Αν η ζωή μου έχει αντικείμενο την ποίηση
ποιός θα μεταφράσει τον θάνατό μου;
– Γ.Γ.
Από τους 226 ΄Ελληνες και Ελληνοκύπριους ποιητές που έχω μεταφράσει, η Ανθολογία περιέχει 101 ονόματα. Απέφυγα να συμπεριλάβω ποιητές που μου ανάθεσαν να μεταφράσω για ανθολογίες, περιοδικά και πολιτισκές εκδηλώσεις στην Ελλάδα και στο εξωτερικό, και όχι εθελοντικά μεταφρασμένοι από μένα. Ο περιορισμένος χώρος που παρέχεται σε κάθε ποιητή, κατέστησε πιο αυστηρή την επιλογή ποιημάτων, ιδιαίτερα όσον αφορά ποιητές των οποίων ένα μεγάλο μέρος του έργου τους έχω μεταφράσει. Ως εκ τούτου, αναγκάστηκα να ζητήσω τη συμβουλή και προτιμήσεις του συγκεκριμένου ποιητή. Η Ανθολογία δεν έχει στόχο να δώσει μια ολική εικόνα της ελληνικής ποίησης την δεδομένη χρονική περίοδο.
Πιστεύω πως μεταφράζοντας ποίηση — αυτή η διείσδυση στον ψυχικό, συναισθηματικό, τον ευαισθητοποιημένο κόσμο ανδρών και γυναικών — είναι τιμή, προνόμιο, και από τις πιο δύσκολες ενασχολήσεις στο χώρο της διανοητικής εργασίας. […]
[…] Η μετάφραση είναι σαν τη μεταγραφή μουσικής σύνθεσης σε νέα μορφή, για ερμηνεία από διαφορετικό όργανο. Ένα κλαρινέτο δεν μπορεί να ηχεί σαν βιολί, και όμως παίζουν τις ίδιες νότες. Κι’ αυτό είναι σαν τη γλώσσα που μέσα απ’ αυτήν δυο διαφορετικές γλώσσες εννοούν το ίδιο πράγμα αλλά ηχούν διαφορετικά.
Η τέχνη είναι μια απέραντη θέα: είναι κρίση και κατάθεση.
Γιάννης Γκούμας
Χαλάνδρι, 2013
[Αποσπάσματα από την Εισαγωγή του βιβλίου]
****
Ακολουθεί μια μικρή Ανθολογία Ποιητών
Kóstas Ouránis, (1890-1953)
I Shall Die One Day on a Mournful Autumn Afternoon
I shall die one day on a mournful autumn afternoon
in my cold room, all alone as I’ve always lived;
in my last anguish I shall hear the rain
and the familiar noises the street scatters.
I shall die one day on a mournful autumn afternoon
among furniture not mine, the place littered with books;
the police shall find me in bed
and bury me a man who had no history.
Of my friends, with whom now and then I played cards,
someone will simply ask, “Has anyone seen
Ouranis? He hasn’t been around for days.”
Another, playing, will answer, “But he died!”
They’ll stop for a moment, cards in hand,
shake their heads slowly, sorrowfully, and say,
“What is man! Only yesterday he was still living!”
And then resume their playing speechless.
Some fellow journalist will write in the “small notices”
that “Ouranis died abroad untimely,
a young man well known amid our set, whose first book
of poems showed much promise.”
And this will be my life’s last epitaph.
Only my aged parents will weep back home,
hold a memorial service with far too many priests,
with all my friends attending, even my foes.
I shall die one day on a mournful autumn afternoon
in a strange room, in bustling Paris,
and some “Kate,” thinking I’ve jilted her for another,
will write to curse me – but I’ll be dead….
*****
Napoléon Lapathiótis, (1893-1943)
Nocturne
A large green moon
shining in the night – that’s all.
A voice audible above the din
and silent soon after – that’s all.
In the distance, ship’s farewell whistle
as she puts to sea – that’s all.
And so much grief
in the depths of my mind – that’s all.
*****
G.T. Vafópopoulos, (1903-1996)
Taste of Death
To study death in books
is an academic exercise for a seminar.
To count its beat on men’s temples
is just an arithmetic practice.
Death does not exist in wars
or in poison or in daggers
or in the hospitals’ night wards.
It exists in the lighted fuse
that only through your secret channels
advances at a slow pace, from that first day.
If you are able to feel this pace
then you will know the sole taste of death.
But you will not feel the explosion.
For then you would see that which is called death
wearing your face on its face.
******
Nicolas Calas, (1907-1988)
Santorini
IV
With its night cry the lighthouse scares the tall rocks
drives them to play gigantic games
that spread their merriment from the sky to the polyphonic caves
for hours the monstrous cries of despairing shadows echo afar
only heroic words can subdue this substance into rhythms
but the pleasures that Santorini offers a person
are quick to alter passions, shattering every cyclopean gust
on the mountains’ porcelain that whitens its black beauty.
