Centre for Romanian Studies

Publius Vergilius Maro (October 15, 70 BC – September 21, 19 BC

Poetry in Translation (CXXV): Francesc PARCERISAS (b. 1944), Poet Catalan – “Mâna lui Virgiliu” (The Hand of Virgil)

Mâna lui Virgiliu (The Hand of Virgil)

Francesc PARCERISAS (n. 1944)
Poet Catalan

Bătălia e grea şi nedreaptă,
flăcări domoale pe culmi de coline.
Suliţele şi săgeţile inamice
ne-au decimat încet
părinţii care ne-au ocrotit, încât, aproape,
fără sa ne dăm seama
ne aflăm muţi şi surprinşi peste măsură,
în toiul focului, pe câmpul de bătălie.
Atât despre scriptura după Virgiliu.
Apoi, realitatea se schimbă:
Rămânem singuri să stingem conflagraţia.
fără sfat, purtaţi dealungul drumului
de îndemnul lăuntric al milostivirii,
poate vom înţelege că zidurile
fortăreţei, vrăjmaşii şi chiar războiul însuşi
nu sunt decât umbre, crescute peste măsură
al unui incendiu ostenit în cenuşe.
Purgatoriu şi paradis lăuntric.

Versiune în limba Română
de Constantin Roman
Londra, 23 Septembrie 2012,
© 2012, Copyright Constantin ROMAN
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

THE HAND OF VIRGIL

The battle is slow and devious,
a temporal fire on the hilltops.
The spears and darts of the enemy
have decimated so slowly
the parents who protected us that,
almost without realizing it,
we find ourselves, silent, wide open,
hard by the fires on the battlefront.
Thus far the hand of Virgil.
Hereafter the world will be different:
we are on our own to quell the fire.
Without a guide, borne along
by the secret promptings of a sense for good,
we will perhaps come to see that the walls
of the fortress, the enemy, war itself
are merely the shadows, grown enormous,
of a blaze that is light and embers.
Purgatory and paradise we bear within.

Translated by D. Sam Abrams
Five Poets, Institute of North American Studies, Barcelona, 1988

Francesc PARCERISAS (b. 1944) – Catalan Poet

BIOGRAPHY:
Francesc PARCERISAS
(n. Begues, 1944) Poet Catalan, Spania
Born in 1944, Francesc Parcerisas, the author of fourteen volumes of poetry, including Still Life with Children, Triumph of the Present, and The Golden Age, is considered the premier Catalan poet of his generation—a “miracle generation” of poets who came of age as Franco’s public banning of the Catalan language abated. He is also an accomplished, award-winning translator of an impressive array of significant international writers, such as Joseph Conrad, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Doris Lessing, Katherine Mansfield, Joyce Carol Oates, Cesare Pavese, Edgar Allan Poe, Ezra Pound, Rimbaud, Susan Sontag, William Styron, and Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney. Among his numerous translations from French, Italian, and English into Catalan, he is most famous in Catalonia for his translation of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. From 1998 to 2005 he was director of the Institute of Catalan Letters in Barcelona. He teaches at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. His own poems have been translated into Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Basque, Gallego, and Welsh, among others.
Among his awards are the 1966 Carles Riba Prize, the 1983 Critics’ Prize for Catalan Poetry, the 1983 Catalan Government Prize for Catalan Literature, the 1992 Lettre d’Or Prize for his volume Mana lui Virgiliu (The Hand of Virgil), Triumph of the Present, the 1992 Serra D’Or Critic’s Prize for his Catalan version of Seamus Heaney’s The Haw Lantern, and the 2001 Cavall Verd-Rafael Jaume Prize for his translation of Ezra Pound’s A Draft of XXX Cantos.

Boxing scene from the Aeneid (book