First go at translation of I Eleni (Elytis/Kokotos)

Lyrics: Οδυσσέας Ελύτης
Music: Λίνος Κόκοτος
First version by: Μιχάλης Βιολάρης
(credits to Italian translation by Gian Piero Testa)

Σήκωνε το κλουβί μια δω μια κει
She would raise the birdcage now here now there
κι ο ήλιος πήγαινε απ' την άλλη
And the sun would come from far away
Ν'ανάψει τ' όμορφο κεφάλι
To light the lovely head
μια δω μια κει
Now here now there
ο ήλιος κάθε Κυριακή
The sun every Sunday

Φώναζε στην αυλή και ψι και ψι
She would call in the courtyard 'psi' and 'psi'
κι ο γάτος σήκωνε ποδάρι
and the cat would raise its paw
Μέσα απ' τα μάτια της να πάρει
To take from her eyes
και ψι και ψι
and 'psi' and 'psi
την αστραπή τους την χρυσή
Their flash of golden lighting

Πήγαινε ν' ανεβεί σκαλί σκαλί
She would go upstairs upstairs
την αγκαλιά ρούχα γεμάτη
Her arms full of clothing
Κι έλεγαν οι αγγέλοι νά'τη
And the angels would say here she is
σκαλί σκαλί
Upstairs upstairs
τη πιο μικρή μας αδερφή
Our littlest sister

Κάτασπρο γιασεμί και μι και μι
Snow white and jasmin and 'mi' and 'mi'
και μυστικέ μου αποσπερίτη
And my secret evening star
πάρτε με πάρτε με στην Κρήτη
Take me take me to Crete
και μη και μη
And don't and don't
και μη ρωτάτε το γιατί
And don't ask about why

Notes:

'psi psi' is the sound used to call cats, is 'mi mi' the cat's answer?

I've guessed that the imperfect tense verbs should be done as 'would-habituals' in English, meaning that this is about normal goings on, not some specific incident.

'far away' is probably not accurate for απ' την άλλη but I think it works better than anything else I could come up with in English.
Other ideas or corrections welcome!

Ah, Elytis. Translating his poetry is not an easy task. "His subtle play of mind in language and his melodic exaltation make him much more difficult to translate, cadence by cadence, than his two great predecessors, Cavafis and Seferis." However, in 1997 The Johns Hopkins University Press published The Collected Poems of Odysseas Elytis - an excellent "complete" collected edition (it omits unpublished poems) translated by Jeffrey Carson and Professor Nikos Sarris. They spent 20 years editing and translating this lifetime's work, and argue that his poems are "quintessentially Greek in that they seek symmetry and shape and are magistic, insistently rhythmical, obsessed by language, and brimming with praise of creation."

Here's their translation:

She lifted the cage alone
there one here one
and the sunlight shifting with her spread
to light up all her lovely head
there one here one
on every Sunday thus the sun

She called by the backyard tree
psee-psee psee-psee
and the tomcat lifted up his paw
so from her gleaming eyes to draw
psee-psee psee-psee
their lightning's golden energy

***
Oh jasmine as white as sky
and my and my
and my mystic Evening Star so sweet
oh take me take me off to Crete
and mi-and mi-
and mind you do not ask me why

_________

/I put only the parts you had questions on./

My respect for your courage. I wouldn't have the guts to translate this. You did great.

PS. It's not about folk tradition or Crete. It's about Elytis and his Greece.

Thanks very much for this! Theirs is very beautiful, but mine is more literalistic, I think, or else erroneous in parts - that will require some digging to ascertain. Of course a translation that's supposed to work as a freestanding poem has a different task than one that's supposed to be read while hearing the original, and I think it's good to have more literalistic ones alongside more artistic ones. I've just ordered copy of the 2004 edition of C&S, need to figure out what Greek editions of the originals to get.

The biggest accuracy question, are the imperfects σηκωνε etc. best interpreted as descriptions of a single happening, as in C&S, or as habitual ones?

My question about the tradition is re Kokotos' melody.

In my opinion "σήκωνε" should be translated as "it was raising" because that's the tense used by the lyrics writer.

Continuous past tense is the most correct translation to me...

Other than that, the readers may wish to translate a different way in order to give a different "note" of the lyrics involved like Johns Hopkins University Press did...

Oh yes, and did C&S really leave out the part about the laundry? (Homeric princesses did mess with laundry, Nausicaa and all that)

Originally Posted by AveryA3

Oh yes, and did C&S really leave out the part about the laundry? (Homeric princesses did mess with laundry, Nausicaa and all that)

I'm not sure if i follow you...
What do you mean?

