And I've about spent my half hour.
So let me read you--
here's a surprising thing.
One of the poems from 1948 is called "A Little Negro Girl
Playing Chopin."
I should remind you that Poland and Russia
and the Lithuania of that time were also slave societies.
Serfdom was abolished around the same time
that slavery was abolished here.
And all through the 18th and 19th century,
Poland was divided between three empires--
the Prussians, the Austrians, and the Russians.
And Polish people and Polish poetry and Polish novels were--
all had the dream of a liberated and free Poland.
And the greatest expression of that hunger for freedom
in the 19th century was Chopin.
So here's a little Black girl in America playing
Chopin at some recital that this Polish diplomat is going to--
not seeing many Black people.
And he came to America with European prejudices
about this country.
Another of the first letters he wrote back, he said,
the only people here with souls are the Negroes.
"If only you had seen her, Sir Fryderyk,
How she places her dark fingers on the keys
And diligently bends her woolly head,
How she places her slender foot on the pedal
Comically childlike, on a well-trodden little shoe,
And when the hall suddenly grows quiet,
The primrose of tone unfurls slowly.
If only you had seen in the hall, in the semi-darkness,
How her teeth glitter in her open mouth,
When the grand piano bears our cares,
And how in slanting ribbons, it falls from the side,
And how in the hubbub of birdsong
through the stained glass splashes.
It was spring in a city unknown to you by name.
If only you had seen how those tones flew,
Pulled the dust moats into columns of sunlight,
Over her dark face as it rested on her palm.
You would have said it was worth it."
That's the poem.
So it was interesting in translating this poem.
David, my-- what are we going to do about these racial markers?
Should we just leave them out in the translation?
"Places her fingers on the keys and diligently bends her head,"
and leave out the "dark fingers" and the "woolly hair."
Leave out the "glittering white teeth."
We made versions of both.
And then I thought, I guess what I
should do, thinking of Czeslaw saying, mouse.
I'd better just translate what's there
and let people deal with it.