Scott Walker - Farmer In The City (High Quality Audio) Translating is always betraying
I’m bringing back (lucky you!) my little column of free and unfaithful translations (interpretations more than translations), language—even when it’s the one you were born with, by pure chance—is a barrier and communication is only a utopian desire; so take this stuff, which we call translation only for convenience, with a grain of salt.
I’ll end here (for now) with the most difficult and probably most clumsily executed translation attempt. Scott Walker is deliberately obscure by nature, and the theme dealt with is not one to handle lightly. But here are two of my most stubborn obsessions: Pier Paolo Pasolini (and his death) and Scott Walker (and his quest for invisibility). Walker’s text recalls one of Pasolini’s most intimate poems ("Uno dei tanti epiloghi") but does so in a deviant, intangible way. Too many passages remain obscure to me (what does the number 21 refer to? Perhaps to Ninetto Davoli’s age when he was drafted? Is the farmer in the city a metaphor for feeling out of place? Why the reference to Esau? The harness on the finger or the nail that withers... etc. etc.). I present it to you as is, in its impartiality and insufficiency, trusting in the benevolence of those who read it.
The piece is beautiful, though!
Scott Walker - A Farmer In The City
I hear 21, 21, 21? I’ll give you 21, 21, 21. I listen to 21, 21, 21? I will give you 21, 21, 21
Tonight it’s you who’s wrong, I am (like) a farmer in the city. The dark, threatening farmhouses against the sky and every night I have to ask myself why. The harness on the nail to the left keeps shriveling, shriveling. Higher above me, after...
Esau, Esau
I can’t trust a man from Rio, I might trust a man from Vigo but (certainly) I can’t trust a man from Ostia.
Hey, Ninetto, remember that dream? We talked about it so many times
I hear 21, 21, 21? I’ll give you 21, 21, 21. I listen to 21, 21, 21? I will give you 21, 21, 21
And if I’m not wrong we might try to look farm to farm. Dark farmhouses against our eyes and every night and I have to ask myself why. The harness on the nail to the left keeps shriveling, shriveling. Higher above me, after...
Esau, Esau
I can’t trust a man with this shirt and (then) I should trust a man with that shirt
but (of course) I can’t trust a man with a brain full of grass. Trust his long long ocular gas
And once I was a city dweller and never felt pressured pressured but I knew nothing about horses and nothing about the threshing machine
Paolo, will you take me with you? It was the trip of a lifetime
I perceive 21, 21, 21? I’ll give you 21, 21, 21. I hear 21, 21, 21? I’ll bring you 21, 21, 21. fissi:
