Something about it more abrupt and stark when it's in English like this. There's something lost in translation when it's no longer in Spanish; It's more lyrical when it is.
But not to say it isn't still beautiful. It matches a lot of what I feel as well.
How did you relate with it, if I may be so bold as to ask?
I can believe it. A lot of the Sufi poetry I love loses much of it's meaning in translation.
It will take me time to digest the poem as a whole, but right away there are certain, small phrases that I can connect with. In particular 'we climb to the knife edge of the snow' and 'and the enraged ants / will throw themselves on the yellow skies that take refuge in the / eyes of cows' strike something in me.
Pieces of this work remind me of other lines - 'Every street lamp that I pass / Beats like a fatalistic drum, / And through the spaces of the dark / Midnight shakes the memory / As a madman shakes a dead geranium.'
Those are powerful lines. I find myself struck most by the lines of 'and that boy they buried this morning cried so much/ it was necessary to call out the dogs to keep him quiet.'
The thing I like best about poetry is that, while the writer may have been symbolizing or refering to something specific in his own mind, our own interpretations can mold it to have personal, private meaning. What these specific lines mean to us may have meant something completely different to Lorca. But that is the magic of verse; it speaks to us all differently.
And what poem is that other line from? It certainly shares a lot of similar symbolism. Darkness, memory, flowers. Dead flowers, to be precise. Hm.
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But not to say it isn't still beautiful. It matches a lot of what I feel as well.
How did you relate with it, if I may be so bold as to ask?
Reply
It will take me time to digest the poem as a whole, but right away there are certain, small phrases that I can connect with. In particular 'we climb to the knife edge of the snow' and 'and the enraged ants / will throw themselves on the yellow skies that take refuge in the / eyes of cows' strike something in me.
Pieces of this work remind me of other lines - 'Every street lamp that I pass / Beats like a fatalistic drum, / And through the spaces of the dark / Midnight shakes the memory / As a madman shakes a dead geranium.'
Reply
The thing I like best about poetry is that, while the writer may have been symbolizing or refering to something specific in his own mind, our own interpretations can mold it to have personal, private meaning. What these specific lines mean to us may have meant something completely different to Lorca. But that is the magic of verse; it speaks to us all differently.
And what poem is that other line from? It certainly shares a lot of similar symbolism. Darkness, memory, flowers. Dead flowers, to be precise. Hm.
Reply
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