Happy New Year!

After a busy Christmas and a nice quiet New Year, time to roll up the sleeves and get down to some challenges to kick off 2014.

Been doing some last-minute translations for a couple of recitals in a certain distinguished London recital hall, including an obscure set of songs to poems by the great 14th-century Italian poet, Petrarch.  Not wishing to boast (ahem) but I was quite pleased with my efforts:

Or che ’l ciel e la terra (Sonnet CXXXI)

Or che’l ciel e la terra e’l vento tace
E le fere e gli augelli il sonno affrena,
Notte il carro stellato in giro mena
E nel suo letto il mar senz’onda giace,
Veggio, penso, ardo, piango; e chi mi sface
Sempre m’è inanzi per mia dolce pena:
Guerra è ’l mio stato, d’ira et di duol piena,
Et sol di lei pensando ò qualche pace.
Così sol d’una chiara fonte viva
Move ’l dolce e l’amaro ond’io mi pasco;
Una man sola mi risana e punge;
E perché ’l mio martir non giunga a riva,
Mille volte il dí moro e mille nasco;
Tanto da la salute mia son lunge.

Francesco Petrarca (1304–1374)

Now that heaven and earth and the wind are silent
and the beasts and the birds are bound in sleep,
Night leads her starry chariot on its rounds
and the ocean lies waveless upon its bed,
I look, I think, I burn, I weep;  and she who is my undoing
is always before me in my sweet pain:
I am in a state of strife, full of anger and sorrow,
and only by thinking of her do I have some peace.
Thus from a single clear gushing spring
come both the sweetness and the bitterness I feed on;
one hand alone both heals and hurts me;
and so my torment never reaches its end,
a thousand times a day I die and a thousand times I am born,
so far am I from salvation.

English translation by Jonathan Burton (c) 2014