qatarperegrine (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
qatarperegrine) wrote2006-02-14 11:54 pm
qatarperegrine) wrote2006-02-14 11:54 pm
Entry tags:
Green Eyes
Just for kicks, today I translated my favorite Spanish short story into English; it's Los Ojos Verdes, a fun Romantic tale by Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer. Just right for Valentine's Day!
Translation turns out to be harder than I thought. In Spanish this is all beautifully worded, Yeats-ish, but I couldn't make it come out right. The voice is inconsistent, and I spent absurd amounts of time trying to work out how to translate things like "Fuente de los Álamos," because "Poplar Headwaters" just doesn't roll off the tongue. So enjoy, and be gentle. :-)
I
“The stag is wounded, running wounded – There is no doubt. Flashes of blood are seen amid the mountain brambles, and leaping over the sumacs has weakened its legs – Our young lord begins where others leave off – In forty years as a hunter I have not seen a better blow. – But, by St. Saturio, patron of Soria! – head it off its by those oaks, urge on the hounds, sound your horns, and sink your spurs into your steeds! Do you not see that it is making for the Aspen Spring? If it reaches that fount before it dies, we can give it up for lost!”
The blasts of the hunting horns echoed back and forth in the canyons of Moncayo; the dogs’ snarls and pages’ voices resounded with new fury; and the confused commotion of men, horses and hounds set off for the place that Iñigo, the greatest hunter of the Marquises of Alemar, suggested best for cutting off their quarry’s retreat.
But their efforts were in vain. When the most agile of the greyhounds arrived at the oaks, panting and covered in flecks of spittle, the hart – swift as an arrow – had already reached its salvation in a single bound, losing itself in the undergrowth of the trail that led to the Spring.
“Halt! Halt, one and all!” Iñigo cried out. “His escape was ordained by God.”
The cavalcade halted and muted their horns, and at the hunters’ command the greyhounds ceased to whine at the trail.
At that moment the hero of the party – Fernando de Argensola, the heir of Almenar – rejoined his retinue.
“What are you doing?” he cried out, approaching his hunter. Astonishment was painted on his face, and rage burned in his eyes. “What are you doing, fool? You see that the quarry is wounded – the first that has fallen at my hand – and yet you abandon its trail and give it up for lost, to die in the depths of the forest. Did you think, perhaps, that I came to kill deer that wolves might feast upon them?
“My lord,” Iñigo murmured through clenched teeth, “To continue past this point is impossible.”
“Impossible! And why?”
“Because that trail leads to the Aspen Spring,” the hunter continued. “The Aspen Spring, in whose waters an evil spirit dwells. He who dares to roil those waters pays dearly for his audacity. Already the stag has found sanctuary at its shore. How will you reclaim the beast without bringing down upon your head some terrible calamity? We hunters may be the kings of Moncayo, but we are kings who pay a tribute: quarry that find refuge in that mysterious fount are quarry lost to us.
“Quarry lost! I will lose the lordship of my forebears – I will lose my soul into the hands of Satan – before I will allow this stag to escape me, the only stag my spear has pierced, the first fruits of my hunting expedition! – Do you see him? Do you see him? At times you can still make him out from here; his legs are failing him, his race is cut short. Let me go, let me go; loose that bridle or I will hurl you into the dust. Who knows if my steed might not reach the spring? And if he does, to the devil with the wellspring, both its limpidity and its inhabitants. On, Lightning! On, my steed! If you reach the hart, I shall adorn a golden bridle with diamonds for you.
Horse and rider departed like a whirlwind. Iñigo followed them with his gaze until they were lost in the brush; then, his eyes returned to those around him. All, like him, remained motionless and disquieted.
At last the hunter cried out: “Sirs, you have yourselves seen it. To detain him, I risked death under his horse’s hooves. I have fulfilled my duty. Deeds of valor do not matter to the devil. Until this point a hunter with a crossbow could aid him; from here forward, he needs a chaplain armed with holy water.”
