WHAT LITTLE SANDRA READ - PART ONE

WHAT LITTLE SANDRA READ

PART ONE - Sandra at Six
(later on, Sandra at Twelve and Sandra at Eighteen will be added, to reflect on which new things I discovered when it comes to literature)

These is the literature I read when I entered the Burrow (El Cau) at six. The first time in my life I wielded a tennis racket and saw a periodic table.
It was also my first contact with Shakespeare and Goethe, both translated into Catalan (I will put the original MSND scene and my own translation of Goethe, as well as of the davirón story and of the description of the tennis bear :) )


A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM

This was my introduction to the Bard of Avon: the faerie queen's romance with a clown actor endowed, thanks to a spell, with a donkey's head. I was immediately transported to a world of littlepeople more beautiful than us humans and far closer to nature, just to see the marital spat between Queen Titania and King Oberon come to a happy end.
I first read a Catalan translation/adaptation of this fragment, whose lowing-out of certain passages in the adaptation read by my 6-year-old self I have echoed in this edition, in the 3rd-grade coursebook of Llengua (Catalan language) from the Anaya publishing company's Sèrie Sol i Lluna (Sun and Moon Series). To be more precise, as the initial reading for Unit 12, S'obri el teló (Up with the Curtain), on dramatic texts:

TITANIA

Come, sit thee down upon this flowery bed,
while I thy amiable cheeks do coy,
and stick musk-roses in thy sleek smooth head,
and kiss thy fair large ears, my gentle joy.

BOTTOM

Where's Peaseblossom?

PEASEBLOSSOM

Ready.

BOTTOM

Scratch my head, Peaseblossom. Where's Monsieur Cobweb?

COBWEB

Ready.

BOTTOM

Monsieur Cobweb, good monsieur, get you your
weapons in your hand, and kill me a red-hipped
bumblebee on the top of a thistle; and, good
monsieur, bring me the honey-bag. Do not fret
yourself too much in the action, monsieur; and,
good monsieur, have a care the honey-bag break not;
I would be loath to have you overflown with a
honey-bag, signor. Where's Monsieur Mustardseed?

MUSTARDSEED

Ready.

BOTTOM

Give me your neaf, Monsieur Mustardseed. Pray you,
leave your courtesy, good monsieur.

MUSTARDSEED

What's your will?

BOTTOM

Nothing, good monsieur, but to help Cavalery Cobweb
to scratch. I must to the barber's, monsieur; for
methinks I am marvellous hairy about the face; and I
am such a tender ass, if my hair do but tickle me,
I must scratch.

TITANIA

What, wilt thou hear some music,
my sweet love?

BOTTOM

I have a reasonable good ear in music. Let's have
the tongs and the bones.

TITANIA

Or say, sweet love, what thou desirest to eat.

BOTTOM

Truly, a peck of provender: I could munch your good
dry oats. Methinks I have a great desire to a bottle
of hay: good hay, sweet hay, hath no fellow.

TITANIA

I have a venturous fairy that shall seek
the squirrel's hoard, and fetch thee new nuts.

BOTTOM

I had rather have a handful or two of dried peas.
But, I pray you, let none of your people stir me: I
have an exposition of sleep come upon me.

TITANIA

Sleep thou, and I will wind thee in my arms.
Fairies, begone, and be all ways away. Exeunt fairies
So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle
gently entwist; the female ivy so
enrings the barky fingers of the elm.
O, how I love thee! how I dote on thee! They sleep
Enter PUCK

OBERON

[Advancing] Welcome, good Robin.
See'st thou this sweet sight?
Her dotage now I do begin to pity:
For, meeting her of late behind the wood,
seeking sweet favours from this hateful fool,
I did upbraid her and fall out with her;
for she his hairy temples then had rounded
with a coronet of fresh and fragrant flowers;
and that same dew, which sometime on the buds
was wont to swell like round and orient pearls,
stood now within the pretty flowerets' eyes
like tears that did their own disgrace bewail.
When I had at my pleasure taunted her
and she in mild terms begg'd my patience,
[···]
And now [···], I will undo
this hateful imperfection of her eyes:
And, gentle Puck, take this transformed scalp
from off the head of this [···] swain;
that, he awaking when the others do,
may all [···] back again repair
and think no more of this night's accidents
but as the fierce vexation of a dream.
But first I will release the fairy queen.
Be as thou wast wont to be;
See as thou wast wont to see:
Now, my Titania; wake you, my sweet queen.

