Invocación - a poem by Raquel Lanseros, in translation

I became an academic in part because I find a great pleasure in reading being a key element of my work. Yet there are times in the academic year when reading moves stodgily, and it is difficult to get a sense of any progress. This is particularly the case when there are exams to grade, or, as is currently the case, when the students I am supervising are finishing their dissertations and require, and also deserve, repeated check-ins and feedback on drafts in various stages of incompleteness. In such periods, I usually turn to poetry to keep my reading going, and one of the poets I have been reading lately is Raquel Lanseros, an exceptionally gifted contemporary Spanish poet, who has been publishing recordings of selected poems on her Twitter feed, which has been a great source of comfort.

Reading Spanish poetry is a pleasure because of the poetic potential embedded in the language itself, it is a tongue capable of saying many beautiful things, and saying many things beautifully. As I'm trying to improve my own Spanish, this poetry also helps me to dive deeper into the language, it helps challenging my understanding of the creativity of the language, and it broadens my vocabulary. To amplify these aspects of reading, I have also spent part of the solitary hours of the pandemic-imposed self-isolation trying to translate some of the poems of Raquel Lanseros into my native Norwegian - an excercise that also helps to strengthen my sense of my own language as well.

While I'm still learning Spanish, and while I'm not sufficiently well-versed (pun intended) to translate Spanish poetry as a professional, I have nonetheless decided to put some of my translations on this blog, both to expose more people to her wonderful texts and also to provide a Norwegian rendition of these poems.

The first poem I present is my translation of Invocación [Invocation], which was the first poem by Raquel Lanseros that I heard and read. The poem can be read in its entirety on this website. An English translation is found here. I give you my Norwegian translation, followed by an English-language rendition of that translation, so as to give non-Norwegian speakers a chance to both get the gist of the poem and evaluate the accuracy of my translation, as well as seeing the choices I have made in trying to walk that thin line between a literal translation and a faithful rendition of the content.

I am very grateful to Raquel Lanseros for allowing me to put this translation on my blog.



Påkalling

Av Raquel Lanseros


At den aldri meir må vekse inni meg,
denne tilsynelatande roa som dei kallar "skepsis".

Eg ville ha flykta frå ettersmaken,
frå kynismen
i dei innskrumpa menneska sin nøytralitet.

Eg vil alltid tru på livet,
eg vil alltid tru
på tusen uendelege mogelegheiter.

Måtte sirenesongen alltid lokke meg,
måtte sjela mi alltid ha ein dose godtru.

Gje at kroppen min aldri dannar
ein tjukkhud si ytre, urørleg,
tilfrosen.

Eg gret heller framleis
for umogelege draumar,
for forboden kjærleik,
for småjenta sine sønderknuste fantasiar.

Eg vil flykte frå den samansnurpa realismen.

Lat leppene mine samle på songar,
mange, og høglydte, og med mange notar,
for der vil kome tider av tagnad.




That it may never again grow inside of me,
this apparent calm they call "skepticism".

I would have fled from the aftertaste,
from the cynicism
of the neutrality of the shrivelled men.

I will always have faith in life,
I will always have faith
in a thousand endless possibilities.

May the siren song always enchant me,
may my soul always have a portion of good faith.

O that my body never forms
the exterior of a pachyderm, immobile,
frozen stiff.

I'd rather weep
for impossible dreams,
for forbidden love,
for the little girl's broken fantasies.

I wish to flee from the realism strung too tightly together.

Let my lips gather songs,
many, and loud, and with many chords,
for times of quietness will come.