Translating, and Reesom Hailes Poetry
excerpt from the afterword to We Invented the Wheel)
Like the languages of Amharic, spoken in
Ethiopia, and Tigre, spoken in Eritrea, Tigrinya, the language
of the poetry of Reesom Haile, is a Semitic language. Tigrinya
derives from the ancient language of Geez. It derives, like
Hebrew and Arabic, from Aramaic, which is often thought to have
been a language along with Greek and Hebrew of the
original composition of much of the Old and New Testament and
Tigrinya is a major
language of Eritrea. Eritrea has no one official language but
officially recognizes nine languages. These nine languages are
the basis of a progressive mother-tongue education system in Eritrea,
which continues up to the fifth grade. Also, news reports, judicial
proceedings and government programs and documents function in
all nine languages. Obviously such a policy is not without its
political and economic difficulties, but it is based on the simple
and imperative realization that if the language of any group of
people however small in population is not recognized,
then the people themselves will not be recognized, leading to
injustice and inequality if they are to try to participate and
be represented in a democratic society. South Africa has a similarly
progressive language policy, having mandated that its new Constitution
exists in ten languages.
Contrary to the idea
that translation, by growing an audience, hastens the demise of
mother tongues, international or global recognition and translation
have enhanced and not endangered Reesom Hailes poetry in
Tigrinya. We Have Our Voice was the first bilingual book
of Tigrinya / English poetry. Furthermore, no Tigrinya poet before
Reesom Haile has ever been featured on BBC (UK), Deutche
Welle (Germany), RAI (Italy), Radio Vatican,
and NPR (US); in journals like Left Curve, Samizdat,
Exquisite Corpse (http://www.corpse.org/issue_8/poesy/haile.htm)
and AI Performance; and translated into ten more languages
(The Light & Dust Anthology of Poetry http://www.thing.net/~grist/l&d/lighthom.htm).
Importantly, in all of these instances Reesom Hailes poetry
has appeared or been heard not only in translation into English
but also in the original Tigrinya and, if in print, in Tigrinya
Geez script or, at least, in its Latinized form. Moreover,
there are values clearly expressed in Reesom Hailes poetry
which most other poetry in such formats and venues would not or
even could not utter without sounding artless, unsophisticated,
arch or passe. In this respect, Tigrinya, its translation and
growing audience can act as a means of preservation not merely
for the language itself but for our entire, endangered world.
Aiming to enhance
and not to endanger the stature of the African language of Tigrinya,
the translation of Reesom Hailes poetry still raises the
question of the degree to which translations into English can
match the style and music of the original. Addressing the literal,
oral / aural, literary and poetic sense of the original, and more,
impossibilities of translation arise. For example, in the original
Tigrinya there is an absolutely daunting abbondanza of
rhyme that would be impossible in English of any period or any
serious style, not even in dub or rap. In another respect, the
forms or genres of Reesom Hailes poetry have a unique and
continuing genesis in Tigrinya and oral culture that most contemporary
poetry in English can only palely reflect in writing unless it
is appreciated with an informed and acute sense of literary history.
For Reesom Haile in his poetry,
The form of
the poem is derived from its function. There are forms
for work, for praise, for prayer, for bragging, for battle,
for joining, weddings, funerals, criticism. My poetry
makes use of all these forms, sometimes separately and
sometimes in combination. And I have developed new forms
for the challenges of building a modern, democratic nation.
The infamous, stinging
conundrum of the Italian traduttore / traditore, translator
/ traitor, is at the root of questioning whether translation preserves
or endangers mother tongues. The Eritrean conception of the role
of the poet is relevant to this problem, particularly in comparison
with the European derived formulation of the role of the poet
as a "maker", faber or makir, or as a
vates, "a prophet," with connections to the spiritual,
the underworld, the irrational and the marginal that these terms
can connote. Derived from the Tigrinya infinitive mgTam,
literally to join, the Tigrinya word for poetry
gTmi, that is, "joining," and the poet
geTamay, that is, "joiner" are
comparatively humbler. The Tigrinya terms deflect the more sublime
sense of an individual who creates and even speaks for the gods
or God. gTmi emphasizes a joining of words and worlds from
the perspective of the collective, the community, and the society
of which the geTamay is a part. In oral if not in written form,
according to Reesom Haile,
not a special activity of poets, for everyone is a potential
a poet. Only that some people are more gifted than others
in the art and their words and words more memorable. The
poem is not an object separate and apart from its function:
to ease the pain and to celebrate the pleasure of life.
Women and men alike express themselves in music and poetry
while at work or at play.
A little rarer, perhaps,
the poet as "joiner" is like a carpenter or a tinker.
Rarer still, the poet can be a kind of blacksmith: a sense that
echoes the role in ancient Greek mythology of Hephaestus making
the shield of Achilles in The Iliad. More humbly, the concept
of the poet as a kind of blacksmith evokes a common occupation
in Eritrea, where nothing metal is ever wasted but always either
repaired or recycled. The Eritrean ability to fashion any spare
part imaginable is legendary and has been a matter of necessity.
Captured and repaired enemy armaments turned against their original
possessors supplied the military hardware for Eritreas victory
in its war for independence. Even today, a visit to Asmara should
include its "Medeber" or metal market, where any and
all kinds of scrap metal can be seen to metamorphose in
a din of hammering that itself becomes a profound music of drums
into something new and useful: where bomb shells, armored
tanks, tire rims, bailing wire, cannons, and rusty mattress springs
become buckets, lamps, crutches, chairs, desks, coffee pots, platters,
radio spare parts, sledges, axes, shovels and, of course, ploughshares.
