Last Verse written by Saddam Hussein

I suspect to what degree this verse is translatable at all. Leave alone the heavy political implications, leave alone the doomed untranslatable register, leave alone the remoteness of the original language, leave alone the field and habitus of the poet, leave alone the mystified background of its production, a glimpse of the title itself refuses interpretation: a Florid Farewell——what could that be?A bloodily colour of red? An elaborated and extravagant style of writing?

I first came across this verse from sina.com, a Chinese website. And here is an attempted back-translation into English.

Let go

Let go of your soul,
My beloved friends.
You are the dearest of my soul,
And no one shelters my heart like you.

Outsiders intruding our home,
on the face of those who yields, Tears will eventually flood
We face the wolves with bear chests,
We do not tremble in front of the beasts.

For you and your country,
The soul I devote
In this hard time, blood is nothing but cheap

Attacked,
We never knelt or bend for honour
But even for the enemies, due respect we do hold.

I compared it later with the English version release by the Times.
Unbind It

Unbind your soul. It is my soul mate and you are my soul¡¯s beloved.
No house could have sheltered my heart as you have.

The enemies forced strangers into our sea
And he who serves them will be made to weep.

Here we unveil our chests to the wolves
And will not tremble before the beast.

I sacrifice my soul for you and for our nation
Blood is cheap in hard times

We never kneel or bend when attacking
But we even treat our enemy with honor.

I suspect if the English translation was deliberately made without a rhyme, so that it reads less like a poem. After all, it is not a pleasant link between Hussein and a poet. Besides that, the Chinese version and the english version I’ve got are sort of alike. Maybe the Chinese one was translated from English rather than from the original after all.

Xiu Wang : 09 Jan 2007 01:29 |  Tags: Translation |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem