11 Responses to “Reflections on 33 Translations of One Basho”

1. Adam the Poet on December 2nd, 2008 at 10:06 am

   With respect to poetry here is, I think, an interzone between translation and imitation (in the sixteenth-century sense), and then another between imitation and thematic improvisation. But all three nevertheless exist as distinct realms. Here are some summary definitions. Translation: The attempt to render as much as possible of both the denotative sense and the connotative “field” (using equivalences as required) of the source text into a new poem in the target language. Examples: Richard Wilbur’s renderings of Baudelaire, Racine, and other French poetry; Arthur Waley’s 100 Chinese Poems; Clayton Eshleman’s scrupulous renderings of Aime Cesaire and Cesar Vallejo; Richmond Lattimore’s Iliad. Imitation: The creation of a new poem in the target language based directly on the source text but departing significantly in mood, connotation, figure, or form (though often sticking close to one of those at the expense of another). Examples: Robert Lowell’s rendering of Baudelaire; Thomas Wyatt’s “Whoso List to Hunt” and other imitations of Petrarch; Pound’s Cathay; Pope’s Iliad, or Christopher Logue’s in War Music. Improvisation: Taking themes and motifs from the source text and creating a new poem around them in the target language. Examples: Alice Notley’s “After Homer”; Coleman Barks’ renderings of Rumi; Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound and “The Triumph of Life”; Ann Carson’s Autobiography of Red and “TV Men.” With respect to Chad Sweeney’s text, I would argue that only a couple of them are translations in any meaningful sense at all. Most are thematic improvisations at best. The second one is a spectacularly bad translation, combining excessive literalness (“water sound” instead of “splash”)with plain denotative incorrectness (“well” for “pond”). A Japanse poet of my acquaintance once went through the original poem with me syllable by syllable. He explained that the word used for “pond” is deliberately archaic (hence “old pond” in most renderings), suggesting something moss-grown, quiet, undisturbed. This then heightens the contrast with the next two lines, and especially with the sudden presentness of the word for “watersound” (Basho’s Japanese lacked the onomatopoiea of “splash”). I think it behooves poets to take translation very seriously indeed, and to learn at least one other language. The perspective the second language provides on one’s first is invaluable. And the effort to recreate a good poem in one’s own language with the utmost possible fidelity *to both connotation and denotation* is valuable both to oneself and to all readers of poetry. Like or Dislike: 0  0 Reply

2. EKSwitaj on December 2nd, 2008 at 12:14 pm

   I guess that I can see it both ways. I do think serious translation can be useful in terms of cultural understanding and perspective on one’s own work (among other things). That said, I also see the use of the procedures that work like Sweeney’s encourages: to question, interrogate, and find the limits of the meaning of a term is useful no matter how important (sacred) what that word stands for may be. Like or Dislike: 0  0 Reply

3. Adam the Poet on December 3rd, 2008 at 11:50 am

   Hmmmm… I’d have to say that first off, translation also brings us at least a good approximation or equivalent of countless really fine poems in other languages we don’t know and probably aren’t going to learn. How else would I have ever known, say, the work of the marvelous Persian woman modernist Forugh Farrokhzad without Farsi? Or of Sappho for that matter, without ancient Greek? I think it goes way beyond “cultural understanding” to simple poetic greed. Big as is the history of poetry in English (one version or another, across all the former colonies as well the UK), it’s still only a tiny fraction of what’s out there–the accumulation of millennia in countless languages living and dead. Only translation–patient, knowledgeable, thorough, skillful, and poetically inspired–can bring us a fraction of that vast hoard. I’m afraid I don’t share your fascination with this particular “interrogation,” because it doesn’t seem to me to be informed by much understanding of the history and theory of translation. There has been a *lot* of interrogation of the term and indeed the concept, all the way back to the Elizabethans but probably getting its serious modern beginning with Dryden in the later 17th century. Opinions range from the proverbial put-down “tradutore, traditore” (“translator, betrayer”) to Elliott Weinberger in his preface to his astounding translation of Huidobro’s *Altazor*: “For me, poetry is not what gets lost in translation; poetry is that which is worth translation. The ‘untranslatable’ poem has not yet found its translator.” My ur-texts in this study are George Steiner’s *After Babel* and Schulte and Biguenet’s outstanding anthology *Theories of Translation*. I also recommend, if you can find it, Steiner’s own pathbreaking *The Penguin Book of Modern Verse Translation*. His foreword alone is worth the price of the book–and if you’re anything like me at all you’ll find poems in there that will change your writing. A contrary and sometimes cruel man I knew quite well when I was young, Steiner is still the biggest and best thinker on this topic I know. Like or Dislike: 0  0 Reply