TITANIA

My Oberon! what visions have I seen!
Methought I was enamour'd of an ass.

OBERON

There lies your love. (He shows her BOTTOM).

TITANIA

How came these things to pass?
O, how mine eyes do loathe his visage now!

OBERON

Silence awhile. Robin, take off this head.
Titania, music call; and strike more dead
than common sleep of all these five the sense.

PUCK, with magical gestures, disenchants BOTTOM, taking off his donkey head.

TITANIA

Music, ho! music, such as charmeth sleep! Music, still

[...]

BOTTOM

Gods my life, stolen
hence, and left me asleep! I have had a most rare
vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to
say what dream it was: man is but an ass, if he go
about to expound this dream. Methought I was--there
is no man can tell what. Methought I was,--and
methought I had,--but man is but a patched fool, if
he will offer to say what methought I had. The eye
of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not
seen, man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue
to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream
was. I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of
this dream: it shall be called Bottom's Dream,
because it hath no bottom; and I will sing it in the
latter end of a play:
peradventure, to make it the more gracious, I shall
sing it at her death.Exit

 OBERON

Now, until the break of day,
through this house each fairy stray.
To the best bride-bed will we,
which by us shall blessed be;
and the issue there create
ever shall be fortunate.
With this field-dew consecrate,
every fairy take their gait;
and each several chamber bless,
through this palace, with sweet peace;
and the owner of it blest
Ever shall in safety rest.
Trip away; make no stay;
meet me all by break of day.

PUCK

If we shadows have offended,
think but this, and all is mended,
that you have but slumber'd here
while these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
no more yielding but a dream,
gentles, do not reprehend:
if you pardon, we will mend:
And, as I am an honest Puck,
if we have unearned luck
now to 'scape the serpent's tongue,
we will make amends ere long;
else the Puck a liar call;
so, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
and Robin shall restore amends.

HEATHLAND ROSE

These verses were my introduction to Romanticism in general and Goethe in particular: the poem "Heidenröslein", which I first encountered translated into Catalan by Joan Maragall, in Joan Fuster's children's literary anthology Un món per a infants (A World for Children):



Here is my own translation of the same Lied directly from the German into English, which I have used as a leitmotif in the Baratheon Saga. Coincidentally, the Austrian composer who put formidable and heartwarming music to these verses, Franz Schubert, was born on a 31st of January just like yours truly...



THE TENNIS BEAR (URSUS WIMBLEDON)

This is an excerpt of Stranalandia (Extrañalandia in the Spanish translation), a fantasy zoological compendium by Italian author Stefano Benni, an excerpt which I first read as a unit-initial reading in another Anaya coursebook, this one from the early 90s (those vintage grammar textbooks had some very interesting reads, not like today...).

Tennis Bear (Ursus wimbledon)
According to Stephen Lupus, this plantigrade originated in Australia, yet currently it is only endemic to Strangeland. Mother Nature has predisposed it for tennis-playing: note the racket-shaped ears and the characteristic tennis sneakers on the hind feet. Tennis bears spend hours and hours on the red beaches of Seaslug Bay playing tennis against one another (Lupus counted up to 128 individuals).
The rules of bear tennis are quite similar to those of human tennis, the only difference being the lack of an umpire, since these plantigrades are endowed with an extraordinary Olympic spirit and rarely protest upon losing a match. Only in the case of severe errors do the bears get irate and perform a "zok," their counterpart of throwing the racket on the ground. Since the racket is one of its ears, the angry bear throws a large pumpkin on the ground and roars "ZOK!" (which means, more or less, "curses!") During mating season, they arrange mixed doubles matches: a male and a female on every team.
The tennis level of these plantigrades is excellent: Lupus tried to challenge one of them to a match, using himself a rudimentary wooden racket with calamari tentacle strings, and he lost game, set, and match with a score of 6-0. Only then did he realize that Oswaldo (a hobbit-like humanoid native to Strangeland) had eaten the strings of his racket.



