viernes, 16 de marzo de 2012

CECIL DAY-LEWIS [6.186] Poeta de Irlanda


Cecil Day-Lewis

Cecil Day-Lewis (o Day Lewis) (27 de april de 1904 - 22 de mayo de 1972), poeta británico (nacido en Irlanda) y, bajo el seudónimo de Nicholas Blake, autor de libros de novelas policíacas. Descendiente, por línea materna, de Oliver Goldsmith, y padre del conocido actor Daniel Day-Lewis. Comenzó escribiendo prosa radical de izquierdas, de acuerdo con el compromiso con el grupo de escritores marxistas reunidos en Oxford, donde estudió, en torno a Wystan Hugh Auden y Stephan Spender.

Tras la Segunda Guerra Mundial se alejó de la ideología marxista y centró su poesía en temas de la vida privada. Entre 1951 y 1956 fue Professor of Poetry en la Universidad de Oxford. En 1968, la Corona británico le nombró Poet laureate, cargo que obliga a quien lo ostenta a escribir poemas con ocasión de las festividades de la corte o del Estado.

Según John Strachey "cuando condesciende con Nicholas Blake escribe mejor que cuando se 'da por entero a la literatura', como Day Lewis."


PERSEO RESCATA A ANDRÓMEDA:
PIERO DI COSIMO

Todo está ahí. La víctima cavila,
Sus amigos adoptan la actitud
—– Apropiada para el desastre,
El socorrista encantador desenvaina su espada,
Mientras desde el esbelto e impasible fiordo
Irrumpe, terrorífico, denso y aburrido,
—– El monstruo de costumbre.
Cuando las esperanzas más garantizadas se
–venden poco,
La virtud se devalúa, y el oscuro
—– Vengador sube,
Sabemos que siempre estarán esos dos
Caminando hacia lo lejos despistados,
Discutiendo seriamente sobre el paisaje
—– O los precios del ganado cebado.

Por ambos lados la crisis muestra
Sus gestos y rarezas humanas. Ésos
—– No son esenciales.
Mira más bien a la Bestia desmañada,
El hombre-nube viene a darle un golpe mortal,
Armado con una espada y una cabeza de
–Gorgona-
—– Las credenciales de la magia.

Blanca en las rocas, Andrómeda.
La madre había presumido demasiado.
—– El abismo perdió la paciencia.
La pesadilla hizo rechinar sus dientes. El
–salvador
Entró en escena. Un golpe ganador. Listo.
Padres y amigos lo rodean para ofrecer
—– Sus felicitaciones.

Pero cuando los vastos engaños
Caigan sobre ti desde el lago central,
—– Serás menos afortunado.
No te aconsejo creer que una hábil
Operación terminará con tu dolor
O llegará algún indulto de última hora.
—– Para ti, difícil.


PERSEUS RESCUING ANDROMEDA:
PIERO DI COSIMO

It is all there. The victim broods
Her friends take up the attitudes
—– Right for disaster;
The winsome rescuer draws his sword,
While from the svelte, impassive fjord
Breaches terrific, dense and bored
—– The usual monster.

When gilt-edged hopes are selling short,
Virtue’s devalued, and the swart
—– Avenger rises,
We know there’ll always be those two
Strolling away without a clue
Discussing earnestly the view
—– Or fat-stock prices.

To either hand the crisis throws
Its human quirks and gestures. Those
—– Are not essential.
Look rather at the oafish Dread,
The cloud-man comes to stroke it dead,
Armed with a sword and gorgon’s head-
—– Magic’s credentials.

White on the rocks, Andromeda.
Mother had presumed too far.
—– The deep lost patience.
The nightmare ground its teeth. The saviour
Went in. A winning hit. All over.
Parents and friends stood round to offer
—– Congratulations.

But when the vast delusions break
Upon you from the central lake,
—– You’ll be less lucky.
I’d not advise you to believe
There’s a slick op. to end your grief
Or any nick-of-time reprieve.
—– For you, unlikely.


De "La montaña magnética"

3

En algún lugar más allá de las terminales
de la razón, al sur o al norte,
hay una montaña magnética
que funde el cielo con la tierra.

No hay línea tendida hasta ahora.
Conexiones se oxidan en un montón
y durmientes -huesos de muertos-
marcan una vía derrotada.