You speak about ancient Greece and Homer myths or what?
What does that have to do with these lyrics?

Well anyway i 'm not really sure about Nausicaa's laundry....I have a washing machine for mine

Originally Posted by AveryA3

I've just ordered copy of the 2004 edition of C&S, need to figure out what Greek editions of the originals to get.

The revised and expanded edition? It's well worth the money. They have added Elytis's song lyrics that were published as The Rhos of Eros. You'll find the "laundry part" there (Step here step there our smallest sister is right here).
/Of course they didn't leave that part out. I did./

Here's Ta tzitzikia:

Our Lady there the open
Was holding in her open apron
Sikinos and Amorgos
And also all her other children

From the very marge of time
And way back of winters blows
I heard the conch gives out its tone
And then the Mermaids all arose

And I amid the sea urchins
By rocks pools and by tamarisk tree
Like the mariners of old
I asked cicadas to tell me:

"Hey cicadas hey my angels
Health to you in everything
Does the king the Sun still live?"
And all together this they sing:

"He lives lives lives lives lives lives lives."


In my opinion, the translations by Carson and Sarris do justice to the original poems.

Originally Posted by AveryA3

Of course a translation that's supposed to work as a freestanding poem has a different task than one that's supposed to be read while hearing the original, and I think it's good to have more literalistic ones alongside more artistic ones.

Agreed.

Thanks very much! The interpretation with past continuous makes more sense to me, today, than my original one. So here's another one, does απ' την αλλη mean literally soemthing like 'from where she was before', in this case, which would fit C&S' interpretation better than what I had.

Originally Posted by safe1

I'm not sure if i follow you...
What do you mean?

You speak about ancient Greece and Homer myths or what?
What does that have to do with these lyrics?

Well anyway i 'm not really sure about Nausicaa's laundry....I have a washing machine for mine

Helen was a Homeric princess (downgrading from Queen when she ran off with Paris, I guess), and Elytis would have known about Nausicaa's laundry expedition where she found Odysseus, so Helen carting clothes around in Troy would not be impossible, I think. Or maybe I'm getting a bit carried away ... Helen would be a lot more 'senior'. The royalty then did seem to be more hands-on than later.

Originally Posted by AveryA3

So here's another one, does απ' την αλλη mean literally soemthing like 'from where she was before', in this case, which would fit C&S' interpretation better than what I had.

Yup. It moves, that is, the sun, to the other side to "light up all her lovely head".

Ahah "απ την αλλη πλευρα", being most of the google hits for the phrase "απ την αλλη" (google being a very interesting tool for language study).

Originally Posted by AveryA3

Or maybe I'm getting a bit carried away ...

Either you are getting a bit carried away or i'm not a fun of ancient myths OR Elytis' work.
Elytis is a difficult poet to understand.

I read Elytis many years ago, as far as i can remember i also studied Elytis at school since he is considered the "best of the best" in poetry. I was also examined at school in the interpretation of Elytis poems and examined to many other Greek poetry as well....It was part of the Greek literature studies......and it was mandatory study (back then - i don't know what happens now).

But to be honest, poetry artists and paint artists as well, are sometimes soooooooo far way from the reality....

Some of them are so successful in describing real-life situations, but, some of them, you read their work and you start to wonder how much cannabis has been used before delivering their work to the public.

Well i'm not a cynical person at all (on the contrary...) but that's the impression i have.

In the world of art there is an eternal trend worldwide for the strange to be considered the best.
Well i'm not into it...

Just my thoughts Just my opinion which can be wrong

No worries! There are plenty of lines of famous English poetry that I couldn't give a sensible account of to anybody, but that particular song kind of blows me away (and the Tzitzikia one), can't help trying to see what I can see about what's going on with it.

Anyway here's the link to what all this was in aid of:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SdrSeSndmM

I decided not to render all of the imperfects as continuous in English, because piling these forms up on top of each other produces peculiar results, to the effect that the action gets all bunched together at a single moment. When my C&S arrives I might do a synchronized version of their translation as well, to test my possibly daft theories about such matters (once the timings are set, it's very easy to bung in different words).

Wow, that's fantastic, Avery!

Without you guys, it would have been full of goofy errors, rather than just some compromises. If there are any substantial mistakes left, it would be easy to fix them

Found one mistake so far 'cat' -> 'tomcat' (didnt notice that it was ο γατος). I'll fix that pretty soon.

In the picture, to the left of the beach appears a typical sample of what I'm guessing that a καβος is or can be, in του μικρου βορια.