Recognizing forbidden pleasures

Abstract

Literary translation is a site of both literary production and ethical engagement. Translators of queer-authored texts ought to recognize how, and to what ends, their subjects use eroticism and desire. English-language translators have had varied successes in such recognition of how twentieth-century Spanish poet Luis Cernuda himself constructs the social, ethical and poetic importance of desire and passion. Depending on his translators' apparatuses and the language they use to render his verse, Cernuda's framing of the tension between reality and desire assumes different ethical resonances immediately after the 1969 Stonewall riots and during the early years of the HIV/AIDS crisis.

Keywords:

• Luis Cernuda
• translation ethics
• homosexuality
• desire
• Stonewall
• HIV/AIDS

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Corrigendum

Notes

1. All translations are mine, unless indicated otherwise.

2. Cernuda's original reads: “[…] Si queréis / Que ame todavía, devolvedme / Al tiempo del amor. ¿Os es posible? / Imposible como aplacar ese fantasma que de mí evocasteis” (1995, 376).

3. Although, as far as I can determine, Gibbons does not emend any notes or translations for the volume's 1999 reissue by Sheep Meadow Press, he does include as a preface Paz's essay on Cernuda. Thus, his revised framing apparatus implicitly incorporates a serious consideration of homosexuality in Cernuda's poetics.

4. Cernuda's original reads: “Como el tumulto gris del mar levanta / Un alto arco de espuma, maravilla / Multiforme del agua, y ya en la orilla / Roto, otra nueva espuma se adelanta; // Como el campo despierta en primavera / Eternamente, fiel bajo el sombrío / Celaje de las nubes, y al sol frío / Con asfodelos cubre la pradera; // Como el genio en distintos cuerpos nace, / Formas que han de nutrir la antigua gloria / De su fuego, mientras la humana escoria / Sueña ardiendo en la llama y se deshace, // Así siempre, como agua, flor o llama, / Vuelves entre la sombra, fuerza oculta / Del otro amor. El mundo bajo insulta. / Pero la vida es tuya, surge y ama” (1995, 180–1).