All posts by Jan Vihan

Jan Vihan is a contributing writer for In The Fray.
 

My Dear Pattern

I was given a body—what should I do with it,
So unique and so mine?

For the quiet happiness to breathe and to live,
Whom, say, should I thank?

I am the gardener, I am also the flower,
In the dungeon of the world I am not alone.

On the windowpane of eternity,
My breathing, my warmth have weighed down.

A pattern is being imprinted on it,
Recent yet unrecognizable.

Let the mist of the moment drip—
the dear pattern cannot be crossed out.

translated from the Russian by Motýlí Voko

Дано мне тело—что мне делать с ним,
Таким единым и таким моим?

За радость тихую дышать и жить
Кого, скажите, мне благодарить?

Я и садовник, я же и цветок,
В темнице мира я не одинок.

На стекла вечности уже легло
Мое дыхание, мое тепло.

Запечатлеется на нем узор,
Неузнаваемый с недавних пор.

Пускай мгновения стекает муть—
Узора милого не зачеркнуть.

~1909~

About the poem: In the symbolist stronghold of St. Petersburg, Osip Mandelshtam’s debut collection Kamen (Rock, published in 1913) rallied readers for whom words evoked a physical world of razor-sharp contours, rather than standing for an imagined realm of perplexing abstractions.

Jan Vihan is a contributing writer for In The Fray.

 

Eye of the Butterfly

Editor’s note: In the final days of 2005, ITF made inquiries about the identity of its new translator-in-residence. We have so far received two responses.

Admiral Babočka (grandson of Vanessa Atalanta), who has published several articles on Motýlí Voko, writes:

In Czech, “motýlí oko” signifies “the eye of the butterfly.” The name could be a reference to the famous Chinese story of Chuang Chou dreaming he was a butterfly. Waking up he could not figure out whether he was Chou dreaming of being a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming of being Chou. Or, in fact, whether there is any difference between Chou and the butterfly.

The Chuang Tzu transformation story may be a clever play on perspectives, but it does not tell us who the author is and what he believes. For that I turn my dear reader’s attention to the recently (2003) uncovered DNA link between Motýlí Voko and the renowned Russian lepidopterist Timofey Timofeyevich Pnin. In chapter six of his autobiography, the butterfly scholar observes:

When a certain moth resembles a certain wasp in shape and color, it also walks and moves its antennae in a waspish, unmothlike manner. When a butterfly has to look like a leaf, not only are all the details of a leaf beautifully rendered but markings mimicking grub-bored holes are generously thrown in. “Natural selection,” in the Darwinian sense, could not explain the miraculous coincidence of imitative aspect and intimate behavior, nor could one appeal to the theory of “the struggle for life” when a protective device was carried to a point of mimetic subtlety, exuberance, and luxury far in excess of a predator’s power of appreciation.

The writer inside the scientist adds: “I discovered in nature the nonutilitarian delights that I sought in art. Both were a form of magic, both were a game of intricate enchantment and deception.”

Here ends our excerpt from Babočka’s letter.

Červená Housenka (Red Caterpillar) comments: “With all due respect to Dr. Babočka, the academician cannot see beyond the brim of his spectacles. The intention behind the name has been deliberately concealed by Voko, and those who do figure it out have been kindly asked to keep the secret to themselves.”

Click here for a portrait of Motýlí Voko by his friend Red Caterpillar.

Click here for a photo of the admiral.

Click here to watch the caterpillar in action.

Jan Vihan is a contributing writer for In The Fray.

 

Paper Horse

There was a boy who dreamt
a paper horse.
He opened his eyes,
and the horse was gone.

About a white horse
the boy dreamt again;
seizing it by the mane …
Now you won’t get away!

Barely had he caught it,
when the boy woke up.
His fist was closed.
The horse flew away!

The boy became serious,
thinking that a dreamt horse
was not real.
And he never dreamt again.

But the boy turned into a young man,
and the man fell in love,
and to his beloved he would say:
Are you real, or not?

When the man grew old
he thought everything was a dream—
the dreamt-up horse,
and the horse which was real.

And when death came,
the old man to his heart
whispered: Are you a dream?
Who knows, did he ever wake up!

translated from the Spanish by Motýlí Voko

From “Parábolas”

Era un niño que soñaba
un caballo de cartón.
Abrió los ojos el niño
y el caballito no vió.
Con un caballito blanco
el niño volvió a soñar;
y por la crin lo cogía …
¡ahora no te escaparás!
Apenas lo hubo cogido,
el niño se despertó.
Tenía el puño cerrado.
¡El caballito voló!
Quedóse el niño muy serio
pensando que no es verdad
un caballito soñado.
Y ya no volvió a soñar.
Pero el niño se hizo mozo
y el mozo tuvo un amor,
y a su amada le decía:
¿Tú eres de verdad o no?
Cuando el mozo se hizo viejo
pensaba: todo es soñar,
el caballito soñado
y el caballo de verdad.
Y cuando vino la muerte,
el viejo a su corazón
preguntaba: ¿Tú eres sueño?
¡Quién sabe si despertó!

