100 Love Sonnets: Cien sonetos de amor (Texas Pan American Series) (English and Spanish Edition)

"...Todo lo que usted quiera, sí señor, pero son las palabras las que cantan, las que suben y bajan... Me prosterno ante ellas... Las amo, las adhiero, las persigo, las muerdo, las derrito... Amo tanto las palabras... Las inesperadas... Las que glotonamente se esperan, se acechan, hasta que de pronto caen... Vocablos amados... Brillan como perlas de colores, saltan como platinados peces, son espuma, hilo, metal, rocío... Persigo algunas palabras... Son tan hermosas que las quiero poner todas en mi poema..."

This was a Valentine's day gift for a significant other who has taught himself Spanish. I appreciated that the book had both the English and Spanish version of each poem on facing pages. That is a great learning tool. It is also great for people who love to see how someone interpreted the translation part of the equation.

The shipper was nice and responsive.

that this book ranks #4 on my top10 favorite books list. And yes, i have a favorite book list.

Guess what my number one is.... =]

This is a beautifully crafted book. If you want to impress your wife, leave one of these love poems on her pillow. A Sure Hit!

Am reading through Pablo Neruda's 100 Love Sonnets for a second time. A lot of the Amazon customer reviews for this book mentioned that the translator, Stephen Tapscott, produced English versions laden with inaccuracies and liberties and errors. I must admit: I haven't studied Spanish since elementary school, but I think I can glean enough from the en face Spanish of Neruda's original language that I can safely agree with this assessment.

Tapscott routinely renders singulars as plurals, and plurals as singulars. The same Spanish word, "rocío," is rendered "dew" in one place and "soft rain" in another. In sonnet IX alone, we have "restless" for "indócil" (are restlessness and indocility the same thing?), and "dazzling lurch of the sea" for "deslumbrante movimiento marino."


Allowing for the fact that a translator must occasionally use synonyms and avoid cognates, is "lurch of the sea" really the best choice? The alliteration is lost, and the meaning is changed to something that, perhaps, Neruda would not want. "Marine movement" would be equally unacceptable; it is flat, and "movement" sounds a little odd. "Motion," perhaps? "Maritime motion." I'm not equipped to translate Spanish into an English that can be called poetry, but I'm fairly certain that "lurch" is a mistake, as it gives us more Tapscott than Neruda.

Having said all this, Tapscott is brave enough to give us Neruda's original sonnets, so we can compare Tapscott's English to the Nobel laureate's Spanish. It is perhaps inevitable that Tapscott would suffer in the comparison. And these translations, however flawed, do open up the Sonnets to those of us who are Spanish-impaired.

Some memorable lines:

sonnet 78, "Yo pagué la vileza con palomas" ("I repaid vileness with doves");


sonnet 81, "tus ojos se cerraron como dos alas grises" ("your eyes closed like two gray wings");

sonnet 84,
"una copa en que cae la ceniza celeste,
una gota en el pulso de un lento y largo río"


("a chalice filling with celestial ashes,
a drop in the pulse of a long slow river");

sonnet 100,
"Ya no habrá sino todo el aire libre,

las manzanas llevadas por el viento,
el suculento libro en la enramada,

"y allí donde respiran los claveles

fundaremos un traje que resista
la eternidad de un beso victorioso"

("There won't be anything but all the fresh air,
apples carried on the wind,
the succulent book in the woods:

"and there where the carnations breathe, we will begin
to make ourselves a clothing, something to last
through the eternity of a victorious kiss").

Five stars out of five for Neruda's sonnets, three stars for Tapscott's translations.