This site uses cookies. Some of these cookies are essential to the operation of the site, while others help to improve your experience by providing insights into how the site is being used. For more information, please see the ProZ.com privacy policy.
Cookie settings
en las cuatro consumar
NRP

Glossary entry

Spanish term or phrase:

pluma a comer y cenar

English translation:

\"quills\" [large bird] for lunch and dinner / untranslatable play on words!!

Added to glossary by Lydia De Jorge
Jul 1, 2019 23:42
4 yrs ago
2 viewers *
Spanish term

pluma a comer y cenar

Spanish to English Art/Literary Poetry & Literature poesía barroca española - JÁCARA NUEVA DE LA ZANGARILLEJA
Another from the same jácara. Thank you for your input!


De las cinco reglas,
solo la zangarilleja
aprendió a multiplicar,
¡zarandillo y andar!

Aunque pudo por discreta
la zangarilleja
en las cuatro consumar,
¡zarandillo y andar!

A escribir, si por tener
la zangarilleja
**pluma a comer y cenar,**
¡zarandillo y andar!
Proposed translations (English)
3 "plume/pen" [pork's boneless flank] for lunch and dinner / untranslatable play on words!!
References
Yo no se de cuando es el texto, pero has...

Discussion

Carol Gullidge Jul 6, 2019:
Thanks Lydia! I should perhaps have added the obvious :-

The more birds that she ate
the more quills she could get

But enough of this, I have a ✈️ to catch. Have a nice weekend!
Lydia De Jorge (asker) Jul 5, 2019:
Brilliant, Carol! I don't know if you saw a previous entry where I had indicated that I was thinking of using 'quill'. This is just precious!
Carol Gullidge Jul 5, 2019:
Thanks, Charles Have a nice weekend!
Charles Davis Jul 3, 2019:
@Carol Love it! Thanks
Carol Gullidge Jul 3, 2019:
just for fun - a little bit of doggerel when supplied with a quill
she’d dash off a bill;
and thus was she able
to fill up her table
with nothing less pleasant
than pigeon or pheasant
for everyday fare.
The foie gras or jugged hare -
at her behest -
were kept for best,
while to enhance her mood
and wash down all this food,
she’d never eschew
the odd magnum or two


Apologies to all, especially Lydia!
Lydia De Jorge (asker) Jul 3, 2019:
@ Charles You have outdone yourself! I can't tell you how much I appreciate your brilliant input. I am thinking of using 'quill' or 'quill pen' as the closest she's ever been to a writing tool. Something along those lines.
JohnMcDove Jul 3, 2019:
@ Charles - Wow! Thank you very much for all this data. It's funny that I kind of thought about the "pigeons" or any "fowls" as a metonimyc connection to this "pluma". I doubt this is because my grandmother was from Villanueva de los Infantes (where Don Francisco de Quevedo "ended" his life), but "todo ayuda"... :-) Maybe Lydia can find some play on words with some pigeon related culinary term... ? / At any rate, your contributions are AVE-some!! ;-))
Charles Davis Jul 3, 2019:
@Carol Yes, Becky Sharp is another great example: Vanity Fair is a wonderful novel (I've never enjoyed anything else by Thackeray as much). It's a rich vein; there's Zola's Nana, for example. (It's usually obligatory at this point to mention Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman.) The poem we have here is pretty crude by comparison. I agree; she doesn't seem to be genuinely interested in being a "good person". But the idea is certainly there in Guzmán de Alfarache, and ultimately it is largely thanks to that book (not an easy read) that the picaresque has been such a fruitful literary tradition for so long in so many places.

I may have misinterpreted the rules; anywhere, it's there or thereabouts.
Carol Gullidge Jul 3, 2019:
the link does work, BUT you need to scroll up to page 3, where it embarks on "PRIMERA REGLA, que se dize Numerar",... followed by "Segunda regla llamada sumar", etc, etc.
They have already been listed on Page 1.
Carol Gullidge Jul 3, 2019:
@Charles: reminds me also of "Vanity Fair"! ... although Becky does have a far kinder end

I already had the 5 "reglas" (from the same book that you quote from): https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=omZnAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA8&lpg=...

