Consecration of the Aleph Bet
Bilingual Portuguese/English Edition
by Leonor Scliar-Cabral, translated by Alexis Levitin
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About this book
Horns rise up with force, igneous, aglow,
to burst apart the mysteries of time,
while scribes revive prophetic words, divine,
on pure papyrus, salvaged long ago.
A bilingual treasure trove, that is the Portuguese poetry of Leonor Scliar-Cabral and the stellar rendering into English, by her trusted translator Alexis Levitin. Translation is an art and interpretation – delving deep into the realm of Scliar-Cabral’s letters, Levitin crafts sonnets that feel sacred and mysterious.
Lenore Scliar-Cabral’s Consecration of the Aleph Bet—startling, profound, masterfully composed and erudite—belongs in the good company it keeps, taking its place beside Rimbaud’s Voyelles, Karl Shapiro’s The Alphabet, Terrance Hayes’ How to Draw a Perfect Circle, and Molly Peacock’s Alphabetique among others. A delight, a tutorial, a meditation—of which, yes, Borges would heartily approve.
—Danny Lawless, Editor of Plumes
Leonor Scliar-Cabral writes poems of intensity and great beauty, marrying intellect and passion, as exemplified in her extraordinary collection Consecration of the Aleph Bet. This collection of 22 sonnets, one for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet, is a tour de force: The sonnet form has rarely served so expansive an undertaking as it brilliantly serves here. Each letter’s sonnet embraces history, geography, religion, and the human condition, as in these powerful evocative lines from two poems: “Like Job, we’re prisoners of straightened spaces / …Our hangman is a silent clock, stopped dead, / … Garroted, we gaze ahead.” and “A long Phoenician keel with fanning oars / for seven moons plows through the darkened seas…” Consecration of the Aleph Bet includes the original Portuguese text and Alexis Levitin’s sensitive translation, expertly maintaining the original’s meaning and the musicality of the demanding sonnet form. Scliar-Cabral’s haunting complex poems amply reward repeated readings.
—Miriam N. Kotzin, author of Debris Field
About the Author and the Translator
Leonor Scliar-Cabral is Professor Emerita at the Federal University of Santa Catarina in Brazil. She continues to work as a psycholinguist in the field of literacy training. Her poetry has appeared in Brazil in the following volumes: Sonnets, Memories of the Sephardim, Of Erotic Senectitude, The Sun Fell on the Guaíba, Consecration of the Aleph Bet, and The Book of Joseph. All of the poems included in her collection Consecration of the Aleph Bet have appeared in the following literary magazines: Amethyst Review, Blue Unicorn, Epoch, Home Planet News, Measure, niv, Oberon Poetry Magazine, Per Contra, Plume, and Poetica Magazine. Poems drawn from her recent Book of Joseph have been accepted by Amethyst, Blue Unicorn, International Poetry Review, and Metamorphoses.
Alexis Levitin has published fifty books of translations, including Clarice Lispector’s Soulstorm and Eugenio de Andrade’s Forbidden Words, both from New Directions. His most recent translations of poetry include: from Brazil, five volumes by Salgado Maranhão and two collections by Astrid Cabral; from Portugal, Rosa Alice Branco’s Cattle of the Lord and Eugenio de Andrade’s Furrows of Thirst, and from Ecuador, Carmen Vascones’ Outrage. He is the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts translation awards and has held Fulbright positions in Portugal, Brazil, and Ecuador. He is Leonor Scliar-Cabral’s official translator into English.
"Aleph"
Horns rise up with force, igneous, aglow,
to burst apart the mysteries of time,
while scribes revive prophetic words, divine,
on pure papyrus, salvaged long ago.
You’ll carry through the sands your great design
so that the holy voice will always be
alive, beyond the wild sundered sea,
as you your realm with sword and flame define.
Each word’s initial sound will henceforth be
inscribed by you, a letter like a seal.
The part calls forth the whole and so the script
becomes a tale, as sentences depict
how G-d called out, encouraging your zeal
to fix your ties for all eternity.
"Bet"
Now through the entrance of the house you come
unto the fire always pulsing heat
and giving forth maternal Jewish warmth
to all four sheltering walls of that retreat.
The turning of the arms, the slow advance
in search of other ways for those straight lines,
until they come curved back, with breasts as guides,
the refuge now of other written signs
first printed out by scribes who wrote on clay
and then on scrolls, papyrus and on parchment.
Celestial vault, close nestled on your breast,
with intimate companionship’s caress,
immortalizing sheltered utterance,
vowels join at last their consonants to stay.
"Gimel"
You go through doorways and you cross frontiers
astride a camel’s back. Dissatisfied,
harassed, you burst forth in a new-made guise,
and cross the Mare Nostrum without fears,
friend, host to letters of another kind.
Prudent, with rounded pouch well fortified,
your vital reservoir now purified,
you sprinkle for all time the spreading vines.
Waning moon, semicircle of a cowl,
a scattering of values forced to bow
to gestures of predominating vowels,
at times ahead and then at times behind,
an altering, converting shape and sign,
resuscitating straight tangential lines.
