Nguyễn Quốc Trụ

MÙA THU Ở ĐÂY ĐẸP NÃO NÙNG

Autumn

The wind wakes,
sweeps the thoughts from my mind
and hangs me
in a light that smiles for no one:
what random beauty!
Autumn: between your cold hands
the world flames.

1933

Octavio Paz: First Poems (1931-1940)

Mùa Thu

Gió thức dậy
Quét những ý nghĩ ra khỏi cái đầu của anh
Và treo anh
Trong ánh sáng mỉm cười cho chẳng ai
Cái đẹp mới dưng không, tình cờ làm sao?
Mùa thu: giữa lòng bàn tay lạnh của em
Tình anh sưởi ấm
[nguyên văn, thế giới bập bùng ngọn lửa]

~~oOo~~

Here
 

My footsteps in this street
echo
        in another street
where
        I hear my footsteps
passing in this street
where

Only the mist is real
 

[1958-1961]

Đây

Tiếng bước chân của tôi
trong con phố này
vọng lên
         trong một con phố khác
nơi
         tôi nghe những bước chân của mình
qua con phố này
nơi
Chỉ sương mù là có thực

~~oOo~~
 

Mùa thu bịnh

Mùa thu bịnh và đáng mê làm sao
Mi sẽ chết khi bão thổi qua những vườn hồng
Khi tuyết xuống
Trong những vườn cây

Mùa thu đáng thương, tội nghiệp
Chết trong cái màu trắng, trong cái giầu sang
Của tuyết và của trái chín
Ở nơi cuối trời
Những cánh chim bồ cắt bay lượn
Bên trên những thuỷ thần già, tóc xanh và lùn
chẳng bao giờ yêu

Ở nơi bìa rừng
Những con hươu thèm nhau, rền rĩ

Ui chao, mùa thu, mùa, tôi mới yêu làm sao
Những tiếng thì thầm của nó
Những trái cây rụng xuống, không ai hái
Gió và rừng đều thi nhau khóc

Tất cả những giọt nước mắt, mùa thu, lệ thu, từng chiếc, từng chiếc
Những chiếc lá con người dẫm lên
Một con tàu chạy
Và đời cứ thế mà trôi đi.

~~oOo~~

Automne

Dans le brouillard s'en vont un paysan cagneux
Et son bœuf lentement dans le brouillard d'automne
Qui cache les hameaux pauvres et vergogneux 

Et s'en allant là-bas le paysan chantonne
Une chanson d'amour et d'infidélité
Qui parle d'une bague et d'un cœur que l'on brise

Oh! l'automne l'automne a fait mourir l'été
Dans le brouillard s'en vont deux silhouettes grises

Apollinaire

Mùa Thu

Trong sương mù, một người nhà quê đi, chân liềng khiềng
Và con bò của anh ta lừng khừng đi trong sương mù mùa thu
Lấp ló trong lớp sương mù là những thôn xóm nghèo nàn và xấu hổ

Và trong khi đi như thế, anh nhà quê ư ử hát
Một bài tình ca và sự không trung thuỷ
Nói về một cái nhẫn và một trái tim mà người ta làm tan nát

Nguyễn Quốc Trụ dịch

(Nguồn : Tin Văn

www.tanvien.net )

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Tượng Nữ hoàng Elizabeth ở trung tâm thủ đô Ottawa dưới cơn mưa cuối mùa thu.

Quoc Tru Nguyen shared a memory.

4 hrs ·

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Quoc Tru Nguyen

October 5, 2014 ·

GOSSIP IN THE VILLAGE

I told no one, but the snows came, anyway.
They weren't even serious about it, at first.
Then, they seemed to say, if nothing happened,...

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/05/05/gossip-in-the-village

GOSSIP IN THE VILLAGE

I told no one, but the snows came, anyway.
They weren't even serious about it, at first.
Then, they seemed to say, if nothing happened,
Snow could say that, & almost perfectly.

The village slept in the gunmetal of its evening.
And there, through a thin dress once, I touched
A body so alive & eager I thought it must be
Someone else's soul. And though I was mistaken,

And though we parted, & the roads kept thawing between snows
In the first spring sun, &itwas all, like spring,
Irrevocable, irony has made me thinner. Someday, weeks
From now, I will wake alone. My fate, I will think,
Will be to have no fate. I will feel suddenly hungry.
The morning will be bright, & wrong.

- Larry Levis

The New Yorker, April 5, 2014

Buôn chuyện làng

Tớ đếch nói với ai, nhưng, dù sao, tuyết tới.
Lúc thoạt đầu, họ chẳng thèm ngay cả tỏ ra nghiêm trọng, về chuyện đó.
Rồi có vẻ như là họ muốn nói, nếu chẳng có gì xẩy ra,
Tuyết có thể nói điều đó & hầu như tuyệt hảo

Ngôi làng ngủ, trong màu đồng đỏ, của những buổi chiều của nó.
Và ở đó, qua cái áo dài mỏng, một lần, tôi sờ vô
Một cơ thể sống ơi là sống & hăm hở, tôi nghĩ
Hẳn là linh hồn một người nào đó.
Và, tôi đã lầm.

Và chúng tôi lên đường & những con lộ băng tan giữa tuyết
Trong mặt trời đầu tiên của mùa xuân & tất cả, như mùa xuân
Vô phương huỷ bỏ, cái tếu táo, buồn cười làm tôi càng thêm ốm tong teo.
Vài ngày, vài tuần, kể từ bây giờ
Tôi sẽ thức giấc một mình.
Số phần của tôi, tôi nghĩ,
Là đếch có số phần.
Bất thình lình, tôi cảm thấy đói.
Buổi sáng thì sẽ sáng ngời & lầm lẫn.

---

Trong Khi Chờ Tầu Hỏa!

Nhân đọc mẩu viết về “tầu hoả”, tức “xe lửa”, trên Blog NL, bèn nhớ tới số báo này.
Bài "édito" thật tuyệt.
Cái tít làm nhớ đến Beckett, Trong Khi Chờ Godot, và đây là dụng ý của tay viết.

Và của Gấu!

EN ATTENDANT LE TRAIN

MÉDITANT SUR TOLSTOI ET DOSTOIEVSKI au fil d'un magistral essai (1), George Steiner ouvre une brève parenthèse pour souligner le role stratégique des quais de gare chez ces deux auteurs. Leurs trajectoires, si souvent opposées et dont Steiner s'applique à minorer les divergences, se trouvent ainsi réunies, en attendant le train, II ne faudrait pas toutefois en conclure que le roman russe s'apparente à l'indicateur Chaix et encore moins à une littérature de gare, encore que lire Guerre et Paix dans le Transsibérien demeure un projet séduisant. Et cohérent. Les héros de Tolstoi comme ceux de Dostoievski aiment voyager par le train, Que l'on songe à l'ouverture de L'ldiot, quand le prince Muichkine et Rogojine approchent de Saint-Pétersbourg par le train de Varsovie. Ou encore à la tragédie d'Anna Karénine qui commence, comme elle finira, sur un quai de gare.
    Vronsky, on le sait, part pour la guerre. II existe d'autres destinations plus enviables. D'autant que le roman russe profite de l'immensité de l'espace pour pousser ses héros vers de lointaines et mythiques frontières, là où campent les Cosaques, les tribus du Caucase, les vieux-croyants du Don et de la Volga. Le héros tolstoien s'évade volontiers à la campagne, et ce retour à la terre s'accompagne d'une résurrection de l'âme. Le héros dostoievskien, pour sa part, cherche son salut dans le royaume de Dieu, improbable destination que l'auteur des Possédés conseillait ironiquement de choisir plutôt en juin.
    Quand, rompus de fatigue, les héros restent à quai, c'est l'auteur qui part. Ainsi Tolstoi, abandonnant au soir de sa vie de domicile conjugal pour retrouver les lieux de sa jeunesse, fuyant vers le Caucase comme s'il voulait semer la mort qui est à ses trousses. « Je m'en vais dans la solitude», écrit-il dans ses Carnets. Pour terminus, une petite gare, à Astapovo, où il mourra en laissant sur sa table de chevet deux livres, ultimes compagnons de voyage: Les Frères Karamazov et les Essais de Montaigne.
    La Russie et l'Europe sont les deux patries des auteurs russes. Tolstoi admirait Stendhal. De son coté, Dostoievski avait lu avec passion Sand, Dickens, Balzac, Sue, Restif... Reconnaissant sa dette envers la culture européenne, il faisait dire à Ivan Karamazov: « Je veux voyager en Europe, Aliocha; je veux sortir d'ici. Et pourtant, je sais que je ne trouverai qu'un cimetière un très précieux cimetière, voilà ce que c'est! » Quant à Gogol, il trouva sa Russie alors qu'il pérégrinait à Paris, Rome ou Vevey.
    Indifférente à tant de transports, l'Europe à longtemps consideré avec froideur et réticence les auteurs russes, On leur reprocha une débauche de pathos, l'absence de contraintes esthétiques, trop de vie, trop de pages. Comment faire face aces « grands monstres informes », selon la redoutable expression d'Henry James? Tolstoi a écrit pas moins de quatre-vingt-dix volumes et, jamais en mal d'inspiration, il se risqua à bâtir une pièce de théatre en six actes. Voulant rivaliser avec l'infinité, il faisait en sorte que le dernier chapitre de chaque roman ménage un prélude à l'oeuvre prochaine. II refusait de mettre un point final, et en mit même trois pour éviter de tout à faire conclure
Guerre et Paix. Voilà l'un des miracles de la littérature russe : les trains qui la traversent ne s'arrêtent jamais.+

