XXXV
The voyage stops here. Descending from the boat,
I knew with closed eyes what was ahead of me,
risen as always among goats and shrubs
of lavender, of fennel, of spurge
barely moved by those slender hands
of quiet gold aroused on the summit, Bad Times.
Strict limits of an old land:
the procession of cypress trees that follow the sun’s chariot
as it leaves stumbling in the long and dry rivers,
making, as it goes behind the small crest,
the light and the distance of the horizon’s sunset.
I’ve given my life for the difficult gain
of a few bare words.
I’ve seen my life as a wall
in the silence of afternoon and its passing.
from The Book of Sinera
Salvador Espriu
translated from the Catalan by Sonia Alland and Richard Jeffrey Newman
Listen to the original read by Alexandra Agullo:
Our goal in translating Espriu has been to recreate as closely as possible the form and sense, if not the music, of the original Catalan in a way that stands on its own as contemporary American English poetry. Perhaps our greatest challenge in this endeavor has been to preserve the moments of ambiguity and densely knotted allusiveness that Espriu actively courts in Catalan. To do so, we often rendered the text first into prose as a way of “unweaving” the poem so that we could discuss it logically. Once we were sure we had a good grasp of that, we moved back into poetry, looking for language that would be as rich and multilayered in English as Espriu was in Catalan.
In addition to earning some of the most prestigious awards in his native Catalonia, including the Government of Catalonia Gold Medal in 1982, Espriu’s work has been recognized internationally, most notably with the Michel de Montaigne Endowed Prize from the Universität of Tübingen in 1971. No less a literary critic than Harold Bloom said he was worthy of a Nobel Prize. He was the author of a number of plays and narratives, but was particularly acclaimed for his imposing opus of poetry. Especially now, when the integrity of language itself is under attack on so many fronts, we are happy to be bringing into English the work of this poet who was so fiercely committed to his own tongue as the bedrock of identity and a truly just politics.
In addition to earning some of the most prestigious awards in his native Catalonia, including the Government of Catalonia Gold Medal in 1982, Espriu’s work has been recognized internationally, most notably with the Michel de Montaigne Endowed Prize from the Universität of Tübingen in 1971. No less a literary critic than Harold Bloom said he was worthy of a Nobel Prize. He was the author of a number of plays and narratives, but was particularly acclaimed for his imposing opus of poetry. Especially now, when the integrity of language itself is under attack on so many fronts, we are happy to be bringing into English the work of this poet who was so fiercely committed to his own tongue as the bedrock of identity and a truly just politics.
Salvador Espriu (1913–1985) is an icon of Catalan literature. He was born in Santa Coloma de Farners, a Catalonian town on the Mediterranean coast. Writing mostly during the dark years of Franco’s reign, Espriu gave voice to a resistance rooted not in a specific political ideology, but rather in the Catalan language itself and in an unwavering commitment to Catalonian identity and the culture it embodied. In pursuit of this commitment, Espriu risked his own well-being, not so differently from his more politically minded compatriots. He read his poems at clandestine anti-Franco meetings, and he signed manifestos and petitions against torture, which landed him on a state police watch list. Ultimately, Espriu became a revered figure of the resistance and, in the post-Franco years, an outspoken advocate for Catalan culture.
Sonia Alland translates from French and Catalan. She has translated works by the French writer, Marie Bronsard, including The Hermitage (Northwestern University Press, 2001) and The Legend (Seagull Books, 2013), as well as as well as two volumes of poetry by Salah Al Hamdani: Baghdad, Mon Amour (Curbstone Press, 2008) and Baghdad, Adieu (Seagull Books, 2018). Her translations from the Catalan include Portbou: a Catalan Memoir by Maria Mercè Roca (Pinyon Publishing 2020) and works by the Catalan poets Narcis Comadira and Feliu Fermosa. Her translations of their poems will appear in a special Catalan issue of Metamorphoses to be published in 2023. She has also translated the poet Salvador Espriu in collaboration with Richard Jeffrey Newman and co-translated one of Salvador Espriu’s plays, Antigone, into French.
Richard Jeffrey Newman has published three books of poetry, T’shuvah (forthcoming from Fernwood Press, October 2023), Words for What Those Men Have Done (Guernica Editions, 2017) and The Silence of Men (CavanKerry Press, 2006), as well as a chapbook, For My Son, A Kind of Prayer (Ghostbird Press, 2016). In addition, he has co-translated three books of classical Persian poetry, most recently The Teller of Tales: Stories from Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh (Junction Press, 2011). Newman is on the executive board of Newtown Literary, a Queens-based literary nonprofit, and he curates the First Tuesdays reading series in Jackson Heights, NY. He is Professor of English at Nassau Community College. Visit his website here.
