The Sardana I The Sardana is of dances the most elegant Of any dance that’s ever planned or unplanned; It’s the magnificent mobility of rings That in pauses and in measures shyly swings. Once inclined toward left, stops unsteadily, It wheels around again toward right in doubt, And seeming turning and returning restlessly Like, poor orienteers, the needle losing north. It fixes on a point and on that point stops. Then with the counterpoint, the go-round starts And goes around again. The Sardana is of dances the most elegant Of any dance that’s ever planned or unplanned. II The bachelors like guards on march, courageously Strategize their steps; the virgins, they won’t. But devotees of the saints of harmony, Every footstep matched to downbeat falls on count. You might say they are priests of a cult That mystically dances its comings and goings Transcending with their symbol of the occult Into one voluminous circle of coupling. If the perfect rhythm hits a counterpoint, It stops, suspended, everyone marveling… It beats on again. The Sardana is of dances the most elegant Of any dance that’s ever planned or unplanned. III The hub of that circle, what would place it And center the focal with such symmetry? Whose mighty, severe, and vindictive hand Plucked out the pupil of a giant eye? At one time, perhaps, they’d mound in the middle The powdery sheaves of sun-toasted grain, And the sweat drenched workers made festivals For prodigal Ceres, and they danced and sang… And the counterpoint of their vagrant song Sounds like echoing birds’ overhead, passing And flying, singing: The Sardana is of dances the most elegant Of any dance that’s ever planned or unplanned. IV Not a lascivious dance, nor ignoble, For those coupling and others uncoupling, It’s the dance of integrity, of a people Who love and advance by giving their hands. The garland fluently disentangles, Unlacing, expanding, dispelling around, Each hand in the wake of a companion Seems to promise already its return, Already returning couple to couple. Every hand of our country fits in this circle, And the people respond: The Sardana is of dances the most elegant Of any dance that’s ever planned or unplanned. Ash Wednesday
To a young girl Do not let them put ash on you, - Do not let them put ash on you, Idol of youth, For that has nothing to do – the death, the ashes – with you. Do not tarnish with remembrances Your forehead, pink and pure. You don’t need to have it mentioned – in wistful palaver, The diction of priests Turning the tables. Because this color of roses – that you have in your lips and face Is not a thing that’s given – to soothe an ashen grief, But something you were given, Virgin of tender blood, For a different shade of white – not of dust or ash. |
Versions or translations of one of Europe's most important and least known poets, Joan Maragall, an essential figure of Catalan literature. These poems begin in patriotic celebration of all things Catalonian, folklore, folk dance, song... then wrestle to embrace both Catholicism & 19th Century German philosophy. Along the way, anarchist terrorism, the Spanish American War, and the seeds of Socialism appear. But like all great poetry, Joan Maragall's work transcends its era to touch all readers who encounter it. This is the English world's first chance to encounter a large selection of Maragall's poems brought into English. It is unlikely to be the last.
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XVIII
Scholium
Like a couple engaged in conversation,
Talking through a partition as they stroll,
One on the side where the sun is shining,
And one from within a wall of shadow,
Adalaisa and the poet have spoken,
He, body and spirit, she, purely soul.
Adalaisa
Ai! It’s agony on this road!
So dark, so dark, and walking so hard!
If I could tell the mountains from valleys,
See the radiance of things backed by sky blue,
And escape this silt of strange voices
Without form or color… Tell me, Arnau:
Who is this, on sorrow’s path with us,
Who mentions us as one does evil haunts?
It’s nothing more than a dreaming poet
Imagining eternity without quiet.
The Poet
Living what’s literally the life
Of the spirit, is there pain still?
Crossing to the immutable…
Adalaisa
Nothing here compares to seeing the sun!
Because you take us down the path
Of things of the corporal world,
Good friend, it does not matter if,
Once there, we suffer every ill.
Bad as light can be, we are dazzled,
Bad as noise can be, we are stunned,
Bad as the body’s every sickness,
The suffering of all the senses,
I want to live it, life first,
To touch, to see, to hear, to taste:
I don’t know of any other life,
Nor could there be any I’d want to try.
The Poet
That life you wish for now
Is the great resurrection.
This one you have is not enough,
But another is still to come.
Adalaisa
Then you must be pretty content
With the life you have at present.
The Poet
If I could see beauty throughout the world,
That which for you is pure joy or torment,
Then, yes, in my life I’d be content
Because within one life, I would have two.
But if this one being were to be cleft
And my lost senses rested with my corpse,
I would ecstatically abandon it
To become, like you, solely spirit.
