“What matters isn’t the target, but the shot,”
says the hunter whose arrow found and pierced the boar.
“What matters isn’t the target
or the shot
but the bow,”
counters the hunter who missed nine hundred ninety-nine times
and, while attempting the thousandth, felt the splintering
of the worn-out
framework
of his bow.
“The arrow matters most, of course,”
asserts the one who couldn’t shoot
even a single time:
ignoble spirits who dishonor
the venerable practice of the hunt
emptied
his quiver
of arrows.
“What matters isn’t the target
or the shot,
or the bow
or the arrow.
It is the long-exercised communion of the eye and hand,”
avers one who detests the stubborn dispute among the hunters
and chooses to perfect his art
against
cardboard
beasts.
“What matters is the boar,”
the poet interrupts.
“We must distinguish the boar of Hercules from that of Atalanta or Meleagar,
the boar who was Vishnu or the boar who was Proteus.
And above all, we must avoid the comfortable confusion
of the onerous boar
with any
common
tasty
pig.”
“What matters,” says the intruder
who does not hunt
or sing
or eat boar
“what matters is that the hunter
makes us believe, with a poet’s wiles,
that he, with sure shot, pierced a nonexistent boar.”
But the intruder
who is, of course, a sage,
follows the inexorable course of his thought:
If the boar pierced by the arrow does not exist,
then there are no true hunters, just vain archers.
Thus the agon,
without the sharp glimpse of death, and stripped of its mystery,
is reduced
to a competition.
“Anyway, master,”
opines the sage’s disciple,
“what matters are the hunters, even converted to archers.
Without their weapons,
one after the other fails to draw the bowstring
of a single
false
bow.
And only the one forever chosen
is able to shoot.”
“So, it is worth distinguishing,”
the wise man expounds,
“between Odysseus disguised as a beggar
and beggars disguised as Odysseus.”
“That is getting into a slippery realm,”
the poet objects,
“of many Penelopes
where there are legions of suitors
but there isn’t any boar.”
“Look, I told you,”
exclaims the first hunter,
“What matters isn’t the target but the shot.”
And he lets the animal escape,
the one he had pierced
with such accuracy.
Art of the Hunt
Pedro de Jesús
translated from the Spanish by Dick Cluster
Listen to the original read by the poet:
This poem comes from de Jesús’s sole poetry collection, Granos de Mudez (Ediciones Luminarias, expanded edition, 2016). “Grano” is equivalent to the word “grain”, with all its meanings in English, but it can also have other meanings such as bean or even pimple. “Mudez” is muteness, and in the title poem it refers mostly to what’s left unsaid amid what’s spoken, “the bits of muteness in your words.” In relation to the collection, it evokes silence about one’s sexuality, a silence de Jesús has broken, being one of the first Cuban writers to deal overtly with queer themes when that window cracked open in the 1990s. It also alludes to the fact that, although he is known predominantly as a prose writer, he has been quietly writing poetry over the years. I would translate the title as “Silent Syllables.”
Translation challenges for “Art of the Hunt” begin with the first two lines: Lo importante no es el blanco, sino el flechazo / —asegura el cazador que atravesó, certero, al jabalí. The words “flechazo” and “atravesó” recur throughout the poem. “Flecha” is arrow, related to the antique English verb “to fletch” and the occupation “fletcher,” arrow maker. The suffix “azo” can be applied to nouns as an intensifier or to verbs (particularly verbs of violent action) to describe their result. So it’s the flight of the arrow, but more specifically it’s the wound it inflicts. English has no such suffix and no such word. “Atrevesar” means to traverse, cross, go through, break through. “Certero” is accurate, certain, sure. So, word for word, the meaning is something like “The important thing is not the target but the flight and the wound produced by the arrow, asserts the hunter who went through, accurately, the boar.”
In a few experiments, the words “archer” and “flight” came and went. Flight and “flecha” are etymologically related, as are “archer” and “arco,” bow, but I needed these elsewhere in the poem. Finally, I chose “shot” for “flechazo,” “pierced” for “atravesó,” and “found and pierced” for a staccato rhythm resembling “atravesó.” This helped to convey the accuracy of the shot as well as the aiming that’s part of “flechazo.” “Pierced” adds some violence that’s not contained in “atravesó” all by itself, but that is implied by “flechazo.” And I had to add an “arrow” to the second line to convey what kind of weapon and shot were being described. So, finally: “What matters isn’t the target, but the shot,” / says the hunter whose arrow found and pierced the boar.
I hope it works.
Translation challenges for “Art of the Hunt” begin with the first two lines: Lo importante no es el blanco, sino el flechazo / —asegura el cazador que atravesó, certero, al jabalí. The words “flechazo” and “atravesó” recur throughout the poem. “Flecha” is arrow, related to the antique English verb “to fletch” and the occupation “fletcher,” arrow maker. The suffix “azo” can be applied to nouns as an intensifier or to verbs (particularly verbs of violent action) to describe their result. So it’s the flight of the arrow, but more specifically it’s the wound it inflicts. English has no such suffix and no such word. “Atrevesar” means to traverse, cross, go through, break through. “Certero” is accurate, certain, sure. So, word for word, the meaning is something like “The important thing is not the target but the flight and the wound produced by the arrow, asserts the hunter who went through, accurately, the boar.”
In a few experiments, the words “archer” and “flight” came and went. Flight and “flecha” are etymologically related, as are “archer” and “arco,” bow, but I needed these elsewhere in the poem. Finally, I chose “shot” for “flechazo,” “pierced” for “atravesó,” and “found and pierced” for a staccato rhythm resembling “atravesó.” This helped to convey the accuracy of the shot as well as the aiming that’s part of “flechazo.” “Pierced” adds some violence that’s not contained in “atravesó” all by itself, but that is implied by “flechazo.” And I had to add an “arrow” to the second line to convey what kind of weapon and shot were being described. So, finally: “What matters isn’t the target, but the shot,” / says the hunter whose arrow found and pierced the boar.
I hope it works.
Pedro de Jesús has published stories, a novel, criticism, and poetry in Cuba and abroad. He has twice won Cuba's major literary award, the Premio Alejo Carpentier, once for fiction and once for criticism, as well as the award of XIX Premio de Cuento La Gaceta de Cuba for story and the Premio Raúl Ferrer for poetry. Throughout his career as a prose writer, de Jesús has been writing poetry in diverse forms, short and long, ranging in style from sonnets to free verse to something like epigrams, and with themes ranging from love and sex to language and poetry to politics and philosophy; a collection was published as Granos de mudez (Silent Syllables) by Ediciones Luminaria (2008, expanded 2016). His story collections have been published in translation by City Lights (Frigid Tales, trans D. Cluster; 2002) and Lavender Ink (Vital Signs, trans. D. Cluster; 2014), and his poems by Words Without Borders and Your Impossible Voice.
Dick Cluster has been translating Spanish-language fiction, nonfiction, and poetry for over twenty years. Besides the Pedro de Jesús works mentioned above, these include Gabriela Alemán’s Poso Wells (City Lights, 2018) and the anthology Kill the Ámpaya!: Best Latin American Baseball Fiction (Mandel Vilar Press, 2017). He also writes history and fiction, including a social history of Havana and a crime novel series. Forthcoming in 2022 are translations of Alemán’s Family Album (City Lights) and Paula Abramo’s Fiat Lux (FlowerSong Press); poems from Fiat Lux have appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, Southern Review, Asymptote, Salamander, and other journals. Cluster has been a translation mentor at the Yiddish Book Center (2016–18), Banff International Literary Translation Centre (2017), and the Mills College MFA in Translation program (2017–18).
