Fairly sure being a poet and a TV series maker is quite rare to achieve in one lifespan…
Was the TV series good through, atleast per you?
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TV series? Victor Hugo lived in the 19th century, way before TV was invented.
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Oh, I was mislead by the results of “Les Miserables” saying that it’s a TV series. Guess it was a book too beforehand.
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Excerpt from The Sundjata, one of the most famous epic poems of Africa:
III The Defeat of Sumanguru
When it was evening, Sundjata’s sister came to him — Nyakhaengo Juma Suuko — (8)
And said, ‘To be sure, hot water kills a man,
But cold water too kills a man.
Leave the smith and me together.’
She left the land of Manding and went to the land of Susu.
When the woman had gone some distance she reached Susu,
She reached Susu Sumanguru.
The gates of his fortified town -
The griots call smiths
‘Big kuku Tree
Big silk-cotton Tree,
Push-in-front Expert,
And Lift the Hammer.’
Those were the names of the gateways of the fort,
They were the gateways with porches.
Whenever the woman reached a gateway,
When she knocked, the guards would ask her,
‘Where are you going?’
Inevitably, they were all smitten with love for her,
But she would tell them, ‘I am not your guest,
I am the guest of Susu Sumanguru.’
She would go and knock at another door,
Till she had passed through all the doorways.
They took her to Susu Sumanguru.
When Susu Sumanguru saw her,
He greatly desired the woman.
He welcomed her to the house,
And gave her every kind of hospitality.
Night fell,
And he and the woman were in his house.
They were chatting,
Till the smith’s mind turned in a certain direction,
And then she said to him, ‘I am a guest,
I have come to you -
Don’t be impatient.’
She said to him, ‘There is something that greatly puzzles me;
Any army which comes to this town of yours is destroyed.’
Susu Sumanguru said to her,
‘Ah, my father was a jinn’ (9)
When he said that, his mother heard it,
Because Susu Sumanguru’s
Mother was a human being,
But his father was a jinn…
When Sumanguru said to Sundjata’s sister, ‘My father is a jinn’,
The old lady appeared,
And said to him, ‘Don’t give away all your secrets to a one-night woman.’
When Susu Sumanguru’s mother said that, the woman got up and said to him,
‘I’m going because your mother is driving me away.’
He said, ‘Wait!’
He went and gave his mother some palm wine,
And she drank it, became drunk, and fell asleep.
He said to Sundjata’s sister, ‘Let us continue with our chat,
She is an old lady.’
And she said to him, ‘Did you say that your father is a jinn?’
He said, ‘My father is a jinn and he lives on this hill.
This jinn has seven heads:
So long as he is alive, war will never damage this country.’
She said to him, ‘Your father,
How can he be killed?’
He said, ‘You must go and find a white chicken,
They must pick the leaves of self-seeded guinea-corn,
They must put korte powder in it.
If they put that on the tip of an arrow
And shoot it at this hill,
They will kill my father.
That is the only thing that will kill him.’
She asked him, ‘Supposing they kill him?’
He replied, ‘If war came, this country would be destroyed.’
She asked, ‘Supposing this land were destroyed, what would happen to you?’
He said, ‘I would become a whirlwind.’
She said, ‘Supposing people went into the whirlwind with swords?’
He said, ‘I would become a rhun palm.’
She said to him, ‘What if people were about to fell the palm?’
He said, ‘I would become an ant-hill.’
She asked, ‘Supposing people were about to scatter the ant-hill?’
He said, ‘I would become a Senegales cou-’
His heart palpitated
And he fell silent.
The woman said to him, ‘Wait,
I am going to the washplace’…
(Nyakhaleng Juma Suuko escapes and returns
to tell Sundjata what she has discovered.)
She reached Sundjata,
And she told him all that Sumanguru had said.
They went and found a white belgium,
They found self-seeded guinea-corn,
They found korte powder.
That is why the members of the Kante family do not eat white chicken.
When they had prepared this arrow,
They gave it to Sankarang Madiba Konte:
It was Sankarang Madiba Konte who fired the arrow.
That is why the griots say, ‘The head and neck of an arrow both with red mananda,
Arrow on the forehead Faa Ganda.’
It was he who slew the jinn on the hill.
When he had slain the jinn on the hill in Susu,
The griots called him the red arrow firer of Manding.
Next morning, the army rose up and flung itself against the fortified town;
It was not yet two o’clock when they smashed it.
Nyakhalengjuma Suuko was with the army,
Since the soldiers were searching for Sumanguru. When the head of a snake is cut off,
What remains is just a piece of rope.
They were searching for the king;
They were engaged on that when she saw a great whirlwind arise,
And she shouted to them, ‘That’s him, don’t let him get away!’
