Irina Moga is a Canadian poet at whose "Artist's Studio" blog I've been recently reflecting on Bogdan Luca's recent Niagara Peninsula artwork. She is a superb poet whose French poetry appears in her Nouvelle Poésie Canadienne. A more detailed biography of Irina Moga can be found at The Writers' Union of Canada website. The following poem is translated here with permission of the author. I will be posting more translations in the near future.
Histoires
Un inventaire de petites plumes,
des cailloux, insérés dans la chair du sens,
et à peine cousus
dans l’ourlet de lumière
qui fait remuer la poussière dans les corridors
de la maison.
Des histories dans lesquelles notre imagination s’accroche,
dans les fragments du désir,
et la légèreté de ta paume,
musique répétitive,
torrent
d’une harpe.
______________________________
Fables
An inventory of plumelets,
pebbles, stored inside the feeling body,
barely sewn
inside a stitch of light
that stirs up dust in the corridors
of home.
Fables to which imaginations hold fast,
and broken desires,
and the lightness of your palm,
a song without end,
the harp's
stream.
(trans. by C. DiDiodato)
11 comments:
Thank you Conrad for this moment.
The translation is great - “barely sewn into a stitch of light” is the exact rendition as is the “stirring up of the dust in the corridors”, where the uptake of motes of dust is what I thought to convey in terms of a fleeting pulse in a void.
A void that is a house, a memory, a past.
It’s also an adjournment of our senses, in the torrential sound of a harp.
“Plumlets” is a poet’s find – a beautiful word glittering on its own as is the following section:
“ Fables to which imaginations hold fast,
and broken desires,
and the lightness of your palm”
which, I am persuaded, sounds a lot better then the original…:o)..
Warmest regards,
Irina
”musique répétitive,
torrent
d’une harpe.”
Ce cuvinte s-ar mai putea adăuga??
Zile frumoase, Irina!
Irina,
thank you for the encouraging words. But I don't think I've the skill to make a translation better than the original.
And Incertitudini, thank you for visiting. You have an unusual blog name: I wonder what the origin of the title is.
musique répétitive,
torrent
d’une harpe.
that's about the best "stream" of words/sounds/images that I've seen in a long time
just imagine Harpo Marx
playing his harp and the sounds just cascading ...
wave after wave after wave...
give this a listen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GArbUV_yv2k
not exactly what I was looking for but...
found an Harpo piece his own composition 1945 that is a better "fit"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aabqmOX720&feature=related
A beautiful poem & a good translation--will look forward to more!
Thanks, John
I will certainly post more in future.
Both offerings exquisite gifts--thanks for the introduction to Irina's work.
Thank you, Vassilis!
Hello Conrad:
"Incertitudini" means uncertainties in Romanian.
Thanks, Irina
I'm struck by the similarities to Italian. The Wikipedia article on the Romanian language stresses its morphological nearness to the Vulgate Latin of the region (being a language that still retains declensions and cases).
Is it true to say it is the best preserved of the original Latinate language to evolve out of ancient Dacia?
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