From here the island looks dramatically at the volcano that created it
and follows its work with the perfection of bewitching supremacy.
Intoxicated then by so many contradictory humours
I give way, and for a moment become the spectator of the play in which I am acting.
Only beauty remains that stresses the difference between us.
******
Αryíris Hiónis, (1943-2011)
from Counteraction
5
Almost-sunflower the sun follows the orbit
Of your face
Almost-sun your face appears at dawn
Through the almost-clouds white sheets
Sets at dusk behind your hands
Almost-leaves of a weary palm tree
I say almost-sunflower the sun
Almost-sun your face
Almost-clouds the white sheets
Almost-leaves your hands
For it wouldn’t do to say
Sunflower the sun
Sun your face
Clouds the white sheets
Leaves your hands
No one would believe me true as it might be
Your face radiant as the sun
The sun faithful as your servant
The sheets white as clouds
Your hands sad as palm leaves
Metaphors, they’d scoff, similes
You’re just a poet
Such an insult would be hard to swallow
I’d opt for
A sunflower the sun the face
Through clouds
Through sheets
The leaves behind the hands
Or just sunflower
Sun face
Clouds sheets
Hands palms
*****
Yórgos Chronas, (1948-)
In Memoriam
In the end he may never have alighted from any train
but had stood there for days before me waiting for someone
no one or nothing. He may have been a stuffed bird
in Piraeus Street or a fossilized deer on the rocks
— these deaths are painted inside us without wings,
without music, without entrances and exits, so they remain deaths
at all times on the ground, in the earth.
In the end it may not have been me but someone else
who had arrived days ahead at the station under
the stopped clock in anticipation of a meeting
that sunday afternoon. I may well have been the betrayed
demonstration, the deserter, the entry of the defeated through
the portrait of his posthumous fame, the sniffer.
That afternoon, we discovered our face. We were no longer
ourselves. We were handsome then. Something rare.
.
********
Yórgos Markópoulos, (1951-)
Memory Ages
I thirst like a parched river.
Your hands, solid stones,
block the riverbed.
A wind, I try prying them with jokes,
now devious, now reckless like a river.
You laugh. Your laughter: two glasses smashing on a desolate shore.
Then you get cross. A shot across the meadows.
Your voice breaks harshly.
If I had died, you wouldn’t have met me.
If you hadn’t left your matches that day
at the station or on the train, you wouldn’t have met me.
Well, had you not left our house
for good that night,
having slipped on your dress, without underwear,
I wouldn’t be a wind now raging with envy.
That’s the way men are:
some mountains, some knives.
And everything ends here,
and here the unforeseen will happen.
Between a final cigarette and night
memory ages,
the voice of a friend fades out
and misunderstanding ceases.
********
Dímitra Christodoúlou, (1953-)
Song of Mani
He met his death and deliverance
The hero, the blessed lad
Who was to bring the spoils of virtue.
I’m told the moon torments him
With a maelstrom of sea numerals.
And in the likeness of the meek he is sorely grieved.
Come, full-breasted woman,
Cherish the kid of death.
Two Depictions on a Tombstone
— I mourn you, my girl.
— Not me.
My red pigtails.
— The sparrows seek crumbs.
— Not they.
The hungry, stony winter.
*******
Yánnis Varvéris, (1955-2011)
Piano of the Deep
These notes
I’m sending you
with the upthrust
are no longer of any
but any musical interest.
Ever since the wreckage
which sent us both
to the bottom
like a weight aghast
the floodlit liner’s piano and I
have become something of a sunken ornament
a dull-sounding furnishing of the deep
an exotic flower
or an enormous shell
shelter of seahorses
fairway of fishes open-mouthed
before this black-and-white memory
of bow tie, keyboard and collar.
And if on one of your boatings
you detect on the calm surface
three, five, ten bubbles
like do, sol, mi
don’t imagine music
it’s only rust which on recalling
presses upwards.
So don’t you worry.
My piano and I
feel very comfy here
producing from time to time random notes
but always within the safety of total loss
and at long last
far from
the prospect of drowning.
*******
Sotíris Trivizás, (1960-)
Everyone dreams with his death.
I kept a little of your breath
and the mute wrinkle of your lips
but you’ve no face or body
each night you lessen like a word
that cracked the wind without returning.
Here everyone lives his death
hiding his hands each day
with music and darkness
each night.
But I met you in the light years ago
I got to know your voice and your laughter
glowing among words that gave off smoke.
Afterwards you flowed in the vein.
