Aprofitant que demà comencen les trobades entre la cultura irlandesa i la catalana que se celebren a Sitges, he cercat aquest text traduït a l'anglès per Anna Crowe (em sap greu no tenir res en gaèlic irlandès que, sens dubte, hauria estat més genuí), About the Question of Poetry (Sobre la noció poètica, en l'original de la Cèlia Sànchez-Mústich) que es va sortir en el número 28, del juny del 2010, de la revista francesa La Traductière.
Aquell número tenia una secció especial dedicada a la poesia catalana on, a part d'una antologia de poesies (entre les quals també hi figurava una de la Cèlia) els autors Jaume Pont, Arnau Pons i el també sitgetà David Jou també eren convidats donar una visió personal sobre la relació entre la poesia i allò que se'n diu poètic. Tots els articles apareixien en la seva versió original en català i les corresponents traduccions al francès i a l'anglès. L'excel·lent versió francesa de l'article de la Cèlia va córrer a càrrec del també poeta (en cors i en francès) François-Michel Durazzo. Els altres poetes inclosos en l'antologia van ser (a part dels esmentats articulistes): Montserrat Abelló, Anna Aguilar-Amat, Margarita Ballester, Miquel Bezares, Enric Casasses, Antoni Clapés, Teresa Colom, Narcís Comadira, Miquel Desclot, Carles Duarte, Ernest Farrés Junyent, Gemma Gorga, Antoni Marí, Dolors Miquel, Laia Noguera, Francesc Parcerisas, Josep Piera, Ponç Pons, Susanna Rafart, Albert Roig, Pere Rovira, Josep Maria Sala-Valldaura, Marius Sampere, Jaume Subirana, Àngel Terron i Antoni Vidal Ferrando.
Molta sort als organitzadors de les trobades. Desitjo que siguin un gran èxit.
About the Question of Poetry
by Cèlia Sànchez-Mústich
translated by Anna Crowe
Once,
someone asked me, ‘”What subjects do you deal with in your poetry?” For a
moment I was unable to answer. It felt very odd, as though they had asked me,
“What subjects do you talk about with your partner?” I think that poetry, like
other ways of communicating between people (after all, poetry is a means of
communicating with that which is most intimate and which is at the same time
the most difficult for us to grasp), is above subjects, or else so integrated
with them as to be a second skin, so integrated that we don’t even realise we
are dealing with them...
As for
those subjects popularly associated with poetry or even with poems (perhaps in
those circles farthest from poetry and poems), I would find it very difficult,
for example, to dedicate a poem to spring, or to the moon, or to the sea or the
sunset, as direct objects of the idea.
But neither
do I rule it out, and in fact would consider it a challenge: to make a poem La Traductière n° 28 141 about
any of these “classics” of nature, where they might appear uncontaminated by
the clichés, where masters of the art have so often failed, leaving aside any
question of superficiality, while endowing it with multiple dimensions...
Imagery is
another matter. It is quite true that in many poems (my own included), some
“traditionally poetic” imagery has found new life, such as the universe, the
sea, the moon...whether as pieces of an abstract mosaic, or as a mosaic that
glues together the abstract of the pieces. How can we pour scorn on the sublime
suggestive power of the sea or the moon? Or perhaps we should reject the
versatility and magnetism of bed when it is time to make love, simply because
of the fact that it is a place that recurs and recurs...?
But I would
venture to say that many poets share my experience: while I do not shun these
images, I do integrate them into the poem in the same way that I am able to
integrate into it a cigarette-lighter, a wobbly table, a dog, a hotel bedroom,
a taste of chocolate, the lights winking on the computer, the pieces on a
chessboard, or objects as “unpoetic” as a bundle of euros, a rubbish-bin or an
old-fashioned village privy. What really matters, in short, is the chemistry
which is produced between these objects or elements of an image or images, and
a certain way of looking within oneself in order to seize the magic. And I do
not believe that the image exists which, associated with another at the right
time and place, cannot reveal poetry to us or allow us to enter it. Just as it
is also possible to lend genuine brushstrokes of humour or irony to many
fundamental situations, that are far superior to a party of friends telling
jokes or a moment of comedy at the theatre.
In any
case, and in tandem to the relationship between poetry and what is often
labelled as poetic, I think that the idea of the poetic has changed with time,
or on the downturn has opened up other ways of being subtle. This term, when
applied to a painting, a landscape, a novel, a film, is no longer equated – at
least not uniquely – with the aesthetically beautiful or spell-binding or
serene, but with that particular vibration that arises when the artist has
succeeded in looking at reality from an indefinable and enigmatic perspective,
that is not always free from cruelty or the intention to disturb.
And taking
up the subject of subjects... I think that, in fact, if there did exist a
subject that was poetic in itself, like a kind of independent and self-sufficient
poetic country, it would be impossible to fit it into a poem! The poem is like
an explorer in search of remains or treasure, and if these were to be handed out
as presents beforehand the expedition would never get under way... for what
would be the explorer’s reason for setting out?
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