2.02.2018

Praia de Dover - Matthew Arnold

Praia de Dover
de Matthew Arnold

O mar está calmo esta noite.
A maré está cheia, a lua lá ao fundo
Sobre os estreitos; na costa de França a luz
Brilha e desaparece; os penhascos de Inglaterra surgem,
Reluzentos e vastos, de fronte à baía tranquila.
Vem à janela, o ar da noite é doce!
Apenas, da longa linha de salpicos
Onde o mar se depara com a terra tingida de lua,
Ouve! escutas o rosnido a raspar
Dos seixos que as ondas recolhem, e lançam,
Ao voltarem, para a praia alta,
Começa, e cessa, e começa de novo,
Com trémula lenta cadência, e traz
Para dentro a nota eterna da tristeza.

Há muito tempo atrás Sófocles
Ouviu-o no Egeu, e trouxe
À sua mente o turvo fluxo e refluxo
Da miséria humana; nós
Achamos também no som um pensamento,
Ao ouvi-lo neste distante mar do norte.

O Mar da Fé
Esteve também, em tempos, cheio, e cercando a costa da terra,
Jazia como as dobras de um brilhante cinturão desenfaixado.
Mas agora apenas oiço
O seu melancólico, longo, ruído em retirada,
Recuando, ao sopro
Do vento da noite, abaixo as vastas e cinzentas bordas
E os pedregulhos desnudados do mundo.

Ai, amor, sejamos verdadeiros
Um para o outro! pois o mundo, que aparenta
Estender-se diante nós como uma terra de sonhos,
Tão variado, tão belo, tão novo,
Em verdade não tem nem alegria, nem amor, nem luz,
Nem certezas, nem paz, nem socorro à dor;
E nós estamos aqui como numa planície enegrecida,
Arrastados por alarmes confusos de combates e fugas,
Onde ignorantes exércitos se batem de noite.

Tradução minha.

Dover Beach
by Matthew Arnold

The sea is calm tonight. 
The tide is full, the moon lies fair 
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light 
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, 
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. 
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air! 
Only, from the long line of spray 
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land, 
Listen! you hear the grating roar 
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, 
At their return, up the high strand, 
Begin, and cease, and then again begin, 
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring 
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago 
Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought 
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow 
Of human misery; we 
Find also in the sound a thought, 
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith 
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore 
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. 
But now I only hear 
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, 
Retreating, to the breath 
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear 
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true 
To one another! for the world, which seems 
To lie before us like a land of dreams, 
So various, so beautiful, so new, 
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, 
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; 
And we are here as on a darkling plain 
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, 
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

1.26.2018

يشرف الحق

Al-Kindi. On first philosophy 103.4-8. (My trans.)
We should not feel ashamed for appreciating the Truth and from acquiring it from where it may come, even if it should come to us from distant races and from different peoples. For someone who seeks the Truth, there is nothing that takes precedence to the Truth [itself], there is nothing, in whoever speaks it or brings it, that could take value away from it, and we can never disregard them [whoever they happen to be]. The Truth never humiliates - it ennobles. 
وينبغي لنا أن لا نستحي من استحسان الحق، واقتناء الحق من أين أتى، وإن أتى من الأجناس القاصية عنا، والأمم المباينة، فإنه لا شيء أولى بطالب الحق من الحق. وليس يبخس الحق، ولا يصغر بقائله ولا بالآتي به. ولا أحد بخس الحق؛ بل كان يشرفه الحق.

1.24.2018

1.14.2018

Heraclitus in Sumerian

§1

John. L. Hayes. (2000) A Manual of Sumerian Grammar and Texts p.193 Undena Publications.

B113ellst.png
til - This sign has several readings and meanings in Sumerian. In its reading as til, it is equated with Akkadian gamāru, laqātu, and qatû. The CAD glosses qatû as "1. to come to an end, to be used up, 2. to perish, 3. to become completed, finished, settled". In the causative stem, šuq is glossed as "to bring to an end." 
The word til meaning "to live" has occurred several times, notably in the formula nam-til3-la-ni-še3 ["for his life"]. It is curious that the words "to live" and "to come to an end" are homophones, both being pronounced /til/. They are, however, written differently: "to live" is written by the til3 sign, , and "to come to an end" by the til-sign, . [...] As discussed under Phonology, the existence of such apparent homphones as til and til3  has led numerous scholars to suggest that Sumerian was a tonal language.