4. EKSwitaj on December 3rd, 2008 at 12:35 pm

   I find that the more I learn, the more I question whether translation can bring us sufficient approximations to serve poetic greed. Short of a shape poem (and even that is likely to come up as inadequate), poems brought out of Japanese and Chinese into English for instance, lose so much of the visual engine of meaning. I’m not talking Fenollosa’s mistaken notions about Chinese characters (incidentally, when I visited Bai Juyi’s tomb in Luoyang, one of the Chinese professors I was with recommended Pound’s translations of Chinese poets). I’m talking simply about the way meaning is created. In Japanese, the balance of hiragana to kanji (we’ll leave katakana out of it for the moment) can indicate class, level of learning, or a radical choice with a precision that English doesn’t have. That’s even leaving aside keigo and other formal levels of speech that simply do not have a good equivalent in English. In prose this does not bother me; in poetry, everything matters. Between European languages there are perhaps fewer such issues, though Latin certainly has what would be for English impossible syntax. Back to the “33 Translations”: to clarify, I do not think it is the poem itself that performs the interrogation but that Sweeney has provided a field on which readers can play out that interrogation. Alternatively, they can find it a wholly inadequate field and leave it behind, but the issue has still been raised. Perhaps it could have made stronger by including lines from translations by Dryden to encourage the bringing in of the historical perspective, but I suspect that anyone who would recognize those lines would bring them in unprodded anyway. Like or Dislike: 0  0 Reply

5. Adam the Poet on December 3rd, 2008 at 1:05 pm

   I actually find Dryden paralyzingly dull as a poet (don’t care for English neoclassical verse in general), so he would not be my first choice! I take your point about what gets left out, especially from ideogrammatic or semi-ideogrammatic written languages. But it can be even simpler. In the prose-poem that opens Altazor, Huidobro says: “Amo la noche, sombrero de todas los dias.” Weinberger correctly and literally translates that as “I love the night, the hat of every day.” The basic figure comes across all right–it’s a typical high-modernist (and Huidobrian) metaphor, simple though fresh. But what one misses is the etymonic resonance of *sombrero*, which means, literally, “shadower” (from *sombra*, shadow or darkness). Nevertheless, as a trilingual person within an admittedly close family of languages (English-French-Spanish, with reading Italian, some remaining Latin and a little Greek) I believe that good poetic translation is possible as well as necessary. Back as an undergraduate at UCSC I took a course in poetic translation from one Murray Weingarten. A text he set us was a famous sonnet of Quevedo, “Cerrar podrá mis ojos la postrera Sombra.” I tried to translate it into modern English but it was impossible. So I tried to imagine what an English contemporary like Donne would have made of it. That worked, but only because I had already been soaking in early 17th-century poetry for years. I actually won a prize for it. So I independently rediscovered one of Pound’s early methods. That said, I stubbornly side with Weinberger, because of what I have seen done and been able to do as a translator. I have also written poems in both Spanish (quite a bit actually) and French (one or two) and have back-translated my own work. I guess now I have to learn Japanese! Like or Dislike: 0  0 Reply

6. EKSwitaj on December 3rd, 2008 at 3:17 pm

   I’ve done a few short stories in non-English languages and translated a couple poems (not my own), but I’ve never been able to write anything more than very simple verse in one. I think I simply started too late to develop the flexibility necessary to write original poetry. Like or Dislike: 0  0 Reply