(1) George Steiner, Tolstoi ou Dostoievski, traduit de l'anglais par Rose Celli, réed, 10/18, 2004.

Trở lại với tập thơ. Tuyệt. Đi liền 1 bài

Gunnar Bkelof was born in 1907 in Stockholm. His father was a wealthy stockbroker who caught syphilis, became insane and died while Bkelof was still a child; his mother was a member of the petty nobility and does not seem to have shown him much affection. Consequently, he had to find such happiness as he could in a private dream world of his own. Of this early time he wrote:

    My own childhood environment was well-to-do but so far beyond the normal and so unrealistic that there was good room for peculiar kinds of want .... I had books, music, beautiful furniture around me, but they forced me to go long roundabout ways before I could feel I had a legitimate right to them. 

    As Ekelof grew up, he became engrossed in Oriental mysticism:

    I learned to hate Europe and Christianity and during the morning prayer at school I began to mumble Om mani padme hum as a form of protest ...

In the Royal Library he discovered Tarjúmán el-Ashwáq by Ibn el-Arabi which for a long time was his favorite book and from which, he tells us, he first learned what is meant by Symbolism and Surrealism. With the idea of emigrating to India, he went to London to study at the School of Oriental Languages, but abandoned this scheme and returned to Sweden to study Persian at the University of Uppsala. However, a long illness prevented him from completing his studies. It was at this time that he wrote his first poem:
    One night I had an experience that I would have to characterize as a form of ecstasy. It came over me as a shower of shooting stars, and I remember staggering a bit on my way home. As often on such occasions, I had had the usual orchestra playing somewhere behind me, and I myself joined in with one instrument after the other. Then it became a poem, my first fairly original one.
    Ekelof's second great and lasting passion was music and, in the 1920s, he went to Paris to study it, but soon became absorbed by the problems of poetic language:
   
    I placed one word beside another and finally with a great deal of effort managed to construct a whole sentence - naturally not one that' meant something' but one that was composed of word-nuances. It was the hidden meaning that I was seeking - a kind of Alchemie du verbe. One word has its meaning and another word has its own, but when they are brought together something strange happens to them: they have an in-between connotation at the same time as they retain their original individual meanings . .. poetry is this very tension-filled relationship between the words, between the lines, between the meanings

It was in Paris, it would seem, that he wrote many of the poems which appeared in his first book, Sent pa Jorden (Late on the Earth), which was published in I932. This he later described as a 'suicidal book":
    I literally used to walk around with a revolver in my pocket. Illegally, for that matter. In my general despair I did everything possible to remain in my dream-world - or to be quickly removed from it. I began to gamble and I lost my money, which made my temporary return to Sweden quite definite. 