********
Kóstas Papathanasíou, (1969-)
Hallucination
Tonight came in me again
What lunatics know about
Blurry thoughts
In the silence and the mirror
Flew birds
From the embalmed sky
And from afar were heard
Outcries writhing
Upside down in the void
And facing me the dead
Smoked and patted dogs
Shouts trembling in the smoke
That enveloped oblivion
“What we owned remained here
That’s why you see us
Going back”
Women
With snakes twined in their hair
Sang songs of love and shed
Poisonous tears
Then I grew old
And returned to tedium
From the window
I stole glances
At my youthful self
Writing down
With angry eyes
*************
Yánnis Stígas, (1977-)
On the Shadows’s Threshing Floor
with Octavio Paz
Octavio
only about you I’ve never written
your suns, your locusts
made me nervous
what the desert does
and takes away my voice
nothing to do with a mirage
whichever way you turn your hourglass
the desert lasts
thus all those sandstorms
that at night entice my bed
love it says
is a prematurely bent landscape
shut up and let me sleep I tell it
no
you should dig for water now
I’m thirsty as if I were a poem
for God’s sake, it’s late, think of the neighbours
think of the parquet
no
dig now for a God
thirst’s garden
Such are the occupational hazards, Octavio
circle after circle of endurance
circle after circle of hope
with what silences
with what cries it builds us
******
Pétros Golítsis, (1978-)
Georg Trakl
Child-like I sketch a child
with a circle for a head
with simple geometric outlines I’ll draw
two or three tiny
yellow spots
on the left and above
the head sets like a sun
without being rubbed out
the river
a suspicion of a diagonal line.
I’ve left Trakl with one leg
he’s limping now yes limping
in the silver fever
he’s looking for his sister
among the wounded and the dead.
She feels his feverish head.
Then he says:
“Give me back my leg
futurity’s little boy
you recur to the past
you make me dig like a dog
I a lame and lonely man
keep on finding the foetus
a clue of a man erect.
Why are you torturing me?
I loved my sister, I long for her
in the earth
I loved the dead too
my lungs are full of earth
I want to rest.”
*****
Vassílis Zilákos, (1980-)
Entrance
Who has come in, who has already left?
Who measured the space
between the mouth and the mind?
Not wanting to betray himself
not wanting to betray loneliness.
Men sleep
milk-white
on leaving here.
Devoid of dreams and nightmares
they rinse their repatriation with wine.
Peculiar creatures
when they come here
like black chimneys
they look behind them
but see nothing ―
What was it that came in with them?
What was it that left with them?
And the crickets chirped
over my frightening corpse
but those creatures wouldn’t look, they didn’t want to see.
*****
Háris Psarras, (1982-)
La Belle Dame (I)
Your flower’s petiole entwines round the clouds
and your body’s flawless shape
is traced out entire in the sky.
Beautiful as the lure of dawn
you kindle in the hands of your gods.
My sight endows the shades
of your eyes with scintillation, brilliance.
Beside you I become a hunter who comes to rest
in the house of winds and in my mind
I have ships’ sails waving in the breeze
and flowers shimmering in unsown fields.
Beautiful, emotionless lady of destiny,
fingers bleeding, laugh that your music
may be heard in the precinct of Hades
where sleep spellbound peltasts
irresolute archers, white birds of passion.
There by pairing off who warm up the breath?
Whose cries spray the solitude of night
now that even your shadow’s choice attendants
have no reason to tell you so or a tongue to speak with?
In the hire of your art they too became forgotten.
Oblivion surrounds them, a thick cloud.
*********
Natalía Katsoú, (1982-)
Winter
under the ice
winter
white season, incomprehensible
in the morning water runs
in the white washbowl
it chills me, irritates me
it’s colourless
this
water is
winter
eventually it will freeze
– fountain in reverse –
I bend over, clasp hands
to wash to seize
my eyes
on opening them I am through
the tiny holes
of the metal spout
straight to the sky
it is no longer cold I am flying
I see no people
nor scaffolding, only
a blue flight of swallows
I swim amongst them
and this is the city
below the city there are streets
and trains, yes,
a train
scales the walls
green
windowless, empty
it laughs and whistles
I fly and am always
leaves forgotten from the previous
autumn
they are entangled in the sleeves
the hair my mouth
I chew them
but my bulbs
don’t turn upside down
I keep mum, I don’t know
the future
there is no future
everything happens here
in winter today now look
you too seem to me
something insignificant
standing up all this time
hair dishevelled, unwashed
in front of the mirror
with the water running
a washy joke
that’s what you are
Very nice selection, euxaristw poly!
Is it possible to read more poems in English from Sotiris Trivizas, Kostas Papathanasiou, and especially from Natalia Katsou in somewhere in internet? The last poem which is hers, is very nice.