2014 TBO 1G--Leal's butterflies
 

"Estampa" by Francisco Leal (Chile, 1977- )
from his book Insectos (Montevideo: Artefacto, 2005)


VERSE TRANSLATION:

Pattern

Round and round in the washing machine
in the water and suds
among the other colored clothes
is a tiny pair of underpants
patterned with butterflies
fading
in the water and suds
among the other colored clothes.


SPANISH ORIGINAL:

Estampa

Gira y gira en la lavadora
entre agua y espuma
y otras prendas de colores
un minúsculo calzón
con estampas de mariposas
que se destiñen
entre agua y espuma
y otras prendas de colores.


ENGLISH PROSE CRIB:

Pattern

Goes around and around in the washing machine
between water and foam
and other clothing of color
a minuscule panty
with a pattern of butterflies
that fade
between water and foam
and other clothing of color.

Commentary
 

NOTES ON THE POEM CHOICE:

This is the kind of poem that women get slammed for writing, for two reasons. First, and most obviously, the subject is a domestic chore. How dull is that? Second, this poem's "message" has more to do with the establishment of a mood than with the articulation of an argument or narrative. As a result, nothing really happens. The poem ends almost literally where it begins, with the repetition of lines 2 and 3. There's no forward motion, no development. If the poem takes us anywhere, it's to the laundromat...and who wants to go there who doesn't have to?

[Edited to say: Obviously, that's not my opinion of this poem. But I've seen similar themes and approaches dismissed as Unworthy of the Lofty Pedestal of Poetry, or, worse, regarded as having been written by and for women: chick lit.]

I'm not going to congratulate the poet for being male. In fact, it annoys me when male writers get fussed over for bravely tackling traditionally female topics like parenthood and household tasks. The attitude that it's extra cool when men write about such things implies that it's still inevitably clichéd when women do, and that testosterone--not talent--is required to turn such unpromising material into true art.

In my experience, poetic subject matter is never clichéd--or original, for that matter; poetic treatments are.

So I think it's best to focus on the poem itself--what it attempts and what it achieves--rather than the sex of the author. Well, then, why did I bring up the gender issue at all? Because it gave me a convenient excuse to preach against the idea that poems are "about" their subject matter or primary images--which happens to be an idea which penalizes women more often than men.

Returning to the topic of repetition (heh!), this poem isn't a triolet, but it faces the same challenge that French repeating forms do: namely, how to keep the repetition from feeling redundant. Some poets try to make each iteration of a repetend slightly different, either by investing the same words with different meanings, rearranging the punctuation, or actually changing some of the text. But in the case of this poem, keeping the repeated lines identical fits perfectly with the sense of circular motion.

And I really do see those two identical lines differently, after the butterflies' fading is mentioned. On a literal level, I've become aware that the relentless swirling of water and suds is directly responsible for that fading effect. And focusing on the depictions of butterflies has momentarily turned them into actual butterflies, just long enough to take my thoughts out into the real world...where there is also circular motion going on, constantly. The repetend encourages me to take a perspective farther out still, and consider our round planet from space, with its water and colors and sudsy swirls of cloud, rather like the round window of a front-loading washer. I ponder the fact that we measure time in planetary turns, and I think of how those time-turns eventually cause the beauty of all living things to fade, as surely as the agitation of the washing machine is fading the butterflies on that poor little panty.

That is not the only possible interpretation, and I like that. Perhaps the fact that it is a woman's panty hints that the owner's beauty is also fading. Perhaps the tininess of the pair of underpants indicates that the wearer is a little girl, who cannot remain a little girl forever, to the sadness of the person doing her laundry. Perhaps the fact that the butterfly pattern decorates a delicate, intimate garment, damaged by friction with "other colored clothing" that need never be hidden, suggests something about sexual repression.

The poet has established a sense of perpetual motion, and a rather mantra-like, meditative mood...but the particular significance is left to the reader's imagination.

NOTES ON THE TRANSLATION:

The main difference I notice between the original and the verse translation is the role of verbs...which, in a poem "more about mood than message," is crucial.

