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In the poem Pi, by Wislawa Szymborska, there is this line:

in which we find how blithe the trostle sings!

A Google search for trostle turns up a few hits, mostly as people's last names. Urban Dictionary [nsfw] has two definitions, both of which were voted down. And Webster's Online Dictionary says it's a misspelling of throstle.

I understand that poets are licensed to make up words, but this poem is otherwise very plain. In fact, this whole line seems out of place.

Can anyone explain the author's meaning?

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3 Answers

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Blithe = cheerful, carefree; and trostle = misspelling of throstle = a type of thrush = a songbird. So, given just this line, I think it's meant to be interpreted pretty literally:

in which we find [out] how blithe[ly] the [thrush] sings!

Edit: Found a different translation, which actually makes less sense, but clearly uses "bird" to translate the Polish word:

[...] a charade, a code,
in which we find hail to thee, blithe spirit, bird thou never wert
alongside ladies and gentlemen, no cause for alarm

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Uh, what's with the anonymous downvote? If you think my answer is wrong, please tell me, so I can improve it! – Marthaª Dec 3 '10 at 15:19
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That translation includes a direct quotation from Shelley's Ode to a Skylark: "Hail to thee, blithe spirit / Bird thou never wert". Whether there is a reference to that in the Polish, or whether it is the translator's fancy, I cannot tell. – Colin Fine Dec 3 '10 at 16:07
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@Colin Fine: ah, that actually helps greatly to make sense of that line: ... a code in which we find "hail to thee, blithe spirit / Bird thou never wert" alongside "ladies and gentlemen, no cause for alarm"... – Marthaª Dec 3 '10 at 16:41
Somehow, when I followed the link to "throstle" from the definition of "trostle," I only read the first definition -- a spinning machine -- and didn't read on to the second definition -- a song thrush. That plus Colin Fine's elaboration explained not only the odd word but the whole line (even the whole poem) to me. Many, many thanks to you both! – Doug Dec 6 '10 at 20:49
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up vote 7 down vote

A native or expert Polish speaker is clearly what we need here! I’m not one, but my best attempt: the original has

w którym słowiczku mój a leć

and the word corresponding to trostle seems to be słowiczku, a diminutive form of słowik, which online dictionaries tell me is nightingale. The nightingale is a species of thrush (roughly — there are some ornithological hairs that could be split here).

Diminutives in Polish (and other Slavic languages) are notoriously hard to translate. They sometimes just indicate familiarity or smallness; sometimes, they have more specific connotations, or may carry echoes of particular well-known poems or fairy-tales; a few have even evolved specific meanings, more distinct from the base words.

I don’t know which of these słowiczka is — whether it sounds old-fashioned to a Polish ear, or playful, or whether it’s even a reference to some other species similar to the nightingale. (Actually I guess not this latter, since it doesn’t appear on Polish Wikipedia.) But it’s certainly some kind of nightingale, thrush or similar bird, and it’s certainly a moderately unusual word for it (słowiczka gets about 9,000 google hits), so throstle seems like a reasonable translation, and trostle a misspelling or variant spelling of that.

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Wikipedia says a throstle is a song thrush. I thoroughly approve of the fact that you worked from the original Polish. – Jon Purdy Dec 3 '10 at 20:17
@Jon: Yes, the issues of which species of thrush/nightingale are in question, and whether “thrush”/“throstle” refer to a species, a genus, or a family, were the ornithological hairs I was avoiding splitting :-) If I understand right, though, usage of bird names has varied a lot in the past, by era and region, so with archaic terms it’s hard to say for certain what they mean in modern terms. – PLL Dec 4 '10 at 18:44
Great info. I didn't realize that the original was in Polish. I imagine translating poetry is the hardest job for a translator! – Doug Dec 6 '10 at 20:45
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up vote -1 down vote

U could be wrong, I suspect that in the poem the reference is made to the name -- Trostle. You're probably taken aback by the fact that it's written with the lower case t.

I also found via google that it's frequently used as a name

[n] Last name, frequency rank in the U.S. is 19387 .

Or my second theory as it's a misspelling of http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/throstle

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If it was meant to be interpreted as a name, (1) it should be capitalized, and (2) it shouldn't be preceded by an article. – Marthaª Dec 3 '10 at 15:06
That's what I figured. Keep in mind , though, the poem was written a long time ago, by a foreign writer, and translated into English. The combination of the 3 distinctly exclusive elements might have contributed to this anomaly. Otherwise, I agree with you. – Anderson Silva Dec 3 '10 at 15:12
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Wisława Szymborska is still alive. She won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1996. – Marthaª Dec 3 '10 at 15:34
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