Esperanto Esperanto poetry in translationAuthor: David Poulson In my last article I described how William Auld was launched on his very distinguished literary career when Juan Regulo Perez published a selection of his poems in Kvaropo, the first of the Esperanto books to be published under the Stafeto imprint. In 1989, among his many and varied activities (about which I will surely have more to say in later topic articles), William Auld found time to accept the role of editor of a new book in which he proposed to publish English language translations of original Esperanto poems, together with the Esperanto version. Bill (as he signed himself in correspondence we had during 1990) told me that he had received almost 200 translations from various parts of the world from which he finally selected 50 "to represent our poetry." I myself submitted a few translations to Bill and he was gracious enough to select two for publication. I have decided to include them in this topic article for several reasons. First to publicly thank Bill for his kindness in selecting some of my work for publication, second to introduce readers of this topic who are very new to Esperanto to a tiny portion of its original literature in a way which will allow them to appreciate it and encourage them to press on with their language lessons. And thirdly, to counter the frequent and erroneous statement made by opponents of Esperanto to the effect that it is impossible to write poetry in an "artificial language" and consequently that there has been no original literature written in the language. (For more on this subject, see my Topic Article "Sad but True" which you will find at: . So, without further preamble, here is a handful of poems which I particularly liked myself. I do hope that you enjoy them and I would welcome your comments as to whether or not you would like to see, from time to time, more samples of original Esperanto writings included in these articles. IMRE SZABO Sablodunoj/Sand-Dunes Printempo pas^as c^irkau^ klostro antikva Spring strides through an ancient cloister La Ebria Rivero/ The Drunken River Mi ruligis la vortojn la ebria rivero multobligas ilin Words flow out of me the drunken river multiplies them 1986 ALDO DE'GIORGI Metamorfozo/Metamorphosis Vi estis fantasta You were fantastic 1979 DAMJAN VAHEN-SVETINOV Ne Skribu/Don't Write Ne skribu al mi, Vi iam deziris esti kun mi, Kaj sola de tiam vagabondas mi, Sed se iam ni renkontigos ie denove, Don't write to me, Once you wanted to come along And since then I've wandered alone, But if we ever meet again, some time, some place, 1963 |