The Spanish begins with a verb, gira: "turns, spins, rotates, revolves". The activity of that verb is further intensified with repetition, illustrating the repetitive action itself. To me, the English construction "Round and round...(line 2)...(line 3)...is" does not connote the same intensity of action: the frenetic verb has been downgraded to a mere state of being, and even that gets postponed until line 4. I would prefer something like "It spins and spins", or maybe "It swirls and swirls", followed by the prepositional phrases, followed by a colon to introduce the mysterious subject, the pair of underpants.

Changing the active "se destiñen" to the participle "fading" also sacrifices some of the original's frenzied motion. Before I read the Spanish, I had thought that the panty, rather than the butterflies, was fading...which is a far less interesting idea. I'd suggest either "which fade" there, or something to play up the similarity between se destiñen, "they fade" and destino, "destiny": "fated to fade," perhaps? (Nah, I think I'd prefer the active verb to the pun. Again, I think it's important to use active verbs to maintain that sense of relentless motion.)

One of the things I most like about the translation is the alliteration of t's and p's in lines 4 and 5: is a tiny pair of underpants / patterned with butterflies. The effect isn't overly dramatic, but I do notice it, and find it beautiful. Its sonic pattern to help me to imagine the visual pattern.

I beg forgiveness for beginning with a nit. When I first read "Round and round... IS..." it struck me as unidiomatic, and I wondered if it might be a miscopying. But it's in Julie's commentary, so no. Am I just odd in thinking it's not natural sounding? (Wouldn't be the first time.)

Like Julie again, I'd like a more definite verb (whirls? spins? tumbles, even?) at that spot, and my brain can almost feel the translator choosing that more definite verb first, being dissatisfied with its heavy stress, and switching to something lighter.

Hey Maryann, “round and round…is a …pair of…” went right by me – if you hadn’t raised a Q I'd never have paid attention. An across the pond thing maybe? That’s coz ‘is’ comes paired with 'pair' and right after ‘among’ + ‘the other…clothes’ so positioning’s established clearly. Maybe you've got the same reaction to this as I get to the Americanese "Jones reported Sunday that..." - I really really need 'on' there, coz days can't be reported... "reported on Sunday" - and there's always this mental red pen making corrections, no matter how often that phrasing comes up :)

Gut reaction to this poem is linking the ‘tiny’ to butterflies whose life span is also tiny and feeling that sense of momentary sorrow over the inevitability of the little girl’s “littleness” coming to an end as the next cycle of development begins. I'd actually wondered if 'tiny' could imply belonging to a small girl's doll - but either way, it's a stage that ends to allow the next stage. My only nit would be to remove all of what become very dominant def.articles – removing them might also help to highlight the focal image by making it the only 'def.article', so to speak. Interesting piece, yes.

Oh, good grief! The Pond strikes again! I read this, smiled and started to think what to say about the whyness of my smiling. It never occurred to me for a millisecond to wonder about the gender of the arse that owned the underpants. I "knew" it was male and carried on.

This has all the simplicity of the red wheelbarrow. It's a take-it-or-leave-it jumping-off point. A little thing, to hold in a clenched fist, like the thing Seree gave me on another of these threads, a thing that I wrote down on the pad by the phone. (It was the phrase "associative thinking", which I'd never heard before and which I shall cherish because I didn't know how much I needed it till it I saw it.)

I then noticed in the crib that the word is "panty", which is little and twee (and girly) and the translator has made it less sickly for me, but why do I like it so much better? It's only for Brits that the gender is changed by the word chosen to replace it.

Oh, this is going to go round and round in my head like stuff in the frontloader that I can see between the banisters if I look down to my left. The poem sat me in front of it, watching, as I sometimes do. Did I put the red Sloggis in or did I leave them in the bathroom? I watch the whizziness and yes - there they are. I feel happy for having spotted them. They are a feature of the midweek load. One day the gusset will give and they won't be. But not yet, not yet.

Let me throw a different detergent capsule in among the word-washing here. What about that phrase in the crib "of color"? It must be important. It is repeated. Is it a metaphor for... ?

Here (in the UK) when washing was a bigger deal than it is now, we used to refer to the contents of our washloads as "whites" or "coloureds" and nobody thought twice. Why, my neighbour Mary, who moved to Tenby, used to ask me not to burn my garden rubbish when she "had her whites out".

Mary died a couple of years ago. One of her front teeth was missing...

Oh, stop it, poem! I am not sure what it is you're trying to say, but I'm listening, I'm listening. And no, on second thoughts, don't stop. I'm enjoying the ride.

I think my girls wore underpants when they were little. Or even just pants. There was a phrase they used in those days. 'This is pants!' Meaning no bloody good. 'Knickers!' on the other hand, was a general expostulation of annoyance. Isn't that so? Sweet little poem. Men can write sweet little poems. I do.

Everybody else has said all the interesting stuff. This is exquisite. Lovely the way the U of “butterflies” echoes all the way through, (redeeming the heaviness of ‘suds’ which otherwise lacks the evanescence of ‘espuma’).

Seems like this would be a contemporary poet worth exploring more --- http://central.colostate.edu/people/francisc/

My first reaction too was – ah — William Carlos Williams

Here’s a website of his book and all of his poems in Spanish -- all insects!

http://www.letras.s5.com/fl091005.htm

I'm not sure I "get" the poem in Spanish, which makes it harder to comment on the translation, but I'll chirp in with a few comments anyway.

First, I think the word "pattern" may not be the right choice. According to my dictionaries, a pattern on clothing would be an estampado (same root, different form), and estampa is simply a shape or image without the notion of how various shapes form a pattern of any kind. Since the word is not just in the poem, but its title as well, saying "pattern" may be imposing some sort of metaphor onto the poem that isn't actually there.

Next, I don't care for translating "de colores" as "colored." I think the sense of the phrase is "colorful" or "multi-colored." It's a phrase that is often used to suggest diversity, like a rainbow, and in fact it is the name (I believe) of the United Farm Workers anthem under Cesar Chavez. (I'm not at all sure, but the poet may be trying to suggest some sort of assimilation, with the diverse colors fading among one another as they spin around together in the wash?)

I suppose calzón probably refers to a woman's panties, given that it has butterflies on it, but the word can also refer to a man's boxer shorts or a variety of other undergarments, so the translator apparently tried to play it down the middle and avoid being too specific.

Finally, the word "beween" in the translation bothers me a bit, since I think "entre" here is closer to "among" -- the undergarment is not located physically in between the water and the suds (how would that even be possible?) but is one of the items floating in the sudsy water.

In this case, I just can't summon up much enthusiasm for the original, so the translation also is not doing much for me. Julie has made a good case for how one could read deeper meaning into the scenario, and the form does mimic the effect of a washing machine. But my reaction is still lukewarm.

Susan

There's something at once self-indulgent and self-consciously naïve about this piece. One might almost think a child had written it, except a child would be less pretentious. The piece embodies everything I dislike about so much contemporary poetry – lack of craftsmanship, of clarity, of having anything meaningful to say.

I thought of Williams also. And I should disclose, I'm not a big fan of his either.

I apologize that I haven't commented on the translation per se. It's hard to do so with any enthusiasm when the poem leaves me cold.

I love both the poem and your feminist rant insights, Julie!

At first I thought this was just a whimsical little poem about a pair of butterfly-print panties swirling around and around in the wash. (I don't mean "just" in a dismissive way; a poem can be a small, pleasing thing, and that's certainly better than what a lot of poems are.) Then I thought some more about that word "fading." That made me think of the endangered monarch butterflies - but like you said, it's not pinned down (sorry!) to one interpretation.

Gender aside, the undies are tiny, which I assumed meant they were an adult's sexy undies (though you're right, they could be a child's). For me, sexy undies + the title suggests it's about the narrator's relationship history (a repetitive cycle of short-lived relationships). Or it could be about fading beauty, or lost innocence. Maybe the poem is about all these things. It works on a purely superficial level, too.

p.s. Ann, I'm still thinking about that "of color," too. Like you said, it's repeated, it seems to be significant. Maybe the point of that line is to differentiate that particular garment from the others, to show that it stands out in the crowd, while at the same time giving us a fuller picture of a load of colored wash. The relationship is fading, this lover is beginning to blend in with all the rest... I don't know, just a thought.

p.p.s. Roger, Google Translate tells me that "estampa" means stamping, stamp, print, or imprint. In English, fabric with butterflies printed all over it would be called a butterfly print or a butterfly pattern. But even if you're using, say, a rubber stamp to create one lone image at a time, there's still the implication that the individual print is not a unique creation, but one of a series of identical images, i.e. part of a pattern.

Now, in the light of day, I see I was a bit of a grump last night, for which I apologize.

I'm still not crazy about the poem. But, paying closer attention to the original, I see there is something in the sound, in the open vowel sounds and feminine endings that gives it a feeling of motion, of turning, that is inextricably connected to the meaning of the poem. It's hard to capture the openness and flow of Spanish into English, I know, but I feel that whatever is sonically happening in the original, is completely lost in the translation.

For example, the translation begins "round and round" which does not capture the smooth movement of “gira y gira,” which has more of that open sound I was talking about. Why not "turning and turning" which is more true to the sense, and captures more that feeling of motion. (And does not convey that unfortunate association of "round and round the mulberry bush,” which I heard in my head as soon as I started reading the poem!)

Perhaps it's virtually impossible to capture the music of lines like:

entre agua y espuma
(Suds? No!)

or

con estampas de mariposas

It almost doesn't make sense to give examples, as the success of the whole poem depends on its music, which, in my opinion, is completely lost in the translation.

"Turning and turning . . ." for me would suggest Yeats's "Second Coming" (which, incidentally, I once turned into a washing machine joke to write a tailgater).

Just out of curiosity, I put the poem into Google Translate, and Google rendered the first line exactly the same way our translator did, i.e., "Round and round in the washing machine"

Well, Bob, it doesn't have to be "turning and turning". I know it's already took. But something like that. Anyway, evoking Yeats might be preferable to a nursery rhyme! :)

P.S. I remember your tailgater! It was a good one!

This looks like a nostalgic piece about either a parent remembering its little child's faded past, or, a grown child thinking of its own. The "butterflies" have flown away, at any rate and won't fly back in all their vivid glory, no matter what, as Omar Khayyam himself probably would have concurred. Nice wistful imagery. It is what it is.

never mind.

Tailgater, indeed.

There are some poems that require a context if one is to fully appreciate them. Something that may be quite clear in a specific political or cultural context often sails over the heads of the uninitiated. This poem may be one instance of that.

I am going way out on the proverbial limb, which I have often had sawed off while I sat on the far end, but it seems to me that this poem harks back to the Chile of Salvador Allende.

There is a Latin American expression "hablar a calzón quitado" which means "to talk frankly or openly", roughly "to put one's cards on the table". That, I think, is what this poem is really about: the "washing" of the post-Allende government, the still dirty laundry of the Pinochet dictatorship.

More neck-out-sticking. I wonder if the butterflies might not have their origin in the anti-Fascist poem by Montale, "Hitler Spring". In translation by George Kay, the first stanza goes thus:

Dense the white cloud of the moths going mad
whirls about faint globes and on the embankment,
streches along the ground a coverlet on which
the foot crackles as on sugar; the coming summer frees
the nightly chill that tll now was enclosed in the secret pits of the dead season,
in orchards that from Maiano clamber down to these sands.

from the second stanza:

(...) the rite of mild executioners who do not yet know blood
has turned to a foul reeling of shattered wings,
of wraiths at the river-edge, and the water goes on gnawing
the banks and no one now is guiltless.

And ends;

with the breathing of a dawn that tomorrow for everyone
may show again, white but without wings
of horror, on burnt wadis of the south . . .