7. Adam the Poet on December 3rd, 2008 at 4:44 pm

   Here’s a Spanish-language poem of mine with English version following: ORACION por René Yáñez Nuestra Senõra del Tiempo arreglado y poderoso Virgen transparente con lágrimas de vidrio preciso Hija de los ritmos de brazos inumerables y anónimos y de los ascensores en los centros financieros delante de nosotros te avanzas siempre más allá en tu vientre inmanchable no llevas un salvador sino un reloj lunar con manos de avispas negras que nos pican minuto por minuto inyectándonos con sus larvas hambrientos de experiencias Entumécenos Nuestra Señora del Tiempo aritmético y final Virgen coronada por nanosegundos radiantes Hija de la explosión de poblacion de ángeles sobre la punta blanca de calor del alfiler de Diós delante de nosotros te retiras siempre más allá mirándonos con tus ojos cámaras oscuras digitales qué triste tu sonrisa como la tarde ahumada sobre miles de coches retrasadas en filas sus conductores tan separadas como galaxias Jubílanos Nuestra Señora del Tiempo termodinámico Virgen con tu sexo una predicción arrugada Hija de la velocidad de luz y del carbón silencioso Madre del artrítis y de agujeros en el cerebro del trabajo como ellos en un pan estrellada de ojos inmóvil tu te mueves delante de nosotros siempre más allá como el horizonte de la supervivencia mientras nos encierras en el cielo destellante del desperdicio medido es decir del dinero Olvídanos Adam Cornford PRAYER for René Yáñez Our Lady of Time ordered and powerful time Transparent Virgin with accurate glass tears Daughter of the rhythms of countless anonymous arms and of rhythms of elevators in financial centers before us you advance ever further away in your stainless belly you carry no savior but a moon-clock with hands of black wasps that pierce us minute by minute injecting us with their hungry larvae of experience Numb us Our Lady of Time arithmetical final time Virgin crowned with radiant nanoseconds Daughter of the population explosion of angels on the white-hot point of God’s needle before us you retreat ever further away watching us with digital camera obscura eyes how sad your smile is like the smoky dusk over thousands of cars held up in lines their drivers as separate as galaxies Retire us Our Lady of Time thermodynamic time Virgin with your sex a crumpled forecast Daughter of the speed of light and silent carbon Mother of arthritis and of gaps in the brain of work like the ones in bread starred with eyeholes unmoving you move ahead of us always further away like survival’s horizon while you enclose us in the glittering heaven of measured waste in other words money Forget us Like or Dislike: 0  0 Reply

8. EKSwitaj on December 3rd, 2008 at 10:21 pm

   Oh, I love the ending of that. Fades out in a hiss in both languages. Like or Dislike: 0  0 Reply

9. Adam the Poet on December 4th, 2008 at 10:22 pm

   Glad you liked the last line anyway! Like or Dislike: 0  0 Reply

10. EKSwitaj on December 5th, 2008 at 5:28 pm

    That was really just what made the strongest impression, but you know that a very strong line at the end of a poem that doesn’t prepare the way for it tips the poem over–which is not the case here. One of the issues I’ve run into in translating from Spanish to English is that statements that sound gorgeous in Spanish can sound trite or over-romanticiz(ed/ing) in English. Your poems steer clear of that problem by blending words and images of science and business in with the religious. Like or Dislike: 0  0 Reply

11. Adam the Poet on December 5th, 2008 at 11:53 pm

    Cool! I agree about translating lyric poetry from the Spanish can be problematic in this way. Including my own poems! This is me from a couple decades ago, stretching a few metaphors: LAGRIMA Y VARIACIONES Frasco de claridad en que se disuelven mis arquitecturas nada más dejando una huella de sal Holografía Se estrella el vidrio del día En cada pedazo me aparece flotando pálida pequeñita y entera como el cáliz al ojo del abeja la desnudez que ya no puedo tocar Al revés En este huevo transparente regresan y se contraen las alas húmedas de mis pulmones el pico que chirriaba dentro de mi calavera las costillas huecas de mi voz En este huevo lo que tú de algún modo hacías volar regresa y desaparece detrás de su nacimiento Flujo Por el estuario de mi vista sobre mis pestañas como sobre algas sumergidas llevada por el oleaje de un parpadeo tú nadas lejana Campana clara que al caer suena y que pro los espacios enormes y brillantes de tu retiro no cesa de sonar TEAR AND VARIATIONS Flask of clarity where my architectures dissolve leaving nothing but a trail of salt Holography The day’s windowpane shatters In each fragment appears to me floating pale tiny and complete like the calyx to the bee’s eye the nakedness that now I cannot touch In Reverse Into this transparent egg return diminishing the damp wings of my lungs the beak that chirped inside my skull the hollow ribs of my voice Into this egg whatever you somehow set flying returns and vanishes behind its birth Flow Through the estuary of my sight over my eyelashes as over underwater weeds carried by the surge of a blink you swim remotely Clear bell that rings as it falls and through the enormous shining spaces where you drew away does not stop ringing Like or Dislike: 0  0 Reply

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