Building A Translation The Re Construction Business Poem 145 of Sor Juana in S de La Cruz
Building A Translation The Re Construction Business Poem 145 of Sor Juana in S de La Cruz
Building A Translation The Re Construction Business Poem 145 of Sor Juana in S de La Cruz
To cite this article: Margaret Sayers Peden (1984) Building A Translation, the Re-Construction
Business: Poem 145 of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern
Literatures, 38:2, 143-158, DOI: 10.1080/00397709.1984.10733556
BUILDING A TRANSLATION,
THE RE-CONSTRUCTION BUSINESS:
POEM 145 OF SOR JUANA INES DE LA CRUZ
A MORE SERIOUS TITLE for this paper, which will address aspects of the
process of translation, would be "Reading Poem 145 of Sor Juana Ines
de la Cruz: Variations on a Sonnet." Metaphorically speaking, however,
each of the "variations" can be considered as the product of a builder in
the re-construction business.
For Walter Benjamin a translation had to fit itself into its own lan-
guage "with loving particularity ... just as the broken pieces of a vase,
to be joined again, must fit at every point, though none may be exactly
like the other." 1 You will understand why a translator would not be
thrilled with this figure-the marks of the patching are all too readily
observable, the translator's work distressingly exposed. I like to think of
the original work as an ice cube. During the process of translation the
cube is melted. While in its liquid state, every molecule changes place;
none remains in its original relationship to the others. Then begins the
process of forming the work in a second language. Molecules escape,
new molecules are poured in to fill the spaces, but the lines of molding
and mending are virtually invisible. The work exists in the second
language as a new ice cube-different, but to all appearances the same.
The reference in my title, the role of the translator as a builder in the
re-construction business, derives not from reading on translation but
from the play "La mueca" by the Argentine psychiatrist!dramatist
Eduardo Pavlovsky. One of Pavlovsky's characters, El Sueco, voices his-
and perhaps the author's-esthetic: "Hay que violentar para embellecer;
hay que destruir para crear." One must do violence before one can make
beauty; one must destroy before one can create. This is scarcely an
original idea; rather, a recyclable constant that arises periodically clad in
the robes of a new esthetic. What struck me, however, was how perfectly
it described the act of literary translation. We cannot translate until we
"do violence" to the original literary work. We must destroy-de-struct
(and we must make the obligatory disclaimer: no reference is intended to
the terminology of Derrida, who has pre-empted a word I should like to
use) before we can re-~struct. The translation as edifice seems par-
ticularly appropriate for two series of translations with which I have
143
144 SUMMER 1984 SYMPOSIUM
may convey minimal meaning, but no artistry. The devastation from this
de-struction is so total that, concurrently, we want to de-struct the sonnet
in a different way, within its own language, reducing it not to word
clusters strung along a narrative line but to its architectural frame: its
essential communication. We thus isolate the content that transmits Sor
Juana's philosophical views on the fleeting joy of beauty represented in a
portrait: the illusion that seems to triumph over time by eternalizing
beauty in the oils of the canvas, and the deceit inherent in this counterfeit
beauty. Beauty, Sor Juana warns, is not eternal. Nor life itself, as we
read in the famous, beautiful, and didactic last line of the sonnet. As
beauty yields before time, life itself yields to death: cadaver evolves into
po/vo, po/vo into sombra, sombra into nada. The diagram below
removes the ornamental-and to a degree functional-s-facade to reveal
the structural frame:
errada,
1 - - - - - ' - - - -........---'::;......-......
bien micado/
F
MARGARET SAYERS PEDEN 147
The de-structed sonnet reveals the promise-and then the striking in-
terruption-of parallelism in the two quatrains. Each begins with the
word este-the pronoun substituting for the word "portrait" which, in-
terestingly, never appears in the sonnet. It is the repetition of este as the
first word in line 5 that leads the reader to expect a symmetry in the
quatrains. (Peripherally, though the first eight lines of an Italianate son-
net are thought of as an octave, the abba, abba pattern of the rhyme
scheme, as well as the indentation of line 5 in Sor Juana's sonnet, as
reproduced in her Obras camp/etas, tend to suggest two quatrains.)
