What does "trostle" mean?

Question

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?

Answer 1

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 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"¹
alongside "ladies and gentlemen, no cause for alarm"

_{1 This is a quotation from Shelley's Ode to a Skylark. I don't know if this reference exists in the original poem, or whether it's something added by the translator, but in any case, it's clear that this part of the poem has something about a bird.}

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

Though translation is out of scope, I thought that I as a Polish speaker might help. Marthaª and PLL are both correct as far as they go.

The original poem by Szymborska has (including the lines immediately preceding and following):

obwód w biodrach dwa palce szarada i szyfr,
w którym słowiczku mój a leć, a piej
oraz uprasza się zachować spokój,

Literally translated, this would be

hip measurement two fingers charade and cipher,
in which my dear-little-nightingale fly and sing
and are advised to remain peaceful

(Where "dear-little-nightingale" represents my crude attempt at the Polish słowiczku, a diminutive of słowik, nightingale.)

A person well-read in Polish would know immediately that this a direct quotation from the poem "Do Bohdana Zaleskiego" by Adam Mickiewicz, Poland's greatest poet. It was written in 1841 and uses rather old-fashioned but evocative language.

Słowiczku mój! a leć! a piej!
Na pożegnanie piej
Wylanym łzom, spełnionym snom,
Skończonej piosnce twej!

or

My dear nightingale! Fly! Sing!
In farewell sing
Outpoured tears, fulfilled dreams,
Your finished song!

I do not know the exact intent of the poet, but it was written during the Great Polish Emigration to the west of Europe, a time of tremendous artistic and cultural growth for Poles (think Chopin and Curie) despite their lack of an independent nation. Therefore, its import is somewhat 'patriotic', though in a uniquely Polish sense. The phrase is therefore a classic line by a very famous poet about a joyous bird. The translation mentioned in Marthaª's answer used an equivalent classic English poetic line by Shelley and really did a good job in my opinion.

(The next line is also a bit of a quotation, but for the common phrase "Please remain calm".)

Regarding "blithe" and "trostle":

I can only suspect that the translator who used "trostle" was looking for an antique-feeling equivalent to "nightingale" since the Polish language of the original is similarly old-fashioned. He may have used "blithe" to evoke the Shelly quote. The original Polish does not specifically refer to "blithe", but the mood of the Polish poem is definitely joyous!

Answer 4

One of the derivations for the name is the German word for the thrush, Drossel, a songbird. It is also pictured on an old family crest lending credibility to the derivation. This would also fit nicely with the quoted text above.

Answer 5

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