Flavia Cosma translates from George Elliott Clarke Poeme Incendiare (Burning Poems) Cogito Press, Oradea, Romania, 2006
By Prof. Dr. Ana Olos, PHD
Northern University, Baia Mare, Romania
Established many years ago in Toronto, Ontario, Flavia Cosma wrote so far children's literature, a novel, a travel memoir and, after honing her own poetic voice by publishing ten poetry books, both in English and in Romanian, and discovering perhaps with astonishment, the metamorphosis of her own poetry in a foreign language, (one of her poetry book receiving even The Richard Wilbur Award for poetry in translation), she decided to pass herself this time through the difficult and often frustrating "test" of being a translator.
Compared by a reviewer to Emily Dickinson, one would have expected from Flavia Cosma to choose as her first translation effort, a poet of a similar style and not to transpose into Romanian language the work of a post-modernist author who is ripping apart the molds of the Anglo-Saxon type of poetry. Because George Elliott Clarke brings along the twin themes of the Black Royalist Refugees in Nova Scotia (named by him "Africadia") after the Independence War, and the sad history of the Native Indians, transposing their suffering, joy, religious beliefs and also their sensuality or violence which are part of their destiny, in musical rhythms specific to spirituals, blues, soul, rock or jazz. But the poet brings along also a solid load of modern poetry. His unique voice allows for him to be included among the most important English-speaking poets of all time.
The Romanian poet Ioan Tepelea (Editor in Chief of the publishing press of this tome), in his foreword to the above-mentioned book, justly observes that it would be difficult if not impossible to find a Romanian poet similar to George Elliott Clarke. And again the question arises: why does Flavia Cosma make her translating debut with this very difficult poet? It cannot be just an elegant gesture, springing from the gratitude for the enthusiastic forewords written by this poet for her own poetry books. I would be inclined to believe that this is happening because of a reading experience that profoundly affected her poetic receptivity, one sharpened by her own harsh destiny and her own uprooting. Here one can find Flavia Cosma’s openings toward the acute existential problems, her understanding and her compassion. We recognize here the same Flavia Cosma who speaks to students about Human Rights, the same producer and director of documentaries about the homelessness in Toronto or about the orphaned children of her own country Romania, those whom she started helping since immediately after the Romanian Revolution. And she meets in all of these, the social activism of George Elliott Clarke.
If the voice of the Canadian poet reflects a rich oral tradition, Flavia Cosma’s poetry draws its sap from Romanian folklore, with a wealth of artistic possibilities and of a great musicality, as Lucian Blaga rightly observed. Most probably it is not by pure chance that Flavia Cosma worked as a sound engineer in radio, before leaving Romania. Shall we still mention here the profound ties with the cosmos, the love and respect for nature, of the traditional cultures? This is the meeting place of the translator with the more tempered poems of George Elliott Clarke, those in which the mystical thread mixes with the poetry of the marine landscape of the Canadian poet’s birthplace. But, at the same time, Flavia Cosma’s poetry is grafted onto the great modern poetry, her voice arising like an echo from Transylvanian poetry, and her imagistic language being akin with European expressionism.
The selection chosen by Flavia Cosma in the making of this book, taking its title from one of the poems enclosed, is extremely daring. The first translations of the book and the first shock for the reader belong to The Execution Poems (2001) for which George Elliott Clarke received the Governor General Award, being also the first Canadian Black poet to be awarded this prize. Negation is the business card of the poet: "Le negre, negated, meager, c’est moi: A whiskey-coloured provincial, uncouth / Mouth spitting lies, vomit-lyrics, musty,/ Masticated scripture. Her Majesty’s Nasty, Nofaskoshan Negro, I mean / To go out shinning instead of tarnished, To take apart poetry like a heart. My black face must preface murder for you."
In the poems Childhood 1 and Childhood 2 the voices that have a dialogue, reminiscing about violent scenes between their parents, and which would in fact mar their evolution in life, are of two future murderers of a taxi driver during a robbery and for which they would be hanged. A sad and true story, that took place in the middle of the 20th century. In their interpretation, Talkin' Jesus Blues is a true blasphemy for any Christian’s ears, and Georgie’s Hit is of an intemperate, brutal, unequivocal sensuality. The reader is confronted with the horror, which in Greek or Shakespearean tragedy is deemed to produce soul purification. But in contrast, comes Haligonian Market Cry, very appreciated by the public through the energy it gives out, with the ambiguous pluri-lingual shouts of the vendors (It goes without saying that GEC took the Trudeau Fellowship for Multiculturalism!).
