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G. S. FRASER
which are one of the things we associate with modernism (Ezra Pound's
beautiful, though strikingly inaccurate, version of
The Seafarer
is at the
roots of much modem metrics and diction, including his own
Cathay
and
the first of the
Cantos,
the one about Elpenor and the raising of the
ghosts of the dead). And the ·mood of
Beowulf,
the sense of
wyrd
or fate
or doom, the sense of the hero's isolation, of the constant threat from
monsters, seems to me much nearer the mood of much modern poetry
than, say, the poetry of the eighteenth century or even of the romantics.
Our human tribe seems threatened and not only the Beowulfs but the
Grendels ("I have felt the death-wish too") are within ourselves.
Spanish seems to me the easiest of the Romance languages to learn
and the most difficult to translate from. It is very difficult to do a
wholly satisfactory version of Neruda but very difficult to do a wholly
unsatisfactory one either. In these late poems translated by Ben Belitt a
lot of the early violence, rage, and obscurity seems to have gone, though
the essential two qualities that have fused his genius remain, pride and
melancholy, very Spanish qualities, and with them a sort of sad humor. I
quote Belitt's version of the second half of a fine short poem,
"Diaclitos," a short poem of self-justification; Neruda's Spanish; and a
possible other way of doing the same passage.
I'm a journeyman fisherman
of living wet verses
that break through the veins:
it's all I was good for.
I never contrived opportunities
out of mere vainglory
or a schemer's perversity:
whatever I say in my songs
is
more than benign propaganda.
True, I did it all clumsily
and for that I beg pardon:
now leave me alone with my ocean:
I was born for a handful of fishes.
Yo soy obrero pescador
de versos vivos y mojados
que siguen saltando en
mis
venas.
Nunca supe hacer otra cosa
ni supe urdir los menesteres
del intrlnseco jactancioso
o del perverso intrigador,
y no es propaganda del bien
lo que estoy diciendo en mi canto:
sino que no lo supe hacer,