II
“Your color is much changed; shriveled and shadowy you appear as you pace. What has befallen you? Since that unfortunate day on which you pursued your injured quarry to the Aspen Spring, it is said that an evil sorceress has enchanted you with her spells. No longer do noisy packs of hounds accompany you to the mountains; nor does the clamor of your horn awaken the mountain’s echoes. Instead, you are yourself hounded by ruminations every morning as you take up your crossbow and plunge into to the thicket, remaining there until the sun has disappeared. And when night darkens and you return to the castle, pallid and fatigued, in vain do we search your pouch for the spoils of your hunt. What is taking you so far from those who most love you, and for such long hours?”
While Iñigo spoke, Fernando, absorbed in his thoughts, mechanically chipped at his ebony bench with his hunting knife.
After a long silence interrupted only by the rasp of the blade against the polished wood, the youth cried out to his servant, as though he had not listened to a single one of his words:
“Iñigo, you who are old, you who know the sentinels of Moncayo, who have lived on its slopes while pursuing its beasts, and who in your errant hunting excursions have more than once scaled its summit, tell me: have you met, by chance, a woman who lives among its crags?
“A woman!” cried the hunter with astonishment, watching him closely.
“Yes,” said the youth. “It is a strange thing that has befallen me, very strange. I believed myself able to guard this secret eternally, but it is no longer possible; it overflows my heart and reveals itself in my semblance. I will therefore make it known to you. You shall help me unveil the mystery that shrouds this creature who (it appears) exists only for me – for no one knows her, nor has met her, nor can account for her.
Without parting his lips the hunter dragged his bench over to that of his lord, from whom he did not remove his frightened eyes. The youth, after arranging his thoughts, proceeded thus:
“From the day on which (despite your dire predictions) I came to the Aspen Spring and, crossing its waters, recovered the hart that your superstition had let flee – from that day, my soul has been filled with desire for solitude.
“You do not know that place. Picture it: the wellspring is hidden in the cleft of a rock. Its water falls, sliding drop by drop, among the green and floating leaves of the plants that grow at the borders of that cradle. Those drops fall, shining like points of gold and sounding like the notes of an instrument; they reunite between the leaves and, whispering, whispering, with a sound like bees humming between flowers, they retreat at the sand and form a channel; they fight the obstacles hindering their path; then they fall upon themselves, leap, slip away, and run – sometimes with laughter, other times with sighs – until they cascade into a lake. Into the lake they fall with an indescribable murmur. Laments, words, names, songs – I do not know all that I have heard in that murmur when I have sat alone and feverish on the crag at whose feet the waters leap from the mysterious font to idle in a deep pool whose motionless surface hardly ripples in the afternoon breeze.
All is majestic there. Solitude, with its thousand unknown susurrations, abides in those places and intoxicates the spirit with its inexpressible melancholy. In the silvered aspen leaves, in the hollows of the rocks, in the swells of the waters, the invisible spirits of Nature seem to speak to us, recognizing a brother in the immortal spirit of man.
When, at daybreak, you saw me take up my crossbow and set forth for the mountains, it was never that I might lose myself among its briers in pursuit of game. No; I went that I might sit on the border of the spring, that I might search in its waves for – I know not what – a madness! For on that day, the day in which my Lightning leapt over the spring, I believed myself to have seen, shining in its depths, a strange thing, a very strange thing: a woman’s eyes.
Perhaps it was a ray of sunlight that fleetingly pierced its foam; perhaps it was one of the emerald-sepalled flowers that float among the seaweed on its ripples; I know not. I believed I saw a glance that fixed mine, a glance that ignited an absurd, unrealizable desire in my breast: to find the person with those eyes. In search of those eyes I went day after day to that place.
At last, one afternoon – I had believed myself the toy of a dream, but no, it is true – I have spoken to her many times now, as I am speaking now to you. One afternoon I found her seated on my crag, clad in garments that fell onto the pool and floated on the face of the waters. A woman lovelier than all contemplation. Her locks were as gold; her eyelashes shone like threads of light, and between those lashes moved those inquiet orbs I had seen. Yes, for the eyes of that woman were the eyes that I had fixed in my mind, eyes of an impossible hue, eyes that were –”
“Green!” Iñigo cried out with an accent of profound terror, suddenly straightening in his seat.
Fernando gazed at him as though astonished the hunter had completed his thought, and he asked with a mixture of anxiety and joy: “You know her?”
