Translation of a Poem by Pablo Antonio Cuadra

As a follow up to the Roque Vallejos poem I translated: I was curious to know more about that "promocion de 1960" he belonged to. I found this on the Mundopoesia site and found it interesting. This explains somewhat the unremitting darkness of his poetry. This was a rather ambitious literary movement, and one with a Beckettian aesthetics, indeed....."Fail again. Fail better." How Promethean is this task which they outlined for themselves..."trata de salvar reconstruyendolo con la palabra, enfrentandolo con un temple distinto, en un ambito diverso de la imaginacion o de la sensibilidad, pero con un equivalente desesperada sinceridad." So my intuition about the Promethean nature of his poetry was right.

The second stanza contains a very good critical estimation of his poetry. I tend to want to turn to very dark painters and dark paintings for analogous works. Tenebrism transposed into language is a good approximation of the effects Vallejos achieves in poetry. Maybe, when faced with his rawer images, "The Anatomy Lesson of Professor Tulp" or perhaps, in his quieter poems, the works of Sanchez-Cotan.

Here...


ROQUE VALLEJOS


Nació en 1943 en Asunción. Su ficha personal dice: Periodista, poeta, crítico, médico.

Forma parte de la llamada "promoción de 1960", con Francisco Pérez Mariecevich, Esteban Cabañas y Miguel A. Fernández: "Poetas urgidos por una misma ansiedad y un mensaje unívoco: el de un mundo ent rizas que cada uno de ellos trata de salvar reconstruyéndolo con la palabra, enfrentándolo con un temple distinto, en un ámbito diverso de la imaginación o de la sensibilidad, pero con una equivalente desesperada sinceridad".

Aparte de sus ensayos, ha publicado Pulso de sombra, Los arcángeles ebrios y Poemas del Apocalipsis. En ellos Josefina Plá ve que "Vallejos ha creado una poesía desnuda penetrada por un lívido rasgo al sesgo; como en los cuadros de los "tenebrosi" es notable la ausencia en ella de palabras que aludan a la claridad, a la luz, a la compañía de las cosas; su claridad es siempre una claridad sin memoria, opaco, renunciante. Poesía engañosamente desnuda, con una inabarcable desnudez abismal. Asida como el trago de muerte a que alude en uno de sus poemas".


The poem I translated tonight was rather easy to adapt. The language is incredibly lucid, and the poem is a straightforward series of images...but images that do carry a great pathos...for this reader, anyway.

It's the poem "Bird Cemetery," by Pablo Antonio Cuadra.

Here's his Wikipedia bio...I thought it was interesting that part of his life in self-imposed exile was spent in Texas. I wonder with whom he mixed literarily in the United States.


Pablo Antonio Cuadra (1912-2002) was a Nicaraguan essayist, art and literary critic, playwright, graphic artist and one of the most famous poets of Nicaragua.


Early life and career

Cuadra was born on November 4, 1912, in Managua but spent the majority of his life in Granada. Cuadra or PAC was the son of Carlos Cuadra Pasos and Mercedita Cardenal. Cuadro is first cousin-of Ernesto Cardenal. He married Adilia Mercedes Bendaña Ramírez.


Vanguardia movement

In 1931 Cuadra, along with José Coronel Urtecho, Joaquín Pasos, and other writers, founded the Vanguardia literary movement in Granada.


Later career

Cuadra's Poemas nicaragüenses was published in 1934. He opposed the American intervention against Augusto César Sandino in the 1930s and broke with the Somoza dynasty in the 1940s. Cuadra later became an outspoken advocate for Nicaragua's poor, embracing liberation theology and other intellectual currents the Somoza government considered subversive. He later also criticized the post-1979 Sandinista National Liberation Front régime for stifling the independence of Nicaragua's culture and for several years thereafter he lived in self-imposed exile in Costa Rica and Texas.

In 1954 he became co-director of La Prensa newspaper alongside his cousin and partner, Pedro Joaquín Chamorro Cardenal, who was assassinated by Somoza supporters in 1978. He was briefly jailed for his opposition to the FSLN in 1956. In 1961 he became editor of the influential journal El Pez y La Serpiente (the fish and the serpent), which was highly influential in Latin America.


Death

He died on January 2, 2002 in Managua, following a respiratory illness. He was buried on January 4 in Granada, where he spent the majority of his life.


Awards

Cuadra won many literary honors, among them the Gabriela Mistral Inter-American Cultural Prize, awarded by the Organization of American States in 1991.


Published works

Poetry

Poemas nicaragüenses (1934)
Canto temporal (1943)
Poemas con un crepúsculo a cuestas (1949)
La tierra prometida (1952)
El jaguar y la luna (1959)
Poesía (1964)
Cantos de Cifar (1971)
Esos rostros que asoman en la multitud (1976)
Siete árboles contra el atardecer (1980)

Stories

Agosto (1970, 1972)
Vuelva, Güegüense (1970)
Cuentos escogidos (1999)
Essays
Hacia la cruz del sur (1936)
Promisión de México y otros ensayos (1945)
Entre la cruz y la espada (1946)
Torres de Dios (1958, 1985)
El nicaragüense (1967)
Otro rapto de Europa (1976)
Aventura literaria del mestizaje (1987)
Theater
Por los caminos van los campesinos (1957)
El coro y la máscara (1991)


After reading all that, one has to ask oneself if this poem is really an autobiography in petto? After so many years of political struggle, and the years of exile, the man must have been exhausted. Does this poem represent an abdication of poetry, or a renunciation of poetry's significance in the world?


    El Cementerio De Los Pájaros



Arribé al islote
enfermo
fatigado el remo
buscando
el descanso de un árbol.
    No vi tierra
      sino huesos.
De orilla a orilla
huesos
y esqueletos de aves,
plumas calcinadas,
hedor
de muerte,
moribundos
pájaros marinos,
graznidos
de agonía,
trinos tristes
y alguna
trémula
osamenta
aún erguida
con el pico
abierto al viento.

Con débil brazo
moví los remos
y di la espalda
al cementerio
del canto.






    Bird Cemetery


Arrived at the island
feverish
and oar-tired,
desired only
shade of a simple tree.
    Saw no earth,
     only bones.
Shore to shore
gleamed relics,
bird skeletons,
sun-baked feathers,
miasma
of death
and dying
everywhere,
large seabirds,
squawks
of last agony,
mournfull trills,
and one
solitary bird
half-dead
trembled,
held itself erect,
its beak
open to the seawind.

With weakened arms,
I sunk my paddles
and turned my back
on the cemetery
of song.