«La máscara de los dioses olvidados»: Clark Ashton Smith; poema y análisis.
La máscara de los dioses olvidados (The Masque of Forsaken Gods) es un poema mitológico del escritor norteamericano Clark Ashton Smith (1893-1961), publicado en la antología de 1912: El caminante estelar y otros poemas (The Star-Treader and Other Poems).
La máscara de los dioses olvidados, uno de los grandes poemas de Clark Ashton Smith, regresa sobre un motivo central en la producción poética del autor: la mitología. El motivo principal del poema, tal como lo anuncia su título, es la caída de los dioses paganos.
En este caso, La máscara de los dioses olvidados de Clark Ashton Smith se centra en los mitos griegos, primero a través del diálogo entre el poeta y el filósofo, y luego con la presencia de los dioses: Zeus (Jove), Pan, Artemisa, Apolo, Afrodita; y algunas criaturas mitológicas como las Ninfas.
La máscara de los dioses olvidados.
The Masque of Forsaken Gods, Clark Ashton Smith (1893-1961)
Escena: Un claro de luna en una medianoche de verano.
El POETA.
¡Qué pálido es el zafiro de la noche central,
donde las estrellas se vuelven grises!
El verde del verano, intenso durante el día,
se torna opaco y tenue bajo la monótona luna,
que en esta ausencia del apasionado sol
se sumerge en un sueño de color y sonido:
el aspecto vivo y vívido del mundo.
Incluso el pensamiento es extrañamente vencido,
como el pálido comienzo de un viaje onírico.
Aquí se desarrolló el teatro de un milagro,
en un mundo que olvidó sus primeros sueños
a través largos años escépticos,
y que ahora podría volver a ocurrir.
EL FILÓSOFO.
La Cazadora ya no cabalga
entre los rostros invertidos de las estrellas:
no es más que la cáscara muerta de un mundo frío,
rebosante de desolación.
Los antiguos dioses de la Tierra, los dioses
que acechan como los sueños de cada joven planeta,
han huido de los años incrédulos,
cansados de usar múltiples máscaras
que revelan pero que también sirven para ocultar.
No queda fe suficiente para traerlos de vuelta;
Pan regresó a sus bosques, Diana a su luna,
y todos los poderes que una vez hicieron populoso
un mundo demacrado donde el tiempo ahora se agota.
Sin embargo, la Juventud, que vive, podría reclamar
el desvanecido panteón, en una noche así,
bajo la luna asombrosa,
cuando las partículas del Tiempo se desgastan,
y el pensamiento mira hacia atrás, a los años más simples,
hasta que toda la visión parece distante.
Si uno tiene fe, puede que los vea,
solo una vez, y no más,
pues el Tiempo no es hospitalario,
y los otros no pueden quedarse.
EL POETA.
¡Las silenciosas oleadas de luz
y los humos se asemejan a un mar espectral
del cual nacen formas desconocidas!
¿Es una multitud de luminosas nubes blancas,
fantasmas de los Titanes de la antigua tormenta
impulsados por la muerte,
los que flotan bajo la luna y hablan
como los últimos ecos de un trueno pasado?
Son los dioses olvidados, que avanzan
sobre el círculo mágico que la luna dibuja
como una antigua hechicera alrededor del claro.
EL FILÓSOFO.
No los veo; la visión está dirigida
solo a tu aguda y ansiosa juventud.
JOVE.
Todo el cielo y la tierra fueron una vez mi trono;
ahora solo tengo al viento.
Un mundo de columnas me sostuvo:
sin embargo, la vieja incredulidad del hombre
no dejó nada para mis pies.
PAN.
El hombre me ha olvidado:
sin embargo, parece que mi memoria
aún entristece las voces melancólicas del bosque,
el Eco no olvida mi música,
ni la Tierra los senderos que durante años he caminado.
ARTEMISA.
El tiempo es frío
con la amada belleza de antaño.
Los dioses deben temblar
cuando los sueños y las esperanzas
abandonan el corazón del hombre,
y la desilusión,
más fría que la piedra,
se levanta hasta que el antiguo trono
de la belleza se vuelve oscuro y vacío.
Ahora debo llorar,
sin hogar en las profundidades
donde una vez rodó mi carro;
llorar en vano, con tristeza,
el inmemorial dolor del hombre
que huyó de la luz y la belleza.
APOLO.
El Tiempo se fatigó de mi canción.
