Is it True (You will walk in the field) / Leah Goldberg, translated

Today I present a translation to English of Leah Goldberg's "Is it true", popularly known as "You will walk in the field" ("האמנם"/"את תלכי בשדה"). I wrote about this poem in my first blog post. Below is one of Hava Alberstein's performances of the song (I hold her to be the best performer of this song). You might also find the video of Shlomi Saranga's recent cover interesting. Finally, an analysis of the work is available from Wikimedia.

To Y., with pride and gratitude.

Is it true - will there ever come days of forgiveness and mercy?
And you'll walk in the field, and it will be an innocent's walk.
And your feet on the medick's small leaves will be gently caressing,
And sweet will be stings, when you're stung by the rye's broken stalks!

And the drizzle will catch you in pounding raindrops' folly
On your shoulders, your breast and your neck, while your mind will be clean,
You will walk the wet field, and the silence will fill you -
As does light in a dark cloud's rim

And you'll breathe in the furrow in breaths calm and even,
And the pond's golden mirror will show you the Sun up above,
And once more all the things will be simple, and present, and living,
And once more you will love - yes, you will, yes, once more you will love!

You will walk. All alone. Never hurt by the blazing inferno
Of the fires on the roads fed by horrors too awful to stand,
And in your heart of hearts you'll be able to humbly surrender,
In the way of the weeds, in the way of free men.

Translated by yours truly, Dec. 2008.

Francesco Petrarca / Canzoniere, Sonnet 1

Francesco Petrarca, who lived in the 14th century, is often called the "father of humanism" and is considered a progenitor of the Renaissance (which he preceded by a full century!). His contribution to world culture deserves a special mention, but I haven't the time to describe it now - so I will confine myself now to quoting the first poem out of his wonderful Sonnets, which explains his motivation for writing. I don't know Italian, but I the English translation is good in its own right.

Voi ch'ascoltate in rime sparse il suono
di quei sospiri ond'io nudriva 'l core
in sul mio primo giovenile errore
quand'era in parte altr'uom da quel ch'i' sono,

del vario stile in ch'io piango et ragiono
fra le vane speranze e 'l van dolore,
ove sia chi per prova intenda amore,
spero trovar pietà, nonché perdono.

Ma ben veggio or sí come al popol tutto
favola fui gran tempo, onde sovente
di me mesdesmo meco mi vergogno;

et del mio vaneggiar vergogna è 'l frutto,
e 'l pentersi, e 'l conoscer chiaramente
che quanto piace al mondo è breve sogno

---

Ye who in rhymes dispersed the echoes hear
Of those sad sighs with which my heart I fed
When early youth my mazy wanderings led,
Fondly diverse from what I now appear,

Fluttering 'twixt frantic hope and frantic fear,
From those by whom my various style is read,
I hope, if e'er their hearts for love have bled,
Not only pardon, but perhaps a tear.

But now I clearly see that of mankind
Long time I was the tale: whence bitter thought
And self-reproach with frequent blushes teem;

While of my frenzy, shame the fruit I find,
And sad repentance, and the proof, dear-bought,
That the world's joy is but a flitting dream.

Translation by Lord Charlemont

Recitation in Italian -

A Closed Garden / Rachel, translated

Rachel (birth name Rachel Bluwstein) was born into a respectable family of Russian Jews. She grew on the lyrical conventions of the Russian Romantic poetry. Her first works, written in Russian, appear quite mediocre. However, her consequent work in Hebrew is superb and groundbreaking. Main themes are reflection on her coming to Ottoman Turk-controlled Palestine on ideological grounds, her unhappy love affairs giving birth to a profound sense of loneliness, and her eventual mortal illness - tuberculosis ("consumption").

Her personal, clear, stremalined language marks a considerable change from the Bibleic and Talmudic-laced language of many of her contemporaries. In particular, it is interesting that Rachel intended the vowels in her poems to be pronounced with a Sephardic intonation (which eventually was became the dominant in Modern Israeli Hebrew), whereas her contemporaries Bialik and Tchernihovsky used the Ashkenazi intonation. Altogether, her poetic style became the progenitor for much of Israel's lyrical poetry for the decades following her untimely death.

מי אתה? מדוע יד מושטת
לא פוגשת יד אחות
ועיניים, אך תמתינה רגע
והנה שפלו כבר נבוכות

גן נעול. לא שביל אליו לא דרך.
גן נעול - אדם.
האלך לי, או אכה בסלע
עד זוב דם.

To an unknowing muse.

Who are you? And why a reached-out hand
Fails to meet a hand - her mate?
And the gaze - awaiting for one moment,
In the next one is so shyly waived.

A closed garden. No path, no road to go there.
A closed garden is the Man.
Should I leave, or face the rock and batter,
With my hands - a bleeding ram?

Translation by yours truly.

A performance by Shuki and Dorit, music by Shuki (they started performing this song in 1978; the recording is from 1979) -

Ithaca / Constantine P. Cavafy

Constantine P. Cavafy was a great Modernist poet that wrote in New Greek around the turn of the 20th century. He spent most of his life in Alexandria. His life as a whole was not dramatic (whereas Europe endured World War I during that same period, and his ethnic homeland Greece endured a bitter and lengthy confrontation with Turkey).

Judging by the good translations, Cavafy's poetry is technically superb, with words and expressions chosen extremely precisely, obviously through much labor and rewriting. He is extremely attached to his classic heritage and writes much about history and philosophy; another theme is his own sensual life (he was openly homosexual). His expressions are extremely colorful and vivid, his use of free (non-rhymed) verse combines the immediacy of everyday speech with the beauty of classical poetry.

The lyrics of the poem in English are available from here; a wonderful translation to Hebrew is available here (alas, I learnt that the translator died a relatively young man); the Greek original - here.

The poem in English, narrated by Sean Connery:


And in the original Greek:


And now, a personal note:

Two years ago, as I was nearing a graduation ceremony of sorts, I proposed to read this poem to signify the common change of venue (naturally, the proposal was benevolently ignored). Nevertheless, I feel it holds true even more at this anniversary.

I wish our followers, the 3³s, a sound journey.