§2

βιός· τῷ τόξῳ ὄνομα βίος ἔργον δὲ θάνατος 
Heraclitus DK B48
Bow [biós] - the name is life [bíos], yet the work is death.

12.13.2017

Moral Letters to Lucilius // a poem

A translation of a poem of mine.


My dear Lucilius.
Once again I encourage you to ponder
The virtues of temperance
And tranquillity.
My dear Lucilius.
Long have I written to you incessantly,
And told you tales of brave souls
That you might copy them.
We are both making great progress.
My dear Lucilius.
Our friends tell me
That in your party nights you pass by my house
And sing just a bit lower
So as not to wake me up.
I have indeed a light sleep,
Though not from cares,
But from the light electric the gods
Planted inside me,
In my spirit,
And that keeps me up at night
While I write to you.
My dear Lucilius.
Tell me news. Some say
That every night you sing
Until your lips stiffen and numb.
I have trouble believing this.
You do not sing, you pray.
Always have you kept the two apart.
And be that as it may I do not think you could sing
Without me there to give you the tone.
This is true,
Is it not?
My dear Lucilius.
Once again I ask that you direct your body
To just deeds, that you conform your soul
To the super-celestial gods.
If I repeat myself, if I search for you,
If I insist and see myself in you,
That is because I know that God that spins everything
Spins us both in unison,
If I take your hand He
Takes mine in turn,
And with the other He takes yours.
My dear Lucilius.
Try to dull your love.
Dull it and smoothen it,
The love for people,
The love for the beautiful statues in your palaces,
Dull the love for philosophy,
The love for music,
The love for the gods of Love and the others.
Love instead the dulling itself.
But even that in a way that's tame and faint.
Let it dry and gather it once more the following Summer.
Thin it until it fits,
Like a papyrus sheet,
Between the closed beak of an ibis.
My dear Lucilius.
Once again I encourage you to ponder
The virtues of temperance and resignation.





































Imagem: Jusepe de RiberaSeneca (?), 1625-1650 @ Londres.

12.12.2017

Oswald von Wolkenstein



franzoisch, mörisch, katlonisch und kastilian,
teutsch, latein, windisch, lampertisch, reuschisch und roman,
die zehen sprach hab ich gebraucht, wenn mir zerran;
auch kund ich fidlen, trummen, paugken, pfeiffen!

11.26.2017

Darkness Visible

W. R. Johnson. Darkness Visible: A Study of Vergil's Aeneid. University of California Press: 1976.
The insubstantiality that has been warded off throughout [the Aeneid], though it seems to be about to vanish for good, now returns in full force. Reality dwindles to dream, and the nightmare from which we have been fighting free throughout the poem (velle videmur - for at this moment Vergil includes his readers in his poem) has become the reality. No homeric lucidities or articulations here, for the laws of time and space - like the human capacities for motion, action, and speech - themselves have become void. Action, truth, and their images drain away to nothingness. It is the perfect flowering of the Vergilian imagination, this perfect representation of the monstrous and unreasoning night. The via negativa is now, against all likelihood, as reliable and as expressive a mode of mimesis as the via positiva that Homer's art had brought, in Western poetry, to its great perfection. This formulation and perfection of the negative image go beyond the inwardness or subjectivity or elaborations of the potentialities of poetic mood and poetic music; they rather involve an exploration of the relentless, impenetrable darkness inside us and outside us. The lyricism is sometimes tender and fragile, but it is also sometimes ferocious and unyielding in its search for our real weaknesses and real enemies as well as for the lies and myths we tell ourselves about them. After Vergil, not only the grand desolations of Dante and Milton but also the smaller desolations of Tennyson will be possible:
But, ever after, the small violence done
Rankled in him and ruffled all his heart,
As the sharp wind that ruffles all day long
A little bitter pool about a stone
On the bare coast.
The darkness without and within, the big darkness and the small - Vergil has found ways of imagining them; darkness, all kinds of darkness, is finally made visible. And the boundaries of poetry are extended immeasurably.