Hmmh, that doesn't look very feasible, but perhaps worth a try... If the link doesn't work, I'll delete it

According to this, the Rules are (in this order):-

1 Counting (units, tens, hundreds, thousands ...)
2 Adding
3 Subtracting
4 Multiplying
5 Dividing

And, of course, she couldn't have learned to write without first being able to read - at least, when it suited her.

Incidentally, I wasn't implying (above) that she was trying to improve herself in any way other than enriching herself at others' expense (hence being so adept at multiplying - again, when it suited her!
Charles Davis Jul 3, 2019:
@Carol Absolutely; she is anything but dumb! Though it's a matter of native wit rather than learning.

It may be worth adding here that the desire to improve oneself by getting an education is a generic feature of the picaresque, though the desire to be live a genuinely good life is generally frustrated by a combination of bad luck and bad inclinations. For women, in any case, opportunities for actual schooling were virtually non-existent; higher-class women were educated at home.
Charles Davis Jul 3, 2019:
La Zangarilleja, writing and feathers (4) Does this really mean she learned to write? I doubt it. Writing is alien to her character and career as a literary type. And it was relatively unusual even for women from higher classes to learn to read and write. Plenty of aristocratic women, probably most, were illiterate. She’s not the kind of person who runs a business or keeps accounts; she just wants to be comfortable at someone else’s expense, do her hair and her makeup, and eat well. I think the first line about writing is there just to set up the joke on “pluma”. And in the light of González Palencia’s account I am more confident that the line means that she ate poultry all the time: “en lugar de comer pasteles quiere regalarse con torta real o pichones empanados”. Pichones (pigeons) were expensive; the upper classes ate them. Poor people like her normally had to settle for pasteles. So the joke is she must have been good at writing: she had “plumas” all day!
Charles Davis Jul 3, 2019:
La Zangarilleja, writing and feathers (3) Well then, the poem is basically a long series of jokes based on the idea of the contrast between the respectable front she puts up and the disreputable reality behind it. The idea that she is genuinely improving herself is alien to the genre; even if she genuinely tries, she can’t. Social determinism is taken for granted.

In the verses we’re considering here, it says she never studied basic arithmetic (the “five rules” are addition, subtraction, multiplication, simple division and long division); all she learned was “multiplication”: how to get rich (in the “school of life”). Not because she was stupid, but just because she never even went to school (she’s from the underclass); she was intelligent (discreta) enough to have learned them all, but didn’t. “Discreto” was a morally ambiguous term, which could imply mental acuity or simply astuteness, ability to see the main chance.

(Anyone interested in finding out about the “cinco reglas” and the various “reglas de tres” can find details here: http://bibliotecadigital.jcyl.es/i18n/consulta/registro.cmd?... )

She did, however, learn to write, because she has “pluma a comer y cenar”.

(contd in next post)
Charles Davis Jul 3, 2019:
La Zangarilleja, writing and feathers (2) It’s like Hogarth’s Harlot’s Progress. Here’s González Palencia:

“La Zangarilleja es una variación más [...] del tipo de la mujer desenvuelta y vagabunda, que, salida de las más bajas capas sociales, se dedica a la vida alegre, obteniendo durante algún breve tiempo ventajas materiales, y terminando su existencia triste y oscuramente en un hospital.”

That’s the generic description; here’s the summary of this poem:

“El proceso de vida de la Zangarilleja es el de tantas otras de todos los tiempos: principia de gorrona [prostitute] [...]; se instala luego en casa principal, acompañada de la inevitable Celestina, y en lugar de comer pasteles quiere regalarse con torta real o pichones empanados. Protegida primero por algún escribano [...] acaba en amiga de un duque, con lo cual anda ya en coche y gasta mucho tiempo en sus afeites y peinado. Cuando recibe la visita de algún pariente del pueblo, le despide pronto [...]. Y se casa al fin [...], aunque proponiéndose abandonar del todo su antiguo vivir [...]”
http://www.memoriademadrid.es/download.php?nombre=bhm_revbam...