About the poem: Composed in a deceivingly simple language styled on popular aphorisms, the eight poems Antonio Machado titled “Parábolas” (“Parables”) appeared in their final version in the 1917 collection Campos de Castilla (Fields of Castile).

Jan Vihan is a contributing writer for In The Fray.

 

Hat in the Shrub

Wind sweeps through the desert,
along the sand is chasing a hat,
chased it into a shrub,
an old, black hat.

Where is the head,
which wore the hat?
Was it black, was it fair?
To whom did it belong?

Who was he, disappearing in the desert?
Where was he coming from, and to where was he headed?
What troubled him,
that he walked alone in the desert?

Only blown-over footprints,
an old hat in the shrub.
No one will understand,
no one will find out.

translated from the Czech by Motýlí Voko

Klobouk v křoví

Vítr vane pouští,
po písku žene klobouk,
zahnal ho do houští,
starý a černý klobouk.

Kdepak je ta hlava,
co ten klobouk nosila,
byla černá či plavá,
komu asi patřila.

Kdo to v poušti zmizel?
Odkud šel a kam?
Jaký to měl asi svízel,
že byl v poušti sám?

Jen zaváté stopy,
starý klobouk ve křoví,
nikdo nic nepochopí,
nikdo se nic nedoví.

About the poem:“Hat in the Shrub” was composed in 1934 by the artistic trio Ježek, Voskovec, and Werich as a theme song for a play performed in their own Osvobozené Divadlo (Liberated Theatre), the most playful and daring cultural institution in the interwar Czechoslovakia.

Listen to the Pražský Hradčanský Orchestra interpreting the song:

Jan Vihan is a contributing writer for In The Fray.

 

Long River

Editor’s note: Starting this Friday, we will publish translations of poetry and prose culled from literatures in various languages and translated into English by Motýlí Voko, our newest contributor. The translations, and other musings by Voko, will appear in the blog every Friday.

 

Gun-gun, thunders the Long River. To the east the waters pass,
the foam of breaking waves rinsing life out of heroes.

Right and wrong, success and defeat, turn your head and they are hollow.
The dark green mountain stands always as before,
the evening sun reddens ever once more.

The old man, fishing in the river, gathering wood on the isle,
knows the gaze of the autumn moon, the feel of the April breeze.

Over a jug of cheap, murky wine, friends happily drink to each other.
Of then and now, of how many things,
they tell with a smile.

translated from the Chinese by Motýlí Voko

Long River Chinese poem

About the poem: Originally written by Yang Shen (1488-1559) as lyrics to a set tune, this poem was later appended as a preface to the immensely popular novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms (San-kuo yen-yi, first printed in 1494), which is how most Chinese readers know it today.

Jan Vihan is a contributing writer for In The Fray.

The Ganges River in Varanasi, India.

Burning the Stones

In a place without memory, life becomes art.

People bathing in the waters of the Ganges
The Ganges River at Haridwar, India.

They come here from all over India to wait for death, in the most auspicious place for dying. This is the holy city of Varanasi, in northern India. Here, the eyes can witness the crimson sun rising from the Ganges’s waters at the break of day. Here stands Manikarnika, the burning ghat, a stone crematorium built on a massive bank over the River, right at the point where she finishes her bend to the north and once again turns to the east.

Here, men burn away the dead, and burn away history.

I stand at the third-floor window of a hospice building in the city’s center, watching Manikarnika. It is the hour of dusk. The heat of the day departs, leaving thin mist and burning stones behind. The sweet fragrance of sandalwood ascends from four funeral fires below. Boats loaded with firewood are roped to the bank. Boys shout and spring from them, swimming and playing catch in water murky from the ash.

Hindu men, most of them dressed in the mourning color of white, surround the fires. Women are not permitted at the cremation site, for their cries would taint the soul’s journey. In Varanasi, death is the ticket to liberation, an ending to the painful cycle of rebirths.

The corpse in the pyre on the far left has been completely consumed by flames. A man with a shaven head, the deceased’s eldest son, turns his back to the fire and lifts an earthen pot filled with water from the Ganges. He throws it over his right shoulder. The flames hiss. The vessel shatters. Men collect the smoldering ashes, and cast them into the river.

In the brownish water millions of lives merge into one. And from this Mother, lives are born again. How many generations have been carried away like this?

From a narrow lane stretching to the ghat I hear a chant. The words accompany the procession of a colorful bier as it makes its way to the fires.

