In a recent post on his Nomadics blog, Pierre Joris pointed out some issues of mistranslation affecting the core meanings of Aimé Césaire's "Earthquake" as translated by Paul Muldoon and presented in the New Yorker as a gesture of sympathy to the tragic plight of Haiti today. In response, I wrote, "The complexities of communist or any political temblors in the Caribbean require exactitudes of expression from both poet and tranlator." I have been sensitive to this problem of exactness in my efforts with translation of some works by the Haitian poet René Depestre. The issues requiring sensitivity include the different ways of negotiating both the Kreyol and the French languages and the role of activism of the sort that is represenetd by the "successes" or "failures" of La Casa de las Americas. There is disappointment and anger and beauty and redemption in Depestre's text. I hope I have got some of it. I put this out here because of Haiti's complexities. Like poetry, she breaks my heart. Any suggestions for tweaking the translation will be appreciated.

ADIEU A LA REVOLUTION FAREWLL TO THE REVOLUTION

J’ai cessé d’être un poète noire
sur le qui-vive à la porte
de la Maison des Amériques
j’ai quitté le foyer deux fois natal :
mes rêves en morceaux tiennent dans un mouchoir.

Je regarde dans les yeux mes jours
élargir un nouveau ciel du poète en moi,
je fais mes adieux à tout ce qui est mort
sur pieds dans ma vie,
je mets à morts la foi et l’espérance
qui ont failli truquer mon art de vivre.

Je voyage désormais
à la belle étoile
des mots d’Alexander Dumas père.
Mon voyage est un enfant du pardon.
S’étant trompé de chemin de croix
mon cheval innocent s’éloigne
comme un voilier remis à neuf
pour l’aventure océane.

Ma tête grise a poussé
dans les hauteurs des mots
en pleine forme
qui firent la pluie et le beau temps
au jardin de la jeune madame Colette :
vive le dieu émerveillé d’une langue française
aussi ronde en chaire et en soleil qui courbe
au lit de la femme en l’état de poésie.

Vive les petits matins maternels de la
langue française!
ils me font des signes de frères
tout en haut des mots
bien créoles d’Aimé Césaire !
vive la prose à monsieur André Gide !
j’ai sa fraîche aurore à la gorge
j’ai des mots frais du français-de-France
je m’imagine fraîcheur du soir
taillée dans la saison des îles
pour couvrir le parcours saharien du siècle.


Au fond du panier d’années d’exil
où mûrissent mes travaux et mes jours
—très loin du désert cubain qui pipait
les dés du fond de mon âme—
voici un sang et un horizon d’homme libre
criblés de rivières et de rêves en crue,
voici la charrue des mots à donner en vrac
à la bonne et fraîche illumination d’autrui,
en prose et en poésie, voici la pirogue
qu’il faut pour descendre en chantant
les tout derniers rapides du XXe siècle I have stopped being a black poet
on guard at the door
of la Casa de las Américas
I have abandoned the hearth twice my home:
my dreams in fragments, caught in
a handkerchief.

I look into my eyes as my days
open a new horizon for the poet in me,
I make my farewells to all that is dead
standing firm in my life,
I condemn the faith and the hope
that betrayed my way of living.

From now on I travel
toward the beautiful star
of words by Alexander Dumas père.
My voyage is a child of remorse.
Having been deceived at the crossroad
my innocent horse stretches out
like a sailboat newly fitted
to venture on the ocean.

My gray head has scaled
the heights of the well-made
words
that bring the rain and sunny weather
to the garden of the young Madame Colette:
Long live the wonder-struck god of a French
so sleek in his flesh and in the sun that falls on the bed of a woman in a state of poetry.

Long live the maternal early mornings of the
French language!
they gesture to me with brotherly signs,
above all the well-made creole
of Aimé Césaire!
Long live the prose of Monsieur André Gide!
I sense its morning fragrance in my throat.
I sense the fresh words of the French of France
I imagine the fragrance of evening
cut in the season of the islands
to cover the Saharan tracks of the century.


At the bottom of the basket of the years of exile
where my works and days ripen
—far from the Cuban dessert that loaded
the dice in the depths of my soul—
here is a lineage and an horizon of the free man
flooded by rivers and raw reveries,
here is the plow of words to break the sod
for the good and fresh illumination of others,
in prose and in poetry, here is the pirogue
that is needed for descending in song
the very last rapids of the 20th century.

René Depestre tr. Donald Wellman

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