How could we effectively convey the cultural, historical, and linguistic significance of Inti Raymi, the traditional religious ceremony of the Inca Empire, dedicated to the god Inti (Quechua for ‘sun’), the most revered deity in the Inca religion? Who is speaking in the poem? And in what register was the poem originally conceived?
These crucial questions emerged during the collaborative translation of the poem ‘Sacred Inti’ by Peruvian poet Raúl Cisneros, undertaken as part of the Oxford Translation Day workshop in the heart of June 2024.
Cisneros, a poet from the peasant community of Pariamarca in Ayacucho, Peru, has developed through the years works of oral narration, poetry, community theatres, and songs for Quechua communities and the Amazon. He often uses music as a powerful tool to teach his mother tongue to young audiences.
Music and rhythm were central aspects we considered when we began translating this poem, as well as a metaphysical idea of the singular “I” being lost and only reaching a fundamental truth when finding his community. We noticed the suffix ‘qani’ at the end of each line through the first stanza, which gave us the idea of beginning each verse with the singular first-person pronoun “I”, followed by a different verb that established a specific action, often with highly political connotations: “I stumbled”, “I studied”, “I plundered”.
In the second stanza, the “I” merged into a “We” (niku), with the addition that it encompasses not only the speaker and his community but also the deity ‘Inti’, who completes the circle. In order to mark this cosmological, religious and linguistic movement, we agreed to use indentation to denote a separation, a break, or a split, conveying a sense of movement.
The discussions focused on the traditional celebration of Inti Raymi, with its colourful offerings and dedications of plants, fruits, and drinks (aqa: chicha made of fermented corn) to the Inca god Sun. The word “ditches” suggested in the bridge translation, with its war-like connotations for a British audience, was changed to “waterways” to denote a sense of furrows for irrigation, giving the lands crucial strength through the flowing of water and allowing the seeds to sprout and feed the community.
The poem ends with a powerful pleading we decided to translate as “Sacred Inti, restore the earth!” an appeal to the Inca divinity to recover the earth after man’s plunders and destruction.
—Leo Boix, poet and facilitator