“Oh, no!” Iñigo said. “God spare me from knowing her! But my parents, when enjoining me from going to those places, told me a thousand times that the spirit, ghost, demon or maiden that inhabited those waters had eyes of that color. I implore you, for those you love most in the world – do not return to the Aspen Spring! One day or another you will awaken its vengeance and, by dying, atone for the sin of having sullied its waves.”
“For those I love most!” murmured the youth with a sad smile.
“Yes,” the ancient continued; “for your parents, for your relatives, for the tears of she whom Heaven destines to be your bride – for those of a servant who witnessed your birth.”
“Do you know what I most love in the world? Do you know for what cause I would sacrifice the love of my father, the kisses of she who gave me life, and all the affection that all the women in the world might possess? I would give all these for a glance, for a single glance from those eyes. Tell me, then, how can I cease to look for them?”
Fernando said these words in such a voice that the tear trembling in Iñigo’s eyelid slid silently down his cheek, while he exclaimed darkly, “May the will of Heaven be done!”
III
“Who are you? What is your homeland? Where do you dwell? I come day after day in search of you, and I see neither the charger that brings you here nor the servants that carry your litter. Rend that mysterious veil that surrounds you like the deepest night! I love you and, noblewoman or villein, I will be yours, yours always.”
The sun had set behind the peak of the mountain; the shadows crept down its slopes; the breeze moaned between the poplars of the spring, and the fog, rising little by little from the surface of the lake, began to envelop the crags on its banks.
On one of these rocks – one that seemed on the point of collapsing into the depths of the waters, in whose surface it was reflected, trembling – there the heir of Almenar, on his knees at the feet of his mysterious beloved, tried in vain to uncover the secret of her existence.
She was beautiful; beautiful and pale as an alabaster statue. One of her curls fell on her shoulders, slipping between the folds of her veil like a ray of light piercing clouds, and in the enclosure of her blonde eyelashes her irises shone like two emeralds set in a golden brooch.
When the youth fell silent, her lips moved as though to pronounce some words; but only a sigh escaped – a weak, mournful sigh like that of a slight wave dying between the rushes.
“You do not reply!” Fernando cried out, his hopes frustrated. “Do you wish to lend credence to what they have told me of you? No! Speak to me; I long to know if you love me; I long to know if I may love you, if you are a woman –”
“– or a demon. And if I were?”
The youth hesitated an instant; a cold sweat ran over his limbs; his pupils dilated as they fixed more intently on hers; and, transfixed by her phosphorescent, almost lunatic brilliance, he cried out in a fit of love:
“If you were… I would love you. I would love you as I now love you, as it is my destiny to love you, all my life and beyond, if anything lies beyond.”
“Fernando,” said the beauty then, with a voice like music. “I love you still more than you love me; I, who have descended to mortality from the realm of pure spirit. I am not a woman like those who exist on Earth; I am a woman worthy of you, who are superior to other men. I live in the depths of this water, incorporeal like it, ephemeral and diaphanous: I speak with its murmurs and undulate with its waves. I do not punish the one who disturbs the spring where I dwell; rather, I reward him with my love, as a mortal superior to the superstitions of vulgar men, as a lover capable of understanding my strange and mysterious circumstances.”
While she spoke thus, the youth, absorbed in contemplation of her fantastic beauty and attracted to her by an unknown force, approached closer and closer to the edge of the crag.
The woman of green eyes continued thus: “Do you see, do you see the clear heart of this lake? Do you see the large and verdant leaves trembling in its depths? They will make for us a bed of emeralds and corals, and I – I will give you a happiness without name, the happiness of which you have dreamed in your hours of delirium and which no one else can offer. Come; the fog of the lake floats over our brows like a linen canopy; the waves call to us with their unfathomable voices; the wind starts up its hymns of love between the aspens; come… come…”
Night began to lengthen her shadows; the moon glistened on the surface of the lake; the fog thickened; and the green eyes shone in the darkness like unavailing fires burning on the surface of polluted waters. “Come… come…” These words hummed in Fernando’s ears like an incantation. Come… and the mysterious woman called him to the edge of the abyss where she was suspended, and seemed to offer him a kiss – a kiss –
Fernando took a step towards her… and another… and felt the thin and supple arms that wrapped around his neck, and a cold sensation on his burning lips, a kiss of snow… and he swayed… and he lost his footing, and fell into the waters with a muffled and mournful sound.