WHAT DOES A DAVIRÓN LOOK LIKE?

Another great story from the Anaya Sol y Luna coursebooks, this time from the Castilian counterpart (Lengua 3º) of the book whose Catalan version contained the MSND scene. I was, on one hand, disappointed, by the lack of Shakespeare, but, on the other, I learned to know a new kind of magical creatures: the davirones (created by a genial Pilar Mateos), hairy asexuated tailed kobolds, similar to trolls, that live in treetops in the woodland pocket dimension of Daviroland (Davirolandia). Furthermore, feeling different emotions makes davirones change colour: for instance, they turn literally red with anger or green with envy. This is the initial reading of Unit , aptly titled "¿Cómo es un davirón?" ("What does a Davirón Look Like?"):

(When I get my hands on the book, I will post the text and my translation thereof. To be placed here soon).


HIMNO DE LA FEDERACIÓN ESPAÑOLA DE BOXEO (With commentaries by Cela)
One thing that surely made my granny Ana, bless her soul, wince (aside from communists, socialists, and frogs) was boxing. She said it was a barbarians' sport, uncouth and too violent. However, Camilo José Cela was one of the Spanish authors she praised and adored the most, recommending me to read Cela, who wrote the prologues to my preschool-age Gloria Fuertes poetry books. At El Cau they had a little Cela book from that deep-green-with-golden-letters Renfe book collection (Biblioteca de Literatura Universal), Café de artistas y otros papeles volanderos. It contained the Franco-era anthem of the Spanish Boxing Federation, in the Voltairian essay "Lecturas para el desayuno" ("Breakfast Reads") that quickly became my favourite -- among other things, for listing the left- and right-wing newspapers of each Spanish region (the Levante and Las Provincias that Cela gives for my own Valencia Region are still being published and read) and this anthem, a heartily welcomed song as a breather from his chaotic prose, that I happened to learn by heart and remember through the years (and now I'm 24!). Since I haven't found the tune, I sing it to the tune I composed in my childhood: the first four stanzas to the Imperial March of Star Wars and the two latter to the refrain of La Marseillaise (¡Arri-i-iii-ba boxeado-o-ooor!). Here is the fragment, putting the boxing anthem into context to understand the profound sass and irony of the author:

Pero no todo ha de ser calamidad ajena a la hora de la delicia del desayuno propio. El espíritu también hace acto de presencia en las páginas concebidas para la digestión, y la poesía está latente en ellas. Véase, si no, el himno de la Federación Española de Boxeo, del que nos instruye la prensa.

El himno no puede ser más sentido y emocionante, y de él puede decirse, sin miedo al error, que agrada a todos los españoles, con la sola excepción de los espíritus derrotistas y enemigos de la crítica constructiva, que tampoco faltan entre nosotros. De lo que ya no nos informa el periódico es si fue o no fue cantado en la olimpiada de Méjico (sic), después de las tundas que nos dieron, no los caballerosos púgiles adversos, sino la altura sobre el nivel del mar y las lamentables actuaciones de los árbitros, impropias del espíritu olímpico.


EXCERPT FROM LA VIDA ES SUEÑO
Another book that was available at the Burrow library was Calderón de la Barca's masterpiece. The whole play being in verse, I gladly learned some passages by heart as well. This is one such passage of those I still know by heart: the cupbearer/royal advisor telling the king how he drugged the crown prince, locked in a keep way out in the provinces, to convey him back to the royal palace in a carriage:

Viéndole ya enfurecido
           con esto, que ha sido el tema
           de su dolor, le brindé     
           con la pócima, y apenas
           pasó desde el vaso al pecho
           el licor, cuando las fuerzas
           rindió al sueño, discurriendo
           por los miembros y las venas 
           un sudor frío, de modo
           que, a no saber yo que era
           muerte fingida, dudara
           de su vida.  En esto llegan
           las gentes de quien tú fías   
           el valor de esta experiencia,

The official English translation goes like this:



There are two Dermarkian translations, one I have done in pentameter (think Shakespeare) and one in ballad meter (think The Rains of Castamere):

TRANSLATION 1: PENTAMETER




TRANSLATION 2: BALLAD METER