“Raama naam satya hai, Raama naam satya hai.” God’s name is truth.

I had come to Varanasi from the former Muslim capital of Delhi, a city dotted with tombs, both splendid and ruined, that stand and fall as the legacy of the Mogul rulers. The beauty and size of the tombs testify to the greatness of the rulers interred within, and their determination to mark their lives for posterity.

After arriving in Varanasi, I met up with my Hindi teacher, Abhiji. We talked about Indian history, and soon started discussing an essay I had just read. The article, which was written by an English scholar, said that the Aryans came to India from Central Asia and laid the foundation to what became the upper tiers of the caste system. The former inhabitants—both indigenous and recently arrived—evolved into the untouchables.

When I mentioned the article’s thesis to him, Abhiji erupted. Foreign historians were propagating lies in order justify invaders of their own kind, he insisted. “The Britishers could never accept that the Aryans, including the English, originally came from India.”

I had little reason to doubt the English scholar’s account, but Abhiji’s outburst troubled me. It reminded me of the agenda-loaded history books I had skimmed despairingly in a Delhi bookstore a few days earlier. History for Indians, even educated ones like Abhiji, appeared to mean advancing their own political objectives. Perhaps it was a legacy of the colonial era, when rejecting the doctrines of their British rulers was a matter of liberty or oppression. In any case, it seemed that I could rarely find a book or enter a debate in which a genuine attempt was made to find the truth about past events.

Later that day, however, I realized that I had misunderstood the reasons behind Abhiji’s belief. In the shadow of Manikarnika, I watched ashes being poured from the pyres. I watched those human remnants as they dispersed on the water surface, slowly drifting downstream and then vanishing. In the emptiness left behind, I imagined the gorgeous tombs of the Mogul rulers in Delhi, and the simple gravesites clustered around village churches back in my homeland, the Czech Republic.

The ashes and the tombs. Compared with the fire-drenched stones of Manikarnika, the memorials of my Catholic and Czech culture and those of the Muslim culture of the Moguls are much alike. They both speak to the same need to remember, to preserve and magnify the memories of life. And yet here was a culture that had always dissolved the material remains of man—the stuff upon which any factual history is based.

The divide that separated me from Abhiji suddenly became clear to me. I remembered working as a tour guide in Prague, and taking Americans through Czech graveyards in search of their great-grandfathers. In the Western cultures, history is the words written on a stone, the lives carved into a tombstone. Abhiji, on the other hand, once explained to me how his caste is defined by a common ancestry from one rshi, or semi-divine sage. For Abhiji, there is no chronology to say when that sage existed, and when his great-grandfather lived, and so the two men merge in his perception; imagination creates history.

This difference between his view and mine appeared stark and irreconcilable. If the two of us differ so fundamentally in our conception of what constitutes our own past, how can we argue about history?

Abhiji has always struck me as a much-contented person, blessed with a happiness that comes from his strong faith in his gods and his ability to feel the divinity within himself. Perhaps the divine spirit pulses in his veins precisely because the tales of the past that he hears and tells are of gods. He grows into what his roots are. What is the point of forcing him to think “historically,” to separate myth and history, to argue about stones instead of relying on his own imagination?

In the past Abhiji imagines and lives by, the sacred Ganges is the womb from which all men once came and to which they return. The threat he hears in the English historian’s article is not so much the argument itself, but the habit of looking for concrete evidence to support an objective explanation. By defining Abhiji’s past for him, the historian also shapes what Abhiji believes himself to be.

In Abhiji’s perspective, history is part of one’s own belief and each individual has the right to create or choose his or her own. Thus, each individual also accepts that another person may choose a completely different version of the same story. The true origin of the Aryans is irrelevant. What is really at stake is how much claim the objective historian has over an area that is inherently private.

The dusk had deepened in Varanasi. The smoke-curtained sunset dazzled me. By and by I forgot both Abhiji and the Aryans, and another thought occurred to me: never before had I appreciated how much history defines who I am. I had seen the past as something that could be dug up and analyzed by others for me. I had seen the past as a stone. But perhaps if I considered the past to be a stone, I would become one, too. By surrendering to objective “truth,” I might forfeit the freedom to create and recreate myself.

Inside, I rebelled against the heaviness of that truth. There was an art to this act of living, I thought, and my life was too precious to be dictated by fossils.

Perhaps it was this thought, or just the evening sun, but the Ganges suddenly seemed to be more than the river I observed. She was vast and ageless and powerful. In her waters millions of lives merged into one.

I walked down along the river to a stone square where boys played cricket. Not ever doubting the superiority of soccer among games, I had never stopped before to watch a cricket match. That evening, however, I enthusiastically joined the youngsters in chasing wickets.

Jan Vihan is a contributing writer for In The Fray.