The waters leapt in sparks of light and closed in over his body, and their silver ripples grew and grew, until they died out on the shore.
Translation turns out to be harder than I thought. In Spanish this is all beautifully worded, Yeats-ish, but I couldn't make it come out right. The voice is inconsistent, and I spent absurd amounts of time trying to work out how to translate things like "Fuente de los Álamos," because "Poplar Headwaters" just doesn't roll off the tongue. So enjoy, and be gentle. :-)
“The stag is wounded, running wounded – There is no doubt. Flashes of blood are seen amid the mountain brambles, and leaping over the sumacs has weakened its legs – Our young lord begins where others leave off – In forty years as a hunter I have not seen a better blow. – But, by St. Saturio, patron of Soria! – head it off its by those oaks, urge on the hounds, sound your horns, and sink your spurs into your steeds! Do you not see that it is making for the Aspen Spring? If it reaches that fount before it dies, we can give it up for lost!”
The blasts of the hunting horns echoed back and forth in the canyons of Moncayo; the dogs’ snarls and pages’ voices resounded with new fury; and the confused commotion of men, horses and hounds set off for the place that Iñigo, the greatest hunter of the Marquises of Alemar, suggested best for cutting off their quarry’s retreat.
But their efforts were in vain. When the most agile of the greyhounds arrived at the oaks, panting and covered in flecks of spittle, the hart – swift as an arrow – had already reached its salvation in a single bound, losing itself in the undergrowth of the trail that led to the Spring.
“Halt! Halt, one and all!” Iñigo cried out. “His escape was ordained by God.”
The cavalcade halted and muted their horns, and at the hunters’ command the greyhounds ceased to whine at the trail.
At that moment the hero of the party – Fernando de Argensola, the heir of Almenar – rejoined his retinue.
“What are you doing?” he cried out, approaching his hunter. Astonishment was painted on his face, and rage burned in his eyes. “What are you doing, fool? You see that the quarry is wounded – the first that has fallen at my hand – and yet you abandon its trail and give it up for lost, to die in the depths of the forest. Did you think, perhaps, that I came to kill deer that wolves might feast upon them?
“My lord,” Iñigo murmured through clenched teeth, “To continue past this point is impossible.”
“Impossible! And why?”
“Because that trail leads to the Aspen Spring,” the hunter continued. “The Aspen Spring, in whose waters an evil spirit dwells. He who dares to roil those waters pays dearly for his audacity. Already the stag has found sanctuary at its shore. How will you reclaim the beast without bringing down upon your head some terrible calamity? We hunters may be the kings of Moncayo, but we are kings who pay a tribute: quarry that find refuge in that mysterious fount are quarry lost to us.
“Quarry lost! I will lose the lordship of my forebears – I will lose my soul into the hands of Satan – before I will allow this stag to escape me, the only stag my spear has pierced, the first fruits of my hunting expedition! – Do you see him? Do you see him? At times you can still make him out from here; his legs are failing him, his race is cut short. Let me go, let me go; loose that bridle or I will hurl you into the dust. Who knows if my steed might not reach the spring? And if he does, to the devil with the wellspring, both its limpidity and its inhabitants. On, Lightning! On, my steed! If you reach the hart, I shall adorn a golden bridle with diamonds for you.
Horse and rider departed like a whirlwind. Iñigo followed them with his gaze until they were lost in the brush; then, his eyes returned to those around him. All, like him, remained motionless and disquieted.
At last the hunter cried out: “Sirs, you have yourselves seen it. To detain him, I risked death under his horse’s hooves. I have fulfilled my duty. Deeds of valor do not matter to the devil. Until this point a hunter with a crossbow could aid him; from here forward, he needs a chaplain armed with holy water.”
“Your color is much changed; shriveled and shadowy you appear as you pace. What has befallen you? Since that unfortunate day on which you pursued your injured quarry to the Aspen Spring, it is said that an evil sorceress has enchanted you with her spells. No longer do noisy packs of hounds accompany you to the mountains; nor does the clamor of your horn awaken the mountain’s echoes. Instead, you are yourself hounded by ruminations every morning as you take up your crossbow and plunge into to the thicket, remaining there until the sun has disappeared. And when night darkens and you return to the castle, pallid and fatigued, in vain do we search your pouch for the spoils of your hunt. What is taking you so far from those who most love you, and for such long hours?”
