And don't forget Manny, Moe, and Jack.

Sheila, poor deprived woman:

Larry, Moe, and Curly are the Three Stooges of cinema fame.

I have never heard of the stories you listed, either, Sheila. Different countries must favor different tales.

Ruth, Tx - Neat stories. I'd never heard them before, likewise I've no idea who Jim's Larry, Moe and Curly are! I've clearly missed part of life!

Sheila wrote: ""Three Billy Goats Gruf" - gosh Ruth that's a new one on me! "

Just for you, Sheila.
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0122e.html...

And of course, Larry, Moe, and Curly

"Three Billy Goats Gruf" - gosh Ruth that's a new one on me!

Three Blind Mice, Three Billy Goats Gruff...

Three Little Pigs, Three Bears.....

Jim, That made me laught and for some strange reason reminded me of chilidren's stories - did they all have 3 characters? (Ooops, possibly weird side distraction coming up here - funny how things pop into one's head!) I'm thinking Bill, Ben and little Weed, Rag Tag and Bobtail? We just read a fable like story from the arabic world in the Short Story thread and I'm wondering here just how culturally specific this holy trilogy thing is, how pervasive it is if it does percolate thorugh to our children's stories as well as poetry?

Not a bad bet, Jim!

OK. Scratch the Trinity idea. It's just that when I see three of anything, I figure it's worth a shot.

In Portuguese “amarguras” mean bitterness in its literal meaning, but can also mean suffering or misery. I am assuming that this could also be the case in Spanish. So a more literal and less poetic translation could read (keeping in mind that I am not very proficient in Spanish):

y las doradas abejas
iban fabricando en él,
con las amarguras viejas,
blanca cera y dulce miel.

and the golden bees
Go on producing in it
With the old suffering
White wax and sweet honey.

Of course, the idea of making sweet out of bitterness is lost in English, which is too bad.

Mina, i like your interpretation of Christian imaginary.

I don't know if I would go to the Trinity, but all of the images in the poem struck me as very Christian - water especially, but also new life, honey and sweetness, transformation, light and warmth. In particular, they strike me as coming from the biblical Book of John, but don't hold me to that impression! (I'm an Episcopalian - we're not the greatest on quoting the bible!)

I thought that the "marvelous error!" was simply mistaking the dream for reality - that, in very, very Christian terms, the breaking through of the kingdom of God was fulfilled within his heart at the present time.

Great dream Theresa! I can see why the poem fits.

Marvelous dream, Theresa. And thanks for leading me to a less literal interpretation of the poem. I think that's what was missing for me, the sense of the poem as a whole as a metaphor.

You sure have some great dreams!

Wow, Theresa. What a powerful dream. Isn't our subconscious marvelous?

Is he saying that God was only an illusion in his dream? That he awoke to the realization that all of these marvelous things were not reality? I think marvelous error has a better cadence (don't know if that is the correct poetry word) but I agree, I'd have stuck with illusion myself. I think of an error as generally self-activated, while an illusion is something we accept but have not generated ourselves.

This was my nomination. The Bly translation is the only one I've ever seen but I'd like to see some other attempts if they are out there.

I think I've always liked this poem because it reminds me of an especially vivid dream I had way back in high school.

In the dream I was sitting in the lap of God, it was truly wonderful and comfortable and the best place I'd ever been. At one point I looked up and realized that I was actually sitting in the lap of the Lincoln Memorial. I was a bit discomfited at first, but came to realize that the lap of the Lincoln Memorial was also not a bad place to be.

Theresa

I got that much, Jim. But missed the Holy Trinity thing. Maybe my criticism is that this is all too obvious.

The depth of the poem for me comes from the series of images (the spring, the hive, the sun)leading up to a definition of God, whatever He may be in Bly/Machado's eyes.

The spring brings something new to the poet, the hive builds on what is old, and the sun brings the comfort of understanding. For my term paper maybe I'll take a swing at relating this to the Holy Trinity (which explains why I was not an English major).

Will that make it sound deep? <G>

I've not read a lot of Bly's poetry, but I have not been particularly taken with what I have read. And like Jim, I have a hard time focusing on him without seeing that vest and hearing those drums.

I'm wondering why he translated ilusión as error. I just checked my Spanish dictionary, thinking perhaps error is listed as one of the subsidiary translations, but it is not. Ilusión is illusion.

To my mind, illusion works better in the poem than error. It's more in keeping with the romantic images, and with the feeling of a dream.

making of old bitternesses,
white wax and sweet honey.

is my trnnslation and I'm wondering why Bly has sacrificed that beautiful beautiful phrasing to get those combs in there.

That said, what do you think of the poem? I most often feel at a bit of a loss when reading poetry in another language, wondering what subtleties I'm missing. This poem seems pretty straightforward, everything pretty much right there in the top layer. I found myself wishing there was something a little more to dig for.

Jim, Tx for the link to the Spanish Dictionary online. Very nice. I'll use it . It translated cera as wax - I've learnt another new word! Not exactly your tourist Spanish vocab.

I don't know the translator's works at all so Jim's comment about him passes me by. But as for this one I agree with Jim the English is a bit disjointed even with my limited Spanish it sounds better there. I think my biggest issue with the English is that phrase "marveleous error" - it just jars.

