El día de hoy no llegó dando tumbos
Mattthew Stewart reviews 'The Conjurer' by Pedro Serrano, translated by Anna Crowe (Arc Publications, 2024).
ORFEBRERÍA
Pieza a pieza, paso a paso,
junta la caca el escarabajo.
Hace ruidos y se agita,
rueda que rueda el ilusionista.
Por la cal y el terregal
a pie juntillas intenta arar.
Nada hay que no le sirva,
paja, cerillos, sal y lascivia.
Al final, en tornasol,
bate y alza esta perla marrón.
THE JEWELLER’S CRAFT
Step by step, and little by little,
he’s gathering dung, the scarab-beetle.
Noises he’ll make, and paw the air,
a trick well-known to the conjurer.
Over lime and dusty ground
with feet together he tries to plough.
There is nothing that cannot be used,
straw, spent matches, salt and lust.
Finally, like beaten gold,
he hammers, lifts high this rich brown globe.
‘Orfebrería’ (‘The Jeweller’s Craft’) is from The Conjurer by Pedro Serrano, translated by Anna Crowe (Arc Publications, 2024) — our thanks to Pedro Serrano, Anna Crowe and Arc Publications for letting us reproduce it here.
El correntín del día viajero
The act of translation involves the need to resolve ambiguities or ambivalences that were intentionally left open in the original, just as it forces the loss of connotations that cannot be replaced on a like-for-like basis. For some translators, this process is drenched in frustration, but for others, it’s a creative challenge, the chance to generate a new entity that simultaneously does its utmost to respect the source. And on this occasion, we’re lucky to find that Anna Crowe is the translator of Pedro Serrano’s new collection, The Conjurer (Arc Publications, 2024) as her method firmly falls into the second category. Crowe’s considerable experience in translating the likes of Joan Margarit (from Catalan) and Juan Forcano (from Castilian Spanish), both also published by Arc, is here brought to bear on a selection from Pedro Serrano’s three published collections in Mexican Spanish.
As a consequence, it’s possible to read this book with pleasure without any knowledge of Spanish, although there’s no doubt the experience is enriched if you’re able to compare the versions. Located in turn on odd and even pages, the originals and translations immediately establish an implicit dialogue. What’s more, this conversation is lent extra complexity from the off, as Serrano’s Mexican sensibility portrays scenes of London life in a Spanish that’s then translated by Crowe. The result is an enriching game of poetic Chinese whispers. It’s pulled off so exquisitely that it doesn’t disorientate the reader. Instead, it casts sparkling perspectives, turning habitual scenes into something fresh, as in the following extract from ‘Madrugada Feérica en Islington’ (‘Fairytale Morning in Islington’):
El día de hoy no llegó dando tumbos,
ni despertó asustado
tenso de ocupaciones y retrasos.
Discurrió lento desde la plena noche
y se fijó afirmado en el estar.Today the day didn’t come lurching in,
nor did it wake in a fright
tense with chores and delays.
Slowly it wandered in from deepest night
and stamped itself firmly on the here and now.
These lines in English work in poetic terms. And they reflect the original’s intentions. And that’s a huge plus, given its inherent difficulties for the translator. In this respect, Crowe’s rendering of ‘el estar’ is of particular interest ‘El estar’ might at first sight be an infinitive, but Serrano here also invokes its second usage as an abstract noun that’s laden with nuances, which is where linguistic complications set in. It’s an act of being and a state of being at the same time. How to convey this in English? Crowe deftly opts for the concrete nature of "the here and now", because there’s no syntactic way to maintain the implied layers of the original. Its immense echoes have to be muted.
The result is an enriching game of poetic Chinese whispers
One of the many merits of Crowe’s work throughout this collection lies in her awareness of the hurdles that face her. Her explanation in the introduction to the book of one such instance is particularly enlightening. When discussing her translation of the poem ‘Diques’ (‘Breakwaters’), she states:
‘You and you’ in Spanish is expressed in the second person singular, placing ‘a ti y a ti’ at the end of the first line, but in the next line, the poet addresses his sons using the more formal, polite form, of the third person plural and continues to do so, the last line ending with ‘a ustedes’. It is as though he were teaching himself to withdraw a little to give them space. […] In English, of course, the distinction between intimate and polite forms of address cannot be conveyed through the pronouns, though I hope that ‘both of you’ perhaps conveys a slightly more formal way of speaking.
