The Bloody Sonnets in New York

With a Seven Syllable Sonnet of my own

After translating thirty-two sonnets by the Slovak poet Pavol Országh-Hviezdoslav into free verse, I finally wrote one of my own. It is a seven syllable sonnet. After the poem, I’ll tell you about the performance that inspired it.

Why a seven syllable sonnet? I like the alliteration of the name, and ten syllables per line sometimes seems a bit long for me.

Waiting to start the performance. The live video close-ups were used well as were the electronic sheep.

Songs of Blood

Sitting among fields of sheep,
two women sing songs of blood.
Those that hear never will sleep,
haunted by the notes that flood.

Rivers of men move their boots
from the mountains to the fields
to cadence of deathly lutes
man to man without their shields.

Why do these women still sing? —
unheard tunes drowned by drums.
From their voices truth does ring;
courage from their guitar strums.

Some may sing the world to war —
listen! to this peaceful score!

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I attended the U.S. premier of The Bloody Sonnets on September 5th. Accompanied by two substack friends, Abby Schleifer and Daniel V. Gaglio , we enjoyed this 70 minute, two-women play, at the La Mama theater in Manhattan.

I had been waiting to see this performance for months. Before I knew it was coming to NYC, I considered making a trip to Bratislava to see it. I could describe the brilliant performances, but it’s like describing a song you have not heard. At best case I will make you want to see the play and at worst case my description will completely fall flat.

Instead, I want to talk about how this team beautifully adapted this work and took full advantage of their artistic medium.

In the original Slovak, Hviezdoslav wrote these in the Petrarchan sonnet form. John Minahane, whose translation was used for the performance, translated them into a Shakespearean Sonnet, saying this:

The fact is, the Petrarchan rhyming scheme is too difficult for English! Shakespeare knew what he was doing when he simplified it, so that no rhyme is used more than once. Not to make things impossible for myself when translating, I have chose the Shakespearean sonnet form. But since every rule must have an exception, I use a Petrarchan variant for the first and last.

And why did Hviezdoslav use the sonnet form? I think the answer is in the first sonnet (John Minahane translation)

A song of blood: — the thought is strange and wild!

The best delivery of these sonnets during the night was when the first sonnet was sung. It was then that they beauty of these songs shine.

It is important to remember that these were written in August and September of 1914, at the start of the war. I have read that the modernist movement gained momentum after WWI. After this war, not many people felt called to write in a romantic and classical style and modernism reflected this change of heart. Which I think is why we get this very classical form from Hviezdoslav here as he does not yet not know the horrors to come.

And even though the words felt most alive to me when sung, a modern audience would find it difficult to sit through 70 minutes of sonnet singing. The question becomes, how to present poetry from 1914 to a modern audience? This is the strength of this production. It was like Miles Davis doing Jazz Fusion. It blended video projection, live subtitles, and contemporary music, with 20th century poetry, art, and delivery. It felt both innovative and classic.

These playing cards were included in the brochures. I love these extras :) Thanks to Daniel who helped find my favorite sonnet (left).

World War I was the war of the telegraph and the railroad. New technologies that caused a speed up of human life and a rush to war. The speed up will only speed up as we continue with more electronic media.

The Bloody Sonnets by DPOH presses pause. There is no 2x-ing this video. For seventy minutes, you sit, watch, and listen to a sixty-five year old Slovak poet trying to stop the world from spinning. He may never succeed, but for those seventy minutes, in that theatre, we all felt the world slow down.

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