(cont in next post)
Charles Davis Jul 3, 2019:
La Zangarilleja, writing and feathers (1) This is a long poem about a literary type: the zangarilleja, a trollop, a slovenly female vagabond trying to make good by her wits. The suffix -eja is intrinsically pejorative. The word is repeated in every verse. The DLE defines zangarilleja as “muchacha desaseada y vagabunda”; the Diccionario de autoridades (1739) says “La muchacha o moza puerca, y mal vestida, que anda vagando”, and quotes this very poem as an illustration.

The other line repeated in every verse, “zarandillo y andar”, expresses her mobility. A zarandillo was a small sieve. Autoridades again: “Zarandillo. Por semejanza se llama al que con viveza, y ligereza, anda de una parte à otra: y assi se dice andar como un zarandillo.”

This puts us firmly in the picaresque world. The basic idea is that she’s corrupt, astute, mobile geographically and socially, and that she ends badly. She starts as a prostitute, lives by her wits, by tricking people, and manages to enter a respectable household, to enjoy a comfortable life. She’s good at passing herself off as respectable, but it’s an act. She would like to throw off her past but ultimately can’t.

(cont. in next post)
Carol Gullidge Jul 3, 2019:
again, in passing: Zangarilleja not so dumb! I saw a reference somewhere to a "Zangarilleja" who ended up extremely prosperous, but I didn't have the chance to follow this up. Could this be the same one, or were there loads of them? If it did happen to be "our" Zangarilleja, then there was also a reference somewhere to her raking in the cash.
This could tie in with the fact that for all her pretence of being as dumb as any other girl, she was in fact a past master at the 3 R's when it suited her (she was particularly numerate, especially when it came to multiplication - the fourth of the five "reglas"!).
It's a long poem, and I'm afraid I haven't had the chance to read all of it...
Carol Gullidge Jul 3, 2019:
another thought: if there is any possibility that she actually is writing a lot of demands for payment, then this could also be tied in with the possibly wry reference in the first stanza to her ability to multiply!
Carol Gullidge Jul 3, 2019:
re the "new" punctuation/version the way I see it now, it could also read something like (and this is ONLY a vaguely possible interpretation!):

However, whenever she possesses a pen,
she'll write and write to her heart's content

I was looking for the continuation of this verse in a bid to see if it shed any light on the meaning. This is only half of the original (?) verse, but, imo, the rest didn't seem relevant. Sorry I didn't copy and paste it though :( as others might have thought otherwise...
I thought I had read somewhere in passing that there was a purpose to all this scribbling (demanding cash/payments??) but can't for the life of me find it now. The remainder of the verse didn't shed any light in this respect.
Charles Davis Jul 3, 2019:
Punctuation and birds The comma after "si" probably is significant. "Si" (if) could well be "sí" (yes); the absence of a written accent would not be unusual in a text of this period.

The presence or absence of an accent after "comer" is almost certainly insignificant, since a comma before "y", which is nowadays wrong by Academy rules, was quite common in the seventeenth century.

One further thought: I wonder whether "pluma", as well as being a metonym for writing on the primary level, might also be a metonym for birds on a secondary level: that is, she now eats game birds for lunch and dinner, as a way of saying that she is now prosperous. Just an idea; it could well be quite wrong.
JohnMcDove Jul 2, 2019:
@ Carol-Thank you. The punctuation on this version seems better, in my view. In particular the "si,"
Carol Gullidge Jul 2, 2019:
another version is punctuated slightly differently I don't know if this could make any difference to the interpretation; it's from REVISTA DE LA BIBLIOTECA ARCHIVO T MUSEO, AÑO II.-ABRIL, 1925.-NÚMERO VI...

