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Antigonish Review
# 134
| Sheila
Hyland |
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Featured Artist
Roger Savage
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Sheep's Vigil by a Fervent Person.
A Transelation by Eirin Moure. House of Anansi, 130 pgs., soft cover,
$16.95.
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Inspired by Pessoa, Moure captures his brilliant spirit. In the title
of her long poem Sheep's Vigil by a Fervent Person, Eirin Moure
(using the Galician spelling of her name) coins the word Transelation.
In this case, the e = extra. She is translating, but she is doing more.
A first glance at the intriguing cover of Sheeps Vigil stirs the
imagination, arouses curiosity. We want to know what is going on here.
Thumbing through the pages of this bilingual version (Portuguese & English)
we realize what Moure is doing. She is putting herself into the poem.
This is the magic that occurs when a poem invents itself and takes off
on its own, and it is obvious that this one has done so.
Sheep's Vigil, a take on the Portuguese long poem O Guardador
de Rabanhos by Albert Caeiro, a heteronym of Fernando Pessoa, the
Portuguese poet-translator famed for inventing characters as authors for
his many poetical works. Heteronyms as opposed to pseudonyms, for Pessoa's
inventions were much more than false names, each one came with a formed
identity, complete with personal point of view. Caeiro, along with Alvaro
de Campos, Bernard Soares and Ricardo Reis are among Pessoa's better known
heteronyms.
O Guardador de Rabanhos translates into English as The Keeper
of Sheep. I'll refer to the English hereupon and when quoting, I'll
cite Caeiro's verse first, followed by Moure's verse. In the original
poem, the author said his sheep were his thoughts and his thoughts were
all sensations:
I'm a shepherd
My sheep are my thoughts,
And my thoughts are all sensations.
I think with my eyes and ears
And with my hands and feet
And with my nose and mouth.
To think of a flower is to see it and smell it.
And to eat a fruit is to taste its meaning.
- Caeiro
In the new poem, Moure's sheep are stray cats:
I've got an entire flock of cats out my door now.
The flock is my thoughts
And my thoughts, all of them, are sensations.
I think with my eyes, with my ears too,
And with my hands and feet
And with my mouth and nose.
To think of a flower is to see it and smell it.
There might never be another day like this one.
I eat fruit with respect; it teaches meaning.
- Moure
The impetus for Sheep's Vigil stems from the author's being confined
indoors nursing an ankle injury. In Toronto at the time, staying in the
home of absent friends, she began to read the original poem and found
she could translate Portuguese. Her work began. It was one of those lovely,
rare experiences when the poem almost writes itself. As she translated,
things began to happen. The landscape of the poem altered and expanded
to include her current everyday experience. She incorporates this unique
experience into the sunflower verse:
My glance is as clear as a sunflower
I usually take to the roads
Looking to my right and to my left,
And now and then looking behind me . . .
And what I see each moment
Is something I've never seen before
And I know very well how to give myself up to it . . .
I know how to feel the same essential wonder
That an infant feels on being born
Supposing he could know he was being born . . .
I feel that I am being born each moment
Into the eternal newness of the world . . .
- Caeiro
My sight's sharp as a sunflower.
I walk up Winnett to Vaughan Road all the time
Looking left and right
And sometimes looking over my shoulder . . .
And what I see every moment
Is what no one's seen before me,
And, as such, I just let myself go . . .
I feel like a child in a T-shirt
Amazed by just being born
and realizing "hey, I'm born" . . .
I feel myself born at every moment
Into the World's eternity of the New
- Moure
In essence, Moure recreates Caeiro's 1914 old world landscape countryside
setting of rolling hills, shepherds and sheep, and Caeiro inhabits her
Toronto landscape. The landscape that emerges, however, is an altered
landscape where both urban and rural worlds coexist. The harmonious and
melodious atmosphere of this co-existence creates an ambience in which
the poet is free to frolic with her muse. Without violating the intent
of the original work, Moure has presented a new poem placing herself in
a specific locale.
Previous work has earned Moure the Governor General's Award for Poetry,
and The Pat Lowther Memorial Award. Sheep's Vigil, her ninth book
of poetry, was shortlisted for the 2002 Toronto Book Award. It is imagistic
and clever, playful and unselfconscious, done in Whitmanesque style. In
the writing and translating Moure keeps true to Caeiro's/Pessoa's original
idea and sensibility.
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