If on a winter’s night a translator...
Ivonna Nowicka
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Instant Living
Instant living.
Unreahearsed performance
Untried-on body.
A thoughtless head.
I am ignorant of the role I perform
All I know is it’s mine, can’t be exchanged.
What the play is about
I must guess promptly on stage.
Poorly prepared for the honour of living
I find the imposed speed of action hard to bear.
I improvise though I loath improvising.
At each step I trip over my ignorance.
My way of life smacks of the provincial.
My instincts are amateurish.
The stage-fright that is my excuse only humiliates me more.
Mitigating circumstances strike me as cruel.
Words and gestures that cannot be retracted,
stars not counted to the end,
my character like a coat I button up running –
this is the sorry outcome of such haste.
If only one could practice at least one Wednesday,
repeat a Thursday!
But now Friday’s already approaching with a script I don’t know.
Is this right? – I ask
(in a rasping voice
since they don’t even let me clear my throat in the wings.)
You’re deluded if you think it’s only a simple exam
set in a makeshift office. No.
I stand among the stage-sets and see they’re solid.
I am struck by the precision of all the props.
The revolving stage’s been turning for quite some time.
Even the furthest nebulae are switched on.
Oh, I have no doubt this is the opening night.
And whatever I’ll do
will turn for ever into what I have done.
(translated from the Polish by Adam Czerniawski;
also rendered into English by Baranczak and Cavanagh
as ” Life While-You-Wait”)
Just like “The Miracle Fair” is, in the translator’s opinion,
one of the most beautiful descriptions of the unappreciated little secrets of
live on the planet we name “Earth”, so “Instant Living”
is an excellent and moving representation of a man or woman’s life on
this planet.
Comparing human life to a play or humans to dependent actors is no original
invention of the Poet, of course, and has been employed in various cultures
since ancient times. In the Orient, suffice it to point to a quatrain ascribed
to Persian poet and astronomer, Omar Khayyam:
Impotent Pieces of the Game he plays
Upon this Chequer-board of Nights and Days;
Hither and thither moves, and cheks, and slays;
And one by one back in the Closet lays.
(rendered into English verse by Edward FitzGerald)
In the Occident the first association that comes to the translator’s
mind is the Globe Theatre in London. The layout of this theatre in which William
Shakespeare’s plays were staged was reminiscent of the star system.
The Poet has employed two original approaches in “Instant Living”,
though. Firstly, she stresses not the temporary quality of human life on this
chequer-board of existence but another aspect, namely man’s total ignorance
as to the hidden meaning of life and as to his of her future. This ignorance
leads to our confusion on the stage of Earth and adds an improvisational quality
to our lives. Secondly, the Poet has developed this comparison fully and unravelled
it in detail.
True, „whatever I’ll do / will turn for ever into what I have done”.
True, there was no chance to practice Wednesday, February 1st, in advance and
this last sleep cannot be undone. As the Poet has said, though, “The eternity
of the deceased lasts as long, as they are being remembered” (“Rehabilitation”).
In Poland and in many other countries Wislawa Szymborska’s poems have
become part of the spiritual landscape of culture-loving people. Although she
was a very humble and calm-loving person, thousands of people came to her funeral
on February 9th in Cracow, Poland. Without doubt, also, through our memory Wislawa
Szymborska’s eternity will last for a long long time.
a winter’s night in February, Warsaw
1. First published in Persian, at: http://www.radiozamaneh.org/culture/khaak/2012/02/11/10947, sadly with changes undiscussed and unaccepted by the author. The present text is the author’s own translation into English from the original Persian version, with minute changes.
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Ivonna Nowicka - Ivonna Nowicka, Polish specialist in Iranian studies, translator.In accordance with the etymology and mission of translation to carry cultures across, she is attempting to introduce Polish belles-lettres into Persian and Persian literature into Polish. Publications in Persian in book form include three collections of verse by Polish poets Wislawa Szymborska (Teheran 2003 and 2004), Halina Poswiatowska (Teheran 2010) and Adam Mickiewicz (Teheran 2010) translated together with Alireza Doulatshahi.