A escribir, si, por tener
la Zangarilleja
pluma a comer, y cenar,
çarandillo andar.
Lydia De Jorge (asker) Jul 2, 2019:
@Charles Thanks for making me laugh in the midst of this madness! Indeed, I wish I could somehow insert a 'gassy pen' in there somewhere!
JohnMcDove Jul 2, 2019:
Juas-juas! Charles, your contributions are always relevant. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if he used the term with all its polysemic values "con intención y alevosía" ... :-)
Charles Davis Jul 2, 2019:
pluma Here is an irrelevant (I think) but entertaining old meaning of "pluma":

"Se llama en estilo familiar y festivo la porcion de aire que se expele con estruendo por la parte posterior. Lat. Ventris strepitus, flatus."
Lydia De Jorge (asker) Jul 2, 2019:
Si eliminamos el pié forzado y seguimos la secuencia de las estrofas:

De las cinco reglas,
aprendió a multiplicar,
Aunque pudo por discreta
en las cuatro consumar,
A escribir, si por tener
**pluma a comer y cenar,**

Proposed translations

2 hrs
Selected

"plume/pen" [pork's boneless flank] for lunch and dinner / untranslatable play on words!!

pluma

Primary meaning,

(All definitions from DRAE)

12. f. Pieza del cerdo posterior a la presa.

Plays with these other meanings,

3. f. pluma de ave que, cortada convenientemente en la extremidad del cañón, servía para escribir.

8. f. Estilo o manera de escribir. Escribe con pluma mordaz.

9. f. Profesión o ejercicio de la escritura. María vive de la pluma.

Presa:

12. f. Pieza del cerdo en forma de abanico situada por encima de la paleta.

https://www.elespanol.com/cocinillas/recetas/carne/20190305/...

http://www.expansion.com/fueradeserie/gastro/2017/02/13/5894...

In so many words, looks like he is saying that she was illiterate, as the only "pluma" (pen) she would have, would be the pork she would eat for lunch and dinner.

The other nuance is that by eating pork, that indicated she had no Jewish blood.

Good luck on rendering this into English!


--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 3 hrs (2019-07-02 03:19:07 GMT)
--------------------------------------------------

You're welcome, Lydia!

I understand your feelings!

Hey, maybe there is some good play on words you could find with "eating a pen for lunch and dinner..." Mmm... Ufff! This is a challenge and a half, to say the least. Maybe some archaic word similar to pen?

With some poetic license, you might find something with a feather... ?



--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 20 hrs (2019-07-02 20:08:18 GMT)
--------------------------------------------------

Hey, what about using "quills"?

That is,

3 quills

another term for penne
‘a dish of pasta quills tossed in a spicy tomato sauce’

https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/quill

Or maybe something with "penne" for lunch and dinner?

https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/penne

--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 6 days (2019-07-08 16:04:57 GMT) Post-grading
--------------------------------------------------

You're welcome!

Thanks to Carol and Charles for their aVe-some input!!! ;-)
Note from asker:
I'm about to eat my pen!. ;-) Thank you, John. Quite helpful.
I'll have to get creative... perhaps tomorrow with fresh eyes.
Pen is also the corral where pigs are kept. Maybe I can play with those two words.
Hi John! I have opted to use 'quills' as in 'plumas de ganso'. Thank you for all your help!
Something went wrong...
4 KudoZ points awarded for this answer. Comment: "Thank you once more! I adapted based on your suggestion."

Reference comments

54 mins
Reference:

Yo no se de cuando es el texto, pero hasta el siglo XVI, las dos lenguas eram lo mismo: https://www.dicio.com.br/emplumar/
plumar - Variação de emplumar. - [Figurado] Pavonearse, envanecerse. engreirse
feather in one's cap: If you describe something that someone has achieved as a feather in their cap, you mean that they can be proud of it or that it might bring them some advantage.- https://www.collinsdictionary.com/pt/dictionary/english/feat...
swank [verb] a slang word for swagger - to behave or talk in a conceited way.
plumear - 2. (Méx) (= ser prostituta) → to be on the game - https://es.thefreedictionary.com/plumear
Note from asker:
El problema es que estas definiciones no parecen encajar en este contexto. Por lo menos yo no lo veo. 'A escribir, si por tener pluma a comer y cenar'
Something went wrong...
Close search
Term search
  • All of ProZ.com
  • Term search
  • Jobs
  • Forums
  • Multiple search