Rueda — Basket-Bearers
 

Salvador Rueda (Spain, 1857-1933)


DRAFT TWO

The Kanephoroi (The Basket-Bearers of the Acropolis)

The official puts his solemn stride on hold
where lovely kanephoroi now process,
and sees how face paint’s scarlet roses stress
their modesty, with blushes drawn more bold.

The tremulous effect of fold on fold
gives svelteness to their stately virgin-dress,
and borne within their hands’ exquisiteness
are trays of sumptuously sculpted gold.

Atop the metal’s brilliant gleam they bring
the sacrificial knife they’re offering
the official, in their white-clad innocence.

They give to him as well the wheat that shines
within their golden baskets’ shimmering lines
like hailstones blond with sun-gilt radiance.


DRAFT ONE (with brown tweaks, plus a blue tweak)

The Kanephoroi (The Basket-Bearers of the Acropolis)

The official puts his solemn stride on hold
where lovely kanephoroi now process,
and sees how face paint’s scarlet roses stress
their modesty, with blushes drawn more bold.

The tremulous effect of fold on fold
gives svelteness to their stately virgin-dress,
and borne within their hands’ exquisiteness
are trays of sumptuously sculpted gold.

Atop the metal’s brilliant gleam they bring
the sacrificial knife they’re offering
the official, in their white-clad innocence.

And they present him, too, with wheat, which shines
within the golden baskets’ shimmering lines
like hailstones, blond in sun-gilt radiance.


TWEAKS

L1: stride >> strides >> stride
L3: and sees how face-paint’s scarlet roses stress >> and notes how face paint’s scarlet roses stress >> and sees how face paint’s scarlet roses stress
L6: chicness >> svelteness
L12: And they present him, too, the wheat that shines >> And they present him, too, the wheat that shines >> And they present him, too, with wheat, which shines
L13: within >> inside >> within
L14: like sun-gilt hailstones’ blond impermanence. >> with sun-gilt hailstones’ briefly blond pretense >> with sun-illumined hailstones’ blond pretense. >> like hailstones, blond in sun-gilt radiance.


SPANISH ORIGINAL
LITERAL ENGLISH PROSE CRIB

Las canéforas
The Kanephoroi (The Basket-Bearers)

Deteniendo severo magistrado
su pie ante las canéforas preciosas,
mira en sus caras de purpúreas rosas
el pudor por carmines dibujado.

The solemn magistrate, coming to a standstill (literally, “stopping
his foot”) before the beautiful kanephoroi,
sees upon their faces of reddish-purple roses
the modesty drawn by lipsticks.

El temblador ropaje replegado
les da esbeltez de vírgenes graciosas
y llevan en las manos primorosas
ricas bandejas de oro cincelado.

The tremulous pleated costume
gives them the svelteness of elegant/refined virgins
and they bear in their exquisite hands
sumptuous trays (made) of engraved gold.

Sobre el metal que espejeando brilla,
del sacrificio llevan la cuchilla
que al magistrado, cándidas, ofrecen.

Atop the metal that shines, gleaming,
they bear the knife of the sacrifice
that to the magistrate they, naïve/snow-white, are offering.

Y le brindan también trigo flamante,
que en las caneas de oro rutilante
rubios granizos con el Sol parecen.

And they also dedicate to him splendid/shining wheat,
which in the baskets of glittering gold
resemble blond hailstones in the Sun.

Julie, I love a poem in the spirit of the ancients. A few thoughts:

their modesty, with blushes drawn more bold.

The modest/bold contradiction, though yours, is interesting.

gives chicness to their stately virgin-dress,

“Chicness” places them momentarily on the catwalk. If nothing else, why not “svelteness”?

within their golden baskets’ shimmering lines

“Lines” referring to the weave of the baskets? A little odd, but I can deal with it. It’s a demanding rhyme scheme.

like sun-gilt hailstones’ blond impermanence.

A strange and thought-provoking simile that breaks with the classical straightforwardness of the rest of the poem.

Trivia: I don’t think “face paint” or “virgin dress” (or Basket Bearers) needs a hyphen, and I’d drop the comma after “process.”

Thanks, Julie, I’m into it!

Hi, Julie—

Lovely work! Nice job preserving the sonnet’s challenging ABBAABBA CCDCCD rhyme scheme. Much easier in Spanish than in English. I like that you got cándidas to do double duty as “white-clad innocence.”

