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Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010
In Canto V of Altazor it seems like Weinberger is really coming in to his own -- this is the first Canto where I can really read the translation without constantly looking back to the original to see what rhythm and meaning Huidobro was getting at, the point at which Weinberger's poem becomes a poem of its own.
Here begins the unexplored land
Round on account of the eyes that behold it
Profound on account of my heart
Filled with likely sapphires
Sleepwalking hands
And aerial burials
Eerie as the dreams of dwarfs
As the branch snapped off in infinity
The seagull carries to its young
There is one point though, where I think his translation could really be improved upon. The long repetitive, chanting section that begins
Jugamos fuera del tiempo
Y juega con nosotros el molino de viento
Molino de viento
Molino de aliento
Molino de cuento
Molino de intento...
Weinberger renders as,
We play outside of time
And the windmill plays along
The wind mill
The mill of inspiration
The mill of narration
The mill of determination
The mill of proliferation...
(and keep in mind that this goes on for another 200 or so lines) -- I love his word choice but think it would flow much better together if every line is turned end-to-end, thus:
We play outside of time
And the windmill plays along
Ventilationmill
Inspirationmill
Narrationmill
Determinationmill
Proliferationmill...
With that singsong rhythm set up I can plow full steam ahead through the pages filled with just Exaltationmill/ Inhumationmill/ Maturationmill/ etcetera etcetera...
A couple of lovely lines from earlier in the canto, in my own translation:
So let us light a pyre beneath the oracle
To placate destiny
Let us feed solitude's
miracles
With our own flesh
So in the cemetery, sealed off
And beautiful, like an eclipse
The rose
breaks its bonds and blossoms beyond the grave
...
Laugh, laugh, before fatigue arrives.
 (Speaking of translation, I had some potentially very good news from an editor at Words Without Borders, about my submission of Zupcic's Réquiem. Should know more next week.)
posted evening of September 22nd, 2010: Respond
➳ More posts about Altazor: The Journey by Parachute
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Dark Roasted Blend has a collection of photos of gargoyles from all over the world -- this is billed as part I, so hopefully we will get more soon. (via cleek)
posted evening of September 22nd, 2010: Respond
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Sunday, September 19th, 2010
 Sylvia's birthday party at the Raptor Trust was great fun and for me, a chance to see something new; I had never been there before. Sylvia got this great shot of a turkey vulture peering out at us.
Mountain Station played the Lenox Pl. block party and we had a ball with it. Several mix-ups on both our parts in terms of what lyrics were coming next... But from where I was standing it came out sounding very good. In the next few days I should get a chance to listen to what the recording sounds like.
posted evening of September 19th, 2010: 1 response
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posted evening of September 19th, 2010: 6 responses
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Saturday, September 18th, 2010
A great lesson with Barbara -- primary areas we covered:
- Bowing -- begin bow strokes with more force, get a percussive effect at the beginning of the stroke. If I am more conscious of keeping a healthy dollop of rosin on my bow, this will be easier.
- Vibrado -- Barbara gave me a woodshed exercise for learning how to do vibrado and told me that if I practice it diligently for a week, I will get it. Probably not going to do this very immediately, but I will keep it on hand... Part of the trick is not to touch the neck with the base of your index finger when you are doing vibrado; the other part is to work on having a very even rhythm to the motion.
- Positions -- Barbara gave me a nice straightforward woodshed exercise for moving between first and third position..
- "Moose on the Roof" -- we worked on this song for about half the time of the lesson; I'm convinced I could play it pretty well with some practice. It is in cross-tuning (EADA) -- I have never played violin in non-standard tuning, it is a lot of fun.
posted morning of September 18th, 2010: Respond
➳ More posts about Fiddling
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Lots of stuff going on this weekend! Sylvia (a child of the millenium, a dragon baby) is as of today, no longer able to write her age with a single digit (assuming of course that she is writing in decimal notation). We are having a birthday dinner with some friends this evening, and tomorrow afternoon her party will be at the Raptor Trust in the Great Swamp. The other big activity for me, outside of celebrating Sylvia's birthday, is fiddling. Barbara Lamb is in town this weekend, she's giving a concert at Menzel Violins tomorrow afternoon -- I can't make it because of the party, alas, but I've arranged for a fiddle lesson this morning. Really looking forward to it! I've learned her jig "Twisty Girl", I'm hoping she'll teach me "Älgen på taket". And the fiddling continues this afternoon, when Mountain Station (i.e. me and John) will have its first gig, at John's neighborhood block party. I'm pretty shocked at the amount of music we are comfortable playing -- we didn't work out a set list exactly, but we have enough songs to play for an hour set easily, and the order of the songs will determine itself...
posted morning of September 18th, 2010: 4 responses
➳ More posts about Birthdays
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Friday, September 17th, 2010
Each Canto of Altazor gets a little faster, a little more frantic. In Canto III (which Weinberger says in his preface, is where the fireworks really start), the rhythm is getting insistent, begging you to follow along:
Break all one's ligaments and veins
The loops of breathing and the chains
Of our eyes, our paths to the horizon
Flower projected on uniform skies
The soul paved with memories
Like stars, emblazoned by the wind
The sea, a rooftop shingled with bottles
Dreams in the sailor's memory
Sebastian Ramirez and Tomislav Definis of V Producciones have filmed a spell-binding reading of this Canto, paired with Bach's piano concerto #9. (Be sure to keep watching til the end!)