Un halcón que anualmente
cambia su sitio en el espacio,
en el último vuelo
puede significar el lugar.

Hierro en el alma,
espíritu acerado en fuego,
aguja temblando en la verdad -
tal lo que allí me revelará.

La montaña magnética, 1933
Versión de J. Aulicino



The Magnetic Mountain

3

Somewhere beyond the railheads
Of reason, south or north,
Lies a magnetic mountain
Riveting sky to earth.

No line is laid so far.
Ties rusting in a stack
And sleepers – dead men’s bones –
Mark a defeated track.

Kestrel who yearly changes
His tenement of space
At the last hovering
May signify that place.

Iron in the soul,
Spirit steeled in fire,
Needle trembling on truth –
These shall draw me there.



¿Dónde están los poetas de la guerra?

Ellos que en la estupidez  o mera avaricia
esclavizaron  la religión, los mercados, las leyes,
ahora toman nuestro lenguaje y nos
ordenan defender la causa de la libertad.

Es la lógica de nuestro tiempo
-no es tema para un verso inmortal-
que quienes vivimos por sueños honestos
defendemos lo malo frente a lo peor.

 Word Over All, 1943
Versión: Marina Kohon


Where are the War Poets?

They who in folly or mere greed
Enslaved religion, markets, laws,
Borrow our language now and bid
Us to speak up in freedom’s cause.

It is the logic of our times,
-No subject for immortal verse –
That we who lived by honest dreams
Defend the bad against the worse.



El poema, dedicado a las célebres Brigadas Internacionales que tanto estudio me han ocupado y que tanto me siguen emocionando todavía:

EL VOLUNTARIO

Diles en Inglaterra, si es que preguntan,
lo que nos trajo a estas guerras,
a esta llanura tras la tumba
de una pléyade de estrellas de la noche -

No fue ni engaño ni estupidez
gloria, venganza ni dinero:
vinimos porque nuestros ojos abiertos
no veían otro camino

No había otra manera de mantener
el parpadeo de la verdad de los hombres encendida:
Las estrellas serán testigo de que nuestra causa
ardió más breve, pero no con menos luz

Más allá de los olivares devastados
desde el más lejano alcor,
nos llama un país que era nuestro
y que aquí recobraremos

Brilla para nosotros, real y en la memoria,
agua-verde-suave hidromiel:
Ríos de la patria, refrescad nuestra carrera
a quien quiera que os conduzca vuestro fluido

Aquí - en un lugar reseco y extraño
combatimos por la libertad para Inglaterra
por el bien que nuestros padres ganaron para ella;
la tierra que esperaban contemplar

Traducido por Antonio Díez 
http://antoniodiez.blogspot.com.es/2012/09/el-voluntario-cecil-day-lewis.html




The Volunteer

Published in 1938 in the collection, Overtures to Death, written in part as Day-Lewis' reaction to the events of the Spanish Civil War, this ringingly patriotic ballod sees him embracing the inevitability of a coming Europe-wide conflict with fascism, of which he accepts he must be a part. The Volunteer of the title - and the speaker in the poem -  is a British volunteer in the International Brigade


Tell them in England, if they ask
What brought us to these wars,
To this plateau beneath the night’s
Grave manifold of stars –

It was not fraud or foolishness,
Glory, revenge, or pay:
We came because our open eyes 
Could see no other way.

There was no other way to keep
Man’s flickering truth alight:
These stars will witness that our course
Burned briefer, not less bright.

Beyond the wasted olive-groves,
The furthest lift of land,
There calls a country that was ours
And here shall be regained.

Shine on us, memoried and real,
Green-water-silken meads:
Rivers of home, refresh our path
Whom here your influence leads.

Here in a parched and stranger place
We fight for England free,
The good our fathers won for her,
The land they hoped to see.




WATCHING POST

Written in June 1940, and later published in Word Over All (1943), this poem recalls Day-Lewis’s time serving in the Home Guard near his home on the Devon-Dorset border.  Rejecting both the communist leanings of his Thirties poetry, and the influence of WH Auden, he found in the patriotic defence of the countryside from a feared German invasion a source of deep patriotism. 


A hill flank overlooking the Axe valley.
Among the stubble a farmer and I keep watch
For whatever may come injure our countryside –
Light-signals, parachutes, bombs or sea-invaders.
The moon looks over the hill’s shoulder, and hope
Mans the old ramparts of an English night.

