Letter II [Scrisoarea II] - Mihai Eminescu

Are you asking me with wonder why my quill now rests in ink?
Why the rhythm cannot lure me from my new concerns to shrink?
Why do sleep between the pages, all turned yellow by the time,
Iambs and trochees, feet and meters, and my sweet melodic rhyme?
If you knew with what I'm struggling, you would see that I have still
Very many words and phrases, so that I could break my quill,
But I'm asking, why should bother so hard only to disguise
In a new and fancy garment the old language pure and wise?
And to turn that secret feeling into assets, into stuff,
Writing rhymes and theater couplets is a thing that I rebuff.
When you eagerly keep looking for a shape that suits you well
Why to write for other people only things that you can sell?
But you'll answer it is proper to be famous, have no shame,
Showing to the world with passion my sweet poems and my name,
Drawing the attention quickly of the men from this old land
And to dedicate my stanzas to the ladies, on demand,
While my heart, so full of loathing, will be tempered by the mind –
O, my dear, this path already has been beaten by mankind;
We have now, in our epoch, that unusual type of bard
Who is trying through his poems to collect fame really hard,
These will dedicate their writings to the mighty, to the dames,
They are praised in coffee houses and in lounges shine their names;
And because the life is brutal, and afraid of being hurt,
They all seek to find protection from a woman dressed in skirt,
So, give booklets to those ladies married to important guys,
Who'll be ministers and maybe they will help them then to rise –
Why do I refuse for glory, for myself to write again?
For I wonder, is it glory to speak all the time in vain?
Nowadays, the people really are enslaved by their desire
And the fame is just a vision which is burning them like fire,
So, they worship their false idol and call great some petty guys,
Who are just a foam, a bubble, in this age so full of lies.

Shall I tune again my lyre to sing love? A mere rope,
Shared by two or three admirers, aiming for the same cheap scope.
What? To pluck the strings enraptured, showing thus the deep desire
To adjoin old Menelaus who conducts the skillful choir?
Nowadays, for sure, the woman, like the world, is a great school
Where you learn the pain, the sorrow and the art of being cruel;
These academies of science, which fay Friday puts in scene,
Are attended by the youngsters, everywhere they can be seen.
They accept the beardless students, who want thoroughly to train,
But from them, in the near future, only ruins will remain.

Do you really keep on thinking about those high-level schools
When we listened to the teachers and were trustful, like two fools,
Waiting patiently to see them searching through the lifeless books
And from patches spread at random to get wisdom in their looks?
With their soft and gentle babbling, like a spring of horum-harum,
To acquire with their ripples nervum rerum gerendarum;
With a deep sincere devotion, with a pulley and a string,
Lifting in our minds some planets or a great Egyptian king.

That astronomer was ready, with his many lovely words
From the chaos, nice and easy, to take out the spinning worlds
And the everlasting darkness right in front of us he spread
Teaching that epochs were lined up like the beads on a thin thread.
Then the world was turning wildly in my head, as does the reel,
So I felt, like Galileo, that the movement was so real –
Dizzy from the host of planets, languages, the thick school dust
I confused the poor old teacher with a prince eaten by must
And while looking at the ceiling full of spider webs and flies
I was listening to king Ramses and was dreaming of blue eyes.
And the edges of my notebooks with sweet rhyme were richly filled,
Dedicated to some savage, nice and rosy-skinned Clotilde.
Right before me things were floating, in the time they all were set,
Now a sun, then a great ruler, then a nice domestic pet.
And the squeak of quills was lending to that silence a sweet charm
I was seeing waves of green crops and the linen at the farm,
And my heavy head was falling on the school bench while I read;
When the bell announced the break-time, I knew Ramses was long dead.

In those days, the world imagined was for us so near, alive,
While the real one, so strangely, didn't seem to really thrive.
Only now we see how barren is the path, right from the start,
Which is followed by the people with a good and honest heart;
And to dream becomes a danger in this world so mean and blue,
Because if you have illusions, everybody laughs at you.

From now on, please do not bother to inquire once again
Why the rhythm cannot lure me, why it struggles hard in vain,
Why do sleep between the pages, all turned yellow by the time,
Iambs and trochees, feet and meters, and my sweet melodic rhyme...
If I were to write in lyrics I'm afraid the world as such
Will begin to read my poems and to praise me very much.
If I carry without effort, even smiling, all their hate,
Then, undoubtedly, their praises will be like a heavy weight.

Added by: Octavian

Translator: Octavian Cocoş
Language: English


see more poems written by: Mihai Eminescu



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