EthicalDative

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Poetry, May 2023 publishes the Arabic text of Mona Kareem’s poem Lailayāt (“Nights”) along with a translation into English by Sara Elkamel.

2
A cloud comes into view.
God smiles, it’s my belief, for the hapless little ones.
In the heavens moons a crescent.
I think what grieves it is the falling of a star.

In desert lands clouds carry the relief of rain, not gloom as in English tradition. In the poem they’re God’s smile.

A quirk of Kareem’s Arabic text is the insistent speaker-presence. Lines 2 and 4 start “I believe” and “I think.” A declaring first person interprets celestial events.

The Arabic says, “The moon is changed into a crescent.” I upend the line, adding hackneyed “heavens” for its syllables, and leaning heavily on “moon” as a verb meaning to be in melancholy reverie. Duong Tuong said, “An ideal translation should be a work in which the translator is the co-author.” This interesting doctrine sets dangerous traps for the cheeky student.

Prepositions don’t travel well. Arabic li-, usually meaning “for,” connects “smiles” to “little ones.” Resisting “on” or “upon” adds complexity to the trope of compassionate divinity. Similarly, resisting slippage into “falling star” skirts triviality, mirrors the Arabic syntax, and lends a hint of strangeness.

It seems to me, after all, that a signal trait of lyric is to speak unexpectedly. Translation presents opportunities to do so via a judicious literalness. The trick is knowing when to heed and when to ignore Duong Tuong’s advice that “clinging to the words is not loyalty but… slavery.”

(c) 2023 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved

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

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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