Caminante No Hay Camino (Antonio Machado (1875- 1939)

 

It is Sunday, my personal time to wander without walking; to travel through lines others have thought about first.

Usually, Sundays are my time to read poetry. And as I was thinking about wandering and traveling, I revisited the lines by the Spanish poet Antonio Machado (1875- 1939) from his collection Proverbios y Cantares (Proverbs and Songs.)  The most remembered and celebrated lines from that collection are Machado’s dialogue with the reader about identity and destiny. It is a symbolic poem where the poet believes that we all make our paths by walking through life, hence that we have control of our choices. In a few short lines the poet makes the reader empowered and optimistic.

Here is the original poem in Spanish: 

“Caminante, son tus huellas
El camino y nada más;
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.”

There are a number of translations I have read into English. Unfortunately the translators often are tempted to also “interpret” the original work’s intent. A representative of that temptation is a translation by Willis Barnstone in 2004, which incorporates a number of interpretations that would differ across and among readers of Merchado’s original choice of words, imagery and philosophy.

Here is the translation, which I do like, but I remain uncomfortable with a few words:

Walker, your footsteps
are the road, and nothing more.
Walker, there is no road,
the road is made by walking.
Walking you make the road,
and turning to look behind
you see the path you never
again will step upon.
Walker, there is no road,
only foam trails on the sea.

 

Huellas directly translates into “Footprints” rather than “Footsteps.” And that is important because if indeed we make the road by walking, and if we are to able to look back and see the path we made, then we should have left signs of our passage. Or prints. Even if we will not take that path again.  

Interestingly, Machado’s last two lines leave us perplexed regarding our ability of looking back AND seeing that path. Because now he suggests that the road we created by walking is like a trail left by a boat on the sea which disappears with the waves.

It reads:

Caminante, no hay camino
sino estelas en la mar

A direct translation of “estelas” would be “trails” not “foam trails” as in the English translation. This is where the interpretation of the translator feels like interference.  Perhaps “wake trails” are a better interpretation of Merchado’s message regarding the vanishing of the past.

Finally, every time I have read this poem in Spanish, I got the sense that it is about a traveler rather than a walker, although Caminante translates as Walker. To me, it is more about our travel in life, through choices we make that define our identity.

.. In my walks, I might have made a road or two. And I have looked back, without regret yet sometimes with nostalgia. And when I sit in my rocking chair and try to understand, I still believe that ships do not lose their wake trails in the sea, because trails made by cutting waves find their way back to beaches they know, to the mossy rocks that await them.

Wake trails do not disappear.

 

April 14, 2024

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2024