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Johann Lodewyk Marais. Jakarandas, poёsie en ideologie
Pretoria is groot en Kerkstraat is altesaam 26 kilometer lank. Volgens oorlewering is dit die langste hoofstraat in die wêreld. In Kerkstraat-Oos is daar aan albei kante van die straat jakarandabome. Ek is elke jaar op die uitkyk vir die eerste jakarandas wat begin blom, en 2 September was die vroegste wat ek ‘n jakarandaboom al sien blom het, hoewel hulle eers teen Oktober in hulle volle glorie staan. Nog ‘n interessantheid is dat ‘n mens jakarandabome met blomme aan baie maande van die jaar kan sien. Ek het vanjaar nog tot in Mei bome met blomme aan gesien. Dit beteken ‘n mens kan eintlik nege maande van die jaar jakarandas met blomme aan kry.
Afrikaanse digters soos Lina Spies (kyk “Somnambule” en “Van die weer gepraat” in Van sjofar tot sjalom (1987)) en Ina Rousseau (kyk “Jakarandatyd ’83” in Grotwater (1989)) het onvleiend oor Pretoria se jakarandas geskryf, maar die Griekse digter George Seferis (1900-1971), wat gedurende die 1940’s ‘n diplomaat by die Griekse Ambassade in Pretoria was en in 1963 die Nobelprys vir Literatuur verower het, het in Oktober 1941 met waardering oor Pretoria-Oos se jakarandas geskryf!
Kerk Straat Oost, Pretoria, Transvaal
Jacarandas playing castanets and dancing
threw around their feet a violet snow.
The rest’s uninteresting, and that
Venusberg of bureaucracy with its twin
towers and its twin clocks
profoundly torpid like a hippopotamus in blue sky.
And cars raced by showing
backs glistening like dolphins.
At the end of the street waiting for us –
strutting idly about its cage –
was the silver pheasant of China,
the Eurlocamos Nychtemerus, as they call it.
And to think we set out, the heart full of shot,
to Onokrotalus the Pelican – he
with the look of a trampled Prime Minister
in the zoological garden of Cairo.
(Uit Roy McNab (ed.): George Seferis: South African Diaries, Poems and Letters (Cape Town: Carrefour Press, 1990)
Tags: George Seferis, Griekse Ambassade, Grotwater, Ina Rousseau, Jakaranda, Kerkstraat, Lina Spies, Nobelprys vir Literatuur, pretoria, Van sjofar tot sjalom
Ina Rousseau – vertaling in Engels
Ina Rousseau – vertaal deur die outeur
[ https://versindaba.co.za/2009/07/13/ina-rousseau-in-engels/ (Daniel Hugo) ]
Uit die niet
kom staan voor my ’n kropduif
wat probeer om my blik van my boek
te lok. En sodra ek wonder
wat in liefdesnaam hy by my soek,
begin hy iets by my te bedel
wat ek sweerlik self ontbeer:
Hy vra vir my kroepoek.
En as ek vir hom sê skoert,
herhaal hy maar weer kroepoek.
So: kroepoek kroepoek kroepoek.
Pleitend eers, maar spoedig
bot, asof hy op my vloek.
(c) Ina Rousseau
I went to De Waal Park to read.
A pigeon appeared from nowhere,
making silly noises at my feet,
apparantly to make me look
at him, in stead of at my book.
And just as I was wondering
what the dickens he was up to,
he started to beg something from me
which – cross my heart – I did not have:
He asked me for krupuk.
And when I ordered him to scoot,
he simply continued asking krupuk.
Like this: krupuk krupuk krupuk.
Plaintive at first, he soon became
distinctly curt, as though the word
was being uttered as a curse.
(Vertaling: Ina Rousseau)
Uit: ’n Onbekende jaartal (1995)
The healers (“Die helers”)
Also on this morning in early summer
the onslaught is being perpetuated:
is being torn, the seams
unpicked with little hooks of stainless steel –
but outside in the garden,
in a herbaceous border, fragrant
with the exudations of jasmine and heliotrope,
birds is busy
knotting a long strip of Flemish lace
One morning I had a tiff with Sis Genis.
“It is!” I shouted, and she: “It isn’t!”
What was this tiff about between me and Sis
before we knew the word tiff exists?
“Tis.” “Tisn’t.” “Tis.” “Tisn’t.”
Then a grownup hissed:
“For heaven’s sake, stop this tiff!”
I caught the word in a net.
