It showed your place of birth and all the colors blurred like chalk on a blackboard
It seems I just don't sleep anymore, which is great heading into Readercon.
Yesterday was a wash. I walked around a little. I lay around a lot. I spent most of the evening working on a translation of Abraham Sutzkever's "The Lead Plates from Romm's Printing House" ("די בלײַענע פּלאַטן פֿון ראָמס דרוקערײַ") because I knew the first verse from memory and could not remember if I had ever read the rest in the original Yiddish; the answer turned out to be no. I did a kind of work-print translation for![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spatch and then a slightly less chunky one for selkie who introduced me to this poem in the first place in 2003, when it provided a chapter heading and eventually the title of her first novel A Verse from Babylon (2005). And then I did this.
Mir hobn vi finger geshtrekte durkh gratn
tsu fangen di likhtikte luft fun der fray—
durkh nakht zikh getsoygn, tsu nemen di platn,
di blayene platn fun Roms drukeray.
Mir, troymer, badarfn itst vern soldatn
un shmeltsn oyf koyln dem gayst funem blay.
Un mir hobn vider geefnt dem shtempl
tsu epes a heymisher eybiker heyl.
Mit shotns bapantsert, bay shayn fun a lempl—
gegosen di oysyes—a tseyl nokh a tseyl,
azoy vi di zeydems a mol inem templ
in gildene yom-tov-menoyres—dem eyl.
Dem blay hot geloykhtn baym oysgisn koyln,
makhshoves—tsegangen an os nokh an os.
A shure fun Bavel, a shure fun Poyln,
gezotn, gefleytst in der zelbiker mos.
Di Yidishe gvure, in verter farhoyln,
muz oyfraysn itster di velt mit a shos!
Un ver s'hot in geto gezen dos kle-zayn
farklamert in heldishe Yidishe hent—
gezen hot er ranglen zikh Yerushalaim,
dos faln fun yene granitene vent;
farnumen di verter, farshmoltsn in blayen,
un zeyere shtimen in hartsn derkent.
Vilner geto
12tn September 1943
You can see that a very faithful translation of this poem will come out sounding like Kipling, I'm sure to Kipling's horror—if the dactyls don't get you, the ABABAB will. I do not have the knack for rhyme and meter. I never have. All of my sonnets are slant. I do not have the knack for very free translations, either; they run into the problem of feeling as though I am misrepresenting the poem, even though I often enjoy them when done by other poets. So I was stuck here. What you get either has to sound like one of those rhyming opera translations or it has to sound kind of like me.
We like fingers stretched to snatch
the bright air of freedom from beyond the bars
stole through the night to seize the plates,
the lead plates from Romm's printing house.
We the dreamers must now become soldiers
and smelt into bullets the soul of the lead.
So once again we opened the seal
to some familiar, eternal cave.
With shadows for armor, by small lamplight,
we poured out the letters—one by one,
as our grandfathers once in the Temple
into gilded festival menorahs, the oil.
The lead lit up with the pour of the bullets,
thoughts—melting letter on letter.
A verse from Babylon, a verse from Poland,
flooded molten in equal measure.
The strength of Israel, secreted in words,
must now explode the world with a shot!
And those in the ghetto who witnessed the weapons
gripped in heroic Jewish hands—
they saw the struggle of Jerusalem itself,
those granite walls falling;
they received the words, smelted into the lead,
and they recognized their voices in their hearts.
Vilna Ghetto
12th September 1943
The thing about Sutzkever is that he is not one of my favorite poets of this particular war. I respect him for being a staunch Yiddishist in Israel until his death in 2010, but would it have been so terrible not to have lost Hirsh Glik? Or damn near all the rest of Yung-Vilne? I like this poem and I can't even tell if the thing I like best about it is present as strongly as it feels to me. Sutzkever is writing ploughshares into swords, dreamers into soldiers, the melting down of millennia of studious tradition into violent action—like those Jewish warrior-exemplars the Maccabees—but because the thoughts and the dreams and the tradition remain still in the lead, it feels to me like fighting with stories as much as with guns.
For obvious reasons I think that's important.
Yesterday was a wash. I walked around a little. I lay around a lot. I spent most of the evening working on a translation of Abraham Sutzkever's "The Lead Plates from Romm's Printing House" ("די בלײַענע פּלאַטן פֿון ראָמס דרוקערײַ") because I knew the first verse from memory and could not remember if I had ever read the rest in the original Yiddish; the answer turned out to be no. I did a kind of work-print translation for
spatch and then a slightly less chunky one for selkie who introduced me to this poem in the first place in 2003, when it provided a chapter heading and eventually the title of her first novel A Verse from Babylon (2005). And then I did this.Mir hobn vi finger geshtrekte durkh gratn
tsu fangen di likhtikte luft fun der fray—
durkh nakht zikh getsoygn, tsu nemen di platn,
di blayene platn fun Roms drukeray.
