Cover photo: Arabia at Hacienda Peñasco, La Cabra, SLP, México.
“Encrapuler” [Pulling Some Crap] introduces from the outset a polysemic interpretation to the neologism Rimbaud unveiled in one of his visionary letters dated May 13, 1871.
Capturing the depth of engagement becomes one of the primary challenges when translating a layered poem that is in direct conversation with its predecessor(s). Disregarding or obfuscating this engagement would be akin to muddling its footprints. Let us take “Encrapuler.”
Translating the title posed the inherent problem that the Rimbaldian coinage (“je m’encrapule” [I debase myself]), itself difficult to render directly due to its nuanced connotations, signifies engaging in debauched or morally degraded behavior. This reflects the desire to break free from conventional expectations and explore the depths of human experience and creativity. The colloquial expression ‘pulling some crap’ suggests debasement, particularly when actions and words compromise one’s dignity or integrity, as depicted in Arabia’s poem. Moreover, it mirrors the sound pattern of Rimbaud’s lexical invention (Encrapuler >Pulling Some Crap). To reflect the older reference of the original title, I chose cognates in the opening line of each stanza (“pardo” to “pardine” and “lágrima” to “lacrimal”). These choices position the speaker in a context that is less immediate or contemporary. Furthermore, in the opening line of the text, the verb “enbrillanté”—a neologism, normally ‘abrillantar’—is translated as ‘embrightened,’ a rare term in English, rather than the more commonly used ‘brightened.’ The reader will notice the phonetically closer rendering of the line “pené mis sombras” as “I pondered my dark’s sum,” preserving all the original consonants (p, n, m, s, r), except for ‘b.’ This choice deviates from the literal translation, ‘I suffered my shadows.’ The addition of the noun “sum” in translating “sombras” to “dark’s sum” creates a resonance, while amplifying the darkness and conveying a sense of accumulating shadowy aspects.
—Patricio Ferrari
Encrapuler
De sol pardo, enbrillanté los viejos caminos encrapulé mi rostro en el fango porque cuando éramos jóvenes cercaron sus vendas y las banderas pesadas aniquilan distancias
De sol lágrima, enbrillanté al sol cielo encrapulé la multitud de la esencia y en la lentitud del lagarto pené mis sombras sin el veneno de las acacias que perdura
Pulling Some Crap
Of pardine sun, I embrightened down tired trails I pulled the crap of my own face into mud because when we were young they shielded their wounds and the laden flags decimate distances
Of lacrimal sun, I embrightened the sun to sky I pulled the crap of the crowded core and in the lizard’s pace I pondered my dark’s sum free of the poison of acacia trees that endures
Juan Arabia is a poet, translator, literary critic, editor and publisher. Born in Buenos Aires in 1983, he is founder and director of the cultural and literary project Buenos Aires Poetry. Arabia is also in-house literary critic for the Cultural Supplement of Diario Perfil and Revista Ñ of Diario Clarín. Among his most recent poetry titles are Desalojo de la Naturaleza [Eviction of Nature] (Buenos Aires Poetry, 2018), Hacia Carcassonne [Towards Carcassonne] (Pre-Textos, 2021), and Bulmenia (Buenos Aires Poetry, 2022). After the publication of El enemigo de los Thirties [Enemy of the Thirties] (2013), awarded in France, Italy, and Macedonia, Juan participated in several poetry festivals in Latin America, Europe, and China. In 2018, on behalf of Argentina, he was invited to the “Voix vives de Méditerranée en Méditerranée” poetry festival in Sète (France). The following year he became the second Latin American poet to be invited to the “Poetry Comes to Museum LXI,” sponsored by the Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum. Arabia has translated works by Ezra Pound, Arthur Rimbaud, Dylan Thomas, and Dan Fante, among others. Two of his books have been translated into French (L’Océan Avare, trad. Jean Portante, Al Manar, 2018) and Italian (Verso Carcassonne, trad. Mattia Tarantino, Raffaelli Editore, 2022). Some of his poems have been featured in English translation by Patricio Ferrari in The Southwest Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Asymptote and Fence, among others. He lives in Retiro (Buenos Aires) with his wife — the designer, poet, and literary translator Camila Evia — and son Cátulo.
Patricio Ferrari is a poet, polyglot literary translator, and editor. Born in Merlo to Piemontese and Calabrese immigrants who settled in the outskirts of Buenos Aires at the turn of the 20th century, he left Argentina at age 16 to attend high school and play soccer in the United States as part of the Rotary Exchange Program. He received an MA in Comparative Literature from Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, an MFA in Poetry from Brown University, and a PhD in Linguistics from Universidade de Lisboa with a dissertation on the prosody of Fernando Pessoa’s trilingual poetry. As a translator and literary editor, he has published 20 books, including The Galloping Hour: French Poems by Alejandra Pizarnik (with Forrest Gander; New Directions, 2018), The Complete Works of Álvaro de Campos (with Margaret Jull Costa; New Directions, 2023), and Habla terreña by Frank Stanford (with Graciela Guglielmone; Pre-textos, 2023). In 2024, he was featured at Shanghai’s “Poetry Comes to the Museum” with Mudderun. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Poetry, The New York Review of Books, Southwest Review, and Fence, among others. Since 2017 he has resided in New York City, where he teaches in the MFA program at Sarah Lawrence College and hosts “World Poetry in Translation,” a series that highlights poets and translators across languages.