While Iñigo spoke, Fernando, absorbed in his thoughts, mechanically chipped at his ebony bench with his hunting knife.
After a long silence interrupted only by the rasp of the blade against the polished wood, the youth cried out to his servant, as though he had not listened to a single one of his words:
“Iñigo, you who are old, you who know the sentinels of Moncayo, who have lived on its slopes while pursuing its beasts, and who in your errant hunting excursions have more than once scaled its summit, tell me: have you met, by chance, a woman who lives among its crags?
“A woman!” cried the hunter with astonishment, watching him closely.
“Yes,” said the youth. “It is a strange thing that has befallen me, very strange. I believed myself able to guard this secret eternally, but it is no longer possible; it overflows my heart and reveals itself in my semblance. I will therefore make it known to you. You shall help me unveil the mystery that shrouds this creature who (it appears) exists only for me – for no one knows her, nor has met her, nor can account for her.
Without parting his lips the hunter dragged his bench over to that of his lord, from whom he did not remove his frightened eyes. The youth, after arranging his thoughts, proceeded thus:
“From the day on which (despite your dire predictions) I came to the Aspen Spring and, crossing its waters, recovered the hart that your superstition had let flee – from that day, my soul has been filled with desire for solitude.
“You do not know that place. Picture it: the wellspring is hidden in the cleft of a rock. Its water falls, sliding drop by drop, among the green and floating leaves of the plants that grow at the borders of that cradle. Those drops fall, shining like points of gold and sounding like the notes of an instrument; they reunite between the leaves and, whispering, whispering, with a sound like bees humming between flowers, they retreat at the sand and form a channel; they fight the obstacles hindering their path; then they fall upon themselves, leap, slip away, and run – sometimes with laughter, other times with sighs – until they cascade into a lake. Into the lake they fall with an indescribable murmur. Laments, words, names, songs – I do not know all that I have heard in that murmur when I have sat alone and feverish on the crag at whose feet the waters leap from the mysterious font to idle in a deep pool whose motionless surface hardly ripples in the afternoon breeze.
All is majestic there. Solitude, with its thousand unknown susurrations, abides in those places and intoxicates the spirit with its inexpressible melancholy. In the silvered aspen leaves, in the hollows of the rocks, in the swells of the waters, the invisible spirits of Nature seem to speak to us, recognizing a brother in the immortal spirit of man.
When, at daybreak, you saw me take up my crossbow and set forth for the mountains, it was never that I might lose myself among its briers in pursuit of game. No; I went that I might sit on the border of the spring, that I might search in its waves for – I know not what – a madness! For on that day, the day in which my Lightning leapt over the spring, I believed myself to have seen, shining in its depths, a strange thing, a very strange thing: a woman’s eyes.
Perhaps it was a ray of sunlight that fleetingly pierced its foam; perhaps it was one of the emerald-sepalled flowers that float among the seaweed on its ripples; I know not. I believed I saw a glance that fixed mine, a glance that ignited an absurd, unrealizable desire in my breast: to find the person with those eyes. In search of those eyes I went day after day to that place.
At last, one afternoon – I had believed myself the toy of a dream, but no, it is true – I have spoken to her many times now, as I am speaking now to you. One afternoon I found her seated on my crag, clad in garments that fell onto the pool and floated on the face of the waters. A woman lovelier than all contemplation. Her locks were as gold; her eyelashes shone like threads of light, and between those lashes moved those inquiet orbs I had seen. Yes, for the eyes of that woman were the eyes that I had fixed in my mind, eyes of an impossible hue, eyes that were –”
“Green!” Iñigo cried out with an accent of profound terror, suddenly straightening in his seat.
Fernando gazed at him as though astonished the hunter had completed his thought, and he asked with a mixture of anxiety and joy: “You know her?”
“Oh, no!” Iñigo said. “God spare me from knowing her! But my parents, when enjoining me from going to those places, told me a thousand times that the spirit, ghost, demon or maiden that inhabited those waters had eyes of that color. I implore you, for those you love most in the world – do not return to the Aspen Spring! One day or another you will awaken its vengeance and, by dying, atone for the sin of having sullied its waves.”
