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The Moon THE MOON
for Maria Kodama There is such
loneliness in that gold. [Trans. Willis Barnstone] Trăng Trăng đêm không phải trăng Adam, thuỷ tổ giống người, nhìn. Những thế kỷ dài ăn chay cầu nguyện của con người Đã tẩm vào nàng nỗi sầu vạn cổ. Hãy nhìn nàng kìa. Nàng là tấm gương của em đó. 
THE MOON
History
tells us that in such time past when so many real, imaginary and doubtful things took place, one m~n conceived the unwieldy Plan of ciphering the universe in one book and, infinitely rash, built his high and mighty manuscript, shaping and declaiming the final line. But when about to praise his luck, he lifted up his eyes, and saw a burnished disk upon the air; startled, he realized he'd left out the moon. Though contrived, this little story might well exemplify the mischief that involves us all who take on the job of turning real life into words. Always the essential thing gets lost. That's one rule holds true of every inspiration. Nor will this resume of my long association with the moon escape it. I don't know when I saw it first- if in the sky prior to the doctrine of the Greek, or in the evening darkening over the patio with the fig tree and the well. As they say, this unpredictable life can be, among other things, quite beautiful. That's how it was the evening we looked at you, she and I--oh, shared moon! Better than real nighttime moons, I can recall the moons of poetry: the bewitched dragon moon that thrills one in the ballad, and, of course, Quevedo's bloody moon. Then there was that other blood-red moon John wrote of in his book of dreadful prodigies and terrifying jubilees; still other moons are clearer, silvery. Pythagoras (according to one tradition) used blood to write upon a mirror, and men read it by reflection in that other mirror called the moon. There's an iron forest where a huge wolf lives whose strange fate is to knock the moon down and murder it when the last dawn reddens the sea. (This is well known in the prophetic North; also, that on that day the ship made out of all the fingernails of the dead will spread a poison on the world's wide-open seas.) When in Geneva or in Zurich once, luck had it I too should become a poet, it imposed on me, as on the rest, the secret duty to define the moon. By dint of scrupulous study, I rang all the modest changes under the lively apprehension that Lugones might have used my amber or my sand. As for exotic marble, smoke, cold snow- these were for moons that lit up verses never destined, in truth, to attain the difficult distinction of typography. I thought the poet such a man as red Adam was in Paradise- he gave everything its true, precise, still unknown name. Ariosto taught me that living in the doubtful moon are all dreams, the unattainable, lost time, all possibles or impossibles (they're pretty much the same). Apollodorus showed me the magic shadow of triform Diana; Hugo disclosed its golden sickle; an Irishman his tragic moon of black. So, while I was poking in this mine of moons out of mythologies, along it came, around the corner: the celestial moon of every day. Among the words, I know there's only one for remembering or imagining it. For me the secret is to use the word humbly. And the word is-moon. Now I don't dare stain its immaculate appearance with one vain image. I see it as indecipherable, daily and apart from all my writing. I know the moon, or the word moon, is a: character created for the complex inditing of the rare thing we all are, multiple and unique. It's one of the symbols which fate or chance gave man so that one day in a glorious blaze, or agony, he'd learn to write his own true name. -Translated by EDWIN HONIG Trăng
( Đặng Lệ Khánh)
TRĂNG Em bước ra vườn, trăng chảy tràn trên vai Vườn rất im không một tiếng thở dài Chỉ có con dế quen cất giọng chào đêm tới Và nước trong hồ gờn gợn cá gọi mời Em ngước nhìn trời, trăng thật sáng, thật trong Lành lạnh khuya dâng, mình ôm mình vào lòng Trăng cứ lăn hoài làm sao trăng còn nhớ Những câu thề theo trăng rồi tan vào hư không Em nói với trăng dù biết trăng rất xa Những lời dịu êm em dành cho người ta Chỉ có con dế quen và em và đêm biết Trăng nhẹ nhàng theo em vào giấc ngủ thêu hoa Năm rồi năm đi qua trăng vẫn còn lăn hoài Trời vẫn rất trong và đêm vẫn miệt mài Con dế quen thôi không còn cất tiếng Em ôm vai mình dỗ tròn cơn mộng dài Thế giới quay cuồng, đất và trời chuyển rung Có rất nhiều tiếng cười, và tiếng khóc chập chùng Em vẫn nằm co người đếm trừu chờ giấc ngủ Níu một vầng trăng đã lạnh tuổi thu đông Đặng Lệ Khánh 
The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures 1967-1968 Trong
bài viết Ẩn Dụ, trong cuốn This Craft of Verse,
Borges có nhắc tới 1 câu thơ, "phản bác" trăng -
đây cũng là ý nghĩa bài thơ Tặng Phẩm, theo
GCC, vì trao cho cả thư viện sách, cùng lúc
trao cho món quà, mù - mà ông
nghĩ là của Plato:
Tớ mong tớ là đêm để có thể ngắm em của tớ ngủ, với cả ngàn con mắt! I wish I were the night so that I might watch your sleep with a thousand eyes 
Hardy never said much about writing or the difficulties of it, or the moral difficulties of it. Kafka said that a writer was doing the devil's work, writing a wholly inadequate response to the brutishness of the world, and Hardy increasingly felt this. It's not that it's an immoral activity or an amoral one; it's just that the act of creation is something to which the ordinary standards of human behavior do not apply. Hardy never liked to be touched. He always walked in the road to avoid brushing against people, and servants were told never to help him on with his coat and just to drop the shawl around his shoulders and not tuck him in. The pen had been his weapon in his struggle for life - and it had been a struggle. The next poem is a dialogue with the moon. Hardy chẳng hề lầu bầu về viết, hay những khó khăn về viết, hay khó khăn đạo đức của nó. Kafka phán nhà văn làm, việc của quỉ, viết trọn một phúc đáp không thoả đáng về tính thú vật của thế giới, và Hardy càng ngày càng cảm thấy đúng như thế. Không phải đạo đức, hay không đạo đức, hành động sáng tạo có 1 điều gì, lũ chó, hay phường mắt trắng dã, không hiểu được, hay, không áp dụng được. Hardy đếch khoái ai đụng vô ông ta. Cây viết là vũ khí của ông ta, trong cuộc chiến đấu với đời – và quả có cuộc chiến đấu đó thực. Bài thơ sau đây là 1 cuộc lèm bèm với trăng. I Looked Up from My Writing