Mir, troymer, badarfn itst vern soldatn
un shmeltsn oyf koyln dem gayst funem blay.
Un mir hobn vider geefnt dem shtempl
tsu epes a heymisher eybiker heyl.
Mit shotns bapantsert, bay shayn fun a lempl—
gegosen di oysyes—a tseyl nokh a tseyl,
azoy vi di zeydems a mol inem templ
in gildene yom-tov-menoyres—dem eyl.
Dem blay hot geloykhtn baym oysgisn koyln,
makhshoves—tsegangen an os nokh an os.
A shure fun Bavel, a shure fun Poyln,
gezotn, gefleytst in der zelbiker mos.
Di Yidishe gvure, in verter farhoyln,
muz oyfraysn itster di velt mit a shos!
Un ver s'hot in geto gezen dos kle-zayn
farklamert in heldishe Yidishe hent—
gezen hot er ranglen zikh Yerushalaim,
dos faln fun yene granitene vent;
farnumen di verter, farshmoltsn in blayen,
un zeyere shtimen in hartsn derkent.
Vilner geto
12tn September 1943
You can see that a very faithful translation of this poem will come out sounding like Kipling, I'm sure to Kipling's horror—if the dactyls don't get you, the ABABAB will. I do not have the knack for rhyme and meter. I never have. All of my sonnets are slant. I do not have the knack for very free translations, either; they run into the problem of feeling as though I am misrepresenting the poem, even though I often enjoy them when done by other poets. So I was stuck here. What you get either has to sound like one of those rhyming opera translations or it has to sound kind of like me.
We like fingers stretched to snatch
the bright air of freedom from beyond the bars
stole through the night to seize the plates,
the lead plates from Romm's printing house.
We the dreamers must now become soldiers
and smelt into bullets the soul of the lead.
So once again we opened the seal
to some familiar, eternal cave.
With shadows for armor, by small lamplight,
we poured out the letters—one by one,
as our grandfathers once in the Temple
into gilded festival menorahs, the oil.
The lead lit up with the pour of the bullets,
thoughts—melting letter on letter.
A verse from Babylon, a verse from Poland,
flooded molten in equal measure.
The strength of Israel, secreted in words,
must now explode the world with a shot!
And those in the ghetto who witnessed the weapons
gripped in heroic Jewish hands—
they saw the struggle of Jerusalem itself,
those granite walls falling;
they received the words, smelted into the lead,
and they recognized their voices in their hearts.
Vilna Ghetto
12th September 1943
The thing about Sutzkever is that he is not one of my favorite poets of this particular war. I respect him for being a staunch Yiddishist in Israel until his death in 2010, but would it have been so terrible not to have lost Hirsh Glik? Or damn near all the rest of Yung-Vilne? I like this poem and I can't even tell if the thing I like best about it is present as strongly as it feels to me. Sutzkever is writing ploughshares into swords, dreamers into soldiers, the melting down of millennia of studious tradition into violent action—like those Jewish warrior-exemplars the Maccabees—but because the thoughts and the dreams and the tradition remain still in the lead, it feels to me like fighting with stories as much as with guns.
For obvious reasons I think that's important.
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I tend to say that I know three and a half dead languages, but I really am invested in this one not actually being dead.
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I wanted very much to see Menashe (2017) just because it was an American movie shot entirely in Yiddish and there haven't been many of those since 1940. Alas, if it played around here, it must have been the same kind of one-night, film-festival engagement as Disobedience (2017), because I sure didn't see it.
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That is useful to know! I think I am not worried so much about being harmed as underwhelmed, although I would obviously hope for neither.
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Thank you!
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BTW, that poem is the bomb.
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Thank you.
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Cheap, efficient, and environmentally sound!
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Sleep has been fickle with me too. I wonder if there is just one Sleep that comes and goes as it likes, or if we all have our own little Sleeps, and if they sometimes get together when they are wandering, and complain about us. This would NOT stop me complaining about them.
P.
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Thank you!
I wonder if there is just one Sleep that comes and goes as it likes, or if we all have our own little Sleeps, and if they sometimes get together when they are wandering, and complain about us.
Like Deaths in Cocteau's universe! It makes sense to me.
This would NOT stop me complaining about them.
Agreed. It can be mutual.
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Of course! Sleep and Death are related species, at least in poetry, so that makes very good sense.
P.
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Thank you! I like your plan. I learned to read several languages because I didn't want to have to go through other people's words to get them.