Rueda — The Wedding of the Sea
 

Salvador Rueda (Spain, 1857-1933)

DRAFT TWO

The Wedding of the Sea

Now you keep your mystic rendezvous,
O steady moon, with the capricious sea.
The shores of the Levant and, wondrously,
a Host of light — your face — come into view.

A rose of pearl above the billows’ blue,
your breast is bared with a lover’s energy,
The spume on which you stand’s a glittery
trail your foot draws, snail-like, under you.

The water, a romantic wedding bed,
offers you its crystals as you lay
your glowing body on its twinkling spread.

Then, trembling at your naked charms’ display,
the sea embraces, and you’re blanketed
within a light beam’s rippling, rhythmic sway....


LL7-8 were:
and where you stand, the spume turns glittery,
a stream your foot keeps sketching under you.
Before that, LL7-8 were:
the spume you stand on seems a glittery
trail your foot draws, snail-like, after you.

L14 was:
within a light beam’s rippling, rhythmic sway. (no ellipsis)


DRAFT ONE

The Wedding of the Sea

Now you keep your mystic rendezvous,
O steady moon, with the capricious sea.
The shores of the Levant and, wondrously,
a Host of light — your face — come into view.

A rose of pearl above the billows’ blue,
your breast’s exposed with a lover’s energy.
The spume on which you stand’s a glittery
snail-trail that your foot inks under you.

The water, a romantic wedding bed,
offers you its crystal-strewn duvet
on which to lay your glowing body, spread.

And then, your naked charms on full display,
the sea, with an embrace that’s tremble-fed,
engulfs you in a rippling light beam’s sway.


TWEAKS:

L3: let >> and


SPANISH ORIGINAL
LITERAL ENGLISH PROSE CRIB

Las bodas del mar
The Wedding of the Sea

Ya acudes a tu cita misteriosa

con el inquieto mar, luna constante,

y asoma las playas de Levante,

hostia de luz, tu cara milagrosa.

Now you keep your mysterious appointment
with the unquiet sea, constant moon,
and (this) makes the shores of the Levant appear:
a (communion) host of light, your miraculous face.

En la onda azul, cual nacarada rosa,

se abre tu seno con pasión de amante

y dibuja un reguero rutilante

tu pie sobre la espuma en que se posa.

On the blue wave, like a pearly/mother-of-pearl rose,
your breast gets bared/opens with the passion of a lover
and your foot draws a sparkling trail
upon the foam on which it stands.

El agua, como un tálamo amoroso,

te ofrece sus cristales movedizos

donde tiendes tu cuerpo luminoso.

The water, like an amorous wedding bed,
offers you its restless crystals
where you stretch out your luminous body.

Y al ostentar desnuda tus hechizos,

el mar, con un abrazo tembloroso,

te envuelve en haz de onduladores rizos…

And at your displaying, naked, your charms,
the sea, with a trembling embrace,
envelops you in a beam of undulating ripples…

Lovely, Julie, and an interesting reversal of sexual stereotypes, with the feminine-gendered moon being constant and the masculine sea capricious—in fact, a reversal of astronomical stereotypes, since it’s the moon that’s traditionally inconstant.

S1: I had something to say about the shores letting the moon appear, but you fixed that with a surprisingly simple tweak.

S2: Typo: “breast’s.” I like the specificity of “snail-trail” and “ink,” though neither is in the crib and they make for a very mixed metaphor: the moon’s foot inking a snail-trail. I dunno.

S3: I like “duvet,” though it’s not a word I’m very familiar with, but I don’t care for the tacked-on “spread.” Maybe something like:

The water, a romantic wedding bed,
offers a restless place where you can lay
your glowing body on its crystal spread.

I tried to get “restless” back in, because a “restless bed” is interesting, though not too surprising in the circumstances.

S4: I like the hyphenated adjective, but think “fed” is quite a stretch. (You were waiting for that, weren’t you!) With “sway,” I guess you’re doubling down on “undulating,” though it sounds almost like it could be “sway” in the sense of “rule.” I don’t think that’s really a problem, just saying. Also, I think you should preserve the ellipsis at the end, whatever it means.

