When I first viewed Ronald Tanaka's 'Pascal' web site some months ago, I was struck by the way in which he had so naturally combined themes of Asian culture with a sensitive treatment of American social issues such as death and dying, interracial relationships, and sexual preference. In subsequent discussions with Dr. Tanaka, I observed that a multilingual presentation would be much in keeping with the multicultural vision that characterizes his art. He agreed that although Pascal did not lend itself well to translation, the subject matter of his earlier 'Wine and Tea' project was appropriate for a broader audience. Since I was familliar with the Spanish language could readily relate to the character of the young Madeline Giboin, I offered to try my hand at translating an adaptation of the 'Tea' half of that project. The poetry that resulted from my efforts appears in the website that mirrors this online presentation of the original English. The lean form of the Spanish was inspired in part by the Pablo Neruda's Odes and by the small number of Spanish Haiku I was able to discover. However, my translations do not pretend to conform to any poetic tradition in particular, and their amateur flavor may have been heightened still further by my attempt to preserve the conversational tone of the original English. My main objective was to produce a set of poems would stand on its own as an artistic expression, and that would be accessible to Spanish-speakers from a broad range of cultural backgrounds as well as to English-speaking students of Spanish. When I began my work, I quickly discovered that although the style of the poems is not elevated nor the form outwardly complex, their informality disguises a tight syntactical structure that was all too easily shattered when a more or less literal tranlation into Spanish was attempted. Nevertheless, I have done my best to approximate the overall structural harmony of the English, as well as to preserve in translation the several instances of logical disjunction and anomalous diction. A strong ironic tension arises from Madeline's admitted failure to describe
in the language of an adolescent girl the significance of the tea ceremony
and its relationship to her life outside the tea room -- concepts which
she nevertheless grasps intuitively. Through Madeline, the poet manages,
without sounding overly anti-intellectual, to give an artistic impression
of the ultimate inadequacy of language that is consistent with the spirit
of Zen Buddism that underlies the spirit of tea. Therefore, I have made
every effort to preserve the simplicity of the verse and the innocence of
the narrative voice. I would like to add a final word of thanks of Olivia Castellano, poet
and professor at CSUS, whose revisions greatly facilitated the development
of this project and whose enthusiasm was much appreciated. Thanks also to
Mitch the Webmaster, who helped me fine-tune the source code for the site.
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Translator's Preface
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