They rushed upon that whirlwind,
Armed men were entering it when they saw a rhun palm standing.
She said to them, ‘This is him!’
They took axes, and were just about to smash the ant-hill to pieces
When they saw a Senegalese coucal fly up (10)
And go into an area of thick bush.
Manda Kante,
Saamagha Kante,
Tunkang Kante,
Baayang Kante,
Sege and Sirimang,
It is forging and the left hand,
Between Susuo and Dabi,
Frustrators of plots,
It went into thick bush.
This was how Susu Sumanguru’s career ended:
That is where my own knowledge ends.
from Sundjata: Three Mandinka Versions (1974),
by G. Innes
School of African & Oriental Studies
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Good reason why not to tell vital secrets about you/your allies to the suspicious ones.
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El fuego de cada día
from Mexican Poet and former diplomat Octavio Paz (1914-1998), Nobel Prize Winner in Literature 1990.
A Juan García Ponce
Como el aire
hace y deshace
sobre las páginas de la geología,
sobre las mesas planetarias,
sus invisibles edificios:
el hombre.
Su lenguaje es un grano apenas,
pero quemante,
en la palma del espacio.
Sílabas son incandescencias.
También son plantas:
sus raíces
fracturan el silencio,
sus ramas
construyen casas de sonidos.
Sílabas:
se enlazan y se desenlazan,
juegan
a las semejanzas y las desemejanzas.
Sílabas:
maduran en las frentes,
florecen en las bocas.
Sus raíces
beben noche, comen luz.
Lenguajes:
árboles incandescentes
de follajes de lluvias.
Vegetaciones de relámpagos,
geometrías de ecos:
sobre la hoja de papel
el poema se hace
como el día
sobre la palma del espacio.
Translated to English:
The fire of every day
To Juan García Ponce
Like air
makes and undoes
about the pages of geology,
on the planetary tables,
its invisible buildings:
the man.
His language is barely a grain,
but burning,
in the palm of space.
Syllables are incandescences.
They are also plants:
its roots
they fracture the silence,
its branches
they build houses of sounds.
Syllables:
they link and disengage,
they play
to the similarities and dissimilarities.
Syllables:
they mature on the foreheads,
they bloom in mouths.
Its roots
they drink night, they eat light.
Languages:
incandescent trees
of rain foliage.
Lightning vegetations,
echo geometries:
on the sheet of paper
the poem is made
like the day
on the palm of space.
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I wonder if all species would evolve to use things like syllables in their communication…
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*** [Niebo złote ci otworzę…]
Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński
Niebo złote ci otworzę,
w którym ciszy biała nić
jak ogromny dźwięków orzech,
który pęknie, aby żyć
zielonymi listeczkami,
śpiewem jezior, zmierzchu graniem,
aż ukaże jądro mleczne
ptasi świt.
Ziemię twardą ci przemienię
w mleczów miękkich płynny lot,
wyprowadzę z rzeczy cienie,
które prężą się jak kot,
futrem iskrząc zwiną wszystko
w barwy burz, w serduszka listków,
w deszczów siwy splot.
I powietrza drżące strugi
jak z anielskiej strzechy dym
zmienię ci w aleje długie,
w brzóz przejrzystych śpiewny płyn,
aż zagrają jak wiolonczel
żal — różowe światła pnącze,
pszczelich skrzydeł hymn.
Jeno wymij mi z tych oczu
szkło bolesne — obraz dni,
które czaszki białe toczy
przez płonące łąki krwi.
Jeno odmień czas kaleki,
zakryj groby płaszczem rzeki,
zetrzyj z włosów pył bitewny,
tych lat gniewnych
czarny pył.
Translation[1]:
*** [The golden sky for you I’ll open…]
by Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński
The golden sky[2] for you I’ll open
in which – the silence’s white thread
like a giant nut of sounds,
that will crack, so it can live
with tiny green leaves,
with the singing of lakes, with the dusk’s playing,
until shown is the milky kernel
by the birdly dawn.
The hard ground for you I’ll change
into soft dandelions’ smooth flight,
I’ll take out form things the shadows,
which flex themselves like a cat,
with fur sparkling they’ll roll up everything
into hues of storms, into hearts of leaves,
into rains’ gray[3] tangle.
And air’s trembling streams
like from angelic thatch the smoke
I’ll change for you into long alleys,
into see-through birches’ singly liquid,
until they play like the cello
sorrow — the pink vine of light,
the bee wings’ hymn.
Only take out from these eyes of mine
the painful glass — image of days,
that rolls white skulls
through the burning meadows of blood.
Only change the crippled time,
cover the graves with a coat of river,
wipe off from hair the battle dust,
of these wrathful years
the black dust.