I looked
up from my writing, And gave a start to see, As if rapt in my inditing, The moon's full gaze on me. Her meditative misty head Was spectral in its air, And I involuntarily said, 'What are you doing there?' 'Oh, I've been scanning pond and hole And waterway hereabout For the body of one with a sunken soul Who has put his life-light out. 'Did you hear his frenzied tattle? It was sorrow for his son Who is slain in brutish battle, Though he has injured none. 'And now I am curious to look Into the blinkered mind Of one who wants to write a book In a world of such a kind.' Her temper overwrought me, And I edged to shun her view, For I felt assured she thought me One who should drown him too. Tớ nhìn lên từ trang
viết của mình
Tớ nhìn lên từ trang viết Và rất ư hài lòng vì cái viết của mình Và bèn ngắm trăng Và trăng bèn dành trọn cái nhìn, đáp lại tớ Cái đầu mù sương mù suy tư của nàng Thì mới ma mị làm sao trong cái "air" của nó Và tớ bèn vô tình phán, Em đang làm gì ở trên ấy? Ôi, ta đang soi ao, và hố Và sông hồ đâu đây Để kiếm tìm một cái xác Của một kẻ, với linh hồn đắm chìm Đã trút cạn ánh sáng cuộc đời của nó Mi có nghe hắn lèm bèm khùng điên? Về nỗi đau buồn đứa con trai Chết trong 1 trận đánh tàn bạo Dù thằng con chẳng gây thương tích cho ai Và bây giờ ta tò mò muốn nhìn vào cái đầu mù của mi Kẻ muốn viết 1 cuốn sách Trong 1 thế giới khốn kiếp như thế đó! Tính khí của nàng làm tôi mệt nhoài Và tôi tránh cái nhìn của nàng Bởi là vì tôi cảm thấy Nàng nghĩ Tôi cũng là 1 trong số những người đẩy anh ta tự trầm The Moon
The story goes that in those far-off times when every sort of thing was taking place- things real, imaginary, dubious things- a man thought up a plan that would embrace the universe entire in just one book. Relentlessly spurred on by this vast notion, he brought off the ambitious manuscript, polishing the final verse with deep emotion. All set to offer thanks to his good fortune, he happened to look up and, none too soon, beheld a glowing disk in the upper air, the one thing he'd left out-the moon. The story I have told, although made up, could very well symbolize the plight of those of us who cultivate the craft of turning our lives into the words we write. The essential thing is what we always miss. From this law no one will be immune nor will this account be an exception, of my protracted dealings with the moon. Where I saw it first I do not know, whether in the other sky that, the Greeks tell, preceded ours, or one fading afternoon in the patio, above the fig-tree and the well. As is well known, this changing life of ours may incidentally seem ever so fair, and so it was on evenings spent with her when the moon was ours alone to share. More than moons of the night, there come to mind moons I have found in verse: the weirdly haunting dragon moon that chills us in the ballad and Quevedo's blood-stained moon, fully as daunting. In the book he wrote full of all the wildest wonders and atrocious jubilation, John tells of a bloody scarlet moon. There are other silver moons for consolation. Pythagoras, an old tradition holds, used to write his verse in blood on a mirror. Men looked to its reflection in the moon's hoping thus to make his meaning clearer. In a certain ironclad wood is said to dwell a giant wolf whose fate will be to slay the moon, once he has knocked it from the sky in the red dawning of the final day. (This is well known throughout the prophetic North as also that on that day, as all hope fails, the seas of all the world will be infested by a ship built solely out of dead men's nails.) When in Geneva or Zurich the fates decreed that I should be a poet, one of the few, I set myself a secret obligation to define the moon, as would-be poets do. Working away with studious resolve, I ran through my modest variations, terrified that my moonstruck friend Lugones would leave no sand or amber for my creations. The moons that shed their silver on my lines were moons of ivory, smokiness, or snow. Needless to say, no typesetter ever saw the faintest trace of their transcendent glow. I was convinced that like the red-hot Adam of Paradise, the poet alone may claim to bestow on everything within his reach its uniquely fitting, never-yet-heard-of name. Ariosto holds that in the fickle moon dwell dreams that slither through our fingers here, all time that's lost, all things that might have been or might not have-no difference, it would appear. Apollodorus let me glimpse the threefold shape Diana's magic shadow may assume. Hugo gave me that reaper's golden sickle and an Irishman his pitch-black tragic moon. And as I dug down deep into that mine of mythic moons, my still unquiet eye happened to catch, shining around the corner, the familiar nightly moon of our own sky. To evoke our satellite there spring to mind all those lunar cliches like croon and June. The trick, however, is mastering the use of a single modest word: that word is moon. My daring fails. How can I continue to thrust vain images in that pure face? The moon, both unknowable and familiar, disdains my claims to literary grace. The moon I know or the letters of its name were created as a puzzle or a pun for the human need to underscore in writing our untold strangenesses, many or one. Include it then with symbols that fate or chance bestow on humankind against the day- sublimely glorious or plain agonic- when at last we write its name the one true way. -A.S.T. Penguin ed |