Volume 6 | Issue 1 | April - May
2012 |
Manavaz Alexandrian - Poet and translator
Manavaz Alexandrian
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Samples of Translator’s own poetry:
From my ‘Memoirs of Life’
By Manavaz Alexandrian
I start this canto in first person as
I'm tired of narrating in a faked name,
But I have an odd name, it is Manavaz!
Perhaps you've never heard it in a poem!
I picked another name easy to rhyme
And this I found convenient at the time.
But this has proven a difficult task,
Being a foreigner to English tongue,
And if I have blundered I humbly ask
Your pardon; may be I have been wrong
To discipline my theme to rigid verse
While in prose there is no rule to be terse.
And why write? This is a question that may gall you.
For God’s sake why did I versify my life?
This puzzles me much. I have doubted the value
Of recording my past deeds of joy and strife.
Who has patience in this hurried age
To read a common tale? What trophy or badge
Awaits me - a retired and shy versifier
And foreign to the English readers?
Perhaps the episodes of my tale will fire
The interest of my kin who are feeders
Of my stock! Perhaps when I am dead,
And if this parchment isn't destroyed yet
Or sold to the greengrocers by the groom,
Or deposited in a abandoned dead file,
A kind heart will bind it in a volume
And send it to an editor within a mile.
I don't know what will happen to this
But fear most those who will slander and hiss!
But I have started it and mean to end it.
Whether I'll bind it or throw in the dust
Or whether I shall manage to send it
To a publisher or it will decay and rust
I cannot tell. Thus much I've bragged of the fate
Of my book. No more I'll bother you on this date.
I have now left behind seventy two years
Of my life and aged and wrinkled deeply;
The loss of golden days puts one in tears
And one grows restless and melancholy.
Oh youth where is thy fire, vigor and strength?
Is it doomed to be thus curtailed in length?
The blood is cooled, the fire is out, wit fled,
My body is ailing, my eyesight dimmed;
My temples have grayed, hairs grown white, my head
Is balding in front where I combed and trimmed.
My memory fails me, I cannot recall
The events of my life and what did befall.
I've been a zealous reader all my life
And my shelves are filled with many volumes,
But being careless I have vexed my wife,
For I have littered them in all the rooms.
Pope and Byron have been my companions and guide
Books have been my friend because nothing they hide.
Poems dedicated to Saadi and Hafez
By Manavaz Alexandrian
To Saadi
O great teacher and sage, who dig into the heart
And blend your sweet verse with eloquent prose;
In all your varied maxims a new sense glows.
Your Golestan is a masterpiece of art,
Your sweet Bustan skillfully does impart
Your message to mankind mixed with lily and rose.
You know when to start and when to bring to a close,
And your numbers in sweet harmony flows.
You bid reason to rule and tame the sense;
You point at people's virtue and folly
Without affectation or vain pretense.
Many have caught your spark in their sally
Into realm of art, but their music jars
And betrays your shining gold in their farce.
To Hafez
Much have I pored in your great book, O master of verse!
And much essayed to transcribe your living numbers,
Puzzled at your golden mansion and lost in your chambers.
You, O sweet Hafez are the unrivaled poet of Perse!
Your lays marvellously sweet, your lines succinct and terse.
Your song awakens the youth from heavy slumbers;
Your verse is as harmonious as body members;
Now the fragrant bowers of rose you nurse,
Now you perch on the dewy boughs of stately pine,
Now you hang on lovers' lips in their soft repose;
Now in lovers’ mansion you drink the purple wine,
Now with sweet nightingale you sing of lovers woes,
Now with the hoary tavern-keeper you dwell and dine.
Bards like Drydon or Pope must rise from shades to sing
Your immortal lays into English and like you chatter;
Your notes are as lively as you can utter;
But they cannot find enough words, O master to ring
The true notes of your sweet Persian, or like you wing
Their flight in your lovely gardens and must flutter,
Defeated by your divine power and for lack of matter,
Like those who tried Homer or Dante. You are the king
Of poets in Persia in tenderness and in art;
You are the sweetest warbler who revived our tongue.
You dip your pen in the blood of your heart;
You teach our poets the art of music and song.
What dirge was sung on the sad day you did depart?
And what obsequies paid to you who adored our tongue?
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Manavaz Alexandrian - Manavaz Alexandrian, is a poet, writer, and a translator of literary works (Persian to English); he lives in Tehran, Iran. Alexandrian's translations include over hundred odes from Rumi rendered in quartets, translation of other classic poets, translation of more than 60 contemporary poets , quotations from translation of modern Iranian novels, an introduction to Iranian literature.