Eduardo Chirinos

Ars Poetica
December 16, 2011 Chirinos Eduardo

Ars Poetica

 

The Dark Night of St. Jerome

 

The dark night caught Jerome by surprise

in a religious canvas from the sixteenth century.

No one could see his vexed expression or

decrepit fingers running over the hefty tomes.

How best to describe the scene? Light

enfolds the claws on the crows and an elderly

lion looks on bored while white peeks out

on those edges of a page darkest and

farthest from view. That page is a cold desert

many miles from Jerusalem where Jerome

lives, banished by God for reading Virgil

in the original Latin. Now every morning the

sun declines to greet him while the moon smiles

away and the words refuse to rise to those lofty

heights where they once learned to sing.

Mother‟s milk shoots forth from Mary‟s breast

most pure as aged saints swallow the stream.

Tomorrow they will disappear into the nearby

woods, into the dark night where words grow

sullied at play. Jerome knows. Tomorrow,

with great enthusiasm, we will read the pagans.

 

 

La noche oscura de Jerónimo

 

La noche oscura sorprendió a Jerónimo

en un cuadro religioso del siglo dieciséis.

Nadie pudo ver su gesto de fastidio, sus

gastados dedos recorriendo volúmenes.

¿Cómo describir el escenario? La luz

enreda las patas de los cuervos, el viejo

león se aburre y el blanco asoma en los

rincones más oscuros y apartados de

la página. La página es un desierto frío

lejos de Jerusalén. Allí vive Jerónimo.

Dios lo ha desterrado por leer a Virgilio

en su lengua original. Cada mañana

el sol se niega a saludarlo, la luna sonríe

y las palabras rehúsan subir a las esferas

donde alguna vez aprendieron a cantar.

La leche brota a chorros del purísimo

seno de María. Viejos santos la beben.

Mañana se hundirán en el follaje, en la

noche oscura donde juegan y se ensucian

las palabras. Jerónimo lo sabe. Mañana

habremos de leer con fervor a los paganos.

 

 

 

II

 

A Brief Treatise on Aesthetics

 

So what if he merely completed the parts

Giorgione left unfinished? The Three Ages of

Man could never be one artist‟s creation

(even if only one attains immortality by it).

For starters, there are the objections: too much

light and a line that betrays either strict academic

convention or simply hopes of pleasing the master.

The Goat of Sin grazes on, indifferent to the events

transpiring around it, while the dreaming boys

are just too fat and the old man dressed in pink

looks like a girl. Everything in this painting

conveys distance and we can exact no emotion

from the scene. The canvas is clearly allegorical

and Titian was just too young to pull it off. It‟s

hard not to laugh at Eros climbing the Tree

of Life, not to focus on the eyes of the shepherd

as he practically begs for a little rest, let alone

not to blush at the nymph‟s chubby hands

holding their mandatory accoutrement of flutes.

 

 

Breve tratado de estética

 

Que más da si completó lo que Giorgione

le dejó inconcluso. «Las tres edades del

hombre» no puede ser obra de un artista

(aunque sólo uno consiga la inmortalidad).

Para comenzar los reparos: demasiada

luz, la línea delata corrección académica

o simplemente ganas de agradar al maestro.

La cabra del pecado pasta indiferente

al acontecimiento, los niños que sueñan

son demasiado gordos y el viejo de rosa

parece una chica. Todo en esta pintura

trasmite distancia, pero no podemos

exigirle emoción: se trata de una alegoría

y Tiziano además era muy joven. Difícil

no reírse del Eros trepándose al árbol

de la vida. Difícil no fijarse en la mirada

del pastor que pide a gritos un descanso.

Difícil no ruborizarse ante las manos

de la ninfa y su requerimiento de flautas.

 

 

 

 

Translator: G. J. Racz is associate professor of Foreign Languages and Literature at Long Island University—Brooklyn, review editor for Translation Review, and president of the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA). In addition to the three volumes of Chirinos in English, his translation in meter and rhyme of the Spanish Golden Age play Fuenteovejuna by Lope de Vega appeared recently from Yale University Press.

Eduardo Chirinos, born in Lima, is professor of Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures at the University of Montana—Missoula and the author of sixteen books of poetry. Three volumes of his work in English have appeared this year as Reasons for Writing Poetry (Salt Publishing), Written in Missoula (University of Montana Press), and The Smoke of Distant Fires (Open Letter Books).