I was once told during a management course that most employers have no idea of the talents of their staff. Perhaps publishing is unusual in attracting a large number of people of varied and unsuspected talents. Unfortunately, I have been reminded of this by the funerals that I have begun to attend over the last few years.
I recently “attended” online the funeral of Alastair Gordon, who had been the international sales director of Macmillan Press (the academic division of Macmillan Publishers) with whom I worked for a number of years. Alastair was a genial colleague, but my books were a difficult sell for him because reference works were very expensive, and I was unwilling to give overseas booksellers the high discounts that were customary. Nevertheless, Alastair did his best, and we were on very friendly terms.
I learned more about Alastair in our retirement at occasional reunion lunches, usually in Winchester. He and his wife owned a house in a tiny town, Sant Martí de Barcedana, in the Catalan Pyrenees, so we shared an interest in matters Hispanic. He was learning Catalan and was a keen walker on routes once traversed by Spanish shepherds with their flock of transhuman animals.
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| Sant Martí de Barcedana (photo by Gustau Erill i Pinyot) |
What I learned from his funeral was that Alastair was fond of memorizing poetry. Another friend from Macmillan days, Jim Papworth, read verses selected by Alastair of a Longfellow translation of the Coplas a la Muerte de su padre (Couplets on the death of his father) of Jorge Manrique (c.1440-1479). Here are the verses that Jim read:
Let from its dream the soul awaken,
And reason mark with open eyes
The scene unfolding,
How lightly life away is taken,
How cometh Death in stealthy guise,
At last beholding;
What swiftness hath the flight of pleasure
That, once attained, seems nothing more
Than respite cold;
How fain is memory to measure
Each latter day inferior
To those of old.
Beholding how each instant flies
So swift, that, as we count, ‘tis gone
Beyond recover.
Let us resolve to be more wise
Thank stake our future lot upon
What soon is over.
Let none be self-deluding, none,
Imagining some longer stay
For his own treasure
Than what today he sees undone;
For everything must pass away
In equal measure.
Our lives are fated as the rivers
That gather downward to the sea
We know as Death;
And yonder every flood delivers
The pride and pomp of seigniory
That forfeiteth;
Yonder the rivers in their splendor;
Yonder the streams of modest worth,
The rills beside them;
Till there all equal they surrender;
And so with those who toil on earth
And those who guide them.
Longfellow’s version, is not, of course, a faithful translation – that would not have been poetry. The six verses and 36 lines versions selected by Alastair are three verses and 35 lines in Manrique’s original. Here are Manrique’s three verses with my own un-poetic translation:
Recuerde el alma dormida, Let the sleeping soul recall,
avive el seso y despierte The
brain stir and awake
contemplando Contemplating
cómo se pasa la vida, How
life passes,
cómo se viene la Muerte How
Death comes
tan callando; So
silently;
cuán presto se va el placer; How
fast pleasure flees;
cómo después de acordado How
later, when recalled,
da dolor; It
pains;
cómo a nuestro parecer How
we esteem
cualquiera tiempo pasado Any
time past
fue mejor. As
better.
Pues si vemos lo presente For, if we see the present
cómo en un punto se es ido As
if it were merely a point, it is gone
y acabado, And
done with,
si juzgamos sabiamente, If
we judge wisely,
daremos lo no venido We
will see that the future
por pasado. Is
already past.
No se engañe nadie, no, No,
let nobody be deceived,
pensando que ha de durar Thinking
that what is to come
lo que espera Will
last
más que duró lo que vio, More
than lasted what we saw already,
pues que todo ha de pasar For
everything is to pass
por tal manera. In
like manner
Nuestras vidas son los ríos Our lives are rivers
que van a dar en la mar, That
flow to the sea
que es el morir: That
is death;
allí van los señoríos, Thus
pass all dominions
derechos a se acabar Straightway
to end
y consumir; And
be consumed;
allí los ríos caudales, There
go great rivers,
allí los otros medianos There
the lesser streams
y más chicos; And
the least;
y llegados, son iguales And
on arrival all are equal,
los que viven por sus manos Those
who live by their labour
y los ricos. And
the rich
Manrique’s father, Rodrigo Manrique de Lara (1406-1476), Count Paredes de Nava and Grand Master of the Order de Santiago, was famed for his feats of arms in the Reconquista against the Moors, as verse XXIX tells us:
No dexó grandes thesoros He left no great treasures
ni alcançó grandes riquezas Nor did he earn great riches
ni baxillas, Nor great wealth
mas hizo guerra a los moros But he made war on the Moors
ganando sus fortalezas Seizing their fortresses
y sus villas; And their villas;
y en las lides que venció, And in the battles that he won
muchos moros y cavallos Many Moors and horses
se perdieron, Were lost,
y en este oficio ganó And these deeds won him
las rentas y los vasallos The rents and vassals
que le dieron. That they gave him.
Fortunately, the Longfellow verses that Alastair chose for his friends and family to mark the end of his life were a much more apt selection than verse XXIX. Those verses reminded me of one of my own favourite Spanish poems, Antonio Machado’s “Caminante, son tus huellas”, the translation here from a video that includes a reading by Emilio Aponte Sierra, a Colombian refugee in Florida (https://scalar.fas.harvard.edu/resources-for-loss/caminante-no-hay-camino-by-antonio-machado-contributed-by-jerry-sevillano-2021):
Caminante, no hay camino,
se hace camino al andar.
Al andar se hace el camino,
y al volver la vista atrás
se ve la senda que nunca
se ha de volver a pisar.
Caminante, no hay camino
sino estelas en la mar.
Traveler, your footprints
are the only road, nothing else.
Traveler, there is no road;
you make your own path as you walk.
As you walk, you make your own road,
and when you look back
you see the path
you will never travel again.
Traveler, there is no road;
only a ship's wake on the sea.
Alastair’s wake speaks of a kind, thoughtful man of wide interests and a fondness for fine verse. A rather better record of a life than that of Rodrigo Manrique de Lara.
