Rueda — Watermelon
 

Salvador Rueda (Spain, 1857-1933)


DRAFT FOUR (with green, purple, and blue tweaks)

The Watermelon

As if, with an intense and sudden flash,
the dawn itself had broken through its peel —
released, then widened by the shining steel —
the watermelon flaunted its red flesh.

The glistening within that oblong slash
resembled, in its glowing cochineal,
that fiery mouth whose spurts of joy reveal
a simmering ebullience, wildly fresh.

Slice after slice — brought expertly to life
when parted by the pen-strokes of the knife —
maintained the ruse no slices had been made.

Then the hand unfurled them, without warning,
and, taken by surprise, one saw adorning
the dish a ring of red half-moons displayed.


L5 was:
     The glistening of that dazzling, oblong slash
L8 was:
     the ebullience within it, wildly fresh.
Before that L8 was:
     ebullience whose simmer's wildly fresh.
LL9–11 were:
     Slice after slice — adroitly brought to life
     by strokes of the dividing, staining knife —
     kept the illusion not a slice was made.
Before that, LL9–11 were:
     Slice after slice the ink-strokes of the knife
     skillfully divided into life,
     within the illusion not a slice was made.
Before that, LL9–11 were:
     Slice by slice, the nimbly flourished knife
     went on dividing, while it brought to life
     the illusion not a single slice was made.


DRAFT THREE

Same as Draft Four, except for the following changes:

L5 was:
     The glistening of that oblong, dazzling slash
LL7–8 were:
     that fiery mouth whose bursts of joy reveal
     the ebullience of lava, wildly fresh.
Before that, L8 was:
     ebullience of lava, wild and fresh.


DRAFT TWO

Watermelon

As if, with an intense and sudden flash,
the dawn itself had broken through its peel —
released, then widened by the shining steel —
the watermelon flaunted its red flesh.

The glistening of that long and dazzling slash
resembled, in its glowing cochineal,
that fiery mouth whose bursts of joy reveal
fresh lava, bubbling, ready to unleash.

Slice by slice, the nimbly flourished knife
went separating, while it brought to life
the illusion not a single slice was made.

These the hand unfurled then, with no warning,
and, taken by surprise, one saw adorning
the dish a ring of red half-moons displayed.


DRAFT ONE

Same as Draft Two, except for the following changes:
LL8–10 were:
     what’s freshly-boiled and ready to unleash.
     Slice by slice, the subtly-wielded knife
     that made dividing gestures brought to life
Later, L10 was:
     went dividing, while it brought to life
LL12–13 were:
     The hand pushed these apart, then, without warning,
     and unexpectedly one saw adorning


ORIGINAL SPANISH
LITERAL ENGLISH PROSE CRIB

La sandía
The Watermelon

Cual si de pronto se entreabriera el día
despidiendo una intensa llamarada,
por el acero fúlgido rasgada
mostró su carne roja la sandía.

As if suddenly the day (dawn) were cracked half-open
releasing an intense flash,
widened by the shining steel,
the watermelon showed its red flesh.

Carmín incandescente parecía
la larga y deslumbrante cuchillada,
como boca encendida y desatada
en frescos borbotones de alegría.

Red-hot carmine/cochineal, seemed
the long and dazzling slash,
like (a) mouth, ignited and unleashed [Edited to say that that's too literal: "fiery and uncontrolled" would is better.]
in fresh bubblings of joy.

Tajada tras tajada, señalando
las fue el hábil cuchillo separando,
vivas a la ilusión como ningunas.

Slice after slice, gesturing
[Edited to add "marking / them" as a possible definition of "señalando / las," if one assumes a hyphen after "señalando"]
went the skilled knife separating them,
(while they were) alive to the illusion that there were none (of them).
[Edited to add another possibility: "(while they were) alive to the illusion like no others."]

Las separó la mano de repente,
y de improviso decoró la fuente
un círculo de rojas medias lunas.

The hand separated them suddenly,
and unexpectedly, decorating the platter
was a circle of red half-moons.