"I got hallelujah watermelons! - virginal pears!- virtuous corn!
Munit haec et altera vincit!
Luscious, fat-ass watermelons!-plump pears!- big-butt corn!
La gusta este jardin?
Come-and-get-it cucumbers-hot-to-trot, lust-fresh cucumbers!
Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?"
Reminding us of our shoutings and jokings, and in the end everything would culminate with literary allusions:
"I got sluttish watermelons! - sinful cucumbers! - jail-bait pears!--as a illustration of inter textually world of the poet. Poems from Gold Indigoes (2000) and Blue (2001) are followed by Illuminated Verses (2005), the latest suggesting the medieval illustrations, by incorporating a series of nudes of black women. This series starts with the poem Exile, which the translator felt compelled to include.
Planted by Big-Mouth Chaucer and picked by Evil Shakespeare!"
"Your scuttled pays floats - fiery - in the ether;"This poem brings the ultimate experience of someone escaped from a Civil War and carries along the nostalgia entwined with the memory of violence. Bio: Black Baptist/Bastard, another self portrait but also a collective portrait of Black Communities in North America, speaks about "The terror of evacuated faith". Many poems have a precise address, are dedicated, allude about other poets, have imagistic memories of places visited by the poet, poems "a la maniere de", echoes from Psalms (Canto XXXIX, Au Chateau Frontenac, Tobago, Colette, Translated, For Henry Dumas (1934-1968), etc. suggesting an overflowing vitality, an incandescence of the senses that goes even to self annihilation, remanding us of the bohemian or “lost generation”, but sometimes leaving the sensation of pure theatricality, when the self censorship and self irony of the poet intervenes. Then, for instance he duplicates himself, seeing as in a mirror a love scene directed by his imagination. Personal, having as a motto a classified add is in effect a virtual staging.
"We used your fat Bible for our pillow,
And spliced the Song of Solomon with Sade.
You’d draw me rouge wine and a drunken bath,
Then lounge, lingeried, in pastoral sheets,
Under that L.A. nun’s Kindergarten -
Pop art gyring orange, green, violet hearts,
Crayons swearing "I luv you very much"
But we seldom lucifered our leanings,
Though I was rampant, and you were slanting
To pant enmity against your mother."
"The brown girl, golden, sable-eyed,where The Song is no longer a parody, and in Ecclesiastes 12 the poet is inspired by true faith. And again a self portrait written in somebody’s name, although for GEC the delineation among the three voices of the poet (about which T.S. Elliot wrote: the lyrical poet’s voice speaking for himself, the impersonal voice, or the voice of a dramatic persona), that delineation is never clear.
flourishing yellow hibiscus,..."
As Clarke’s poetry is saturated by cultural allusions, places, persons, etc, not always familiar to the Romanian reader, but which knowledge could contribute to a better understanding of the poems, we deplore the absence of a qualified Editor. Because, as Paul Rincoeur wrote: "The context is the one element that decides the meaning of the word in specific circumstances. Because there are not only clear contexts, there are also masked contexts, and there are also connotations, which are not only intellectual, but also affective, not only public, but also specific to a certain medium, a certain class, a group or even a secret sect. There is therefore a whole territory hidden by censorship, interdictions, the territory of the un-spoken, traced by all the figures of dissimulation." (About translation, Trad. Maga Jeanrenauld, Polirom, 2005, p.95). But even without these notes, that could have supplemented the information about the context, these poems speak to their reader. The sure instinct with which the translator chose the significant poems from GEC’s creation, and her transpositions, prove her receptivity in accepting the challenges of the poems and /or the intelligence with which she avoided the traps, transmitting the pleasure and not the difficulties of this endeavor, showing once again, if needed, that the Romanian language is a hospitable language, even when we have to deal with "Burning Poems".
To close up, let’s quote a few more verses from the masterly translation of Flavia Cosma, this time right from the poem that gives the book its title:
"A pen burns paper. A black Blitzkrieg
Blazes, leaving the glinting odour of charred
Diction, a vocabulary in ashes: Detritus.
The word-scorched paper smells darkly...
...Every poem is its own pyre, flamboyant,
The smoking words laying waste to Time."