Words and Verse
Portrait (Translation-Spanish)
By Antonio Machado
My boyhood is all memories of a patio in Sevilla
An orchard where the sun would ripen lemons in the fall,
My growing up: some twenty years in regions of Castilla
The rest of it's a couple things I'd rather not recall.
I'm not a playboy, never been Sir Galahad or Byron*.
-You know I'd never fit the part. My style is dull and old-
Yet Cupid had an arrow with my name and I received it
But only loved the ones I thought might have a friendly soul.
Although my veins have drops of blood that's ripe for revolution
My poetry comes flowing from some tranquil spring unstirred.
And more than any guy around who knows the laws and doctrine,
I'm truly "good" at heart in every good sense of the word.
I serve the saint of beauty. To the click of modern scissors
I've cut some ancient roses from the garden of Ronsard**,
No lover of the modern flock that slinks with the beauticians,
I'm not a fan of jays that sing gay tunes of "avant-garde."
The hell with the arpeggios of all the love-sick tenors
The choirs of crickets, tweety birds who warble at the moon.
I quiet down to try and tell true voices from their echos,
And out of all the voices heard I listen for just one.
A classic or romantic? Couldn't tell you. But I'd rather
Leave poetry exactly as a fighter leaves his blade
Famed for the manly hand that held and brandished it in battle
And not the learned smithy's fist that had the metal made.
I hold a conversation with a chap who's always with me
-The man that talks, and talks alone may talk with God some day-
What some would think soliloquy's just talking with this fellow
Who taught me how to love my race, and taught the only way.
I don't owe you a thing, you see, you owe me for my writings.
I go about my work with care, and buy with what I keep
The suits and clothes that cover me, the house whose roof protects me
The bread that helps me stay alive, the bed on which I sleep.
And when the final day arrives, the day of the last voyage,
The ship that never comes again will lift the anchor free
You'll find me with the crew aboard, with very few belongings
And but a rag upon my back, like children of the sea.
*The original says "I've never been Mañara or Bradomín." Miguel Mañara was born in 1626, a playboy in his early life who based his behavior on literary models such as Don Juan. Marqués de Bradomín is the main character in a faux-biographical novel by Ramón María del Valle-Inclán. Since these names are unfamiliar to the English-speaking reader, I've substituted names that might have a certain resonance to them.
**Pierre Ronsard (1524-1585) - French poet who set the style of many of the now-standard forms in French poetry and who turned French poets away from the Rondels and Virelays of native tradition and turned them to the Sonnets of infant pre-Romanticism and Odes of antiquity.
Original
Mi infancia son recuerdos de un patio de Sevilla,
y un huerto claro donde madura el limonero;
mi juventud, veinte años en tierras de Castilla;
mi historia, algunos casos que recordar no quiero.
Ni un seductor Mañara, ni un Bradomín he sido
-ya conocéis mi torpe aliño indumentario-,
más recibí la flecha que me asignó Cupido,
y amé cuanto ellas puedan tener de hospitalario.
Hay en mis venas gotas de sangre jacobina,
pero mi verso brota de manantial sereno;
y, más que un hombre al uso que sabe su doctrina,
soy, en el buen sentido de la palabra, bueno.
Adoro la hermosura, y en la moderna estética
corté las viejas rosas del huerto de Ronsard;
mas no amo los afeites de la actual cosmética,
ni soy un ave de esas del nuevo gay-trinar.
Desdeño las romanzas de los tenores huecos
y el coro de los grillos que cantan a la luna.
A distinguir me paro las voces de los ecos,
y escucho solamente, entre las voces, una.
¿Soy clásico o romántico? No sé. Dejar quisiera
mi verso, como deja el capitán su espada:
famosa por la mano viril que la blandiera,
no por el docto oficio del forjador preciada.
Converso con el hombre que siempre va conmigo
-quien habla solo espera hablar a Dios un día-;
mi soliloquio es plática con ese buen amigo
que me enseñó el secreto de la filantropía.
Y al cabo, nada os debo; debéisme cuanto he escrito.
A mi trabajo acudo, con mi dinero pago
el traje que me cubre y la mansión que habito,
el pan que me alimenta y el lecho en donde yago.
Y cuando llegue el día del último vïaje,
y esté al partir la nave que nunca ha de tornar,
me encontraréis a bordo ligero de equipaje,
casi desnudo, como los hijos de la mar.
