[Catherine Chandler]

This is a very famous Neruda poem and the translation here is very well done. Julie: The Spanish version in the thread does not reflect the stanza breaks.

I have only six nits, three small, one medium and two large.

The small nits are (1) the translator having dropped the word agudos when describing the lover's toes -- Neruda uses every single word with a purpose; (2) the word "shining" for claro, although "clear" would have been worse; and (3) "Through" for Por in L15.

The medium nit is the period instead of the exclamation point at the very end of the poem. A classic Nerudian syntactical device, I'm assuming the translator simply made a typo. At least I hope so!

The first major nit has to do with the word "moistened". Had the translator used the word "dampened" he/she would have approached Neruda's double meaning more faithfully.

The second major nit has to do with the relegation of the word caigo from Neruda's L28 (first word in the line) to L26 in the English translation (and as a result the placement of the words "blind" and "hungry" -- which, by the way, should be "starved" or "famished", not merely hungry ). Through the misplacement, most of the passion in this, the most important part of the poem, is lost.

[Skip Dewahl]

Like some, free verse is not my thing, but I can find nothing here that Neruda did not intend. Very accomplished work. Were this a strictly free-form category contest, it would be hard to beat.

[Janice D. Soderling]

I have a few thoughts about this poem and possible rendering of it. My comments are mostly concerned what is this poem really about and the word choices that map it.

El insecto

De tus caderas a tus pies
quiero hacer un largo viaje. I believe that "largo" here is not "long", but is a reference to the musical term "largo", i.e. a very slow tempo. It is originally Italian but is used in Spanish as in English. And makes much more seductive expression than "long journey".

Soy más pequeño que un insecto. The lover, in order to make this slow journey compares himself to an insect which would not quickly traverse the distance from the hip region to the feet. Establishing this slowness to allow the slow travel of an insect, is I think, essential to the poem, since most women (I think) would not readily warm to the idea of an insect creeping around on their skin. The usual reaction to that is to scream and try to brush it off. HOWEVER I think there is a private joke between Matilde and Pablo here. Consider these lines from "El Olvido", "Oblivion" where the poet reminds his lover that she mistook him for an insect that fell into her skirt (which I think is a joke that she thought he was harmless). I also believe that there is a tie between "El Olvido" and "durmiendo en el viaje".


Entonces no mediste mi estatura,
y al hombre que para ti apartó
la sangre, el trigo, el agua
confundiste
con el pequeño insecto que te cayó en la falda.

These versos were, I believe, not originally written for publication as Neruda was still married to his second wife, so he could afford to include some private jokes. There may be something about this in a biography or suchlike but I have no real information to go on, I am only speculating.

(…)

These lines I think are the key to the later translation of the closing de vasija quemante! Everything this little poet/insect is doing is in reference to his lover's fiery crater wherein (from the insect's perspective) he spies a "dewy rose" or "bedewed rose". At any rate I am not keen on the choice of "moistened" in this forthright poem, but it is admittedly quite a challenge to include the senses of "wet" and "fire" and "crater" and "rose".

Y un cráter, una rosa
de fuego humedecido!

And a crater, a rose
of dewy fire.


Por tus piernas desciendo It seems to me that this spinning and spiraling and descending takes place "between" the lover's legs and not "through" them.

I have to admit that I don't understand why the lover is falling asleep; I think there is something here I am not "getting", something related to a "trance-like state", related in turn to the aforementioned "olvido" of the sister poem with that title.

hilando una espiral
o durmiendo en el viaje
y llego a tus rodillas
de redonda dureza
como a las cimas duras
de un claro continente.
Hacia tus pies resbalo,
a las ocho aberturas,
de tus dedos agudos,
lentos, peninsulares,

I can't make sense of this unless I consider it an erotic jest. "Peninsulares" is defined as "someone from mainland Spain" and the toes (or so it seems) are peninsulas jutting out from the body, the mainland.

If this were mine (which it is not) I would perhaps translate these lines thus (remembering that this is an insect on a journey):


Towards your feet I glide,
slowly, to the eight slits between your toes,
pointy peninsulas.
and fall into the void of white sheets
blind and starving,
searching for the contours
of your fiery crater.

PS, I am not keen on "hips" though I know that is one translation. There is surely a better word. But I haven't found it yet.

[Janice D. Soderling]

In the clear light of day, I think "un largo viaje" probably translates as "a long journey" after all, but that the subconscious will register largo=slow when reading.

More neck-out-sticking though.

No saldré nunca de ella.

I wonder if this isn't also part of the jest. (I'll never get out of this.)

I still think it is more complicated than the several translations I've seen, which seem to concentrate on the more immediate translation of the words, without mining the essence of the poem.

I wish a native speaker (Pedro, Rhina) would weigh in on this.

[Ann Drysdale]

Slow and long are often the same thing. Especially with journeys. And if you are an insect covering the terrain in crawlytime.

After all, the "largo" instruction tells you to take a lo-o-ong time to get to the end of Ombra mai fu. Cruise, it insists; don't commute.