal.
Te ofrezco el centro de mí mismo que salvé de algún modo - el
corazón central que no trata en palabras, no trafica con sueños
y está intocado por el tiempo, por el gozo, por las adversidades.
Te ofrezco el recuerdo de una rosa amarilla, vista al ocaso, años
antes de que nacieras.
Te ofrezco explicaciones de ti misma, teorías sobre ti misma,
auténticas y sorprendentes noticias de ti misma.
Te puedo dar mi soledad, mi oscuridad, el hambre de mi corazón;
estoy tratando de sobornarte con la incertidumbre, con el peligro,
con la derrota.
Gracias che...me da ganas de llorar.
panzade wrote:Gracias che...me da ganas de llorar.
I can perfectly understand the way you feel. I'd feel exactly the same if I were you.
That's a haunting poem, even in English. It reminded me a bit of one by Frost, which I hope no one will mind if I add here:
I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain -- and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.
I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,
But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height
One luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.
Wonderful choice. Thank You
When, as a teenager, I started reading Borges, I decided I'd go slow, in fear that there might come a day in which I have read his complete works.
I haven't read all of Borges, but I'm not afraid anymore.
Re-reading Borges is like being Pierre Menard writing Don Quixote (to recall one of Borges' short-stories): there is always something new, something different.
May I add that the opus of Jorge Luis Borges precludes the internet? The concept of hypertexts is there. So is the library of Babel.
Borges was a strange mix: his world is barroque (but not forms, ideas), yet his writing style is neoclassic.
The Library story!!!!!!!!!! Oh my!!!!!!!
Funes El Memorioso is the one I can't forget(sic)
si si esta re bueno en castellano y en ingles. go argentina! jaja
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