The equivalents translated by Jonathan Gallasi :

The thick white cloud of mad moths whirl
around the pale lights and the parapets,
spreading a blanket on the earth that snaps
like sugar underfoot; the coming summer
frees the night frost locked in the dead season's secret cellars
cellars and the gardens
that scale down from Maino to these sands.

(...) the feast
of the mild murders still innocent of blood
has turned into a foul Virginia reel of shattered wings,
larvae on the sandbars, and the water rushes in
to eat the shore and no one's blameless anymore.

**

with the breath of a dawn that may break tomorrow for all,
white, but without wings of terror,
over the scorched rockbeds of the south . . .

Having followed up this hunch, I started to investigate the poet and found this encouraging text at http://romancelanguages.missouri.edu/people/leal.shtml

I'd like to add that "mariposa" translates to both "butterfly" and "moth".

Just a note to say that the panties in question cannot whirl, spin or tumble in the water-and-suds cycle. They may whirl or spin in the spin cycle, and later, tumble in the dryer. But I'm just an old housewife out of Wilkes-Barre, PA. What do I know ;) ?

Not that it really matters, but mariposa by itself does not (as far as I know) mean moth, a word that is usually covered by polilla. A moth can be referred to as a mariposa nocturna, but mariposa by itself is just a butterfly. It's far too pretty a word to be a moth!

Lordy - mine do!

Clothes in, detergent in, press the tit and the machine fills. Then the inner drum slowly spins. Up to the top they all go, then tumble down past the glass. Admittedly they don't really whirl till the drum speeds up to empty the suds, but for a long time they dance, turning and turning in the bubbling gyre.

Trust me; I don't have television. And I don't get out much.


Editing back to say that the above refers to Cathy's post on the previous page (#20) and has to do with laundry rather than lepidoptera. Bob and I cross-posted.

Hey Bob! I'm gonna sic the Moth Anti-Defamation League on you!

http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb2...othra_2004.jpg

Well, I did as I often do when following up a hunch. I went to the English section to see what "Butterfly" resp. "moth" would translate as in Spanish.

"Moth" translates as "mariposa" f. And the expression "like moths around a flame" translates to "como las mariposa alrededor de la luz". So I think we can safely say that "mariposa" is sometimes "moth" and sometimes "butterfly".

"Palomila" is a clothes moth, you know that dines on woolen things, but there are other kinds of moths as well.

I will be the first to admit that it is pure speculation on my part that the poet was influenced by the Montale poem. But poets being whom they are, I would be surprised if there isn't a connection, an association that would be recognized by those "in the know".

bolas de la polilla (naftalina)

I don't know about Chile, but in Uruguay one never calls a butterfly a polilla or a polilla a butterfly. A polilla is a moth, and we pronounce is po-LEE-shah.

Wow, Janice's political interpretation blew my mind. I still don't know what to make of this poem. It's a little zoom-lens snapshot that could mean nearly anything in context. As such, it seems to me that translation is particularly tricky, and I feel a vague dissatisfaction as others have mentioned with the flatness of phrases like 'in the water and suds'. But this is a poem that will stick with me somehow.

As I said, I'm not crazy about the poem, but whatever merits it does have - mainly sonic, IMO - fail to come through in the translation. For me this raises the issue, how much can you rely on a translation when you don't know the original? Which of course, is the crux of translation. Because after all, isn't it the translator's responsibility to capture that elusive element – the poetry that, as Robert Frost says "gets lost in translation" – and bring forth the spirit of the original to those who couldn't read it otherwise. I'd be curious what others think, although maybe this is a topic for another thread.

That said, this poem seems to me virtually impossible to translate. I myself wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot fabric softener!

I would love to learn more about this poem and its poet. Cathy?

http://www.scielo.cl/scielo.php?pid=...pt=sci_arttext

http://romancelanguages.missouri.edu/people/leal.shtml

Thanks for the references. The Spanish one translated very well.

I really enjoyed puzzling this out and hope you will translate more of his work. I'm sure he is going to be a major poet. I hanker to buy his book now, but maybe I should wish for it as a christmas present.