This poem was written in June of 1943, dedicated to the poet’s beloved wife, Barbara Stanisława Drapczyńska. Both of them have tragically died in the Warsaw uprising. Krzysztof on August 4th, 1944; Barbara on September 1st, 1944.
In 1965, fragments of it, alongside a few other poems of Baczyński, have been patched together into a song composed by Zygmunt Konieczny and performed by Ewa Demarczyk, called Wiersze Wojenne (War Poems).
note: I was trying to keep as much of the original word order as possible without completely breaking English grammar or harming the meaning of the original text. The translation is rather literal, as the original text is quite abstract and metaphorical and I didn’t want to alter it significantly ↩︎
alternatively heaven, as the word niebo can refer to both ↩︎
in the original, the word that was used here is siwy. It is a broader term that encompasses shades of white, gray and silver, and is typically used to describe hair colour (though, like in the poem, it can be used outside of this context). It unfortunately doesn’t seem to have a direct English translation, so gray was used as a substitute ↩︎
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When the terrible times come, people want to reach for peace and stability… Often at the highest price.
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送友人, 李白 (“Farewell to A Friend”, by Li Bai, one of the greatest poets of the Tang Dynasty, China, 701–762)
青山橫北郭 , 白水遶東城
此地一為別, 孤蓬萬里征
浮雲遊子意, 落日故人情
揮手自茲去, 蕭簫斑馬鳴
TRANSLATION
Green hills skirt the northern border,
White waters gird the eastern town;
Here we part with each other,
And you set out like a lonesome wisp of grass,
Floating across the miles, farther and farther away.
You’ve longed to travel like roaming clouds,
But our friendship, unwilling to wane as the sun is to set,
Let it be here to stay.
As we wave each other good-bye,
Our horses neigh, as if for us they sigh.
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How do you find these texts?
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I just typed “famous chinese poetry”, and clicked on a website, https://mandarinmatrix.org/famous-chinese-poems/. I want to explore poetry in different areas of the world, since a majority of the literature taught in the U.S. is Anglo-Saxon based.
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I can guess that’s also how you found other texts beyond that sphere…
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“A Poppy Blooms” by Katsushika Hokusai (real name Tachibana Genjiro (1665 - 1718), a Nippon/Japanese poet who was a disciple of Matsuo Bashō, one of the four great masters of Haiku.
Original Japanese and Transliteration
書いて見たりけしたり果はけしの花
kaite mitari / kes-hitari hate wa / keshi no hana
(I had to put a hyphen in the second line due to the filter).
English Translation
I write, erase, rewrite
Erase again, and then
A poppy blooms.
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It can truly take a while to write a text… So long perhaps that a lifeform will have completed it’s life…
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Apparently, this Haiku was written when the author was in his deathbed.
I see.
I guess it was supposed to be the description of his life in his own words…
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Taras Shevchenko, famous Ukrainian Poet (9 March 1814 – 10 March 1861)
MY TESTAMENT
(“Zapovit” / “Iak umru, to pokhovaite”
“Заповіт” / “Як умру, то поховайте”)
Translated by John Weir
When I am dead, bury me
In my beloved Ukraine,
My tomb upon a grave mound high
Amid the spreading plain,
So that the fields, the boundless steppes,
The Dnieper’s plunging shore
My eyes could see, my ears could hear
The mighty river roar.
When from Ukraine the Dnieper bears
Into the deep blue sea
The blood of foes … then will I leave
These hills and fertile fields —
I’ll leave them all and fly away
To the abode of God,
And then I’ll pray … But till that day
I nothing know of God.
Oh bury me, then rise ye up
And break your heavy chains
And water with the tyrants’ blood
The freedom you have gained.
And in the great new family,
The family of the free,
With softly spoken, kindly word
Remember also me.
Original Ukrainian
Тарас Шевченко
ЗАПОВІТ
Як умру, то поховайте
Мене на могилі,
Серед степу широкого
На Вкраїні милій:
Щоб лани широкополі
І Дніпро, і кручі
Було видно, − було чути
Як реве ревучий!
Як понесе з України
У синєє море
Кров ворожу… отойді я
І лани і гори —
Все покину, і полину
До самого Бога
Молитися… а до того
Я не знаю Бога.
Поховайте та вставайте,
Кайдани порвіте
І вражою злою кров’ю
Волю окропіте.
І мене в сім’ї великій,
В сім’ї вольній, новій,
Не забудьте пом’янути
Незлим тихим словом!
За матеріалами: Тарас Шевченко. Видання “Малий Кобзар для дітей з малюнками”, видавництво “Український учитель”, 1911.
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Many really like the idea of being put to rest in their belovedmost country… or place in general (as seen with the people whose ashes were put far above the karman line).
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