By adding “impermanence,” you offer an interpretation that, when considering the poem as a whole, casts it as a lament for the fleeting beauty of the lovely acolytes. If you had chosen “insouciance,” or “impertinence” instead, it would offer a more subversive interpretation, calling into question the sincerity of the girls’ piety. Maybe I’m reading too much into rubios.

I enjoyed it!

Glenn

Thank you, Carl and Glenn. Very helpful impressions. Tweaks posted above.

My overall impression of the original is that it subtilely, but repeatedly, emphasizes the artificiality of this scene, rather than just the usual fleetingness of beauty trope. The modest blushes are drawn-on. The costume "gives them the svelteness of elegant virgins," leaving open the question of whether these girls are all actually as virginal as their ritual dress makes them appear. As Glenn pointed out, the "cándidas" describing the girls has connotations of naïvety and purity (contrasting starkly with the violence and gore represented by the sacrificial knife), but "cándidas" is also cognate with the root of the word "candidate," for the snow-white garment worn by Romans who were presenting themselves for election to public office, thereby clothing themselves in the appearance of incorruptibility that may or may not have been the case.

The religious ritual described in the poem is thus presented by Rueda as performance art, and I view the image of the blond hailstones at the end not only as an image of impermanence (since hailstones melt in the sun, and natural blond hair rarely lasts past puberty), but also an image of falsity, since the grains of wheat, like the sun-lit hailstones to which they are compared, only look golden, rather than literally being made of gold, like the trays and baskets. (Blondness, too, only resembles gold.)

Some of my choices are far less subtle than Rueda's original in regard to the artificiality angle, and I've changed L14 to make the final word of the poem even less subtle. Perhaps my choices go a bit too far in steering the interpretation that way, but I hope that the new end-word "pretense" might send the reader back for a second reading, to take another look at earlier clues that not all is as it appears in this scene.

Carl, I wondered if I could get away with "chicness" instead of the cognate "svelteness." I guess not! I'm keeping the hyphen in "virgin-dress," since I think dropping it turns "virgin" from noun to adjective, but have dropped the one in "face paint."

I didn't like the fact that my first changes put "with" / "within" / "with" in the final tercet, so I changed "within" to "inside."

I should note that the original mixes iambic pentameter with a few different versions of classical hendecasyllables, which substitute an anapest at a certain position in the line (different depending on whether it's Sapphic, Alcaic, etc.). I've included a few anapestic substitutions here and there (and have added one to my tweak of L12 since the Tontoism of my first attempt bothered me). But I did not feel obliged to stick to the same classical recipes each time in terms of exactly which foot Rueda had substituted, since most readers won't recognize these anyway.

Thanks very much for your help, Carl and Glenn.

Julie, you always say your revisions make things worse, which is a lie—except maybe in this case:

L1: I find it easier to think of the official as having a single solemn stride, rather than many individual solemn strides, but maybe I’ll get used to it.

L3: “Notes” does sound more official, but I don’t think that’s the idea here.

L14: I was going to say this line is now too congested, but you’ve fixed that by squeezing out “briefly.” I wondered whether Rueda was hinting at falsity when I read the first version, and it’s better that way IMO. If you have to specify either “impermanence” or “pretense,” I think the former theme is more straightforward and more open to the second theme: the hail’s blondness is false partly because it’s impermanent, so the two intertwine. (And I wonder whether artificially blonde hailstones point to bleached-blonde basket bearers!) Anyway, if you keep it as is, I’d still recommend losing “the” in L12. It sounds like a substitution for substitution’s sake.

Thanks, Carl. Brown tweaks posted above.

I'll keep pondering what to do in L14. The comparison is between the long-lasting, natural blondness of the grains of wheat and the blondness of the sunlit hailstones, so I probably shouldn't be inviting either impermanence or pretense to Rueda's party.

Here’s an idea you could play around with:

like hailstones with a sun-blond radiance/elegance

Thanks, Carl. I just came here to post "like hailstones, blond in sun-gilt radiance," and see that we were thinking along the same lines. I do want to squeeze the oddness of "blond" in there....

My version had “blond” in it too, but yours is at least as good. You might consider “with” instead” of “in.” The hailstones are in the sun’s radiance, of course, but “sun-gilt radiance” is something they have.

Thanks, Carl. Suggestion taken (and LL12–13 also tweaked again) in Draft Two above.