2014 TBO 1C--Boye's butterflies
 

"Min hud är full av fjärilar" by Karin Boye (Sweden, 1900-1941)


VERSE TRANSLATION:

My Skin Teems With Butterflies

My skin teems with butterflies.
They flutter out across the meadows to feast on nectar
and flutter back to die in small dismal spasms,
not a single grain of pollen shifted by their light feet.
The sun was made for them: ardent, boundless, older than time itself. . .

While beneath the skin and blood, in the bone's marrow,
captive sea eagles soar on spread wings,
ponderous, ponderous, forever clutching their prey.

How mightily you would tumble in spring's oceanic storms.
How your cry would resonate when the sun ignites gold-gleaming eyes.
The cave is sealed! The cave is sealed!
Bleak as cellar sprouts, in a clawed grip,
writhes the essence of my being.


SWEDISH ORIGINAL:

Min hud är full av fjärilar

Min hud är full av fjärilar, av fladdervingar -
de fladdrar ut över ängen och njuter sin honung
och fladdrar hem och dör i små trista spasmer,
och inte ett blomstoft rubbas av lätta fötter.
För dem är solen till, den heta, omätliga, äldre än tiderna...
Men under hud och blod och innanför märgen
flyttar sig tungt tungt fångade havsörnar,
vingbreda, som aldrig släpper sitt byte.
Hur vore ert tummel en gång i havets vårstorm?
Hur vore ert skrik, när solen glödgade gula ögon?
Stängd är grottan! Stängd är grottan!
Och mellan klorna vrider sig vita som källarskott
mitt innerstas tågor.


ENGLISH PROSE CRIB:

My skin is full of butterflies.
They flutter out over the meadow and enjoy their honey
and flutter home and die in small gloomy spasms,
and not a grain of pollen is disturbed by their light feet.
For them the sun exists, the hot, limitless, older than time…

But under skin and blood and inside the marrow
move heavily heavily captured sea eagles,
spread-winged, that never release their prey.
How wouldn't you tumble in the sea's spring storm?
What would your shriek/cry sound like, when the sun ignites yellow eyes?
Closed is the cave! Closed is the cave!
And between the claws writhe white as sprouts in a cellar
the fiber of my innermost.

Commentary
 

COMMENTS ON THE POEM CHOICE AND TRANSLATION:

I have to discuss these two points together, because I found the second half of the poem infuriatingly confusing, and wasn't sure how much of that was due to translation choices and how much was due to the original's opacity and mystery.

My first instinct was to eliminate this poem as a finalist because it was just too problematical; it seemed unfair to favor this one over other entries that seemed far less flawed. In fact, I actually wrote a "Dear Translator" email explaining this. (I'll be asking Alex to forward similar emails to each of the non-finalists, to let them know why I didn't chose their pieces for discussion here.)

But this piece kept creeping back into my mind over the next few days, and again and again I found myself coming back to wrestle with it. In comparison, some of the more technically solid entries started to seem a bit safe and boring and uncompelling. So I decided that the arresting images of this piece would make for better discussion, even though I wish that the translator had provided us with more guidance in the second half.

I do very much admire this translator's phrasing in a lot of places. For example, "ponderous, ponderous, forever clutching their prey"--that's just delicious.

Ordinarily I would also be quite enthusiastic about swapping the rather pedestrian "is full" for the vividly active verb "teems." However, the more I look at this, the more I suspect that the original is using all those fricatives (f's and v's) and liquids (r's and l's) to fill the first few lines with the sound of tiny wingbeats. If "is full" is replaced with "teems", I think it would be good to offset that sonic sacrifice somehow.

I am also curious about the alliterative repetition and variation of av fjärilar, av fladdervingar in L1 (continued in the fladdrar of L2 and the fladdrar of L3). I'm not sure why the translator has chosen not to include av fladdervingar in either the prose crib or the translation. All these iterations of fladder strike me as a sonic foil to the stodgier, heavier flyttar sig tungt tungt in connection with the possessive sea eagles later. There also seems to be a foil between fladdervingar in the first part and vingbreda in the second.

I would prefer the simpler "hot" to "ardent" in L5, mainly because "ardent" seems an overly Poetickal flourish. I'd also suggest reconsidering "mightily" in L9; since that part of the poem is so busy with images already, I think the language should be kept more simple and straightforward.

I wonder if the notion of "trapped" could be moved from L7 to L6:
"Meanwhile, trapped beneath the skin and blood, in the bone's marrow,"

Soaring and flight connote freedom to me; in contrast, the second half of this poem seems to be about repression of instincts and desires. The literal prose crib says "move heavily, heavily," and the birds are definitely grasping something. So I wonder if the "spread-winged" of the crib might refer not to flight, but to the way that birds of prey on the ground (or on perches) hide whatever they are eating from other predators, by cloaking it with open wings. Examples:
http://php.democratandchronicle.com/...awkonhairy.jpg
http://previews.agefotostock.com/pre...110714p308.jpg
http://animals.nationalgeographic.co...tellers-eagle/
Just a guess. I could be wrong. But I found the idea of the predatory birds lumbering along the ground, with the narrator's deepest desires securely in their fists, an interesting contrast with the superficial and short-lived fluttering of the butterflies--perhaps representing meaningless, casual relationships?--in the beginning of the poem.

