CAMAGUEY.- I was five years old when they introduced me to Martí: he came to me before knowing how to read. It was the preschool teacher, as a glimpse and omen of a great love for letters, who brought us closer from the pages of La Edad de Oro (The Golden Age), so Martí was also my primary school teacher... and my companion of learned poetry with his Versos Sencillos (Simple Verses), and even the educator with a quasi-gentlemanly civic attitude in his phrases (put on television spots) where he always appeared on the screen, back in the eighties, a child with his "strong man's little hands" carrying a flower in his hands for his friend.
Later we grew up and Martí continued there, every January 28th, among eight-year-old Spanish dancers tapping their heels, with their stoles over their shoulders, in school morning shows, or giving giant life lessons through the 'know-it-all' and tiny Meñique, or with Nené crying uncontrollably when she learned from her father that it is a heinous crime to break a book.
Later, in adolescence and early youth, they told us about the thinker, the revolutionary, the political supporter, the great leader with a vehement, profound and direct speech... about Martí in the history of prison, suffering and death... but they did not tell us in detail that in all of them: Pepe, José Julián, the Delegate, the Teacher... the common universe was poetry and that when the brilliant use of words and language (or languages, because he spoke several) merges with the strength of genuine feeling, and a high ideal, then the one who transcends history is born.
This is how I want to remember him, however, it hurts that sometimes people talk so much only about the name, that his phrases, his aphorisms are repeated as labels... and that by putting it so much everywhere, man gets lost between boredom and myth.
Fortunately I learned from friends other facets of the Apostle that magnify him and still reveal the human part of him. A few years ago, a small group of writers from Camagüey insisted on presenting high school students, a different Martí, from not so prominent edges in his life and literary work, so that they would learn to love the man and save the image of those who could be diluted in the cliché of a comfortable speech. In that panel they talked about eroticism in his poetry, the art critic, the journalist, the diplomat, the Freemason...
Little is said among the common people about our José Julián as a translator, only those experienced in foreign languages and in literary creation do so. It is difficult to explain to someone who does not know foreign languages about the vast domain of languages in which he used to move as a tightrope dancer or prince of oratory, without using complicated terms. We are not going to talk about idiomatic turns, semantic or grammatical equivalents, or how he chose to maintain or reconstruct an image in a given text: suffice it to say that he possessed an impressive arsenal of poetic and linguistic resources.
Martí approaches the translation more because of the need to put bread on the table. The Appleton Publishing House gave him commissions and he translated Notions of Logic books, Compendiums of Geography, novels... With that money he was even able to invite his father to spend time together in the United States.
For children he made the most beautiful translations, yes, back in The Golden Age. The mere choice of texts is praiseworthy, a mirror of a profound sensitivity to find the right piece that conveys both idea and emotion. Surely they caused him emotion when he read them, and they were so similar to his own aesthetics and ethics of life, that it seems to me seing him lying down by the light of a candle through long nights, translating, to tell the children of what he found, because no one like him to put his hand into his heart and take out a little piece of the soul, to scatter like seed, wanting it to always fall on fertile ground, to bear 'beautiful people' as fruit, which for him was like saying 'good' people.
From French Laboulaye, he translated El Camarón Encantado (The Enchanted Shrimp) and Meñique (Little Finger). From the American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson chooses a fable in verses that rises in its poetic quality from the very title, when he transforms The Mountain and the Squirrel in Cada uno a su Oficio (Each one to his profession). The version most treated by scholars and connoisseurs is the recreation of The Prince is Dead, by the also American Helen Hunt Jackson. He expressly takes the idea from the original and turns it into Los Dos Príncipes (The Two Princes), one of the saddest and most beautiful romances in the Spanish language.
Today we are going to remember him from the poetry that makes him sublime to the pain in the act of death. I present to you the original poem, of those who want to be "faithful to the text" and then tell me if the eight syllables of our Martí do not echo in the memory above idea and time.
The Prince is Dead
A room in the palace is shut. The king
And the queen are sitting in black.
All day weeping servants will run and bring,
But the heart of the queen will lack
All things; and the eyes of the king will swim
With tears which must not be shed,
But will make all the air float dark and dim,
As he looks at each gold and silver toy,
And thinks how it gladdened the royal boy,
And dumbly writhes while the courtiers read
How all the nations his sorrow heed.
The Prince is dead.
The hut has a door, but the hinge is weak,
And to-day the wind blows it back;
There are two sitting there who do not speak;
They have begged a few rags of black.
They are hard at work, though their eyes are wet
With tears which must not be shed
They dare not look where the cradle is set;
They hate the sunbeam which plays on the floor,
But will make the baby laugh out no more;
They feel as if they were turning to stone,
They wish the neighbors would leave them alone.
The Prince is dead.
- Translated by Linet Acuña Quilez