A sonnet about the slicing of a watermelon!

My only real problem is with S2L4, where you, and perhaps the poet too, see a boiling pot, but you shift attention to something freshly boiled inside that’s “ready to unleash”—unleash what? BTW, I wouldn’t hyphenate “freshly boiled” or “subtly wielded,” though I think Matt told me it’s de rigueur in British English.

I have a minor reservation about S3L3, where the crib says that the slices themselves were under the illusion that no slices had been made, while the translation leads me to believe it’s the viewer’s illusion. Ultimately, it may come to the same thing, though.

Delicious, Julie!

Hi, Julie—

Salvador Rueda is a poet I had not previously encountered, so I looked for some information about him. There was very little in English, but a little more in Spanish. When I learned that he was from Málaga in Andalucía it struck me that the watermelon was being compared to a flamenco dancer, its red slices like the red ruffles of a dancer’s dress, and the speaker is admiring the knife skills of the chef as he would admire the precise, violent motions of a flamenco guitarist. You skillfully play up this comparison with words like “intense,” “flaunted,” and “fiery.”

I’m very impressed with the grace and ease of your translation. You stay very close to the literal meaning, but manage to reproduce the exact rhythm and rhyme scheme of the original sonnet. I always learn a great deal from studying your translations, Julie. Fine work.

Glenn

Thanks, Carl and Glenn. Several tweaks posted above as Draft Two.

Carl, I was trying to resist mentioning lava in S2, since Rueda didn't come right out and mention it, but I'll do so now.

You are correct that adverbs ending in -ly before adjectives are generally unhyphenated. I'm constantly forgetting that. Thanks.

Full disclosure: I am not 100% certain how to parse the syntax about the illusion in the first tercet. "Vivas," alive, is definitely feminine plural, in agreement with the "tajadas," slices. But I'm hoping I've got the gist, and that, as you hope as well, it doesn't much matter.

Glenn, I too was surprised, too at how little info I found online about Salvador Rueda. Almost all of the Spanish modernists (the Generation of 98) cite him as a big influence, and Miguel de Unamuno wrote the prologue to one of his books of poetry. Due to his extensive travels in the Americas and the Philippines, Rueda was given the title Poeta de la Raza (Poet of the Race, referring to people across the globe whose cultural heritage was partly derived from Spanish colonialism). Yet he doesn't even have an English-language Wikipedia entry. Strange. Sic transit gloria mundi, I guess.

Julie, my misreadings are legendary, but if Rueda meant lava, I’m glad you made it clear for me. I saw a leg of something boiling in a pot! I’m still bothered by “unleash,” though, which as far as I know is strictly transitive. How about “fresh lava bubbling up from a crevasse.”

Carl, I think you are right that "unleash" is not quite right. "Desatado/a" literally means "untied," but the less literal "uncontrolled," "wild," or "frenzied" would be the more usual translation (cf. the WordReference entry here). I'll keep poking at that bit. [Edited to say: Draft Three now posted above!] Thanks for the very helpful pushback on that.

I feel confident that the "mouth" to which Rueda is comparing the glistening watermelon flesh must contain red-hot molten stone or metal. Red sauce boiling in a pot doesn't give off light, which is a concept Rueda uses three different words to convey in that quatrain ("incandescente," "deslumbrante", and "encendida"). The mouth of a volcano is indeed referred to as a "boca" in Spanish, e.g. in this geologic vocabulary list:

But if you are right that it's a volcano image, shouldn't you nonetheless preserve the poet's choice not to say so explicitly? It would have been so easy for Rueda to be explicit, so it was a major choice of his not to be. You wouldn't translate a riddle by including the answer in explicit terms, so I'm not sure it's a good idea to supply info here that poet purposely withheld.

Julie's Watermelon
 

Hello, Julie,

This is my take:

Incandescent carmine it seemed
the long and dazzling gash,
as a mouth afire and set free
in fresh eruptions of glee.