The seeming madness of Asmaras fleet of 1960s Fiats
functioning as the most elegant taxis around the city derives
from a method: the ancient and living art of metamorphosis.
Fundamental to poetry,
the same process applies to translation, particularly to translation
of an African language. There is a common, mistaken assumption
that because there are thousands of African languages translating
them is quixotic. The impression that there is unique difficulty
about Tigrinya and especially its poetry that makes it essentially
untranslatable is similarly common, even among many speakers of
Tigrinya itself. But guided by the humble conception of gtMi
or joining rather than the loftier conceptions of making,
creating, and speaking like a prophet the translators
work can seem a little more, practical, everyday, and honest.
Rather than attempting to raise the art of translation into a
kind of "transcreation," the joining kind of translation
resembles a transmission, with its own special wavelength of poetry
itself: a joining translation and metamorphosis of poetry to poetry,
poet to poet, primarily and intrinsically themselves as the prelude
and the result of the mechanics of literal translation; a process
of communication that is a distinct way of thinking in itself,
applying the knowledge of two poetry traditions in this
case, Tigrinya and English and realized in the verbal music
or rhythm. It is a universal impulse understood at root with or
poetry also offers a special perspective on two other universal
impulses: the political and the religious.
A big reason for the
popularity of Reesom Hailes poetry is its political and
sometimes impolitic content. He has patriotically rallied his
nation any number of times and there have been many
most famously with his poem "Alewuna, Alewana," "We
Have, We Have," a poem so widely and frequently dispersed
in Eritrea that the refrain has practically become interchangeable
with Reesom Hailes own name. To be anywhere at anytime in
Eritrea with Reesom Haile is to hear "Alewuna, Alewana"
lovingly pronounced by strangers, young and old, as soon as they
recognize his face.
Haile is first and foremost a poet of conscience, like all great
political poets. Furthermore, his poetry ranges freely yet artfully
from international to national to local targets: from the politics
of bedrooms to the politics of presidential offices. Because he
frequently uses allegory, thick and thin, the local can be readily
seen as universal. After all, the use and abuse of power are ubiquitous.
A geTamay whose political acumen resembles Machiavellis,
who was anything but Machiavellian, Reesom Haile is without illusion,
thoroughly artful, and unequivocal in describing how it works
and, furthermore, not necessarily appreciated by the politically
powerful when his criticism is negative. The stakes are high and
hotly contested, justifiably so, since the prize is nothing less
than individual, national and spiritual survival, as in the poem
"Freedom of Speech."
or for fun
If we fail
Political poetry in
America and Europe is almost an oxymoron: polarizing the many,
persuading only the few and nearly always preaching to the converted
though this is not to say that poetry like Amiri Barakas
is not the most accurate political commentary and among the greatest
poetry being written in these places today, where great poetry
and great political power are rarely seen together. Towards their
own political regeneration, they have a lot to learn from a political
art like Reesom Hailes and the way it is comprehensively
appreciated from the margins to the center of Eritrean culture
Cultivating the art
of political poetry, Reesom Hailes work reveals a similarly
unlikely dimension, at least from an Euro-American perspective,
in being religious and even explicitly biblical or Christian.
Any contemporary explicitly Christian art in the west today, if
not self-critical or, at least, self-conscious, reeks of exclusivity,
chauvinism and "hate speech" a public loss, surely,
and a personal loss for many, too. In Reesom Hailes work,
however, the biblical framework remains credible and matter of
fact, with neither ideology nor inanity. Dozens of his poems illustrate
this, like "No Regrets."
not going back.
we were fed.
us like animals.
I love you."
"I love you, too"
with your sweat."
not going back.
Unlike in most of
Africa, Christianity and biblical culture were not imported and
imposed by colonialism in the relatively recent history of the
region and of Eritrea. Instead, biblical spirituality stems from
it through Geez and its language of Tigrinya, as can be
similarly said of Egypt, Ethiopia, and countries of the "Middle
East" and many of their languages. These are places
and languages in which biblical spirituality was born and bred.
Their oldest literature includes biblical literature in their
own languages. It should be included in a proper anthology of
Tigrinya literature, much like an anthology of English literature
that includes Anglo-Saxon and Middle English. Moreover, biblical
literature is not a bundle of rootless, abstract concepts but
existed first and foremost in the original language of its expression,
identical with the literary and rhetorical devices of poetry and
storytelling, including metaphor, character, plot, setting, suspense,
hyperbole, irony, word play, shifting points of view, changing
styles, contradiction, endless conflict, song and more. Biblical
language in its oldest texts, alleged originals and best
translations is not a kind of clear container for its ideas.
They are inseparable from the language and the style they are
expressed in. Sharing the same ancestry, biblical writing and
Tigrinya, as exemplified by Reesom Hailes poetry, live on
in each other. Their content and style cannot be separated or
dissociated. The sacred sense that attaches itself to Jerusalem
and Hebrew or Arabic also attaches itself to Asmara, the capital
of Eritrea, and Tigrinya: just as the legend of Sheba, the ancient
queen, who bore Solomons son, Menelik, along a stream near
the city, and as he, years later, carried the Ark of the Covenant
out of Jerusalem to the same area. Indeed, if "to imagine
a language means to imagine a form of life," it must also
have memory, ancestors, history, archaeology, myths and a continuing
and changing life: precisely as is embodied in Reesom Hailes
poetry. Questions of theology and belief aside, Christianity and
biblical culture are a part of the mother tongue of Tigrinya.
In itself and in translation, it not only delights and teaches
the sine qua non of literature but also offers
to reconnect us to a past that has been lost and a future with
everything to gain.