Car le Vice
Car le Vice, rongeant ma native noblesse,
is guilty of this snarling, of flapping wings.
All day I brag and whoop and dance,
when the sun sets, I’m stunned: a white square of white blueness,
hit with a harpoon like a whale. A little pin,
little as a diamond, makes a histological preparation
from my soul. Hey! how do you even survive,
my dearest, how do you recover?
Such incredibly pathetic questions
Tomaž Šalamun asks his soul to get to
the bottom of things. But there are no things. No bottom.
Just this instructive tale about the creative process
with which sooner or later every immortal destroys
its observers. So that it may float in peace, il Terribile.
Note: The first line is from Stéphane Mallarmé’s poem “Angoisse”; the line is in French in the original Slovenian poem. It means “For vice, gnawing my native nobility.”
Car le vice
Car le Vice, rongeant ma native noblesse,
je kriv za to renčanje, za mahedranje s krili.
Ves dan se hvalim in vriskam in plešem,
ko pade sonce, ostrmim: bel kvadrat bele modrine,
s harpuno zadet kot kit. Mala, kot diamant
mala bucika naredi iz moje duše histološki
preparat. Hej! kako potem sploh preživiš,
moja najdražja, kako se obnavljaš?
Taka, neverjetno patetična vprašanja
postavlja Tomaž Šalamun svoji duši, da bi
prišel zadevi do dna. A ni zadeve. Ni dna.
Samo taka poučna bajka o ustvarjalnem procesu,
ki z njo prej ali slej vsak nesmrtni zamori
svoje opazovalce. Da plava v miru, il Terribile.