The first quatrain is self-contained; every phrase refers to the first
word and could be read in this way: "este, que ves"; "este, que es
engano colorido"; "este, del arte ostentando los primores"; "este, con
falsos silogismos de colores"; "este es engafio del sentido." In contrast
to the first, closed quatrain, the second is open: now este promises a
closure that is not forthcoming. In lieu of the suggested, but failed, sym-
metry with "este ... es," the second quatrain presents a secondary struc-
tural parallelism in the two verb clauses dependent on "en quien la lisonja
ha pretendido" and introduced by excusar and triunfar (on which flat-
tery has sought ... to excuse ... and to triumph ... ). Actually, the sec-
ond quatrain can be read as a long aside to, or restatement of, the first
quatrain. The subject este is never completed by the verb, which is the es
of line 9-and all following lines. The effect of this distancing between
subject and verb is to impel the reader toward the lines of the sestet.
148 SUMMER 1984 SYMPOSIUM
On first view, the six lines of the sestet (conventionally, but not func-
tionally, broken by a semi-colon), appear to be parallel, the es of each
line repetitively completing the este.oi lines 1 and 5. Este ... is, equally,
artificio, flor, and on through nada. The parallelism is deceptive,
however. There is an important break at the end of the penultimate line,
indicated by "y, bien mirado . . . " (and, well-considered . . .). The
qualities attributed to the portrait before the break are negative-
artificio, flor delicada (artifice, delicate flower)-but not vital. Follow-
ing the break, we are privy to the author's deepest beliefs and emotions.
It is not merely beauty that is transitory; life itself resolves into nada.
(John A. Crow)"
'Tis but
150 SUMMER 1984 SYMPOSIUM
'Tis merely
'Tis merely
(Kate Flores)4
(Muna Lee)6
(B.G.P.)8
I--_~_-l-'----":'-l
to counter destiny,
is but
is but
'Tis but
A frail
{G. W. Umphrey)!"
Even when a translator has mounted a viable frame, the process of re-
construction has only begun. The outlines of the edifice must be fleshed
out and the distinguishing marks of its original beauty restored. Now the
translator must sift through the rubble of his or her de-struction and
rescue such materials as meter, rhyme, vocabulary, rhetorical tone,
poetic figure, and period.
We might begin with period, as it subsumes other elements like vo-
cabulary and rhetorical tone. Certainly the problems of period are perti-
nent to the sonnet. Today very few people read, very few poets write,
sonnets. At the same time, the sonnet has survived in almost inviolable
form. We may conceive of a sonnet without rhyme, but we cannot call a
poem a sonnet in English unless it is written in fourteen lines of iambic
pentameter. The translator of Sonnet 145, then, is faced with a form en-
crusted with centuries of tradition, one whose formalism dictates a sym-
pathetic formality in lexicon and tone. Each of the translations I have
gathered reflects this deference to the sonnet in general and to Sor
Juana's century in particular. In elevating the language of the poem,
each translator knowingly proceeds against the grain of contemporary
poetry.
Each of the nine translators has paid homage to a more formal period
in the choice of vocabulary. The translations are sprinkled with words
like "dupery," "vainglorious," "expiate," "specious syllogisms,"
"fallacious," and "mitigate," as well as consciously antiquated phrases
such as "Thou beholdest," "sorry labour lost," "doth but disclose,"
and "on which kindness practiced to delete." No translator constructed
Sor Juana's sonnet using modern vocabulary or contemporary rhetoric.
Seven of the nine translators felt sufficiently constrained by the tradition
of form to elect rhyme and meter in their re-constructions. Though
rhyme and meter are not content, they are components that cannot be ar-
tificially separated from content, anymore than plaster takes form
without a substructure of lathe or pebble. Conversely, when the frame of
the translation is slapdash, it is usually the result of subordination of
structure to the ornamentation of meter or rhyme. When end-words like
"pride," "bent and thinned," "wall," "snows," "mind," "door,"
"skill," and "power" intrude into the translations, we know they have
no counterpart in the Spanish but are aberrations caused by the exigen-
cies of meter and rhyme.
