[Julie Steiner]

Salvador Rueda (Spain, 1857–1933)
Coplas 1–3

DRAFT B

1.
Like the almond tree in flower,
you’ll face hardships. When an awesome
wallop shakes you with its power,
just release a rain of blossom.

2.
Before my coffin’s lid is set —
all across my body, be a
dear and fling this coverlet:
your Sevillan lace mantilla.

3.
I drop a piece of glass and find
a thousand pieces shattered there.
I try to wipe you from my mind
and now I see you everywhere.


DRAFT A

1.
Like the almond tree in flower,
you’ll face hardships. If an awesome
blow arrives with shocking power,
just release a rain of blossom.

2.
Before my coffin’s lid is set,
all across my body, be a
dear and fling this coverlet —
your Sevillan lace mantilla.

3.
I drop a piece of glass, and find
a thousand pieces shattered there.
I try to rid you from my mind,
and now I see you everywhere.


SPANISH ORIGINALS, LITERAL ENGLISH PROSE CRIBS

1.
Como el almendro florido           Like the blooming almond tree
has de ser con los rigores,           you have to be/coexist with rigors;
si un rudo golpe recibes           if you receive a brutal blow,
suelta una lluvia de flores.           release a rain of flowers.

2.
Antes que el sepulturero           Before the grave-digger
haya cerrado mi caja,           has closed my casket,
echa sobre el cuerpo mío           throw over my body
tu mantilla sevillana.           your Sevillan mantilla.

3.
Tiro un cristal contra el suelo           I throw/drop a windowpane against the ground
y se rompe en mil cristales,           and it breaks into a thousand windowpanes,
quiero borrarte del pecho           I want to wipe you from my chest/feelings
y te miro en todas partes.           and I see/face you in all places.

[Glenn Wright]

Hi, Julie—

These are lovely, sort of like Spanish haikus. Each one presents a single vividly presented image. I was not familiar with this form, but I learned that they are related to popular songs and dances and have several variations in rhythm and rhyme. I wondered if they were meant to be sung and if so what instrument they are performed with. Are they related to Flamenco? They are composed in arte menor, meaning no more than eight syllables per line. Some use strong ABAB rhyme and others use ABCB or simply use near rhymes or assonance in even-numbered lines. I had to elide words ending with vowels preceding words beginning with vowels in order not to exceed eight syllables per line.

You did a beautiful job on these little jewels.

Glenn

[Carl Copeland]

Hi, Julie. Glenn is right that these “coplas” are little jewels—both the originals and your translations. Interesting that Rueda has only one pure rhyme, and you have only one slant. That’s not a nit, but here are a few very minor ones:


1

“If an awesome / blow arrives with shocking power” seems a bit bloated to me, if not redundant. How about something like: “If an awesome / blow should shake you with its power.”

“Blossom” sounds odd to me as a collective noun, but there’s a song called “Rain of Blossom” and a fabric and other references in Google, so I think I can get used to it.


2

For some reason, I really want you to drop the possessive ending from “coffin’s.”


3

The comma after “glass” is unnecessary.

You could restore the original “wipe.” I don’t see what advantage “rid” has.


If Rueda has more of these, let’s see them!

[Julie Steiner]

Thanks very much for your comments, Glenn and Carl. Draft B posted above.

Glenn, Rueda has many of these coplas, and was actually better known for them than his sonnets (although he also has a fine sonnet about coplas, in which he compares them to butterflies taking flight on four wings).

Some of them are untranslatable (at least by me) because there are just so few syllables to play with. And yes, as you noticed, there are even fewer syllables at the English translator's disposal than at the Spanish poet's, due to the mandatory elision of adjacent syllables in Spanish poetry. The most infamous example of that is the final line of Luis de Góngora's sonnet "Mientras por competir con tu cabello," in which the final line about time and decay swallowing up beauty is itself swallowed up in elisions: "en t(ie)rr(a, en) hum(o, en) polv(o, en) sombr(a, en) nada" — in dirt, in smoke, in dust, in shadow, in nothing.

Throughout the Spanish-speaking world there is a tradition of competitions in which poets cap the previous poet's coplas with their own, on the fly. In May 2023, the San Diego Master Chorale performed a musical setting of a such a wordsmithing contest between a Venezuelan poet and the devil:
https://sandiegostory.com/the-san-di...he-rady-shell/
Here's a recording of that work (though not by us):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Re4o8FymThU

There tends to be a preference in these for assonantal feminine rhymes — perhaps to make it a little easier for find rhymes on the fly, but I suspect mainly it's to build surprise in a language in which perfect rhymes are so easy to come by that they must often be predicted by the audience, too.

Carl, I've poked at #1 again. I took a cold, hard look at the apostrophe in 2 but ultimately decided to keep it. The offending commas in 3 are gone, and I'm giving "wipe" a try.

[Roger Slater]

I think you made the right choice to use perfect rhymes in English even though the Spanish largely uses assonantal rhymes, but you might have given yourself a bit more room to work if you had just used "b" rhymes and not "a" rhymes. As it is, things seem a bit forced. For example, "awesome" doesn't feel like a natural adjective to use to describe an unwelcome wallop. And "be a" is a comical rhyme at best, not really suiting the tone. (Not to mention that "be a dear" is nowhere to be found in the Spanish). And "shattered there" strikes me as forced as well, since "there" has not been defined or referred to before.

In #3, I think the translation loses the sense that the speaker purposely throws the glass to the ground in a vain attempt to erase her (?) memory, though it doesn't work and has the opposite effect.