The Bloody Sonnets #21

Adaptation of Krvavé sonety.

Welcome to my series of adapting Pavol Országh Hviezdoslav’s The Bloody Sonnets into free-verse. This is the twenty-first of thirty-two sonnets.

Following the adaptation, I invite you to read some reflections on the poem.

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What will be and how? Only you know!
O All-Knowing, how can I question you
like a child asking a parent?

For why should you, the great sustainer
care about what we see 
     in our limited mind's eye?
How selfish of us to hoard 
     the dust we stand on
when the Earth is in service to the Sun.

We have been given a special grace and
are but worms, 
     wriggling to the surface —
searching for a sign of freedom.
How long will it last? 
     That, you won't reveal.

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The original is in the Slovak language, which was originally written in 1914:

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Čo bude, ako bude? len ty znáš,
ó, Vševedúci! — Ale nespytujem
sa ťa; tak v mysli krehkej uvažujem,
že bola by to decka samopaš:

bo nač ty ako zdržovateľ dbáš,
jak krátkym umom pozorujem,
čnie nedostižne ľudský nad záujem!
nad všetko, zem čo zmýšľa, prášok náš,

čo na nej my, jej plemä, vystrájame.
Tej úkol je, kým ináč naložíš,
prísluha slncu vo svetovej dráme;
nám ale — zvláštna milosť nanajvýš! —
preds’ červom, voľnosti si udrel znamä,
trvalé pokiaľ? Tobôž nezjavíš…

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Reflections

This sonnet was particularly challenging. I consider these more adaptations than translations because I’m not keeping the sonnet form. The second stanza I took some more liberties that I usually do.

I have some Slovak friends that say POH is difficult for them. I do know it is taught in schools there and I’ve heard he is the “Slovak Shakespeare.” So for this one, the question was: do I keep more of the original and difficult tone or do I adapt it a bit? JM, the original English translator does a beautiful job of keeping the sonnet form. So I feel like if I’m going to smash the sonnet, then why not smash it.

I try to stick to same overall meaning of the original though. The biggest change here I made is the line “to hoard the dust we stand on.” In doing so I flipped the focus to selfish humans where the original is more like, “God has more concerns than our earthen dust.” Something like that.

And I did so because I find it absolutely insane the amount of blood spilt over imaginary lines. There is a libertarian view that the only rights are property rights, but I’m floating around the idea that none of this is our land anyway. We’ve all stolen this land from someone else, even if that someone was Mother Earth to begin with.

As an American veteran, who fought in Afghanistan, I can tell that some of the people we fought, had no idea what 9/11 was. I was once of the opinion that “an attack on America was an attack on all of us.” But then I saw that a tribal chief of an entire Afghan province thought NYC was Kabul when shown a picture of it. Then I started to learn that the war I was fighting was less my war, and the war that someone else wanted me to fight. Governments will their populations to fight, either through force (conscription) or propaganda.

If Canada was to invade Maine, I’m not going to die to defend Maine. Sorry Maine. Likewise if Guam is invaded. How did Guam become a U.S. Territory again?

Hence the line:

Eighteen year-old me would think this would be unpatriotic and cowardly. I understand how eighteen year old me came to that conclusion. I also think eighteen year old me didn’t really love himself and was too willing to throw his life away when ordered.

But I can appreciate the selflessness of younger me. I think I’ve just realized that I can that use that same energy elsewhere.

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Here’s the link to the previous sonnet.

The entire collection can be found here as well.