The rhyme scheme of the Petrarchan or Italianate sonnet (typically
abba, abba, cdcdcd in Sor Juana's sonnets) demands almost impossible
acrobatics from the English-language translator. We are aware of the
reasons. I do not consider it crucial that two translators rejected rhyme. I
do object, however, to their philosophical decision to ignore, or slight,
MARGARET SAYERS PEDEN 155
tantly of all, how is the key line of Sonnet 145 translated? This last ques-
tion is one we cannot ignore.
In my first comments on the poem's structure I pointed out how every-
thing impels the reader toward that last line. As it is the essential line, it is
the line the translator must translate with greatest care. Perversely, it is
the most difficult, technically. Among the reasons are the fact that the
words are stated so as to allow no interpretation, and when inflexibility
of meaning is added to the demands of meter and rhyme the difficulty is
raised to the tenth power. In addition, there are the problems of the word
nada itself; it is one of the beautiful words in the Spanish language, and
one of the most difficult to translate. The trot offers "nothing,"
"nothingness," "naught," "nonentity," and "very little" -none of
which is strikingly mellifluous. Neither, with the possible exception of
"naught," does any lend itself easily to rhyme. SB, unperturbed by
problems of rhyme, chose "nothingness," a not unpleasant word if one
can forgive it the awkwardness of being naturally dactyllic in a line that
demands an iamb. lAC rhymes "nothing more" with door, which might
be cited as a prime example of necessity being the "portal" to invention.
KF, like SB, indifferent to rhyme, ends with "nothing at all." RG and
ML find rhyme for "nought" in "thought" (RG) and "wrought" (ML),
RG waxing more elaborately" 'tis 'tis 'tis ... yea, 'tis nought,"
and ML, more simply, "Is ... is is and is nought!" FBL forces
the meter of nothingness for rhyme with "stress" and "confess." BGP's
solution is "less than these," rhyming with "appease." MSP deserts the
"nothing" words for an equally difficult to rhyme "void," resorting to
the near, or slant, rhyme of "bowed" and the true rhyme of "ill-
employed." And GWU makes "naught" the choice of the majority,
rhyming both with "thought" and "wrought."
What may we have learned from this exercise? Facetiously, that the
moving and re-construction trade is not without its perils. More seri-
ously, to the serious critic of translation-not the reviewer who crawls
through a translation on his hands and knees, dictionary in hand, nosing
out words for which he does not find a hundred per cent correspondence
from language to language-I have offered a formula. Thus the reader/
critic may approach the reading of a sonnet translation-and perhaps
those of other formal poetry as well-by measuring basic structure as
well as evaluating ornamentation. I remind the translator always to be
alert to the total structure of the sonnet. This is particularly pertinent in
Sonnet 145 which consists of a single sentence. It is easy to think of this
poem in terms of units contained within the rhyme scheme (two
quatrains of abba rhyme, plus a sestet) or as units determined by
MARGARET SAYERS PEDEN 157
1. "The Task of the Translator," translated by James Hynd and M. Valko Delos, 2
(1969), 90.
2. An Anthology of Mexican Poetry, edited by Octavio Paz and translated by Samuel
Beckett (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1965), p. 85.
3. An Anthology of Spanish Poetry (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press,
1979),p.119.
4. Angel Flores. An Anthology of Spanish Poetry from Garcilaso to Garcia Lorca
(Garden City: Anchor Books [Doubleday], 1961), p. 147.
5. Ermilo Abreu Gomez. "The Poet Nun." Americas, 3, 10 (October 1951), 17.
158 SUMMER 1984 SYMPOSIUM
6. Arturo Torres-Rioseco. The Epic of Latin American Literature (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1942), p, 38.
7. "Spanish American Literature." The Yale Review, 17 (1928),539.
8. Translations from Hispanic Poets (New York: Hispanic Society of America, 1938),
p.220.
9. Nimrod, 16,2 (Spring/Summer 1983), 82.
10. Fantasy, 10 (1942),43.