Lost in Lemoncholy
On old dictionaries and striking word gold in poetry translation
Words for Blue Monday from yesteryear:
‘Lemoncholy. Melancholy: London (-1909): ob. By jocular transposition of melancholy and slight distortion of melan. cf:
‘Lemonjolly. A jocular distortion of melancholy: ca 1860-1910. Occ. lemon colly, lemon punning melan. cf. colly-molly.’ (Partridge’s Dictionary of Historical Slang, p. 532)
This autumn I’ve been reading through one thousand pages of Eric Partridge’s Dictionary of Historical Slang, an old abridged version inherited from my grandfather who liked to do crosswords. I’m sadly no crossword solver but I recommend dictionary scrolling any day as an idle pastime over social media doom scrolling. The rich store of historical slang in Partridge’s dictionary testifies to the strength of a popular irreverent spirit over the centuries.
Literary translators, as much as writers, are thieving magpies raiding any word nests around them for their own word hordes. Books, papers, snatched conversations overheard (‘Use your loaf!’), are all there to be mined.
The Croatian writer Miroslav Krleža culled words from an old Croatian dictionaries in writing his 1936 The Ballads of Petrica Kerempuh, and went on to establish the Croatian Lexicographical Institute in 1950 which now bears his name and celebrated its 75th year in 2025. It is therefore in the spirit of Krleža’s The Ballads to raid old dictionaries in translating his work.
A translator’s lot translating poetry often involves frustration and dead ends as you try to reconcile sense and sound, especially tearing your hair out over metre and rhyme (or not to rhyme and make more use of alliteration etc), and the perennial translation dilemmas over Nabokovite versus Benjaminite sensitivities to a text, namely translation striving for literal alignment or translation striving for poetic recreation.
But every so often you strike a gold nugget word or phrase for a translation. We found word gold in lemoncholy for lines in Krleža’s poem The Strolling Players from The Ballads collection whose intricate wordplay is difficult to re-create in translation. Much of The Ballads is a poetic rebellious-spirited reckoning against war, oppression, and injustice, but interwoven in its grim catalogue are both lyrical and comic moments, as in this lemoncholy episode.
Here is our draft translation of Krleža’s tale Lost in Lemoncholy:
Miroslav Krleža
Lost in Lemoncholy (1936)
Verses from Miroslav Krleža’s poem The Strolling Players
Among the musical troupers,
Among the trumpeters and tricksters,
Among them was a crotchety crooner,
A snail, a smalltown burger, taproom gabbler,
Sluggardly, beer-drinking tapster!
*
This sotted slugger, this bibulous babbler,
His hovel heart bestowed,
Upon an elegant young lady,
A Miss Lemon Lemonina…
He sobs, he moans, he pines, he broods,
He drools over her, all day long,
His Miss Lemonina is his Madonna.
How he pulls out his horns for his Citronella,
Imploring her for a roll of tobacco,
Forever and a day,
So lost is this snail in lemoncholy.
*
Meanwhile Miss Lemonina,
Miss Lemon Pimperlina,
Heart of sugared almond,
A gift she gives
To Baron Tomato,
As memento,
One sour lemon…
Now snubbed, the snail mopes
Longingly on her balcony,
Slung in the shadow,
Of this illustrious cavalier,
Of this Miss Lemonina.
*
The heart-sore snail, barroom bore,
Mosquito-clinging hanger-on,
Spineless beggar slobbers…
“This Citronella is a sour one,
She ingests our horned snail.
Then this idling Baron,
This moneybagger,
Assumes possession
Of Miss Lemonina’s balcony.
Like Don Quixote, the Spaniard,
In ceaseless humiliation,
The snail slouches for three days,
Along Lemonina’s balustrade…
But then eliminates him, the misfeasor does,
The Baron, the Lemon, the spineless scoundrel.”
*
The Baron is bare as parboiled linguine,
Shelled pea bean, salted brine,
Betwixt and between:
Ox bull and billy goat,
Blanched and broiled,
Plumped and hollowed,
Laundered and begrimed,
Flattened and beguiled,
Our Tomato-Baron, our Lemonising-Baron,
Neither head, nor tail,
Neither cloak, nor lining,
Neither here, nor there!
Verses from Miroslav Krleža’s poem The Strolling Players
Translated by Vanessa Pupavac and Mladen Pupavac
Note
As always feedback welcome on this draft translation, but please do not cite without permission.
References
Krleža, Miroslav (1936) ‘Komendrijaši.’ Balade Petrice Kerempuha. Ljubljana: Akademska založba, pp. 92-103.
Krleža, Miroslav (1946) ‘Komendrijaši.’ Balade Petrice Kerempuha. Zagreb: Nakladni Zavod Hrvatske, pp. 98-109.
Leksikografski zavod Miroslav Krleža https://www.lzmk.hr
Partridge, Eric (1961) [1937] A Dictionary of Historical Slang. Abridged by Jacqueline Simpson. Harmondsworth: Penguin.