Un rey saciado y caprichoso
que por su placer me ordenó cantar,
primero entre su multitud de juglares;
hasta que, dominado por la melodía,
su oído se volvió débil para la voz y la lira:
olvidando entonces el deseo del Tiempo,
su pensamiento estaba vacío de mí.
AFRODITA.
Yo, nacida del sonido y la espuma,
hija del mar y los vientos,
fui fuego sobre la humanidad,
adorada en Siria, en Grecia y Roma.
El Tiempo me avivó con su aliento,
el amor encontró un nuevo calor en mí
y la vida fue un éxtasis,
hasta que me volví mortal con el soplo de la muerte.
UNA NINFA.
¿Cómo puede el mundo seguir siendo hermoso
cuando la belleza huye de sí misma?
Es como la faz muda y marmórea de una chica muerta;
y los que estamos aquí somos como el espíritu
de voces pasadas, como el movimiento y el color vivo
en aquello que ya no se moverá, ni volverá a hablar.
OTRA NINFA.
Más bien digamos que este mundo encantador y sin vida
no es más que una apariencia rígida, que falsifica
el mundo que era: ni los dioses han conservado
el poder que una vez ejercieron,
dándole vitalidad a la críptica irresponsabilidad de la piedra,
esa estatua que Pigmalión hizo y amó.
ATE.
Yo, que era la discordia entre los hombres,
sola entre las jerarquías del Tiempo,
encuentro ahora que el Tiempo ya no me necesita,
que no hay vacíos que yo pueda llenar.
EL POETA.
Dígame, oh dioses, ¿estamos condenados
para siempre a caer entre los vientos estelares,
sin encontrar liberación y paz en ninguna parte?
¿Seremos excluidos de las puertas de los soles,
como los espíritus cuyos nombres
están borrados de las listas del tiempo,
aunque ellos mismos aún vagan sin ser destruidos?
LOS DIOSES JUNTOS.
Sin trono, exiliados e impotentes,
en la triste desilusión del hombre,
pasamos con la juventud sin retorno de la Tierra,
nosotros, que fuimos el semblante de la verdad,
el velo que ocultaba el vacío infinito,
desnudo, sin sentido,
la pálida y universal Esfinge
que cada mundo enfrenta al fin, y se hunde.
Los nuevos dioses defienden
por un momento la mirada del hombre,
cada uno es un velo que permanece,
hasta que los nuevos dioses, desacreditados,
como la niebla que se derrite con el mediodía, huyen,
ese poder opresivo, ilimitado, la tiranía de la nada.
Nuestro poder está muerto sobre la tierra,
con los primeros cielos y albores del tiempo,
pero en el lejano y joven clima de otros mundos, ha renacido.
Sí, aunque no encontramos la forma de volver,
extraviados como plumas en el viento,
ni a la tierra ni los cielos eternos,
descubrimos altares frescos en una esfera distante,
llenos de fragancia, brillantes con el fuego,
nuevos corazones para abrigarnos en la noche;
hasta que de nuevo seamos desterrados,
y huyamos en vuelo mientras agonizan las llamas del sueño.
Scene: A moonlit glade on a summer midnight.
THE POET.
How pale the sapphire of the central night,
Wherein the stars turn grey! The summer's green,
Edgéd and strong by day, is dull and faint
Beneath the moon's all-monorating mood,
That in this absence of the impassioned sun
Sways to a sleep of sound and calm of color
The live and vivid aspect of the world.
Even thought itself is strangely overcome,
And like the pale beginning of a dream.
Here were the theater of a miracle,
If such, within a world long alienate
From its first dreams, and shut with skeptic years,
Might now befall.
THE PHILOSOPHER.
The Huntress rides no more
Across the upturned faces of the stars:
'Tis but the dead shell of a frozen world,
Glttering with desolation. Earth's old gods—
The gods that haunt like dreams each planet's youth—
Are fled from years incredulous, and tired
With penetrating of manifolded masks
That give but emptiness they served to hide.
Remains not faith enough to bring them back—
Pan to his wood, Diana to her moon,
And all the powers that once made populous
A haggard world where Time grows weary now.
Yet Youth, that lives, might for a little claim
That vanished pantheon, on such a night,
When, under the lowering marvel of the moon,
The films of time wear perilously thin,
And thought looks backward to the simpler years,
Till all the vision seems but just beyond.
If one have faith, it may be that he shall
Behold them once—once only, and no more,
Because of Time's inhospitality,
For which they may not stay.
THE POET.
The quiet light
Surges and fumes like to a spectral sea
Whereof relimning foundered shapes are born!
