Madison Weiss
on translating Guillermo Blest Gana
The biggest challenge that I faced when translating this poem was deciding how to balance faithfulness to the structure versus the word choice. As a petrarchan sonnet, the original poem has a very exacting form in terms of rhyme scheme and meter; I did my best to preserve these elements while still being true to the language that the poet uses. I unfortunately found myself largely forced to abandon the technical elements of the poem in the name of creating something that sounded beautiful, not formulaic, in English. The language that Blest Gana uses is so subtly evocative, and English rhyme is so limited, that it was truly difficult to create a translation that could really be considered a translation and not a re-imagining or rewriting. For me, trying to translate “Soneto” was an exercise of putting myself into the poet’s head to decide how far I could stretch his work in any given direction without losing sight of it as a whole, missing the forest for the trees.
about the author
Guillermo Blest Gana was a Chilean writer born in 1829. Originally a law student, he fell ill and decided to pursue writing instead, publishing two works of lyrical poetry during his lifetime: Poesías, his first ever publication, which was inspired by the pain of losing his sister and the love he felt for his brothers, and, thirty years later, Armonías. During this time, his poetry shifted from romanticism, a style of which he is considered an exemplary author in Chile, to classicism. Between the release of these works, he was exiled from Chile as a political dissident, but he later returned. He continued writing in Santiago until his death in 1904, at which point his friend Antonio Orrego Barros assembled, edited, and published three volumes comprising his life’s work.
about the translator
Madison Weiss is a senior at the University of Pennsylvania majoring in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, minoring in French and Spanish. They hold a deep appreciation for classic literature, deep conversation, and pairing either with a good cup of coffee.
photo by Katherine Rozsypalek
