{"id":2012,"date":"2017-10-08T05:09:48","date_gmt":"2017-10-08T05:09:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/arielsheen.com\/?p=2012"},"modified":"2017-11-02T22:54:39","modified_gmt":"2017-11-02T22:54:39","slug":"new-translation-of-pablo-nerudas-poem-the-dead-woman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/2017\/10\/08\/new-translation-of-pablo-nerudas-poem-the-dead-woman\/","title":{"rendered":"New Translation of Pablo Neruda’s poem “The Dead Woman”"},"content":{"rendered":"

La Muerta, or\u00a0The Dead Woman, <\/em>was written by\u00a0Pablo Neruda. I was reading a bilingual edition of this book at El Cafe de Otraparte<\/a>\u00a0and didn’t like the translation so have transcribed my\u00a0own below\u00a0on the right side, linked to where other translations are below and then explained why I think my translation is preferable to theirs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Si de pronto no existes,
\nsi de pronto no vives,
\nyo seguir\u00e9 viviendo.No me atrevo,
\nno me atrevo a escribirlo,
\nsi te mueres.Yo seguir\u00e9 viviendo.Porque donde no tiene voz un hombre
\nall\u00ed, mi voz.<\/p>\n

Donde los negros sean apaleados,
\nyo no puedo estar muerto.
\nCuando entren en la c\u00e1rcel mis\u00a0hermanos
\nentrar\u00e9 yo con ellos.<\/p>\n

Cuando la victoria,
\nno mi victoria,
\nsino la gran Victoria
\nllegue,
\naunque est\u00e9 mudo debo hablar:
\nyo la ver\u00e9 llegar aunque est\u00e9 ciego.<\/p>\n

No, perd\u00f3name.
\nSi t\u00fa no vives,
\nsi t\u00fa, querida, amor m\u00edo, si t\u00fa
\nte has muerto,
\ntodas las hojas caer\u00e1n en mi pecho,
\nllover\u00e1 sobre mi alma noche y d\u00eda,
\nla nieve quemar\u00e1 mi coraz\u00f3n,
\nandar\u00e9 con fr\u00edo y fuego
\ny muerte y nieve,
\nmis pies querr\u00e1n marchar hacia donde t\u00fa duermes, pero seguir\u00e9 vivo,
\nporque t\u00fa me quisiste sobre
\ntodas las cosas indomable,
\ny, amor, porque t\u00fa sabes que soy no s\u00f3lo un hombre
\nsino todos los hombres.<\/td>\n

If suddenly you do not exist,
\nif suddenly you no longer live,
\nI shall live on.I do not dare,
\nI do not dare to write it,
\nif you die.I’ll\u00a0keep\u00a0living.For where a man has no voice,
\nthere, my voice.<\/p>\n

Where blacks are beaten,
\nI cannot be without energy.
\nWhen into prison my brothers go,
\nI am\u00a0with them.<\/p>\n

When victory,
\nnot my victory,
\nbut the great victory
\ncomes,
\neven though I am mute I must speak;
\nI shall see it come
\nthough I am blind.<\/p>\n

No, forgive me.
\nIf you don’t live,
\nif you, beloved, my love,
\nif you have died,
\nall the leaves will fall on my chest,
\nit will rain on my soul night and day,
\nthe snow will burn my heart,
\nI shall walk with cold\u00a0and fire and death and snow,
\nmy feet will want to march\u00a0to where you sleep, but
\nI’ll stay alive,
\nbecause\u00a0you wanted me above all things indomitable,
\nand, my love, because you know that I am not only a man
\nbut all humankind.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Why My\u00a0Translation is Better<\/strong>\"\"<\/p>\n

Where\u00a0my translation differs from the other<\/a>\u00a0versions<\/a> is as follows.<\/p>\n

In the third stanza\u00a0seguir\u00e9 should read as a statement of commitment to life\u00a0rather a phrase that a book with some sort of platitudinous title on coping with grief would tell you to repeat over and over again in a mirror until you start to feel that you are “back amongst the land of the living” and thus no longer “trapped in the past\/in death”.<\/p>\n

The fifth stanza\u00a0I’ve changed for the following reasons. First, the other translators\u00a0incorrectly attributed the Castilian meaning of the word rather than the Chilean. While generally sensible, any Spanish speaker that’s travelled know that there is a wide variety regional dialects and\u00a0meanings. Here’s an screenshot of a Chilean Spanish Slang\u00a0Dictionary:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

If that’s not enough to convince you why my iteration is better, consider this – while “not being dead” may sounds poetic, it doesn’t imply the same sort of implication of commitment to ameliorating racial oppression that was a major component of\u00a0Neruda’s politics. Pablo Neruda was an ardent Marxist, a member of the Communist Party and was a politician and diplomat under President Salvador Allende<\/a>.\u00a0The lines as they were slightly obfuscated something that Pablo Neruda would have been highly attuned.<\/p>\n

As it was worded,
\n\"\"it\u00a0suggested that the “I” of the poem – which is later on characterized as indomitable – respond to racial oppression\u00a0merely by oneself not succumbing to death. Using a dictionary definition rather than an informal one thus loses the implied need for material commitment to oppressed peoples liberation evidenced in my rendition of “I cannot be without energy”. People in perilous situations that require great physical endurance to survive are able to exert themselves past the point they would normally collapse because of the importance of their actions. My rendition captures this, and\u00a0for similar reasons the next two lines of the stanza is also lacking verisimilitude to what I believe to be Neruda’s intent.
\nEmbed from Getty Images<\/a>