Late on the Earth attracted little critical attention, but by the time of the publication of Farjesang (Ferry Song) in I941, he had become recognized as one of Sweden's leading poets.
    The translations in this Penguin volume are of two late works, Diurdn over Fursten av Emgión (Diwan over the Prince of Emgión), 1965, and Sagan om Fatumeh (The Tale of Fatumeh), 1966. His last volume, Vagvisare till underjorden (Guide to the Underworld) was published in 1967. In 1968 he died of cancer of the throat. 

The Prince of Emgión had appeared in two earlier poems. Bkelof relates that, during a spiritualist seance in Stockholm during the thirties, he had asked where his spiritual “I” was to be found. The oracle, a drinking-glass placed upside down, replied: 'In Persia and his name is the Prince of Emgión.' Later, Ekelof came to believe that this Prince was of Armenian-Kurdish stock, half a Christian and half a Gnostic.
    Diwan was begun in Constantinople in 1965, and most or all of the poems were written within a period of four weeks. , 'Dwan,' Ekelof wrote to a friend, 'is my greatest poem of love and passion. I cannot touch it nor see it because I grow ill when I see this blind and tortured man .... As far as I can understand, someone has written the poems with me as a medium .... Really, I have never had such an experience, or not one as complete.'
    The character he here refers to is not the Prince, but Digenis Acritas, the hero of an eleventh-century Byzantine epic romance. Digenís was the son of an Arab father and a Byzantine mother. Captured in battle, he was incarcerated in the prison of Vlacherne, where he was tortured and blinded. In his suffering his principal consolation is the Virgin, to whom he addresses passionate hymns. Though there are references to what are obviously Christian icons, this figure is not the Christian Madonna, but rather the Earth Mother, the Goddess known to us through St Paul as the 'Diana of the Ephesians'. In Diwan another female figure appears who is human, not divine, perhaps a wife, perhaps a sister or daughter.
    The Tale of Fatumeh is an equally sad story. It tells of a generous, loving girl who becomes first a courtesan and then the beloved of a prince, whose child she bears; she is apparently deserted by him and brought to the Harem at Erechtheion, but she is eventually thrown out of the Harem and spends a miserable old age, selling herself to keep alive. Like Digenís, Patumeh is sustained by her visions. Whatever has happened and may happen, no disaster shall degrade her soul.
    Like the Greek poet Constantine Cavafy, Bkelof sets these poems in a bygone age. Different in sensibility as they are - Cavafy is ironic and detached, Ekelof passionate and involved - neither chooses the past as an escape: for both it is a means for illuminating and criticizing the present. Although Ekelof was fascinated by Byzantium, he never idealized it. 'Why,' he wrote in a letter, 'have I become interested in the Byzantine, the Greek life? Because Byzantine life, traditionally and according to deep-rooted custom, is like the political life in our cities and states. I am intensely interested in it because I hate it. I hate what is Greek. I hate what is Byzantine .... Diwan is a symbol of the political decadence we see around us. Fatumeh is a symbol of the degradation, the coldness between persons, which is equally obvious.'
    Ekelof had a special numerological theory and considered life an odd number and death an even number. His numerological preoccupation is expressed in his division of The Tale of Fatumeh into a nazm, a string of beads, and a tesbih; a rosary, each consisting of twenty-nine numbered poems. This plan regrettably had to be abandoned for this version. Some textual emendations have also been made whenever Bkelof''s manuscripts have warranted such action.
W. H. AUDEN
LEIF SJOBERG

for Maria Kodama

There is such loneliness in that gold.
The moon of the nights is not the moon
Which the first Adam saw. The long centuries
Of human vigil have filled her
With ancient lament. Look at her. She is your mirror.

[Trans. Willis Barnstone]

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