Rose photo © Yoshi Kosaki, 2013.
After a long hiatus, I am trying to get back to the translations I'd been working on of poems from Rilke's sequence of Roses poems in French.
I only have one to offer this time - V, which I'd skipped over last time. You can read I and II here, III and IV here, and VI here.
More soon, I hope.
THE ROSES (Rainer Maria Rilke, translated from French by Clarissa Aykroyd)
V
Abandon upon abandon,
tenderness upon tenderness...
Your hidden self unceasingly
turns inward, a caress;
caressing itself, in and of its own
reflection illuminated.
Thus you've invented the tale
of Narcissus sated.
LES ROSES
V
Abandon entouré d'abandon,
tendresse touchant aux tendresses...
C'est ton intérieur qui sans cesse
se caresse, dirait-on;
se caresse en soi-même,
par son proper reflet éclairé.
Ainsi tu inventes le thème
du Narcisse exaucé.
Translation © Clarissa Aykroyd, 2013.
There is a lot of internal alliteration going on in the original, in addition to the end rhymes, and I like the way you have reproduced that so deftly in your translation. The alliteration seems to perform an important function in moving the poem along and drawing the reader in--to that place where the illuminated introspection is taking place--and there is something really dynamic about it which I can't quite define for myself. I'm glad you've returned to these poems and, as it happens, at a time when I've recently been re-examining certain aspects of French literature myself. I guess we could place Rilke in that category here, though it's possible he'd disagree.
ReplyDeleteThank you! I like hearing how translators think I'm doing with these. The decisions to be made can be tricky even with short poems. I find that generally, when I am puzzling about a specific word, there comes a moment when there is a sort of intuitive leap and several lines may suddenly fall into place. However, I then need to go back and check the details of that intuitive leap!
DeleteAs for Rilke, I suppose he was a Bohemian (in all senses of the word) citizen of Europe so he might not object to claiming a place in the French literary canon. These poems will never be as famous as the German ones, though...