Out of nowhere –
no, not nowhere: out of my small past,
a raindrop swooped down into the summer day,
round and shimmery,
and shattered into fragments
against a window pane: Tiff.
And then another one: Tiff.
And yet another one: Tiff, tiff, tiff- tiff.
And then a whole swarm: thousands
of transparent, juicy water berries
whacking and bursting against window glass
and splitting open with hissy sounds:
Tiff-tiff-tiff-tiff-tiff . . .
More and more of them, swifter and swifter
until they were welded together
into one endless fabric of lispy sounds,
veiling the city,
silvery, grey and cool, blowing outwards
over the East Rand and the West Rand,
and very soon encompassing my universe:
Tifftifftifftiff . . .
And that is how a word, brand new and juicy,
spattered into my life when I was six
on the day of my tiff with Sis Genis.
That summer (“Daardie somer”)
That summer it sometimes happened before
daybreak that some insect or bird
made noises in the fig tree
which sounded like knitting needles of steel
It used to amuse us.
That summer you built a sundial
on the southern side of the garden
and the sun burnished you like
a farmer. Your arms were ochre.
It was the summer of the plethora of roses
and on the grass behind the house
our picnic meals of bread and fish –
of the evil against your flesh
exposed by the colour test of Hiss.
Towards twilight there was tumult,
but after twenty minutes the thunder
rolled away out of the landscape,
slowly crumbling into nothingness
behind the mountain range. The clouds
melted, and above the cypresses
the stars were once more punching holes
into the indogo. Then, suddenly,
there was this extravaganza,
almost too grotesque te be true:
a full moon hovering on the horizon,
hauntingly huge, the hue of saffron,
setting in the Tanqua Karoo.
The cherry tree (“Die kersieboom”)
Until recently he was scarcely more than
fragile scaffolding, a growing enigma.
Now he has become a sweetmeat factory,
a flourishing firm with many branches.
He markets his products in the season
of the rununcula and the rose:
the marble-sized ball-round ruby-red
containers crammed with fructose.
Tags: Ina Rousseau
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Ina Rousseau in Engels
Ina Rousseau het op Saterdag 17 April 2004 omstreeks 09h00 begin om haar gedigte in Engels te vertaal. Uit haar nougesette datering (met tyd en al!) van die talle variante kan die chronologie van die teksontwikkeling gelukkig bo alle twyfel bepaal word. Die feit dat die vertalings getik is – met hier en daar wysigings in ’n byna onleesbare handskrif – het die lees daarvan baie vergemaklik. Op Vrydag 10 Desember 2004 het sy om 09h30 vir die laaste keer aan ’n vertaling gewerk, te wete aan “Die kersieboom” uit ’n Onbekende jaartal.
Sy het gereeld aan meer as een vertaling op dieselfde bladsy gewerk. Van sommige verse is daar wel net een variant – wat beslis nie beteken dat sy dit as afgehandel sou beskou het nie! Daarvoor was sy te veel van ’n onvermoeibare perfeksionis. Soos ons weet uit die talle veranderings wat sy deur die loop van jare aan haar Afrikaanse gedigte aangebring het, was sy eintlik nooit heeltemal tevrede met enigiets wat sy geskryf het nie. In die beste gevalle het sy wel daarin geslaag om die besondere klankrykheid van die Afrikaanse verse in die Engelse weergawes te verwesenlik soos in “Krupuk” (“Die laspos” uit Heuningsteen, 1980).
Dit was klaarblyklik Ina Rousseau se voorneme om haar hele poëtiese oeuvre – met die uitsondering van haar debuutbundel Die verlate tuin (1954) – in Engels oor te sit. Sy het merkwaardig veel verrig in die agt maande tussen 17 April en 10 Desember 2004. Sy het waarskynlik opgehou omdat haar kragte minder geraak het weens die siekte (kanker van die pankreas) waaraan sy op 13 Augustus 2005 beswyk het. Haar tyd is ook in beslag geneem deur verhuisingsplanne wat die koop en verkoop van eiendomme behels het. (Sy wou uit haar duplekswoonstel Die Park 4, Hofstraat, Tuine in Kaapstad trek na die aftree-oord Berghof, Tuine.) Op twee dae (30/3/04 en 11/11/04) het sy inderdaad haar vertaalwerk agterop pamflette van “Kapstadt International Properties” gedoen!
Die manuskripte van hierdie vertalings word bewaar in die Dokumentasiesentrum van die Universiteit van Stellenbosch.
Tags: Daniel Hugo, Ina Rousseau
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