Is it a throng of luminous white clouds—
Phantoms of some old storm's death-driven Titans,
That float beneath the moon, and speak with voices
Like the last echoes of a thunder spent?
'Tis the forsaken gods, that win a foothold
About the magic circle which the moon
Draws like some old enchantress round the glade.
THE PHILOSOPHER.
I see them not; the vision is addressed
Only to thine acute and eager youth.
JOVE.
All heaven and earth were once my throne;
Now I have but the wind alone
The pillared world supported me:
Yet man's old incredulity
Left nothing for my feet.
PAN.
Man hath forgotten me:
Yet seems it that my memory
Saddens the wistful voices of the wood;
Echo forgets my music not,
Nor Earth my tread where trampling years have stood.
ARTEMIS.
Time hath grown cold
Toward beauty loved of old.
The gods must quake
When dreams and hopes forsake
The heart of man,
And disillusion's ban,
More chill than stone,
Rears till the former throne
Of loveliness
Is dark and tenantless.
Now must I weep—
Homeless within the deep
Where once of old
Mine orbéd chariot rolled—
And mourn in vain
Man's immemorial pain
Uncomforted
Of light and beauty fled.
APOLLO.
Time wearied of my song—
A satiate and capricious king
Who for his pleasure bade me sing,
First of his minstrel throng;
Till, cloyed with melody,
His ear grew faint to voice and lyre:
Forgotten then of Time's desire,
His thought was void of me.
APHRODITE.
I, born of sound and foam,
Child of the sea and wind,
Was fire upon mankind—
Fuelled with Syria, and with Greece and Rome.
Time fanned me with his breath,
Love found new warmth in me,
And Life its ecstasy,
Till I grew deadly with the wind of death.
A NYMPH.
How can the world be still so beautiful
When beauty's self is fled ? 'Tis like the mute
And marble loveliness of some dead girl;
And we that hover here are as the spirit
Of former voice and motion and live color
In that which shall not stir nor speak again.
ANOTHER NYMPH.
Nay, rather say this lovely, lifeless world
Is but a rigid semblance, counterfeiting
The world which was: nor have the gods retained
Such power as once informed and rendered vital
The cryptic irresponsiveness of stone—
That statue which Pygmalion made and loved.
ATÈ.
I, who was discord among men,
Alone of all Time's hierarchy
Find that Time hath no need of me,
No lack that I might fill again.
THE POET.
Tell me, O gods, are ye forever doomed
To fall and flutter among spatial winds,
Finding release nor foothold anywhere—
Debarred from doors of all the suns, like spirits
Whose names are blotted from the lists of time,
Though they themselves yet wander undestroyed?
THE GODS TOGETHER.
Throneless, discrowned, and impotent,
In man's sad disillusionment,
We passed with Earth's returnless youth,
Who were the semblances of truth,
The veils that hid the vacantness
Infinite, naked, meaningless,
The blank and universal Sphinx
Each world confronts at last—and sinks.
New gods forefend awhile the gaze
Of man—each one a veil that stays—
Till the new gods, discredited,
Like mist that melts with noon, are fled—
That power oppressive, limitless,
The tyranny of nothingness.
Our power is dead upon the earth
With the first dews and dawns of time,
But in the far and younger clime
Of other worlds, it hath rebirth.
Yea, though we find not entrance here—
Astray like feathers on the wind,
To neither earth nor heaven consigned—
Fresh altars in a distant sphere
Are keen with fragrance, bright with fire,
New hearths to warm us from the night,
Till, banished thence, we pass in flight
While all the flames of dream expire.
Clark Ashton Smith (1893-1961)
THE POET.
How pale the sapphire of the central night,
Wherein the stars turn grey! The summer's green,
Edgéd and strong by day, is dull and faint
Beneath the moon's all-monorating mood,
That in this absence of the impassioned sun
Sways to a sleep of sound and calm of color
The live and vivid aspect of the world.
Even thought itself is strangely overcome,
And like the pale beginning of a dream.
Here were the theater of a miracle,
If such, within a world long alienate
From its first dreams, and shut with skeptic years,
Might now befall.
THE PHILOSOPHER.
The Huntress rides no more
Across the upturned faces of the stars:
'Tis but the dead shell of a frozen world,
Glttering with desolation. Earth's old gods—
The gods that haunt like dreams each planet's youth—
Are fled from years incredulous, and tired
With penetrating of manifolded masks
That give but emptiness they served to hide.
Remains not faith enough to bring them back—
Pan to his wood, Diana to her moon,
And all the powers that once made populous
A haggard world where Time grows weary now.