My boyhood is all memories of a patio in Sevilla
An orchard where the sun would ripen lemons in the fall,
My growing up: some twenty years in regions of Castilla
The rest of it's a couple things I'd rather not recall.
I'm not a playboy, never been Sir Galahad or Byron*.
-You know I'd never fit the part. My style is dull and old-
Yet Cupid had an arrow with my name and I received it
But only loved the ones I thought might have a friendly soul.
Although my veins have drops of blood that's ripe for revolution
My poetry comes flowing from some tranquil spring unstirred.
And more than any guy around who knows the laws and doctrine,
I'm truly "good" at heart in every good sense of the word.
I serve the saint of beauty. To the click of modern scissors
I've cut some ancient roses from the garden of Ronsard**,
No lover of the modern flock that slinks with the beauticians,
I'm not a fan of jays that sing gay tunes of "avant-garde."
The hell with the arpeggios of all the love-sick tenors
The choirs of crickets, tweety birds who warble at the moon.
I quiet down to try and tell true voices from their echos,
And out of all the voices heard I listen for just one.
A classic or romantic? Couldn't tell you. But I'd rather
Leave poetry exactly as a fighter leaves his blade
Famed for the manly hand that held and brandished it in battle
And not the learned smithy's fist that had the metal made.
I hold a conversation with a chap who's always with me
-The man that talks, and talks alone may talk with God some day-
What some would think soliloquy's just talking with this fellow
Who taught me how to love my race, and taught the only way.
I don't owe you a thing, you see, you owe me for my writings.
I go about my work with care, and buy with what I keep
The suits and clothes that cover me, the house whose roof protects me
The bread that helps me stay alive, the bed on which I sleep.
And when the final day arrives, the day of the last voyage,
The ship that never comes again will lift the anchor free
You'll find me with the crew aboard, with very few belongings
And but a rag upon my back, like children of the sea.
*The original says "I've never been Mañara or Bradomín." Miguel Mañara was born in 1626, a playboy in his early life who based his behavior on literary models such as Don Juan. Marqués de Bradomín is the main character in a faux-biographical novel by Ramón María del Valle-Inclán. Since these names are unfamiliar to the English-speaking reader, I've substituted names that might have a certain resonance to them.
**Pierre Ronsard (1524-1585) - French poet who set the style of many of the now-standard forms in French poetry and who turned French poets away from the Rondels and Virelays of native tradition and turned them to the Sonnets of infant pre-Romanticism and Odes of antiquity.
Original
Mi infancia son recuerdos de un patio de Sevilla,
y un huerto claro donde madura el limonero;
mi juventud, veinte años en tierras de Castilla;
mi historia, algunos casos que recordar no quiero.
Ni un seductor Mañara, ni un Bradomín he sido
-ya conocéis mi torpe aliño indumentario-,
más recibí la flecha que me asignó Cupido,
y amé cuanto ellas puedan tener de hospitalario.
Hay en mis venas gotas de sangre jacobina,
pero mi verso brota de manantial sereno;
y, más que un hombre al uso que sabe su doctrina,
soy, en el buen sentido de la palabra, bueno.
Adoro la hermosura, y en la moderna estética
corté las viejas rosas del huerto de Ronsard;
mas no amo los afeites de la actual cosmética,
ni soy un ave de esas del nuevo gay-trinar.
Desdeño las romanzas de los tenores huecos
y el coro de los grillos que cantan a la luna.
A distinguir me paro las voces de los ecos,
y escucho solamente, entre las voces, una.
¿Soy clásico o romántico? No sé. Dejar quisiera
mi verso, como deja el capitán su espada:
famosa por la mano viril que la blandiera,
no por el docto oficio del forjador preciada.
Converso con el hombre que siempre va conmigo
-quien habla solo espera hablar a Dios un día-;
mi soliloquio es plática con ese buen amigo
que me enseñó el secreto de la filantropía.
Y al cabo, nada os debo; debéisme cuanto he escrito.
A mi trabajo acudo, con mi dinero pago
el traje que me cubre y la mansión que habito,
el pan que me alimenta y el lecho en donde yago.
Y cuando llegue el día del último vïaje,
y esté al partir la nave que nunca ha de tornar,
me encontraréis a bordo ligero de equipaje,
casi desnudo, como los hijos de la mar.
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Portrait (Translation-Spanish)
Portrait (Translation-Spanish)