To me, "resonate" implies echoes (although I know that it need not), so I was picturing the "you" of the poem in an enclosed space, rather than a cry of joy out in the freedom of the sun.

I think a "But" might be helpful at the beginning of the "The cave is sealed! The cave is sealed!" line, even though that will interfere with the parallelism a bit. That line does seem to be the answer to the two preceding comments/questions, which, due to the mention of cries and eyes, I think the narrator addresses to the sea eagles themselves. Could "tumble" be taken in the sense of "frolic"? That would be more in keeping with the vibe of if-only-we-could-be-free I'm perceiving there; otherwise, tumbling in the storm sounds like a negative experience, instead of a victorious one.

"Pale" or "pallid" might be better than "bleak" to describe the white cellar-shoots, since to me those two words imply weakness and stuntedness, while "bleak" just has to do with dreariness and misery in general.

And now, having picked the piece to death, I still find that I'm captivated by it. The perfectionistic side of me doesn't want to like this translation, but I do anyway. So here it is. I hope others will be intrigued by it, too.

By the way, while researching the poet, I learned that she left her marriage to pursue a relationship with a woman she eventually referred to as her wife, and that one of Boye's novels seems to parallel the author's own struggle to resolve her sexual identity with her faith tradition. This information makes me curious about the date of this poem in relation to other events in her life.

It saddens me that, after a couple of reads-through, I am not feeling any connection with the poem. It feels a bit like the pieces of deeply-felt juvenilia that one feels one cannot comment on for fear of injuring a wholly-sincere poet by betraying the tiny twitch at the corner of the mouth that rises unbidden at lines like "...in a clawed grip/ writhes the essence of my being". But that's (more or less) what the Swedish says.

I find the prose crib easier to make out. Here it is clear(er) that the poet is comparing her own apparent sunny sweetness with inner turmoil, but I'm still not quite clear about where the negative "how wouldn't you tumble" from the later part went.

I'm finding this one a bit overstated at the moment but will come back if, like Julie, I feel it calling to me.

Yes, the poem is a bit of an adolescent effusion, but no less challenging to translate, and the translator has done a beautiful job of adding English music. Quite an achievement to use so much alliteration without making it seem overdone.

I wanted to find out whether learning more about the poet would help me warm to the poem, and I think it has. For starters, the poem no longer seems like juvenilia to me, since it appears in a book dated 1935, six years before Boye's death by suicide and after two other books. (I know, you can't tell how old a poem is by the date of the book in which it appears, but the facts of Boye's gradual coming out suggest that she wrote it during an adult period of struggle.)

In case anybody's curious: More by and about Karin Boye.

When the translators' names are revealed, my question for the translator is whether, in the original, the line "the cave is sealed" is a biblical allusion to the burial of Christ. Just wondering.

Would anyone like to take a shot at explaining what all the smirking about adolescence and juvenilia is about? Is it because the poem is about powerful feelings, painfully repressed? Are we supposed to stop having powerful feelings when we reach a certain age, or just stop writing about them? (Midlife crisis, anyone?) Or is it the mixed metaphors. I admit I have mixed feelings about mixed metaphors, they can seem easy, lazy...but in a poem about passion, for metaphors to come tumbling out one after another, maybe is good. This isn't a cautious poem, it makes its point emphatically, seemingly spontaneously, without holding back. Maybe it makes a fool of itself, a little bit, on purpose. Or maybe I'm the only one doing that.

Julie's note about the author's personal life makes me more sympathetic, but even before I'd read that I could sympathize, just being a former Catholic from puritanical Massachusetts.

Sometimes gut-reactions to a poem say more about the critter than about the work itself.

The tone of the poem embarrasses me - because of who I am and how I think and respond. It has the feel of juvenilia not because of any ineptitude on the part of poet or translator, but just because it "goes on a bit".

Thank you, Rose, for the suggestion that perhaps the poet is smiling too. I hadn't thought of that.

Not my cup of tea, but it is strangely compelling, and I think the translation has added to that. 'Teems' might lose the alliteration, but it's such a weird and disturbing image that it drew me in. However 'the essence of my being' at the end is too vague for me. When I saw 'fiber' in the crib, it made more sense to me as representing both the metaphorical essence and the concrete actual mess of sinew and entrails. Not sure that was intended.

This is just a guess, because I know no Swedish, but the poem would make a LOT more sense to me if it was not the eagles that were captured, but something else that is the captive of the sea eagles, as the last line seems to imply. Then it is the captive something (a fish perhaps?) that wants to tumble into the sea. It is possible that the eagles themselves could also be captive and that the shriek might be their gladness if they could see the sun again. But maybe the captive, used to living without the light, is terrified about being pulled up into it? I have a lot of trouble making sense of what is going on here, and I can't tell whether that is a problem with the translation or with the opacity of the original poem.

Susan

This is a wonderful working into poem, judging by the crib. The closing line is approaching twee, and I wonder if that wouldn't be fixed by replacing 'essence of my being' to 'fiber of my being' - which is also sonically smoother. Glad you kept it in!