posted evening of September 17th, 2010: Respond
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Thursday, September 16th, 2010
 I haven't read Lore Sjöberg's Bad Gods in a while now... I think he had stopped updating a year or two ago, and I forgot about it. Today he does a (hilarous) guest strip at Dinosaur Comics, inspiring me to take a look again at his home page -- turns out he's back in business! His two current features are Apocrypha ("things that aren't part of other things") and Speak with Monsters, comics about the Cockatrice, the Purple Worm, the Troglodyte, etc. I don't know how frequently he updates but for now, there are a lot of archives to go through...
 (Also, the site seems to occasionally crash Firefox, which seems like a lousy feature if it is by design.)
posted evening of September 16th, 2010: Respond
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 LanguageHat posted the other day about the Hungarian Rohonc Codex -- and at Nick Pelling's Cipher Mysteries site I find a recent interview with Benedek Lang regarding the codex and attempts to decipher it. Another good article on the codex is at Passing Strangeness, Paul Drye's blog on "the odd bits of the world."
posted evening of September 16th, 2010: Respond
➳ More posts about Logograms
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Tuesday, September 14th, 2010
I'm feeling on a bit of a roll with reading and translating the prologue to Altazor. Here is another section, in which Huidobro/Altazor lays out the manifesto of the poem. There is some tricky pronoun-switching here; but I think the way I'm reading it makes sense.
Oh: how beautiful... how beautiful.
I see the mountains, the rivers, the jungles, the sea, the ships, the flowers, the seashells.
I see the night and the day, the axis where they converge.
Oh, oh,-- I am Altazor, great poet, without a horse who eats birdseed, nor who warms his throat in the moonlight; with my little parachute, like a parasol above the planets.
From each drop of sweat on my forehead are born stars; I will leave you the task of baptizing them, like so many bottles of wine.
I see it all, my brain was forged in tongues of prophecy.
See the mountain as the breath of God, climbing its swollen thermometer until it touch the feet of my beloved.
Am that one who has seen all things, who knows all the secrets, without being Walt Whitman -- I have never had a white beard, white like lovely nurses, like frozen streams.
That one who hears at night the counterfeiters' hammers, just busy astronomers.
That one who drinks from the warm glass of wisdom after the flood, paying heed to the doves, who knows the path of fatigue, the seething wake behind the ships.
That one who knows the storehouses of memory, of lovely forgotten seasons.
He: he, shepherd of airplanes, who conducts lost nights and masterful winds to the matchless poles.
His moan is like a blinking web of unseen meteors.
The day rises in his heart; he lowers his eyelids to make night, the farmer's respite.
He washes his hands under the gaze of God, he combs his hair like light, like he's harvesting slender raindrops, satisfied.
The screams are more distant now, like a flock across the hills, when the stars are sleeping afer a night of continuous labor.
The beautiful hunter, looking at the heavenly watering-hole where the heartless birds drink.
(The as-yet-nameless stars will make another very satisfying appearance early in Canto I.)
Ah, qué hermoso... qué hermoso.
Veo las montañas, los rÃos, las selvas, el mar, los barcos, las flores y los caracoles.
Veo la noche y el dÃa y el eje en que se juntan.
Ah, ah, soy Altazor, el gran poeta, sin caballo que coma alpiste, ni caliente su garganta con claro de luna, sino con mi pequeño paracaÃdas como un quitasol sobre los planetas.
De cada gota del sudor de mi frente hice nacer astros, que os derea la tarea de bautizar como a botellas de vino.
Lo veo todo, tengo mi cerebro forjado en lenguas de profeta.
La montaña es el suspiro de Dios, ascendiendo en termómetro hinchado hasta tocar los pies de la amada.
Aquél que todo lo ha visto, que conoce todos los secretos sin ser Walt Whitman, pues jamás he tenido una barba blanca como las bellas enfermeras y los arroyos helados.
Aquél que oye durante la noche los martillos de los monederos falsos, que son solamente astrónomos activos.
Aquél que bebe el vaso caliente de la sabidurÃa después del diluvio obedeciendo a las palomas y que conoce la ruta de la fatiga, la estela hirviente que dejan los barcos.
Aquél que conoce los almacenes de recuerdos y de bellas estaciones olvidadas.
Él, el pastor de aeroplanos, el conductor de las noches extraviadas y de los ponientes amaestrados hacia los polos únicos.
Su queja es semejante a una red parpadeante de aerolitos sin testigo.
El dÃa se levante en su corazón y él baja los parpados para hacer la noche del reposo agricola.
Lava sus manos en la mirada de Dios, y peina su cabellera como la luz y la cosecha de esas flacas espigas de la lluvia satisfecho.
Los gritos se alejan como un rebaño sobre las lomas cuando las estrellas duermen después de una noche de trabajo continuo.
El hermoso cazador frente al bebedero celeste para los pájaros sin corazón.
↻...done
posted evening of September 14th, 2010: Respond
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