Poetry in translation: three Catalan poets

Translations from Catalan into English of three prominent poets: Joan Maragall, Joan-Salvat Papasseit, and Jacint Verdaguer. This story was originally published in The Cambridge Student’s Lent 2021 print edition. The text has not been edited.

Photo by Raimond Klavins on Unsplash

JOAN MARAGALL (1860–1911) was a poet, a journalist, a translator and a political and cultural activist. He contributed to the standardisation of the Catalan language and he founded the Philology section of the Institute for Catalan Studies. Among the authors he translated were Homer, Goethe, Nietzsche and Pindar, and by the time of his death, he had become a hallmark figure of Catalan Modernist literature.

EXCELSIOR

(original title Excelsior)

Watch out, spirit, watch out
never to lose your way
don’t let calm waters pull you
away from any bay.

Spin round, round, and look up,
don’t linger on no scanty shore,
take your falls up in the high air,
out at sea forevermore.

Hold up your sails and your slings
from sky to translucent sea-swells,
always shrouding expanding water
always shifting on wind spells.

Flee old motionless homelands,
flee horizons, hostile seaboards
out to sea, to great wild oceans;
out to sea forevermore.

Forget dry land, forget sand
no looking back to stern;
your voyage goes ever onward,
you left never to return.

———

JOAN SALVAT-PAPASSEIT (1894–1924) is known for his love poetry –often erotic– and for his contributions to Catalan avantgarde literature. His work is marked by his countercultural non-conformism, and yet it exhibits a joyful idealism, especially in his last works. To this day, Papasseit is still a very popular writer in Catalonia, despite his premature death.

ALL THE WAY UP IN THE SKY

(original title De dalt de tot del cel)
for Adolf Fargnoli

All the way up in the sky
villages at night look like burning braziers
The evening slips in, and so the stars glitter brighter

they get close to the earth and they warm up their hands
and body
and feet
And they offer her the Big Dipper like a wreath:

And among the morning dew,
they get picked by shepherds.

———

Considered the most important Catalan writer of the 19th century, JACINT VERDAGUER (1845–1902) mastered many genres, including epic and lyric poetry, travel writing, journalism and prose. His Romantic and classical influences blended with his Catholic faith in his works, and his unique literary identity left a much-imitated legacy.

SWALLOWS

(original title Les orenetes)

I
When leaves start withering
bit by bit
if they don’t already tumble
down every road
when that white rose is missing
in a garden of snow
only to later appear in some
high mountain peak;
with October’s arrival,
leaving their nests,
each and every swallow
by the thousand
up on a tree they all gather
in civil assembly.

Once there congregated
thus goes their call:
“The time for us has now come,
we must fly
towards the sun that now bumbles
to new skies.
May and April will be waiting,
their chuckle a hum.
Who wants to go where we’re going?
Who wants to come?”

II
That’s what you are, children of Christ,
just swallows,
You that were born of the Glory
that knows no end,
don’t you know that on earth
we all migrate?
does it not freeze your feathers,
this winter wet?
The sun that will warm our wings
is not here yet.