The Bloody Sonnets #4

Adaptation of Krvavé sonety.

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

Following the adaptation, there is a discussion.

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And nation turned upon nation,
with murder in their eyes, 
with the fury of the destroyer.
Guns cracked, 
     cannons thundered:

Between the lightning, 
     Astaroth grins from the clouds.
In the harvest below, 
     carcasses roll beneath the scythe —
fresh blood from rattling sabres 
     flows back into the soil.

In this maelstrom of cruelty,
     no tiger rages as fiercely,
     no flowers can grow.
Here the joy of life is death
     and the purple robes 
          of human dignity 
     turn to dust in the rubble of the 
     beaming palace of culture!

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

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A národ oboril sa na národ
s úmyslom vraždy, s besom skaziteľa.
Kreš spráskal pušiek, zahrmeli delá:
zem stene, piští vzduch, rvú vlny vôd,

kde bleskom kmitla hrozná Astarot.
A jak v žne postať zbožia líha zrelá
pod kosou, radom váľajú sa telá;
v cveng šabieľ špľachce čerstvej krvi brod…

Tak vo víchrici totej ukrutenstva,
nímž ani tiger dravšie nezúri,
zapadá nie zvlek: výkvet človečenstva,
života radosť smrtnej do chmúry,
v prach purpur všeľudského dôstojenstva,
v sutiny jasný palác kultúry!…

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Through my friend Eva, whom I mentioned in the first sonnet’s discussion, I have been placed in contact with John Minahane. I’ll just say, I was a bit nervous, mainly at breaking from the sonnet form and attempting to work with such a well-known and respected work in Slovakia.

But he was very encouraging and is very kind. He reminded me that Shakespeare is not an easy poet to work with sometimes and yet we keep finding ways to connect back to his work in new ways.

And I was reflecting on the discussion from the last few sonnets. And it struck me just how quickly the public appetite for war can spread. This was true of World War I especially but let’s stick with 9/11 again today.

In just 4 days, the United States voted to authorize the use of force against an unknown enemy. What is this force but the fury of the destroyer at work?

I had not read Barbara’s Lee opinion piece about why she was the lone “no” vote on a country with murder in their eyes. I was a junior at the U.S. Naval Academy when this happened. I wasn’t aware Barbara’s Lee dissent back then, and I am not one to praise a politician, but I can’t make it through that piece now without tears in my eyes.

I remember some twisted McLuhan-esque montage that circulated through the campus network at that time. It was set to Drowning Pool’s Let the Bodies Hit the Floor which was released just four months before the attack. The video contained clips of bombing footage, American flags, and the like. It was widely spread.

Soon after the vote, John Fund criticized Representative Lee’s vote in a WSJ opinion piece. He concluded with this statement:

America has been attacked, and while pacifism has an honorable tradition in this country, Ms. Lee seems to use it as a cloak for her belief that when it comes to the use of American power, her country can never do right.

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Here is the previous Sonnet.