Not now, not with all the song in my gut
And a woman of my own and children,
When from the peaks of my fathers’ mountains
There comes from peril, a cry of rebirth.
My time is for love and for the battle,
And for love and for battle, I need arms.
I lead with my chest, and what I have I want…
But how, tomorrow, will I know what to want?
Adalaisa
You are blessed. You can love with living voice
And have your times that you can take or leave,
And keep your woman captive in a home
Which she fills with sons and daughters to love.
But, tell me, how did you happen upon her?
How did love take root? And when did it bloom?
Tell me how a woman becomes a mother
In this world where I will never return.
The Poet
In a valley of the Pyrenees, up high,
I saw her one summer for the first time;
I saw her many times before I saw her once
Because hers is the esoteric beauty
Of the violets’ dark balm on forest shade.
Now I have her, and have made her the true rose
Of my garden, and moreso, she is fruitful,
Because God has blessed her, many times, her womb,
Even twins, so the fruit could not fit on your lap
And must roll on the floor, and are handsome.
How accustomed we’ve become to kisses
And to lowering our eyes to little ones
And bending our bodies down to love them
More closely, and raise them up in my arms
Toward the sky, holding them tightly, of course!
Every kiss on every one, to each its own taste:
I’ve never kissed two in the same manner,
But to each sweetness, because they submit
To her matriarchal gaze over all
And to her firm and soft imperial rule.
She tucks them in under her watch all day
And keeps vigil at night, until they sleep,
The dreams of a mother, more vigilant
Than any other guard!... But are those tears,
Adalaisa, that I hear in the dark?
Adalaisa
Ah! You have opened my eyes to the light of day,
Another call, another way to cry.
In childbirth, a woman’s bone-chilling screams,
I would happily be that wounded beast;
And the duke of perversion’s son,
I would squeeze slick with blood out of my womb,
And I would laugh and laugh as hard as I prayed.
What would pain be to me? Or all the stress,
Or all the time I lose to sacrifice,
Or the chance of death, or all anxieties,
If a life found myself at its center,
And it feels like a child, then from my womb,
Purple and breathless still, it starts to cry?
The Poet
Yes, I am well aware of your fierceness
When trickling sweat, with your cheeks ablaze,
Your hair flying free as a star’s radiance,
Escaping a glorious grasp and race,
You give us all your furious embrace
And your kiss comes with music’s resonance.
Then your husband’s there, colder than marble
But tremulous always, like leaves of the arbor
In a tempest beside the bed he stormed,
And you lain down, with no memory,
Inebriated with the great victory,
The crushing of the heart, -- more lust for war…
But now, Adalaisa, why dream so far
As having a son, if you are not of this world,
And this world has no need of such a child
Because the ghosts that should be already are?
Adalaisa
You know nothing of this world or any other!
Nothing about bodies, nothing about spirits,
Nothing of what we feel of great desire,
The lasting remnants, yes, of our hearts!
You want to have death. I want to have life.
This is more like I’d been buried alive.
I have a furious need of my senses,
Because if anything is, I am deprived.
If you can’t draw me over to your side,
Then what use is poetry? What use are Poets?
The Poet
I sense some other voice in this dispute,
That of another, wholly senseless, mode.
Adalaisa
No! The voice that doesn’t make noise is dead!
It is not that, not that at all, I want;
The part of my breast that was made of meat,
That joyfully echoed with all around.
That is what I demand of you, my friend,
That part of me with everything involved.
And if your poetry can’t do that,
Go back to your world, shut up, and end this.
The Poet
Adalaisa, Adalaisa, for pity’s sake,
In these times, when there are still things unknown,
Poetry has hardly made a start
And has plenty of virtues named by none.
For now, you are right. For us, enough said:
Let us wait in silence. Others will come.
Scholium
Like a couple engaged in conversation,
Talking through a partition as they stroll,
One on the side where the sun is shining,
And one from within a wall of shadow,
Adalaisa and the poet have spoken,
He, body and spirit, she, purely soul.
Adalaisa
Ai! It’s agony on this road!
So dark, so dark, and walking so hard!
If I could tell the mountains from valleys,
See the radiance of things backed by sky blue,
And escape this silt of strange voices
Without form or color… Tell me, Arnau:
Who is this, on sorrow’s path with us,
Who mentions us as one does evil haunts?
It’s nothing more than a dreaming poet
Imagining eternity without quiet.
The Poet
Living what’s literally the life
Of the spirit, is there pain still?
Crossing to the immutable…
Adalaisa
Nothing here compares to seeing the sun!
