John, that’s Andrew Davis’s translation and a good one, except that he’s turned the subjects of the verbs into objects in the first two lines of the second stanza. Here’s my crib:
When the goldfinch in the airy pastry
suddenly begins to quiver, angry[?],
rage peppers the scholar’s robes,
and the cap is good-looking[?] in black.
The perch and plank slander,
the cage of hundreds of spikes/needles slanders,
and everything in the world is inside out,
and there is a forest Salamanca
for disobedient, clever birds.
It’s not the bird that’s doing the slandering. It’s not even 100% clear that the bird is angry; it depends on how you understand the first neologism, which contains the word “heart” and today is the name of a vitamin supplement for a healthy heart! Celan says the poems in Mandelstam’s first collection, Stone, are “free of neologisms.” That may be true, but it’s not true of Mandelstam in general.
Last edited by Carl Copeland; 07-31-2023 at 07:04 AM.
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