“For those I love most!” murmured the youth with a sad smile.
“Yes,” the ancient continued; “for your parents, for your relatives, for the tears of she whom Heaven destines to be your bride – for those of a servant who witnessed your birth.”
“Do you know what I most love in the world? Do you know for what cause I would sacrifice the love of my father, the kisses of she who gave me life, and all the affection that all the women in the world might possess? I would give all these for a glance, for a single glance from those eyes. Tell me, then, how can I cease to look for them?”
Fernando said these words in such a voice that the tear trembling in Iñigo’s eyelid slid silently down his cheek, while he exclaimed darkly, “May the will of Heaven be done!”
“Who are you? What is your homeland? Where do you dwell? I come day after day in search of you, and I see neither the charger that brings you here nor the servants that carry your litter. Rend that mysterious veil that surrounds you like the deepest night! I love you and, noblewoman or villein, I will be yours, yours always.”
The sun had set behind the peak of the mountain; the shadows crept down its slopes; the breeze moaned between the poplars of the spring, and the fog, rising little by little from the surface of the lake, began to envelop the crags on its banks.
On one of these rocks – one that seemed on the point of collapsing into the depths of the waters, in whose surface it was reflected, trembling – there the heir of Almenar, on his knees at the feet of his mysterious beloved, tried in vain to uncover the secret of her existence.
She was beautiful; beautiful and pale as an alabaster statue. One of her curls fell on her shoulders, slipping between the folds of her veil like a ray of light piercing clouds, and in the enclosure of her blonde eyelashes her irises shone like two emeralds set in a golden brooch.
When the youth fell silent, her lips moved as though to pronounce some words; but only a sigh escaped – a weak, mournful sigh like that of a slight wave dying between the rushes.
“You do not reply!” Fernando cried out, his hopes frustrated. “Do you wish to lend credence to what they have told me of you? No! Speak to me; I long to know if you love me; I long to know if I may love you, if you are a woman –”
“– or a demon. And if I were?”
The youth hesitated an instant; a cold sweat ran over his limbs; his pupils dilated as they fixed more intently on hers; and, transfixed by her phosphorescent, almost lunatic brilliance, he cried out in a fit of love:
“If you were… I would love you. I would love you as I now love you, as it is my destiny to love you, all my life and beyond, if anything lies beyond.”
“Fernando,” said the beauty then, with a voice like music. “I love you still more than you love me; I, who have descended to mortality from the realm of pure spirit. I am not a woman like those who exist on Earth; I am a woman worthy of you, who are superior to other men. I live in the depths of this water, incorporeal like it, ephemeral and diaphanous: I speak with its murmurs and undulate with its waves. I do not punish the one who disturbs the spring where I dwell; rather, I reward him with my love, as a mortal superior to the superstitions of vulgar men, as a lover capable of understanding my strange and mysterious circumstances.”
While she spoke thus, the youth, absorbed in contemplation of her fantastic beauty and attracted to her by an unknown force, approached closer and closer to the edge of the crag.
The woman of green eyes continued thus: “Do you see, do you see the clear heart of this lake? Do you see the large and verdant leaves trembling in its depths? They will make for us a bed of emeralds and corals, and I – I will give you a happiness without name, the happiness of which you have dreamed in your hours of delirium and which no one else can offer. Come; the fog of the lake floats over our brows like a linen canopy; the waves call to us with their unfathomable voices; the wind starts up its hymns of love between the aspens; come… come…”
Night began to lengthen her shadows; the moon glistened on the surface of the lake; the fog thickened; and the green eyes shone in the darkness like unavailing fires burning on the surface of polluted waters. “Come… come…” These words hummed in Fernando’s ears like an incantation. Come… and the mysterious woman called him to the edge of the abyss where she was suspended, and seemed to offer him a kiss – a kiss –
Fernando took a step towards her… and another… and felt the thin and supple arms that wrapped around his neck, and a cold sensation on his burning lips, a kiss of snow… and he swayed… and he lost his footing, and fell into the waters with a muffled and mournful sound.
The waters leapt in sparks of light and closed in over his body, and their silver ripples grew and grew, until they died out on the shore.