The simple explanation is just pointing to the eruptions of glee. But the first thing that came to mind was that someone's already ignited mouth was untied--I don't see lava anywhere. Not only that, but lava would steal too much attention from the watermelon. Poor watermelon, it even decorates the plate at the end.

When a woman (the watermelon is female in Spanish) 'está encendida, she is furious or otherwise 'on fire.' When she is 'desatada' she is loose, she is not behaving as per social convention - she is wild and unbridled, as I imagine this mouth saying all she wishes: all delight and pleasure and happy, it turns out. Rueda is somethin' else.. ha.

I would like to know what prompted you to choose this particular poem. I see it as a puzzle of fun for the author, who plays with the language. He makes it ambiguous and defeats the ambiguity at the same time. It is a very awkward read. Do you like puzzles?

Without a doubt your imagination is more active than most, something wonderful to be blessed with, indeed.

Thank you again for your comments on my little sonnet, and for the French chimney. I wanted to ask you if I should drop the accents from 'etagere' but didn't want to bump the thread..

~mignon

Hello, Roger
 

I love this comment! Because the first conclusion about Rueda, based solely on this poem, is that he stretches the language as far as he can in order to fool the reader first and then release him. See my comment right before this post.

Do you think that a poet of some stature would take the watermelon as a serious 'theme' to write about? What he does to the language is painful--he tortures it. What he does to his readers, well, I suspect that he did it for his friends, to dare them--I can't imagine anyone being able to stretch it any further.

I'm hating this. And I'm not laughing anymore. But I did the translation. I am one of those who, often enough, has to do the translation before I can comment on it. This one ouched.

~mignon

Addendum: count the ways in which he stretches the meaning--you may be surprised.. but no lava--that would bump out the 'malicious' intent--obviously, he was a genius with a sense of humor.. (Back in here to add that it's a dark sense of humor--it took a while for me to notice.)

Thanks for your guidance, Roger and mignon. Draft Four is posted above, with the main changes to the second quatrain.

You are both certainly correct that Rueda likes to leave things open to several meanings, and that my coming right out and saying "lava" excludes other possibilities (as well as spoiling the guessing game for the reader). Rueda's mention of joy rather than anger makes me think that "encendida" is likelier to refer to other aroused passions than anger/malice, in addition to the intensity of the red color, and to heat. The shape of the "oblong slash / mouth" might be, in addition to a description of the oval shape of most watermelons, a delicate reference to feminine anatomy and its juices. I was also struck by the various meanings of "freshness" in the contexts of watermelon, liquids (hot and cold), and femininity.

Rueda was noted for his playful coplas (quatrains), most of which can be read more than one way. Preserving as many of those dimensions as possible is a real challenge in such short pieces.

I mainly chose to translate this sonnet because I was in a summery mood.

mignon, I would recommend leaving the French accents in étagère.

response to Julie
 

Julie,

Definitely “other aroused passions than anger” when it comes to “encendida.” Then the following:

“Slice after slice, leaving marks
as the skilled knife separated them
alive to illusion as no others.”

The boasting of the "skilled knife" and the repetitive descriptions of the gashing. The violence of it. And the inserted “vivas / alive to illusion as no others. It does indicate a ‘favorable nod.’

“señalando” = marcando

Another word/meaning for ‘señalar’ may be ‘pointing to’ or ‘haciendo señales’ which would be ‘signaling’, but they don't apply.

This one is, perhaps, the most sneaky, because he has the article “las” starting the next line, immediately after “señalando”
and attaches what follows to it (to ‘las’). This works at least two ways: detaching the reader’s mind from the immediate: “señalándolas” and making it look like the author is getting away with a little slip, for the need to go on with the next bit. (The dictionary may be of little or no help.)

I don’t claim to have read all there is to this poem. And I’m not happy to break the illusion. But even the ‘freshness’ you mention is iffy, because there are many ways to interpret the word ‘fresh’.

Thank you, Julie, for the advice on ‘étagère’.
~mignon

Thanks, mignon! A new S3 has been posted to Draft Four, above, taking your comments on "señalando" into account.