Moreover, the use of ‘ustedes’ in intimate situations in Mexican Spanish is very different from most standard, Peninsular use. In fact, its subtle baggage of deep affection and profound respect has partial roots in the dialect of Western Andalusia, the origin of many emigrants to Mexico. This means the translator is faced with an impossible task when dealing with lines in which Serrano is invoking a whole set of sociolinguistic ramifications. Yet her translation still works as a poem, while remaining true to the spirit of the original.
Another factor that compounds the complexity of the translator's task is Serrano’s acute awareness of aural patterning, along with his taste for partial repetition, as in ‘La Habitación Azul’ (‘The Blue Room’). Its opening lines read:
Si afuera sólo fuera
el correntín del día viajero
de su nombre a la infancia.
Si afuera acostumbrara
el cielo a despertar archisonante,
chirriante a veces.If outside there were only
the breeze of the wandering day
blowing from her name back to her childhood.
If outside the sky might only grow accustomed
to waking up resonant with song,
chirruping, sometimes.
Crowe finds herself forced to decide how to render the imperfect subjunctive, given that it sounds slightly archaic in English (she lets the archaism stand, bearing in mind that the original’s register is high) and then has to resolve how to reflect the delicious play on ‘afuera / fuera’. She does so, of course, via the repetition of ‘only’ in the translation.
This volume is a significant achievement on the part of both the poet and the translator
So how might we term The Conjurer in this bilingual volume? A heroic failure? Far from it. In fact, this volume is a significant achievement on the part of both the poet and the translator. Anna Crowe has approached Pedro Serrano’s fine writing with a deep knowledge of linguistic nuance and immense attention to detail, enabling English-language readers fruitful access to his work. As such, this collection offers a benchmark and a masterclass for anyone contemplating the impossible challenge of translating poetry.
Matthew Stewart works in the Spanish wine trade and lives between Extremadura and West Sussex. Following two pamphlets with HappenStancePress, his first full collection, The Knives of Villalejo, was published in 2017, and his second collection, Whatever You Do, Just Don’t, in 2023. Recent poems have featured in The Spectator, The New European and Wild Court. He blogs at Rogue Strands.
Pedro Serrano’s collections of poems include El miedo (1986); Ignorancia (1994); Tres poemas (2000); Turba (2005); Desplazamientos (2007) and Nueces (2009). A study on T. S. Eliot and Octavio Paz was published by UNAM / Conaculta in 2011. He was awarded a Guggenheim Poetry Fellowship in 2007. He teaches in the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City, where he is also the editor of online poetry journal Periódico de Poesía.
Anna Crowe is a British poet, a trained linguist, and a translator of primarily Catalan and Castilian poetry, but also French, Portuguese and Italian. She was born in Plymouth, spent part of her childhood in France, and studied French and Spanish at the University of St Andrews. She has had collections published by Peterloo and Arc, and pamphlets published by Mariscat. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and has been translated into Catalan, Spanish, Italian and German. She co-founded and was artistic director of StAnza, and is now honorary president.
As well as browsing our Substack, it’s worth visiting The Friday Poem website where you can browse our Archive of more than 700 posts dating back to early 2021. If you like Matthew Stewart’s writing, try his piece on the work of Michael Laskey, or his piece on how poetry can reach out to a wider readership. If you want to know more about his poetry, read Christopher James’ review of his second collection, Whatever You Do, Just Don’t (HappenStance Press, 2023), or his Friday Poem, Las Cigüeñas.
Help support The Friday Poem — buy us a coffee to help us stay awake as we strive to bring poetic excellence to your inbox every Friday. If you can't afford to donate, no worries, we’re going to keep on doing it anyway! Big thanks for everything, you lovely poetry peeps.
A really fascinating discussion of the art of translation - I don't know Serrano's work, but have put this book on my list! - and Anna Crowe is of course a really first rate poet.
A lovely review of a fascinating book!