Há um fragmento de um antigo poema grego/ que tem um erro de aritmética.

A Enfermaria, blogue amigo, com gente da casa, que vivamente recomendamos, publicou há dias uma tradução, por João Moita, de um belíssimo poema de Anne Carson, poetisa canadiana, de formação em clássicas, que já aqui, noutras ocasiões, partilhámos. Venham ler:

A verdade dos factos para os humanos é a imperfeição.

Anne Carson sobre Ulisses, Godard, Moravia

Anne Carson Sobre 'Antigonick'

ALEX DUEBEN: In recent years you’ve been translating a lot of dramatic work, first the Euripides plays for the NYRB imprint, The Oresteia, and now Antigonick. Why have you been drawn to and interested by drama in recent years?

ANNE CARSON: These were all commissions. I have never in fact been much interested in drama but if someone asks me to do something, I generally do it. Canadians are dutiful. 

AD: Where did the idea of translating Sophocles’ Antigone come from and could you talk a little about the decision to not simply translate the play but to rewrite it?

AC: To be honest, I don't see any "rewrite" going on. Everything I've done in the translation is an attempt to convey a move or shock or darkening that happens in the original text. This doesn't always mean reproducing the words and sentences of the original in their same order; but a play is (note etymology of "drama" from Greek DRAN "to do or act") a collection of actions or doings, this is what needs to be rendered from Greek into English. It's true Sophokles doesn't mention Hegel on the first page of Antigone, but he does refer to the long tradition of A's catastrophic family in order to remind his Greek audience of the legend and for us, in 2012, the Antigone legend includes Hegel.

AD: Do you think about how the play could be performed, or at least how the language could be spoken as opposed to read when you translate a play?

AC: Yes, every minute.

[continuar a ler aqui]

(com um agradecimento à Erica, que me mostrou a entrevista)

O Monstro Precisa de Amigos

IX. Geryon's War Record

Geryon lay on the ground covering his ears The sound

of horses like roses being burned alive

X. Schooling

In those days the police were weak Family was strong

Hand in hand the first day Geryon's mother took him to

School She neatened his little red wings and pushed him

In through the door

XIII. Herakles' Killing Club

Litte red dog did not see it he felt it All

Events carry but one

XIV. Herakles' Arrow

Arrow means kill It parted Geryon's skull like a comb Made

The boy neck lean At an odd slow angle sideways as when a

Poppy shames itself in a whip of Nude breeze

XV. Total Things Known About Geryon

He loved lightning He lives on an island His mother was a

Nymph of a river that ran to the sea His father was a gold

Cutting tool Old scholia say that Stesichoros says that

Geryon had six hands and six feet and wings He was red and

His strange red cattle excited envy Herakles came and

Killed him for his cattle

The dog too

XVI. Geryon's End

The red world And corresponding red breezes

Wento on Geryon did not

Excertos de Red Meat: Fragments of Stesichoros

in Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red - A Novel in Verse.

Vintage Books, NY: 1998.

imagem: Héracles & Gérion; ânfora (550-540 a.C.)

Dia A, de Agamémnon

KASSANDRA

[scream] I lose my screams that find me again!

The dread work of prophecy buckles me

down to its BAM BAM BAM —

do you see them there those young ones

who nest by the door

like shapes in dreams

like children murdered

they hold their own flesh in their own hands

and the entrails drip where their father tasted deep.

Yes I can see this and I tell you vengeance is coming —

a soft lion tumbles in the master's bed awaiting him —

how little the great general understands

that bitch who licked his hand at the door of the house

and what she plans to do.

She has the nerve, she is a killer, female against male.

What should I call her — a kind of snake, a Skylla,

a plague, a mother who breathes out

war against her own loved ones?

How she shrieked in joy

to see that man on her doorstep.

Yet you know it's all the same to me if

anyone believes this or not.

Who cares? The future is coming.

Agamémnon 1214-1240, de Ésquilo

in Anne Carson, An Oresteia, Faber & Faber, NY: 2009.

imagem: Electra at the Tomb of Agamemnon,

de William Blake Richmond (1874) @ Art Gallery of Ontario