I remain convinced that this sonnet really is, first and foremost, a celebration of the joyful drama of slicing a watermelon, and that the sexual connotations of the description are just playfully naughty.

I don't think that the sonnet is primarily about violent sex, and that the watermelon is merely a polite subterfuge for doing that publicly, as implied by your rhetorical question above, "Do you think that a poet of some stature would take the watermelon as a serious 'theme' to write about?" My answer to that is an emphatic "Yes!"

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Sometimes a watermelon is just a watermelon. I hope that my translation choices leave both the light and dark possibilities open, but I strongly prefer a less dark reading, myself.

Julieee!

I am amused. More accurately, I am enjoying your demeanor and feeling a bit poorly because I cannot not see the darkness in this poem. But then, De Sade did it to impart pleasure, as seems to be the case in this poem. To each their own?
But all that raw red gives me the creeps, and about 40 years ago, I saw my daughter's leg sliced that way, by nails sticking out of a neighbor's fence while she was playing ball--a long gash that "widened" while waiting too long at the emergency room.

Yes, it's a watermelon.
Sigh,
~mignon

**I enjoy the fun you're having and hope nothing will ruin it. It is, as you say, a poem of many angles.

Julie,

You are exorcising the poem!

Ha,
~m

Julie, I know you’ve been going deeper into the Spanish with Mignon, but I thought I’d mention that I no longer understand the English in S3. “Ink” is an odd addition, but one I can deal with. But I come out of that stanza now with no idea what the words are doing. I read what Mignon said about Rueda stretching the language out of shape, but it can’t be that tortured, can it?

I also wondered if you might drop the article before “ebullience” to regularize the anapest. I don’t insist on maximum regularity (it’s one of the big lessons I’ve learned on the Sphere), but this opportunity seems too easy to pass up. (You may want it scanned as “th’ ebullience,” but who knows about poetic elision these days?)

Thank you, mignon and Carl. Tweaks to the second and third stanzas of Draft Four are posted above in response to your comments.

Brilliant, Julie! You’ve brought S3 into sharp focus for me now. I’m glad you’ve taken the “ink” out in favor of “stained,” but—based only on your discussion with mignon—I wonder why you didn’t use “marked” instead.

S2L4 now seems very dense, and I’m not sure what “that” is pointing to in the preceding line. You could create a wee bit more space with:

a fiery mouth whose spurts of joy reveal
a simmering ebullience, wildly fresh.

And it would avoid repeating “whose.”

Thanks, Carl! Suggestion for L8 gratefully accepted.

Whatever I do along the lines of mignon's suggested "marked them" works only on the level of seeing the knife primarily as a sexual metaphor, and the slices as the emotionally and physically traumatized recipients of its violent penetration.

I'm trying to leave my translation open to that sort of reading, since the original was; but I am still giving priority to the reading that the watermelon is, first and foremost, a literal watermelon, whose slices are sticking to each other, but which still show the cuts, perhaps with a bit of telltale juice marking those cuts, as if they were only drawn-on, with ink. That's what I'm seeing, anyway.

I hope my purple tweaks to LL9–10 get closer to allowing both of those readings.

In L5, I want to keep the "that" in front of "mouth" to prompt the reader to ask, "Huh? What kind of mouth could that be?" "The" instead of "that" doesn't seem strong enough to me. And using "a" instead of "that" would make my use of the present-tense "reveal" instead of the past tense "revealed" feel off. I may change my mind about that, but that's what feels right to me at the moment.

I like it. It reads to me like something Rilke might have written, though I'm not sure why I say that. Anyway, that's a good thing. My only note is that I somehow don't like the sound of L11. Maybe it's just the mouth-feel of saying "illusion" and what it does to the line. I know it's a cognate of the Spanish word, but it sounds better in Spanish. Maybe "made it seem that not one slice was made"? In any event, the revision brought the poem alive.

Thanks very much, Rogerbob. Perhaps "maintained the ruse no slices had been made."

If this gave you Rilke vibes, the next one I'll workshop will, too.