Cry me a makar

“I’ve got a suggestion for you. Can I buy you a glass of wine?” The answer to that question is always yes. We were in rehearsal for Lorca’s Shadow, a devised theatre piece by Moving Parts Theatre Company, and this suggestion from Corinne Harris, the play’s director, was to change the course of my life.

“Only if you want to, and it might not work, but do you think you could translate some of the poems into Shetlandic?” I’d been writing poems fairly consistently in Shaetlan for two or three years by this point, but my primary creative outlet remained theatre. Still, it was too good an idea not to pursue. I knew Shaetlan and knew how to write a decent poem in it. The García Lorca poems whose English translations we’d been giving voice to were extraordinary so, why not? What could possibly go wrong?

There are of course many more answers to that question than there are to “Can I buy you a glass of wine?” and, seen from over a decade and a half’s experience, I would be more daunted today, if not any less determined. However, naivety was on my side, and, armed with a bilingual Selected Poems from Bloodaxe with translations by Merryn Williams, I started to feel my way into the process.

Like many Shetlanders and Scots my age, I’d taken French to Standard Grade level and had taken a semester of Spanish from cold during my undergraduate degree at the University of Stirling, but any grasp I had of the noble tongue of Español was limited, and initially the pieces I created were translations of translations.

One of the first was of the poem Canción del Naranjo Seco, an early poem of Lorca’s in which an orange tree entreats a woodcutter to cut its shadow. There are more similarities between rural Andalusia and Shetland than one might expect, but they do not extend to the presence of orange groves, so already the sense of a culture being grafted onto another exists. 

Canción del Naranjo Seco 

A Carmen Morales

Leñador.
Córtame la sombra.
Líbrame del suplicio
de verme sin toronjas.

¿Por qué nací entre espejos?
El día me da vueltas.
Y la noche me copia
en todas sus estrellas.

Quiero vivir sin verme.
Y hormigas y vilanos,
soñaré que son mis
hojas y mis pájaros.

Leñador.
Córtame la sombra.
Líbrame del suplicio
de verme sin toronjas.

Da Sang o da Barren Orange Tree

Exmin,
cut me shadow.
Free me fae da torment
o seein mesel wioot fruit.

Why wis I boarn among mirrirs?
Da day circles me
an da nicht copies me
in aa hir staurs.

I want ta live blind tae mesel,
an ants an husks
Ah’ll dream become
me laives an me birds.

Exmin,
cut me shadow.
Free me fae da torment
o seein mesel wioot fruit.
 

Song of the Barren Orange Tree

Woodcutter,
cut my shadow.
Deliver me from the torture
of seeing myself fruitless.

Why was I born surrounded
by mirrors? The day turns round me.
And night reproduces me
in every one of her stars.

I want to live without seeing
myself. And I shall dream
that ants and husks have changed
into my birds and foliage.

Woodcutter
cut my shadow.
Deliver me from the torture
of seeing myself fruitless.

From the distance of almost twenty years now, it is interesting for me to note some decisions, and glean from them a sense of my translatory (such as it is) and poetic practises. In the very first line, I have chosen ‘Exmin’ over Williams’ ‘Woodcutter’ — a couple of things are happening here that I think are worth exploring. ‘Woodcutter’ is an excellent choice, in many ways better than mine. The root of ‘leñador’ en Español is ‘leña,’ given as ‘firewood’ by the Cambridge Dictionary, so ‘Exmin’ is sacrificing a relationship that exists in the original between the tree and the leñador. I don’t know if orange wood burns particularly well, but it’s clear there is a relationship. Also, I lose a syllable against both the original and the English translation. So, what the hell was I playing at?

There are two potential motivations, both of which were almost certainly present in my decision. Most egregiously, I am artificially inflating the linguistic distance between Shaetlan and Ingles — I could have gone with ‘Widcutter’ and been just as faithful to the original. That I didn’t owes no small part to the fact that there isn’t really a word for that kind of person in Shaetlan, consequent to the marked absence of forestry in our lives. Da ex (axe), bi distinction, is ubiquitous in the life of the Shetlander. Hence, ‘Exmin.’

The next notable deviation between the versions comes at the end of the first stanza. García Lorca’s orange tree begs to be relieved of the ordeal of seeing itself ‘sin toronias’ — literally, without grapefruits. Neither Williams nor I have approached the transspeciality of our fruitless tree; however, where she has gone with ‘fruitless,’ I opted for ‘wioot fruit.’ Whilst making this essay, I sought the guidance of a native Spanish speaker who has translated poems of mine into Spanish and delivers excellent, extensive translation projects across the Spanish–English language pair. Growing up in Mexico with British parents, she is genuinely bilingual. She provided the confirmation I sought — that ‘toronias’ are indeed grapefruits, and spoke eloquently of how mysterious it was for a naranjo to mourn its lack of toronias. We are both quite a few syllables light; however, the syntax of ‘wioot fruit’ is closer to ‘sin toronias’ than ‘fruitless’ is.

