The intention of this paper is to convey a critical comment on how the meaning is affected when translating a painting into a poem. The painting I have chosen to translate is called “El Hombre Caimán” ( The Alligator Man) which is a theater drape by the Colombian painter Alejandro Obregón (see fig.1). Obregón was born into a middle-class, Spanish-Colombian family on June 4, 1920. In 1939 he went on to become a painter and studied Fine Arts in Boston. Alejandro Obregon´s paintings are strongly influenced by Pablo Picasso and Graham Sutherland. His paintings have a Cubism style characterized by the use of intense colors, exploration of strokes through brush handling, scales, and landscapes translated into geometric shapes. Alejandro Obregon´s work well represents the abstract surrealist tendency in Latin America. For this reason, I selected this piece because it depicts folklore through myth and painting as a language.
According to philologist Max Muller, a myth is a characteristic of the language. He considered the myth to be a sort of illness of the human mind, so the source of this disease must have been language. Muller quotes: “Myth is something conditioned and negotiated by the agency of language, it is, in fact, the product of a basic shortcoming, an inherence weakness of language”( qtd. in Cassirer 3-4). Bearing this in mind, I would like to briefly narrate the myth of the “El Hombre Caimán” (The Alligator Man) in order to understand the meaning of the painting and its translation. The painting “El Hombre Caimán” (The Alligator Man) is a version of a myth in the Caribbean region of Colombia. We have different stories from the myth, but the most common is that of a fisherman who enjoyed spying on women as they washed their clothes and bathed in the Magdalena River.
As the fisherman wanted to watch the women unnoticed, he decides to find a witch to get a magic potion that will enable him to transform himself into an alligator. The witch gave the fisherman two potions. A red potion for him to become an alligator and a white potion for reversing the spell. The fisherman enjoyed his cleverness for some time. One day, the friend who assisted the fisherman with the white potion could not accompany him. Instead, there was another friend who, seeing the fisherman become an alligator, was afraid and dropped the bottle with the white potion which transformed the fisherman into a man again. Before spilling it completely, some drops splashed only on the fisherman´s head and the rest of his body was turned into an alligator. Since then, he became the terror of women, who did not come back to bathe in the river.
Alejandro Obregon´s painting is a colorful representation of the myth “El Hombre Caimán”. Obregon uses multiple intensified colors like red, black, green, and blue depicting a tropical landscape. One can observe superimposed geometric shapes full of dashes of bright colors. From my point of view, the message portrayed in the painting is clear and concise, so the meaning in the translated poem somehow makes such a connotation. When translating I imagined how the main character of the painting and myth feels, to which extent loneliness invades his heart and how he regrets being so naive with Mother Nature. I see the red color symbolizing his passion compared to the black color representing solitude. Similarly happens when observing the main character in the painting. One can infer that the protagonist is chasing two fairy goddesses, trying to reach for the lost love and the lost childhood.
I believe that language is a whole and that connecting with the human being through different forms of art is essential. Similarly happens with a painting. Curtis L. Carter explains, “ A painting is a complex picture symbol that can be used to communicate ideas, feelings, representations of surfaces and other kinds of information”(112) and he goes on to say, “ A style is a language of painting and its syntactic elements are the dominant kind of shapes used in the style” (117). So, what does it mean that a painting is a language? One might argue that painting is a language because it illustrates the meaning by its style and symbols. Every form of art is a language in which emotions, ideologies, and thoughts are expressed. When one type of art is translated into another, the meaning is neither affected nor lost. Furthermore, it is enriched as the different interpretations that result from these translations come from multiple thoughts, imaginations, or concepts within different social and cultural environments. “The goal is maximum preservation of what the original exemplifies as well of what it says” (Goodman, 1968, 60). In spite of this, it is difficult to come to a specific conclusion related to whether the meaning is affected between two translated art forms. I believe it is important to consider the background of a piece of art in order to understand the meaning the artist wants to convey. All artworks are inspirations and ideas that are influenced by histories and life experiences. Such factors may influence the meaning of a work of art, but this effect of meaning does not affect the meaning itself, rather it magnificently reinforces the essence of a work of art. With all things considered, and with the hope that the following translation may be a meaningful example of the interchangeable transmission of inspiration between two works of art such as a painting and a poem. As in the words of Pablo Picasso, "Painting is poetry and is always written in verse with plastic rhymes” (qtd in Gilot 112).
The Caiman
by Vanesa Rosas Rocha
Half-man, half-gator
running through the wilderness breeze
chasing joyful souls
within the warmest red sea.