Thanks very much for your helpful insights, Carl. Whew! This was a tough one.

Draft Two finally posted above. I tried to reduce the apostrophe esses and ess apostrophes, but still ended up with too many.


Arrrgh, I do hate to leave the snail imagery, even though I may be the only one who sees it. Posted as alt LL7-8. And I forgot the ellipsis, too. José de Diego, the Puerto Rican poet I was translating last year, used a bunch of them in a sonnet on a similar theme, and I ignored them. (I wonder whose poem came first.)


Rayos de luna

Aquí, en el mar insomne, cual mi anhelo,
busco la paz, el sueño busco en vano...
su fulgor lanza lívido y lejano
a luna muerta... ¡oh soledad del cielo!

Tiembla en la onda, que ilumina, el rielo,
el rielo palpitante, tan humano
que imita la escritura de una mano
el temblor de un adiós en un pañuelo...

No puede ser casualidad... no puede...
yo estoy leyendo sobre el Mar Caribe
lo que en mi propio corazón sucede...

Y es que aquel nombre que jamás exhibe,
el dulce nombre, que a mentar no cede,
mi alma de luna sobre el agua escribe...


Moonbeams

Here, on a sea as restless as my mood,
I look for peace, for slumber, uselessly.
It casts its distant, pallid brilliancy
at Luna, dead—oh, sky-vast solitude!

The shimmer trembles, flashing swell by swell—
a shimmer pulsing with a sympathy
so human that those flickers seem to be
the cursive of a handkerchief’s farewell.

It couldn’t—couldn’t—be coincidence
that what on this Caribbean I’m reading
is what occurs within my own heart’s patter.

The name that voice unceasingly presents—
the same, sweet name—my moony soul’s proceeding
to scribble on the surface of the water.

Sorry about the snail, Julie. It wasn’t so much the snail that bothered me as the thought of the moon’s foot leaving a trail of snail ink. Anyway, in the new version, “keeps” makes the sketching sound like an unwanted, involuntary action. You could always change it to “is”—or maybe you’ll come up with a version of that line you like better. Nor am I thrilled about “embraces” without a direct object, though poetry can handle it, I suppose. Two alternatives would be:

the sea embraces you; you’re blanketed
the sea enfolds you, and you’re blanketed

Pushkin is a fan of ellipses, and nobody’s ever quite sure what he’s doing with them. I usually try to preserve them, but the Diego example is a bit over-the-top, at least for English, and your decision to turn three of them into dashes works well for me.

I’ll be posting a “moony” translation tomorrow. That word interested me, because Russian has such a versatile adjective for “moon” (it sounds like “loony”), while “lunar” is pretty limited in English. Saying that your love has “moon eyes” or “lunar eyes” isn’t going to sound right in many cases.

Hi, Julie—

Sorry to be late to the party. I like your handling of the material and feel that the revisions improve the languid, mysterious tone of the sonnet.

Stanza 2 confused me a bit. I’m thinking that the whole poem is an apostrophe to the “constant moon,” in which the first stanza describes the moon low in the sky over the seawater illuminating the shore and presenting her round face like a communion host. In the second stanza, I assumed that the reflection of the moonlight, broken into petals of light in the rippling water, looked like a pearly rose. I didn’t imagine the rose as being “above” the billows’ blue, but rather reflected in it. Am I misinterpreting the image?

I like the addition of the snail-like glittery trail, and I’m glad you got rid of “inks,” since ink is usually dark. The revision makes the image of the moon setting into the horizon like a bride settling into a wedding bed clearer. The last line, though, is still a bit obscure. I visualized the moon flattening and the moonlight rippling on the horizon as the last bit of moon sank out of sight, as a bride would disappear as drawn into the bedclothes by her eager groom. The problem is perhaps not in your translation, but in the original poem itself, since the sea is both the bed and the bridegroom.

Very nice work!

Glenn