Naturally there is a Spanish English Translation service in the marvelous world of the internet and it translates the first lines:

Last night he slept
I dreamed blessed illusion!
a fountain flowing
within my heart.

Perhaps I have never recovered from seeing Robert Bly in his Iron John period when he put himself on display in a vest that he appeared to have designed and sewn by himself, but I find his translation very disjointed compared to the original.

A "spring breaking" suggests something bursting out of nowhere while a "fountain flowing" seems a little more gentle and continual, the type of thing I look for in a functional heart. My feeling about Bly in general is that odd images keep breaking into the flow of his poems. That may not be bad, just different.

Now back to the woods with my drum where I can focus on dealing with my masculinity.

(The Spanish translation service can be found at http://www.spanishdict.com/)

Hi Ruth,

I know I don't stop by the Poetry thread very often by the poet's name caught my attention as one I didn't know and I'm a Neruda fan like Philip so a Spanish name catches my eye.

I liked the structure of the poem and the way it builds to its final night of dreamings revelation. Simple but effective. Do you think it is meant to be over 4 different incidents of dreaming? I enjoyed reading it.

I went with the water source in the first verse, although I found the language of the second half of the first verse a bit contorted for me. It didn't seem to flow (no pun intended). The second verse took me a moment of two to figure out but I suppose he is using the honey to say how his past failures are being made irrelevent by being turned into honey. Is that how you all read it? In the third, I'm not sure why the tears?

Now as for the the translation. My Spanish is rusty for speaking, but not too bad for reading, although I often get some of the tenses wrong and in this case there are a few words I was no familiar with. Sadly my large Spanish dictionary is already packed away and only my pocket one is to hand. So here;s what I worked out

I'm intruiged by the translation of ilusion to error. As far as I now, and please correct me if I am wrong, una ilusion is an illusion. And I did find the "marvelleous error!" a weird turn of phrase. I wonder why the translator chose to use it?

Amazingly my pocket dictinary informed me that un manantial is a spring, which makes the translation of "spring" and "water of a new life" in the English version a quite nice way of translating the Spanish, rather than fountain and spring of new life.

I had to look up une aceequia wich it turns out is a ditch, so the hidden ditch became the secret aqueduct - more poetic in English I think.

In the second, I didn't know the word sas amarguras, but amargo is bitter so I am supposing las amarguras is bitterness. So again interesting translation of olde bitterness into failures - it may be a colloquialism - my Spanish is certainly not up to those. If it isn't, then does this change the meaning? It certainly looses the bitter - sweet contrast.

Also in the second, cero/a is usually nothing, zero I think, so I'm not clear at all here about how this is translating. I had to look up the word for honeycomb and it is un panal.

Having written this I just had another thought. It started with pondering the use of the beehive description . The beehive is commin in Spanish cinema, and is often used as a metaphor for societal structure, government etc. Then it dawned on me - the summation of water, social structure/ food as in honey, warmth = god --- is there something else going on here? I'll ponder further.

I know just a very little Spanish, but being able to read and hear the sound of this lovely poem in Spanish was wonderful. Great idea!

Ruth, my Spanish is touristy on its good days. But poetry like this (and Neruda! Garcia Lorca!) make me wish I knew it better.

Still, the English set me a nice trap. I thought on first look that the coming Spring of the third line was the season, not a source of water.

I read Spanish, but not as well as I used to. Do we any others here who read it well? Theresa? Poetry translation is such a tricky thing.

Antonio Machado was born in Seville and moved to Madrid at the age of eight. He studied in Paris where he worked as a translator, and met French poets. He became a schoolteacher. He returned to Spain and taught at Soria in Castile, from 1907, where he met his wife Leonor. Tragically she died very young, and in 1912 he left Soria for Baeza in Andalusia. Loyal to the Republic he left Spain for France when Catalonia fell, and died there in February 1939. He is acknowledged as Spain’s finest poet of the early twentieth century.

Last Night As I Was Sleeping
-------------------Antonio Machado, translated by Robert Bly

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that a spring was breaking
out in my heart.
I said: Along which secret aqueduct,
Oh water, are you coming to me,
water of a new life
that I have never drunk?

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that a fiery sun was giving
light inside my heart.
It was fiery because I felt
warmth as from a hearth,
and sun because it gave light
and brought tears to my eyes.

Last night as I slept,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that it was God I had
here inside my heart.

AND HERE IS THE SPANISH ORIGINAL:

Anoche cuando dormía
soñé ¡bendita ilusión!
que una fontana fluía
dentro de mi corazón.
Dí: ¿por qué acequia escondida,
agua, vienes hasta mí,
manantial de nueva vida
en donde nunca bebí?

Anoche cuando dormía
soñé ¡bendita ilusión!
que una colmena tenía
dentro de mi corazón;
y las doradas abejas
iban fabricando en él,
con las amarguras viejas,
blanca cera y dulce miel.

Anoche cuando dormía
soñé ¡bendita ilusión!
que un ardiente sol lucía
dentro de mi corazón.
Era ardiente porque daba
calores de rojo hogar,
y era sol porque alumbraba
y porque hacía llorar.

Anoche cuando dormía
soñé ¡bendita ilusión!
que era Dios lo que tenía
dentro de mi corazón.