LYING TO PRIESTS (OR THE TROUBLE WITH NUNS)

 

"It makes absolutely no difference whether gods and devils exist or not. The secret ambition of every true poem is to ask about them even as it acknowledges their absence." —Charles Simic ("Charles the Obscure")

When 80-year-old Cecilia Giménez set out to restore Elías García Martínez's beloved 19th century ecce homo fresco of Jesus, she embarked from a position of pure devotion. The fresco, which resided in a church near her home in Borja, Spain, had deteriorated to such a degree that she felt compelled to step in. Senora Giménez is not a professional. She was spiritually moved to take up the task. In a sense, the fact that the restored Jesus came out looking like a half-bearded monkey is rather beside the point. Many called it a desecration but, really, from a devotional perspective who cares what all the art historians and critics thought about her act, which seems rather like an organic development in a religious fresco's life, if you ask me.

But for my money, there's no more devotional act than translating a poem written by someone else. Unlike the Holy Spirit, who insists that you clean house before he enters and exposes himself to you, the translator willingly enters the head of the poet with the desire to learn something. He doesn't care that the head is cluttered with historical junk, family squabbles, doubts or strongly held though unpopular positions--even sins. It is the translator's pleasure to just sift around through the old boxes and dirty clothes—and with the utmost respect and no small ounce of humility. The Holy Spirit enters with the goal of bending you to his will; the translator, often a poet himself, bends himself to fit the often uncomfortable shape of the poet —and does it gladly.

While translating Osip Mandelstam from Russian, I lived in a haze like some sort of religious ecstatic. All day long the otherwise boring details of my life passed through a kind of Mandelstam filter (What would O.M. have thought of tofu? This film? Would he have been impressed by my coffee maker?). So much so that I began to think only in his terms. Is this enlightenment? Godhead? The Holy Spirit entering the heart and the head? I don't know, but translation is definitely a devotional act—even, I would argue, a poor translation done in earnest that inspires anger and dismay the world over. I reread my old translations over and over again and often find myself reentering O.M.'s long lost head—dipping in and out and finding new meaning, reassessing previous assumptions, like a rabbi engaging with his Torah or a priest with his bible. Not even reading someone else's superior translation of the same poem can keep me from returning to my own faulty efforts, worrying the words with my lips like old fingers on a Rosary bead on a Tuesday afternoon. I read my translations as compelling yet incomplete, as though there's still something meaningful to be discovered beneath the surface and my humble efforts were just a starting point. Then, maybe that means they are indeed complete. Of course the same could be said for any poem or piece of art.