I must point out I have no desire to purport either translation to be “better” or “more correct” or “more faithful.” I merely wish to attempt to explore why translatory decisions are taken in order to better understand the process myself and to edge towards understanding its relationship to writing original poetry. I never have been and am not likely to ever be in the business of the kind of extended translation project between two major languages that Williams has delivered with such aplomb in her Lorca Selected Poems, and which gave me access to the magical world of Lorca’s vivid imagination and exquisite poetry.

In the second stanza, our translations deviate at four points — ‘entre espejos’ has come across as ‘among mirrors’ in Shaetlan (I would probably write ‘amang’ da day) and as ‘surrounded by mirrors’ en Ingles. I think ‘among’ is easier to say, but I admire the striking imagery Williams evokes in the reader through ‘surrounded by’ — the tree it seems cannot escape her disturbing reflection whichever way she turns.

‘El diá me da vueltas’ becomes ‘The day turns around me’ in the English, and ‘Da day circles me’ in Shaetlan. I am a syllable shy of Williams in this line, and two shy of Federico. Williams builds on the imagery created in the previous line, and I think tacks closer to the Español. Rendering ‘me da vueltas’ as ‘circles me’ takes some liberties. If they are justifiable, it is in the pursuit of a poem that works in the target language. Shaetlan an Ingleesh are different languages, so the Williams and Williamson versions will not and cannot be the same. The languages work differently, so the poems work differently.

In our next two deviations, Williams has taken ‘me copia’ as ‘reproduces me’ — a nice thematic hook back into the themes of childlessness — and ‘todas’ as ‘every one.’ Our roles are reversed here. I like to use cognates where they exist, and the sonic quality of ‘reproduces’ sits outside the tongue I am working with, hence ‘copies.’ Also, the one in ‘every one’ is not necessarily implied in ‘todas.’ Going with ‘aa hir staurs’ seems more direct, however ‘every one’ does create imagery of a night sky with stars all around, resonating with the circularity of the day which begins the stanza. Across the second two lines, the original uses fifteen syllables. Williams is very close at fourteen, identical if you speak ‘every’ with three syllables — I am very sparse at my taciturn ten.

The liberty I take in the opening line of the third stanza is I think my furthest departure, from both the original and from Williams’ English version. There is nothing in ‘sin verme’ to indicate blindness — Williams is far more faithful to Lorca with ‘without seeing myself,’ but the Spanish is so much more compact, and cutting as fast and loose as I have with the meaning allows me to keep the ‘ants and husks’ on the second line before the dreams of pajaros. I am very surprised to find that ants are ants and not mooratoogs, which are technically beetles, but is one of the Shaetlan words I have the greatest affection for rolling out at any given opportunity.

So, given all of this, what are we left with? Clearly, three languages. The language of Shaetlan has suffered many indignities over the years, some from detractors with cultural and economic power, others from her own speakers. The fact that it was known for many years as ‘da dialect’ creates an apparently irresistible temptation to dismiss the rich linguistic heritage we have as just that, a collection of mispronunciations to be beaten out generation by generation. Indeed, for certain generations, there was a very real economic imperative to shed the linguistic skin of Shaetlan in order to get on, be that at home or further afield.

Yet serious linguistic study, the kind of which is far beyond me, indicates Shaetlan is a language. Furthermore, on a philosophical level, it is fair to say and worth repeating until it doesn’t need to be repeated, then repeating some more, that language is a behaviour, that the impulse to create language hierarchies exists purely to serve more material and mundane hierarchies, that in the history of language development everything downstream of Latin is ‘vernacular.’

A fourth language is also present. Most European languages, certainly Spanish, English, and Shaetlan, lie downstream of Latin. One of the few languages that lies upstream of Latin is poetry. Whatever it is inside Lorca that drew him to create this and so many other extraordinary poems is a rare gift, one that has clearly been bestowed on Merryn Williams, and some fraction of which it is my greatest honour to carry.

And what of the poems? In Canción del Naranjo Seco we have a strikingly original poem in Spanish by Federico García Lorca. Can Song of the Barren Orange Tree be described as that poem in English? If we only read that, can we say we know Canción del Naranjo Seco? If the translated version can be said to be the original in another language, what necessity is there for translations to be performed? Would the literary world really be any poorer in the absence of a Shaetlandified Sang o da Barren Orange Tree? 

One thing I think we can say is that el Naranjo Seco of Lorca’s Andalusian youth has more toronias than it seems to believe.