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language: Guaraní (English tr. Elisa Taber / Spanish tr. Carlos Villagra Marsal, Miguelángel Meza, and Jacobo Rauskin)
country: Paraguay
year: 1985
form: poetry
dates read: 4.11.24
Miguelángel Meza is a groundbreaking Guaraní poet and publisher, involved in the struggle for Guaraní land and language rights during the US-backed Stroessner dictatorship. the unwieldy title of the trilingual (Guaraní-Spanish-English) chapbook Ita ha’eñoso / Ya no está sola la piedra, Formerly and Again Known as Pyambu / Dream Pattering Soles traces its publication history: Pyambu was Meza’s preferred title for the collection, but the original bilingual publication in 1985 was given the Spanish title Ya no está sola la piedra, which Meza back-translated as Ita ha’eñoso. Elisa Taber’s English translation, directly from the Guaraní, restores Meza’s original title, which she renders in English as Dream Pattering Soles.
in some ways I feel similarly about this collection as I did when reading Ece Ayhan’s poetry, namely that it probably lands more powerfully in its original context. also like Ece Ayhan, I think it would reward rereading, but perhaps only after reading León Cadogan’s Ayvu Rapyta, which collects Mbyá Guaraní myths, legends, and folklore (which Taber cites in her translator’s note).
nonetheless, the imagery and language in all the poems is appealing, if at times enigmatic to me as an outsider. I’m especially taken with “Ñe’ẽ reñói” (“Language Sprouts”), but I also love — and think I would have been obsessed with if I’d found it at the right, lonely moment in undergrad — “Jasy” (“Moon”) and the refrain “Ambyasy, jasy” (“I suffer, moon”).
the highlight of this edition is that it includes not only Taber’s translations, but also the original 1985 Spanish translations by Carlos Villagra Marsal, Meza, and Jacobo Rauskin, making it possible to compare Taber’s choices with the Spanish translators’ choices (not quite side-by-side, but tête-bêche). sometimes the two are quite close, but other times they’re strikingly different, opening up the poem to multiple readings. it’s also inspired me to try to get back into the Guaraní course on Duolingo.
if I had one substantive complaint, it would be that I wish the Guaraní were given priority on the right and the translations decentered on the facing page. in spite of this, it’s just a really neat little book, both in terms of its content and in its construction as a physical object. definitely worth a look.
moods: hopeful, reflective, sad