Because you take us down the path
Of things of the corporal world,
Good friend, it does not matter if,
Once there, we suffer every ill.
Bad as light can be, we are dazzled,
Bad as noise can be, we are stunned,
Bad as the body’s every sickness,
The suffering of all the senses,
I want to live it, life first,
To touch, to see, to hear, to taste:
I don’t know of any other life,
Nor could there be any I’d want to try.
The Poet
That life you wish for now
Is the great resurrection.
This one you have is not enough,
But another is still to come.
Adalaisa
Then you must be pretty content
With the life you have at present.
The Poet
If I could see beauty throughout the world,
That which for you is pure joy or torment,
Then, yes, in my life I’d be content
Because within one life, I would have two.
But if this one being were to be cleft
And my lost senses rested with my corpse,
I would ecstatically abandon it
To become, like you, solely spirit.
Not now, not with all the song in my gut
And a woman of my own and children,
When from the peaks of my fathers’ mountains
There comes from peril, a cry of rebirth.
My time is for love and for the battle,
And for love and for battle, I need arms.
I lead with my chest, and what I have I want…
But how, tomorrow, will I know what to want?
Adalaisa
You are blessed. You can love with living voice
And have your times that you can take or leave,
And keep your woman captive in a home
Which she fills with sons and daughters to love.
But, tell me, how did you happen upon her?
How did love take root? And when did it bloom?
Tell me how a woman becomes a mother
In this world where I will never return.
The Poet
In a valley of the Pyrenees, up high,
I saw her one summer for the first time;
I saw her many times before I saw her once
Because hers is the esoteric beauty
Of the violets’ dark balm on forest shade.
Now I have her, and have made her the true rose
Of my garden, and moreso, she is fruitful,
Because God has blessed her, many times, her womb,
Even twins, so the fruit could not fit on your lap
And must roll on the floor, and are handsome.
How accustomed we’ve become to kisses
And to lowering our eyes to little ones
And bending our bodies down to love them
More closely, and raise them up in my arms
Toward the sky, holding them tightly, of course!
Every kiss on every one, to each its own taste:
I’ve never kissed two in the same manner,
But to each sweetness, because they submit
To her matriarchal gaze over all
And to her firm and soft imperial rule.
She tucks them in under her watch all day
And keeps vigil at night, until they sleep,
The dreams of a mother, more vigilant
Than any other guard!... But are those tears,
Adalaisa, that I hear in the dark?
Adalaisa
Ah! You have opened my eyes to the light of day,
Another call, another way to cry.
In childbirth, a woman’s bone-chilling screams,
I would happily be that wounded beast;
And the duke of perversion’s son,
I would squeeze slick with blood out of my womb,
And I would laugh and laugh as hard as I prayed.
What would pain be to me? Or all the stress,
Or all the time I lose to sacrifice,
Or the chance of death, or all anxieties,
If a life found myself at its center,
And it feels like a child, then from my womb,
Purple and breathless still, it starts to cry?
The Poet
Yes, I am well aware of your fierceness
When trickling sweat, with your cheeks ablaze,
Your hair flying free as a star’s radiance,
Escaping a glorious grasp and race,
You give us all your furious embrace
And your kiss comes with music’s resonance.
Then your husband’s there, colder than marble
But tremulous always, like leaves of the arbor
In a tempest beside the bed he stormed,
And you lain down, with no memory,
Inebriated with the great victory,
The crushing of the heart, -- more lust for war…
But now, Adalaisa, why dream so far
As having a son, if you are not of this world,
And this world has no need of such a child
Because the ghosts that should be already are?
Adalaisa
You know nothing of this world or any other!
Nothing about bodies, nothing about spirits,
Nothing of what we feel of great desire,
The lasting remnants, yes, of our hearts!
You want to have death. I want to have life.
This is more like I’d been buried alive.
I have a furious need of my senses,
Because if anything is, I am deprived.
If you can’t draw me over to your side,
Then what use is poetry? What use are Poets?
The Poet
I sense some other voice in this dispute,
That of another, wholly senseless, mode.
Adalaisa
No! The voice that doesn’t make noise is dead!
It is not that, not that at all, I want;
The part of my breast that was made of meat,
That joyfully echoed with all around.
That is what I demand of you, my friend,
That part of me with everything involved.
And if your poetry can’t do that,
Go back to your world, shut up, and end this.
The Poet
Adalaisa, Adalaisa, for pity’s sake,
In these times, when there are still things unknown,
Poetry has hardly made a start
And has plenty of virtues named by none.
For now, you are right. For us, enough said:
Let us wait in silence. Others will come.