Yet Youth, that lives, might for a little claim
That vanished pantheon, on such a night,
When, under the lowering marvel of the moon,
The films of time wear perilously thin,
And thought looks backward to the simpler years,
Till all the vision seems but just beyond.
If one have faith, it may be that he shall
Behold them once—once only, and no more,
Because of Time's inhospitality,
For which they may not stay.
THE POET.
The quiet light
Surges and fumes like to a spectral sea
Whereof relimning foundered shapes are born!
Is it a throng of luminous white clouds—
Phantoms of some old storm's death-driven Titans,
That float beneath the moon, and speak with voices
Like the last echoes of a thunder spent?
'Tis the forsaken gods, that win a foothold
About the magic circle which the moon
Draws like some old enchantress round the glade.
THE PHILOSOPHER.
I see them not; the vision is addressed
Only to thine acute and eager youth.
JOVE.
All heaven and earth were once my throne;
Now I have but the wind alone
The pillared world supported me:
Yet man's old incredulity
Left nothing for my feet.
PAN.
Man hath forgotten me:
Yet seems it that my memory
Saddens the wistful voices of the wood;
Echo forgets my music not,
Nor Earth my tread where trampling years have stood.
ARTEMIS.
Time hath grown cold
Toward beauty loved of old.
The gods must quake
When dreams and hopes forsake
The heart of man,
And disillusion's ban,
More chill than stone,
Rears till the former throne
Of loveliness
Is dark and tenantless.
Now must I weep—
Homeless within the deep
Where once of old
Mine orbéd chariot rolled—
And mourn in vain
Man's immemorial pain
Uncomforted
Of light and beauty fled.
APOLLO.
Time wearied of my song—
A satiate and capricious king
Who for his pleasure bade me sing,
First of his minstrel throng;
Till, cloyed with melody,
His ear grew faint to voice and lyre:
Forgotten then of Time's desire,
His thought was void of me.
APHRODITE.
I, born of sound and foam,
Child of the sea and wind,
Was fire upon mankind—
Fuelled with Syria, and with Greece and Rome.
Time fanned me with his breath,
Love found new warmth in me,
And Life its ecstasy,
Till I grew deadly with the wind of death.
A NYMPH.
How can the world be still so beautiful
When beauty's self is fled ? 'Tis like the mute
And marble loveliness of some dead girl;
And we that hover here are as the spirit
Of former voice and motion and live color
In that which shall not stir nor speak again.
ANOTHER NYMPH.
Nay, rather say this lovely, lifeless world
Is but a rigid semblance, counterfeiting
The world which was: nor have the gods retained
Such power as once informed and rendered vital
The cryptic irresponsiveness of stone—
That statue which Pygmalion made and loved.
ATÈ.
I, who was discord among men,
Alone of all Time's hierarchy
Find that Time hath no need of me,
No lack that I might fill again.
THE POET.
Tell me, O gods, are ye forever doomed
To fall and flutter among spatial winds,
Finding release nor foothold anywhere—
Debarred from doors of all the suns, like spirits
Whose names are blotted from the lists of time,
Though they themselves yet wander undestroyed?
THE GODS TOGETHER.
Throneless, discrowned, and impotent,
In man's sad disillusionment,
We passed with Earth's returnless youth,
Who were the semblances of truth,
The veils that hid the vacantness
Infinite, naked, meaningless,
The blank and universal Sphinx
Each world confronts at last—and sinks.
New gods forefend awhile the gaze
Of man—each one a veil that stays—
Till the new gods, discredited,
Like mist that melts with noon, are fled—
That power oppressive, limitless,
The tyranny of nothingness.
Our power is dead upon the earth
With the first dews and dawns of time,
But in the far and younger clime
Of other worlds, it hath rebirth.
Yea, though we find not entrance here—
Astray like feathers on the wind,
To neither earth nor heaven consigned—
Fresh altars in a distant sphere
Are keen with fragrance, bright with fire,
New hearths to warm us from the night,
Till, banished thence, we pass in flight
While all the flames of dream expire.
Clark Ashton Smith (1893-1961)
Poemas góticos. I Poemas de Clark Ashton Smith.
Más literatura gótica:
El análisis, traducción al español y resumen del poema de Clark Ashton Smith: La máscara de los dioses olvidados (The Masque of Forsaken Gods), fueron realizados por El Espejo Gótico. Para su reproducción escríbenos a elespejogotico@gmail.com
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Todos los dioses un día serán olvidados
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