#002 Thurs (6/23/2022) - Religio Medici 1643, the mystery of the unknown Spaniard, also Brunanburh and Labyrinths

Spent all morning translating a poem by J.L. Borges, Religio Medici, 1643; which was found in El Oro de los Tigres (1972).  I did not have an English translation of it, so I attempted to produce one.  Then later, in someone's blog post, I discovered a translation by Alastair Reid, that was quite a bit more elaborate and that I think it quite a bit better; posted at RdlR.  It was attributed to The Sonnets by Jorge Luis Borges (A Duel-Language Edition with Parallel Text (Penguin Classics), edited by Suzanne Jill Levine and Stephen Kessler), which I could not find.  In that reference this poem appears in In Praise of Darkness (1969), but Poesia Completa does not have it there. Nor does the 1969 translation by Norma Thomas di Giovanni (which I was able to find). Oddly however, The Gold of the Tigers (1972) paired with Book of Sand in a Penguin edition dated 1971, translated by di Giovanni, does not include Religio Medici, 1643 among the selected works translated. In the process of translating it, Mike produced his own translation, which he shared with me and I posted at RdlR.  We had some discussion on the meaning of shadowed or darkened eyes and marble and save versus defend me.

Yesterday, I read the section titled "Word Music and Translation" in This Craft of Verse by JLB.  In it, he describes in some detail a translation of an Old English ode by Tennyson, The Battle of Brunanburh. Not surprisingly, Borges has a poem entitled Brunanburh, A.D. 937, in El oro de los tigres, which reads as follows:

Brunanburh, a.d. 937
Nadie a tu lado.
Anoche maté a un hombre en la batalla.
Era animoso y alto, de la clara estirpe de Anlaf.
La espada entró en el pecho, un poco a la izquierda.
Rodó por tierra y fue una cosa,
una cosa del cuervo.
En vano lo esperarás, mujer que no he visto.
No lo traerán las naves que huyéron
sobre el agua amarilla.
En la hora del alba,
tu mano desde el sueño lo buscará.
Tu lecho está frío.
Anoche maté a un hombre en Brunanburh.

Brunanburh, a.d. 937
No one at your side.
Last night I did a man to death in battle.
He was spirited and tall, of the clear line of Anlaf.
The sword went into his breast, a shade to the left.
He turned on the ground and was a thing,
an object for crows.
In vain will you await him, wife I have not seen.
They will not bear him back, the ships that fled
over the yellow waters.
In the hour of the dawn,
out of a dream, your hand will reach for him.
Your couch is cold.
Last night I killed a man in Brunanburh.

 

Translated by di Giovanni. 
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There are two poems by JLB, one entitled The Labyrinth [el laberinto] and other other simply Labyrinth [laberinto].  The both appear in In Praise of Darkness (1969) in the Norman Thomas di Giovanni translation, however, in the text El Laberinto is credited to John Updike as translator.

THE LABYRINTH
Zeus, Zeus himself could not undo these nets
of stone encircling me. My mind forgets
the persons I have been along the way,
the hated way of monotonous walls,
which is my fate. The galleries seem straight
but curve furtively, forming secret circles
at the terminus of years; and the parapets
have been worn smooth by the passage of days.
Here, in the tepid alabaster dust,
are tracks that frighten me. The hollow air
of evening sometimes brings a bellowing,
or the echo, desolate, of bellowing.
I know that hidden in the shadows there
lurks another, whose task is to exhaust
the loneliness that braids and weaves this hell,
to crave my blood, and to fatten on my death.
We seek each other. Oh, if only this
were the last day of our antithesis!
[Translated by John Updike]

 

LABYRINTH (source of this translation?)
There’ll never be a door. You’re inside
and the keep encompasses the world
and has neither obverse nor reverse
nor circling wall nor secret center.
Hope not that the straitness of your path
that stubbornly branches off in two,
and stubbornly branches off in two,
will have an end. Your fate is ironbound,
as is your judge. Forget the onslaught
of the bull that is a man and whose
strange and plural form haunts the tangle
of unending interwoven stone.
He does not exist. In the black dusk
hope not even for the savage beast.

 

These both reference the Labyrinth of classical mythology and could be paired with The House of Asterion, which also deals with the Minotaur and the Labyrinth.