What was the greatest gift I received, through my years living in Brazil? Was it perspective on our own nation, and my place in it? Was it the sights and sounds and flavors of the Other, of another portion of our planet, one physically quite as large as the continental United States? Was it the friendships, the loves, my children born there (as if to two mothers), the great efforts, the greater successes, the greatness of the failures?
Besides my love, it was music took me to Brazil. Regularly, I find myself dipping into the collection of recordings I have carried with me across geographic and temporal borders. Every now and then, my electronic stylus touches a track I had forgotten, and as though a lover had suddenly arrived unannounced, as though her face smiled at me unexpectedly through the window, my heart gives a great leap hearing even the first note… to find itself overwhelmed then by the beauty of the melody, and the perfection of a lyric line.
These last few days, this is where I have been: Porto Alegre, in Rio Grande do Sul, transported by the harmonies of my beautiful, adopted language.
My gratitude to Brazil, today – and to the woman who helped me arrive there, no matter our road is no longer shared – is to have learned the language deep enough to speak it in my dreams, and to hear the invisible threads of connection between words, between intentions, flow up into the sky like cloud, and go down into the soil of South America, so that meaning goes far beyond the definition of a word. What a gift, to hear an impossibly perfect line, and understand it with my body, not my mind:
A felicidade é como a gota de orvalho numa pétala de flor
brilha tranqüila, depois de leve oscila, e cai como uma lágrima de amor
I’ll give you that song at a later date, when I have mastered the impossible fingerings and can record a gringo-cover of Tom Jobim’s perfectly realized A Felicidade.
The song below is from Chico Buarque de Holanda’s 1992 Paratodos (I guess I would translate the title “Foreveryone”). I found it by chance, digging for music in my Big Box of Discs, a kind of cardboard burial ground for old technologies, and as soon as light caught the cover – Brazilian faces on a sea of sun-yellow – every single song shot up out of the darkness like birds that had been freed, and their songs were on my tongue as if I had been humming them yesterday. I guess nothing is ever forgotten, really: just set aside. I was in-habited!
“Choro” (The Cry) or “Chorinho” (Little Cry) is a Brazilian musical style, as well as actual tears or lament, and is brought from the 19th century to our present one through the sensibilities of Edu Lobo and Chico Buarque. The musicianship alone is typically exceptional. Then, there are these long poetic lines, as long as a deep breath slowly let out as sound, the poignancy of the words, how they dance with the melodic principal as it (he? she?) swirls all over the place, achingly beautiful along its curves and circles…
I chose to follow the meter of the song in this translation, which means some of the word choices edge slightly toward English, and away from literal. And then, the wonderful double-meanings that exist in every language, that make a song go deep, or wide, can’t really be translated, though I tried.
I hope you’ll enjoy it without the context of years and language it deserves.
Choro Bandido
by Chico Buarque and Edu Lobo
| Mesmo que os cantores sejam falsos como eu Serão bonitas, não importa São bonitas as canções Mesmo miseráveis os poetas Os seus versos serão bons Mesmo porque as notas eram surdas Quando um deus sonso e ladrão Fez das tripas a primeira lira Que animou todos os sons E daí nasceram as baladas E os arroubos de bandidos Como eu cantando assim: – Você nasceu para mim – Você nasceu para mim |
Even if the singers should be as false as me It doesn’t matter, there’ll be beauty There is beauty in their songs Even if the poets are despairing The lines they write are fine Or because the music was unhearing When a thieving and dissimulating god Fashioned out of entrails the first lyre That animated every sound And thus were born the ballads and the ecstasies Of outlaws that like me, like this Would then begin to sing: – You were born for me – You were born for me |
| Mesmo que você feche os ouvidos E as janelas do vestido Minha musa vai cair em tentação Mesmo porque estou falando grego Com sua imaginação Mesmo que você fuja de mim Por labirintos e alçapões Saiba que os poetas como os cegos Podem ver na escuridão E eis que, menos sábios do que antes Os seus lábios ofegantes Hão de se entregar assim: – Me leve até o fim – Me leve até o fim |
Even if you were to close your ears And all the windows of your clothing My muse will be led to temptation Even as to your imagination My declarations would be Greek Even if you fly from me Through labyrinths and hatches in the floor Know that like the blind are poets Capable of seeing in the dark And so, more foolish than before Breathlessly your lips will stir Will have to give themselves away you see: – Go to the end with me – Go to the end with me |
| Mesmo que os romances sejam falsos como o nosso São bonitas, não importa São bonitas as canções Mesmo sendo errados os amantes Seus amores serão bons |
Even if the histories should be as false as ours It doesn’t matter, there is beauty There is beauty in these songs Even if the lovers are mistaken Their love will be divine |
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2012