Says the legend back then
that the emptiness of your heart
cannot be freed from the anguish
cannot get rid of its scars
Poor Half-man! The blackness taking over your chest
throbbing up and down
through the jungleness of your thoughts
Poor Half-gator! Darkness that clouds your gleam
scary glow arising
from the forgotten boyhood dream.
Works Cited
Carter, Curtis L. “Painting and Language: A Pictorial Syntax of Shapes.”Leonardo, vol. 9, no. 2, 1976, pp. 111–118.JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1573117.
Cassirer, Ernst. Language and Myth. Translated by Sussane K. Langer, Dovers Publications Inc., 1953.
Gilot, Françoise, and Carlton Lake. Life with Picasso. 1964.New York Book Reviews, 2019.
Goodman, Nelson. Language and Arts : An approach to a theory of symbols. The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc. 1968
Obregón, Alejandro. “El Hombre Caimán”. El Heraldo. 3 January 2018, www.elheraldo.co/alejandro- obregon
Alejandro Obregon´s painting is a colorful representation of the myth “El Hombre Caimán”. Obregon uses multiple intensified colors like red, black, green, and blue depicting a tropical landscape. One can observe superimposed geometric shapes full of dashes of bright colors. From my point of view, the message portrayed in the painting is clear and concise, so the meaning in the translated poem somehow makes such a connotation. When translating I imagined how the main character of the painting and myth feels, to which extent loneliness invades his heart and how he regrets being so naive with Mother Nature. I see the red color symbolizing his passion compared to the black color representing solitude. Similarly happens when observing the main character in the painting. One can infer that the protagonist is chasing two fairy goddesses, trying to reach for the lost love and the lost childhood.
I believe that language is a whole and that connecting with the human being through different forms of art is essential. Similarly happens with a painting. Curtis L. Carter explains, “ A painting is a complex picture symbol that can be used to communicate ideas, feelings, representations of surfaces and other kinds of information”(112) and he goes on to say, “ A style is a language of painting and its syntactic elements are the dominant kind of shapes used in the style” (117). So, what does it mean that a painting is a language? One might argue that painting is a language because it illustrates the meaning by its style and symbols. Every form of art is a language in which emotions, ideologies, and thoughts are expressed. When one type of art is translated into another, the meaning is neither affected nor lost. Furthermore, it is enriched as the different interpretations that result from these translations come from multiple thoughts, imaginations, or concepts within different social and cultural environments. “The goal is maximum preservation of what the original exemplifies as well of what it says” (Goodman, 1968, 60). In spite of this, it is difficult to come to a specific conclusion related to whether the meaning is affected between two translated art forms. I believe it is important to consider the background of a piece of art in order to understand the meaning the artist wants to convey. All artworks are inspirations and ideas that are influenced by histories and life experiences. Such factors may influence the meaning of a work of art, but this effect of meaning does not affect the meaning itself, rather it magnificently reinforces the essence of a work of art. With all things considered, and with the hope that the following translation may be a meaningful example of the interchangeable transmission of inspiration between two works of art such as a painting and a poem. As in the words of Pablo Picasso, "Painting is poetry and is always written in verse with plastic rhymes” (qtd in Gilot 112).
The Caiman
by Vanesa Rosas Rocha
Half-man, half-gator
running through the wilderness breeze
chasing joyful souls
within the warmest red sea.
Says the legend back then
that the emptiness of your heart
cannot be freed from the anguish
cannot get rid of its scars
Poor Half-man! The blackness taking over your chest
throbbing up and down
through the jungleness of your thoughts
Poor Half-gator! Darkness that clouds your gleam
scary glow arising
from the forgotten boyhood dream.
Works Cited
Carter, Curtis L. “Painting and Language: A Pictorial Syntax of Shapes.”Leonardo, vol. 9, no. 2, 1976, pp. 111–118.JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1573117.
Cassirer, Ernst. Language and Myth. Translated by Sussane K. Langer, Dovers Publications Inc., 1953.
Gilot, Françoise, and Carlton Lake. Life with Picasso. 1964.New York Book Reviews, 2019.
Goodman, Nelson. Language and Arts : An approach to a theory of symbols. The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc. 1968
Obregón, Alejandro. “El Hombre Caimán”. El Heraldo. 3 January 2018, www.elheraldo.co/alejandro- obregon
Fig.1. Alejandro Obregón. El Hombre Caimán. 1976. Theater drape.
9.40x16.30. Theater Amira de la Rosa. Barranquilla, Colombia.
Comentarios
Publicar un comentario