Nichita Stanescu, or the impossibility of translation

Every once in a while, I attempt to translate something that just won't translate. It will stubbornly cling to its Romanianness, or whatever it is, like a leech to the skin; peeling it off inexpertly will possibly infect the skin beneath and it certainly won't stop the bleeding. Detaching the lyrical essence of the poem and depositing safely into another language often proves costly, as it comes at the expense at the original: what was once gloriously tender and juicy becomes battered, bruised, and bitter. And nobody wants a piece of that.

So is the case with Nichita's beautiful poem "Emotie de toamna" (also an Alifantis song, which keeps ringing in my head, to remind me that I can't satisfactorily provide a translation that will fit its melodic line). It's one of my favorite fall poems, always gives me the shivers, always pregnant with meaning, although I've heard it or read it hundreds of times by now.

Here goes--but hey, I couldn't do a proper translation, so yeah, this is a proper and thorough failure, and I'll discuss some of the reasons why.

Emotie de toamna de Nichita Stanescu A venit toamna, acopera-mi inima cu ceva, cu umbra unui copac sau mai bine cu umbra ta. Mă tem că n-am să te mai văd, uneori, că or să-mi crească aripi ascuţite până la nori, că ai să te ascunzi într-un ochi străin, şi el o să se-nchidă cu o frunză de pelin. Şi-atunci mă apropii de pietre şi tac, iau cuvintele şi le-nec în mare. Şuier luna şi o răsar şi o prefac într-o dragoste mare.

Autumn emotion by Nichita Stanescu Autumn came so please cover my heart with the Tree shade—or yours so it won’t wither. I fear that perhaps I won’t see you sometimes That I’ll grow sharp wings up to the skies That you’ll hide within a foreign eye Which will close with a bitter good-bye. And then I go near the rocks and shut up. Take the words and drown them in the sea. I whistle the moon and rise it and turn it Into a big love.

1) The first stanza--the two lines--are so perfectly simple and pure and have this beautiful open rhyme in "-a"; literally, they mean:

Autumn came, cover my heart with something,
The shadow of a tree, or better yet, your shadow.

There's something very melodic in the Romanian "A venit toamna" (Autumn arrived/came/has come/is here); it's an anapest and a trochee (_ _ / / _ ), in succession, sounding a little bit like a rise and fall of waves. That effect cannot be achieved in English. First of all, I probably should translate "toamna" by "autumn" rather than "fall"--they are Latinate words, whereas "fall" is Germanic, I think. Either way, though, the stress is on the first syllable, so the anapest is impossible to replicate--so is the entire rhythm of the first stanza. I cannot easily reverse the order of words, like I could in Romanian, either. And because Alifantis's song plays on that rising sound in its opening notes, I could never translate it in a way that would preserve that melody. Damn!

It all goes downhill from there. I'll just tackle a few particularly frustrating instances:

2) "frunza de pelin" = "wormwood leaf." Now, that's a perfectly acceptable translation (well, apart from the fact that I can't find a rhyme suitable for the context). HOWEVER, any reasonably literate Romanian you ask will tell you, if you ask them what "pelin" evokes, that it's "bitter." (It is.) That would NOT happen with any reasonable literate English-speaker you interview Wormwood has stopped being culturally relevant (plus, I don't think it's a plant native to the US), and so, when I asked several cultivated, intelligent Americans what the word "wormwood" evokes for them, none of them thought of "bitter" (the general consensus, actually, was that it was "wood riddled by worms").

Still, in Nichita's text, it is essential that you understand the connotation of "pelin" as "bitter"--which is why I skipped the "wormwood" in the translation. But then, I fundamentally altered the meaning, I believe, plus I omitted "leaf" in order to get my goddamn rhyme. Gah!

3) "tac" = "(I) shut up/keep silent". The translation of "tac" (from the Latin "tacere") is obviously deficient since it needs a phrasal verb, and one that rather denies or negates an action, by opposition with the almost active  meaning of "tac," in which the action of keeping silent is almost as meaningful and positive as speaking. There is no proper verb in English for this, one that would have the same powerful impact--as it is meant to have here.

4) Then there's the business of "Suier luna si-o rasar si-o prefac..." - "I whistle the moon and I rise it and I turn it into..." It's as weird in Romanian, believe me. The only ambiguous term is "rasar" which can be either "rise" (as in moonrise), or it may have to do with "spring" or "appear"--as in anything plant-related. Both "whistle" and "rise" don't really take a direct object of this nature (you whistle a tune, not a celestial object; and it's certainly not you that "rises" the sun or the moon--they do it themselves), and this is true of their Romanian counterparts. But that's a Nichita specialty, playing with the syntax and bending it to conform to his own cosmology.

5) Finally, the last verse is "Intr-o dragoste mare"--8 syllables, trochee, dactyl, trochee. "Into a big love" is a literal translation, only 5 syllables, no discernable rhythm; but there's only so many ways to translate "dragoste"--and only "love" is the best translation for it. "Big" could probably be tweaked with, but it would alter the simplicity of the verse. You see my dilemma? To say nothing that "mare" meaning "big" is rhymed with "mare" meaning "sea" (yep, perfect homonyms in Romanian)--and there is no way that I could render the same pattern in English.

So there  you have it...spectacular failure; Nichita is just too...dare I say, good? living inside these words like a ghost and refusing to be moved into a different language? Dunno. Or rather, I should just accept the fact that I'm just not that good a translator.  But hey, practice makes perfect!