EthicalDative

I’m pleased to encounter Mona Kareem in Poetry, May 2023 after first reading of her in Arablit & Arablit Quarterly. The Poetry issue prints the Arabic text of Kareem’s poem Lailayāt (“Nights”) along with a translation into English by Sara Elkamel.

Bilingual texts invite the Arabic student to explore and experiment with his own translations in the stabilizing presence of the version that’s in print. The poem has 7 short, numbered stanzas. I deal here only with the first one. Here’s my version:

1
I trace a sweeping open space;
There I do a dance with death.

When I’m done I catch my breath,
then take a dip in my loud tears.

The intrigue and challenge of translation (as I conceive it) is to stay within the confines of the source’s connotative ranges while hitting upon natural English renderings that have a modicum of snap.

I give myself middling marks on my version here. It may be too idiomatic. It may have singsong rhythms. “Take a dip” may be tonally jarring for its lack of gravity.

A translation is akin to a controlled explosion: something is fractured no matter what, but energy is released as well.

Note: There’s a gross misprint in the Arabic text. The second letter of ‘urāqiṣu, “I dance,” is pointed twice with ḍamma. Mona Kareem has nothing to do with it, of course; the snafu belongs to the magazine.

(c) 2023 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved

This post is continued from here.

17 “Our fire was never snuffed out to a sojourner, and no traveller stopping over has found us wanting.
18 “Our days are well known to our enemy. They have marked blazes and pasterns.
19 “Our swords in all the west and east are notched from bashing armored men.
20 “Their blades aren’t customarily drawn, then sheathed, until a tribe has been exterminated.
21 “If you are in the dark, make inquiry regarding us and them; the clueless and the well informed are not a match.
22 “Truly the Banu Dayyān are an axis to their people round which their mill-stone turns and spins.”

Notes
(Unless otherwise noted, quotations are from Arberry.)
17 “The poet refers to the Bedouin practice of lighting a fire on the top of the nearest hill to guide night-travellers to the encampment and as a sign that hospitality was to be found there.”
18 “Our ‘days’: i.e. the famous battles in which the tribe has engaged. The white parts of the noble horse describe the ‘outstanding’ achievements.”
22 “This verse is assigned by al-Tibrīzī not to al-Samau’al, who was not of the Banu ‘l-Daiyān, but to a certain ‘Abd al-Malik b. ‘Abd al-Raḥīm al-Hārithī…”

(c) 2023 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved