Theory of the Voice and Dream
by Liliana Ponce/translated from the Spanish by Michael Martin Shea
The task of the translator, said Walter Benjamin, is to give literature its “afterlife.” Jacques Derrida and Rabindranath Tagore agreed, and spoke of translation as “new birth,” “life after death,” and “reincarnation.” But what exactly is reborn in a translation of poetry? Michael Martin Shea answers that question in his translation of Liliana Ponce. Sound is reborn, in the service of sense. The new edition, Theory of the Voice and Dream, is the cry of a newborn echoing the meaningful music of Ponce’s work.
Throughout her career, Ponce has paid close attention to the aural qualities of her poetry. She has devoted herself to language, whether it be the unique tonality of Rioplatanese Spanish in her native Buenos Aires, her studies of semiotic and linguistics, or her translations from the Japanese. Her art synergizes the sounding tongue and the image-making mind. English translator Shea remarks, Ponce writes “singularly beautiful lines wrought from a deep understanding of the relationship between word and image, mouth and voice.”
This understanding is evident in the the two books Shea has curated and translated in this volume: the book that lends it’s title to Shea’s collection, Teoría de la voz y el sueño (2001) and the Japanese-inspired Fudekara (2008). It is evident everywhere in Ponce’s lines, and faithfully captured by her translator. In poem 2 of the book, “word and image, mouth and voice” come together in both original and translation:
Última noche.
Ni ruido ni imagen.
En la espera sin conciencia
el cuerpo se abandona.
A la inmensidad de océanos terrestres se abandona.
Final night.
Neither sound nor image.
In its unconscious waiting
the body surrenders.
To the expanse of earthly seas it surrenders.
Translation like this epitomizes the concept of the “afterlife” or “rebirth” of the work. Ponce’s diction in Spanish is lucid, and her tonality is resonant and somber. In translating, Shea matches this, not by a literal decoding, but by finding in English a vocabulary that transmits lucidity and gravity. “Se abandona” becomes “surrender”—a word in English that evokes emotions of loss and sensual passion implicit in the image of the body. “Inmensidad,” which might have been translated as “immensity” by a less capable translator, becomes the more intimate “expanse,” conveying our vista as we look out into the sea. The rebirth of Ponce’s poetic voice also occurs in this graceful passage from the poem Day 13 from Fudekara. Of special note is the translated line “I will wait for dawn, and even without voice, I will speak for you,” which leverages the simplicity of one-syllable English nouns and verbs to give the poem new life.
En un vaso de agua se esconderá esta estación tan larga, o se doblará con el viento sobre el río.
Esperaré el corazón animal.
Esperaré el comienzo del día, y aun sin voz, hablaré para vos.
In a glass of water this long season will hide itself, or it will bend with the wind above the river.
I will wait for the animal heart.
I will wait for dawn, and even without voice, I will speak for you.
The poems presented, poem 2 and Day 13, indicate one of Ponce’s important strategies: a predilection to number rather than title a poem. The numbered poem in Spanish—in Ponce, in the current work of poets like Rocío Cerón (México), and in the poetry of St. Teresa and Ávila—creates a strength and structure coexisting with the supple sensuality of the language. Even when imposed by later editors, as happened with Teresa’s poetry, the numbering of Spanish poems lends a tension to the work that does not occur naturally in an English translation.
Shea seems to have intuited this, and often begins the opening line in English with an undulating, sibilant, or open group of phonemes. In this way, first lines reimagine the tension of structure between softness in the numbered original, such as “16 | Wandering. I risk my own limit” and “Day 4 | In silence, I sketch fragments of signs, strokes, like exercises.”
The finest quality of Theory of the Voice and Dream is its generosity. In both Spanish and English the tone and images of the poetry express a magnanimous approach to this astounding world. Ponce’s verse can be sad, but she never retreats into herself, never turns her back on this broken yet beloved world, animated by sublime sprits. One of my favorite poems in the book, poem 8, bears this out in both Ponce’s Spanish and in Shea’s dexterous translation.
El goce es una franja inhumana en el cuerpo, trozo ingrávido.
La roca es una divinidad en el viento, la pureza de un día por venir—que aparta la muerte con un gesto impotente.
Nacer, en verdad, nacer, en la constelación de los errantes, de los fugitivos—probar diminutos frutos, callejas desconocidas.
Pleasure is an inhuman band on the body, a weightless piece.
The stone is a divinity in the wind, the purity of a coming day —which sets aside death with an impotent gesture.
To be born, to be truly born, under the sign of wanderers, of fugitives —to try the diminutive fruits, the unknown alleys.
Poem 8, as in many of Ponce’s poems, is a lineated prose poem, with some “lines” the length of a short paragraph. The poet employs this craft to great effect: it contributes much to the generosity and somber gravity of the poems; it is the foundation of “mouth and voice,” Shea’s formulation for Ponce’s attention to sound in her work. When Ponce departs from this style, as she does in a handful of titled poems present in the book, she loses ground. Her more traditionally lineated verse, while still very fine, does not resonate in the same way as her prose-inflected work. Quite simply, Ponce owns lineated prose poem, and this form displays her poetic genius. Shea has kept that genius alive for readers of English, with a translation worthy of the poet, and worthy of every reader’s time.
—Dana Delibovi
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