In a house down there was Marlborough born. One night
Monmouth marched to his ruin out of that valley.
Beneath our castled hill, where Britons kept watch,
Is a church where the Drakes, old lords of this countryside,
Sleep under their painted effigies.  No invaders
Can dispute their legacy of toughness and hope.

Two counties away, over Bristol, the searchlights hope
To find what danger is in the air tonight.
Presently gunfire from Portland reaches our valley
Tapping like an ill-hung door in a draught.  My watch
Says nearly twelve.  All over the countryside
Moon-dazzled men are peering out for invaders.

The farmer and I talk for a while of invaders:
But soon we turn to crops – the annual hope,
Making of cider, prizes for ewes.  Tonight
How many hearts along this war-mazed valley
Dream of a day when at peace they may work and watch
The small sufficient wonders of the countryside.

Image or fact, we both in the countryside
Have found our natural law, and until invaders
Come will answer its need: for both of us, hope
Means a harvest from small beginnings, who this night
While the moon sorts out into shadow and shape our valley,
A farmer and a poet, are keeping watch.




THE ALBUM

Written in the early 1940s when Day-Lewis, then married to his first wife, Mary, met and fell in love with the novelist, Rosamond Lehmann.  It appears in Word Over All (1943), a collection dedicated to Lehmann who was his mistress throughout the decade. 

I see you, a child
In a garden sheltered for buds and playtime,
Listening as if beguiled
By a fancy beyond your years and the flowering maytime.
The print is faded: soon there will be 
No trace of that pose enthralling,
Nor visible echo of my voice distantly calling
‘Wait! Wait for me!’

Then I turn the page
To a girl who stands like a questioning iris
By the waterside, at an age
That asks every mirror to tell what the heart’s desire is.
The answer she finds in that oracle stream
Only time could affirm or disprove,
Yet I wish I was there to venture a warning, ‘Love
Is not what you dream.’

Next, you appear
As if garlands of wild felicity crowned you –
Courted, caressed, you wear
Like immortelles the lovers and friends around you.
‘They will not last you, rain or shine,
They are but straws and shadows,’
I cry: ‘Give not to those charming desperadoes
What was made to be mine.’

One picture is missing –
The last.  It would show me a tree stripped bare
By intemperate gales, her amazing
Noonday of blossom spoilt which promised so fair.
Yet scanning those scenes at your heyday taken,
I tremble, as one who must view
In the crystal a doom he could never deflect- yes, I too
Am fruitlessly shaken.

I close the book;
But the past slides out its leaves to haunt me
And it seems, wherever I look,
Phantoms of irreclaimable happiness taunt me.
Then I see her, petalled in new-blown hours,
Beside me – ‘All you love most there
Has blossomed again,’ she murmurs, ‘all that you missed there
Has grown to be yours.’




AT LEMMONS

The last poem Day-Lewis wrote, it was composed on his death bed in the spring of 1972 at Lemmons, the large north London home of his friends Kingsley Amis, Elizabeth Jane Howard, her brother Colin and Sargy Mann, the painter.  Day-Lewis was officially recuperating there, with his family around him, after a period of poor health, the press was informed.  On doctors’ orders he was never told that he was dying of cancer.  Later Amis was to write: ‘At no time did Cecil mention death.  My own strong feeling is that he came to draw his own conclusions from his physical decline and increasingly severe – though happily intermittent – bouts of pain, but, out of kindness and abnegation of self, chose not to discuss the matter’.  The reference to requiems in the poem would seem to bear this out.  It was published in 1979 in Posthumous Poems.


Above my table three magnolia flowers
Utter their silent requiems.
Through the window I see your elms
In labour with the racking storm
Giving it shape in April’s shifty airs.

Up there sky boils from a brew of cloud
To blue gleam, sunblast, then darkens again.
No respite is allowed
The watching eye, the natural agony.

Below is the calm a loved house breeds
Where four have come together to dwell
- Two write, one paints, the fourth invents -   
Each pursuing a natural bent
But less through nature’s formative travail
Than each in his own humour finding the self he needs.

Round me all is amenity, a bloom of
Magnolia uttering its requiems,
A climate of acceptance.  Very well
I accept my weakness with my friends’
Good natures sweetening each day my sick room.




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