Eliot Weinberger, whose writing introduced me to classical Chinese poetry, said its untranslatability is like the meaning of life or what happens after we die -- something one should think about every once in a while before getting on with things. I have no idea what Li Po or Han Shan "really" sound like but having met them through their mediators Pound, Snyder, Rexroth etc I still feel as if I know them across time and space, which is imo one of the most miraculous aspects of literature.
(Also re Celan and the weirdness of translation, I saw a newer translation of "Death Fugue" that renders it "Death is a master from Deutschland" rather than "Germany" and I couldn't help but think that, though obviously German speakers would read it differently, the three hard syllables of "Germany" better fit the mood of the poem than the faintly comical "Deutschland," which brings to mind the fat lederhosen kid from The Simpsons)
Yes, and I've had a similar experience with those poets too. Maybe because that tradition values the image so strongly it can cross boundaries in the same way drama and narrative can.
I also saw a translation of "Death Fugue" that left a number of things in German, including "Deutschland." I guess the idea is to carry his defamiliarization of German over into English, in line with theories that translation should be estranging rather than domesticating? I agree with you that, whatever the fancy intention, it tends to lower the tone.
We'll be getting a new Baudelaire in a couple of years on FSG from Nathaniel Rudavsky-Brody, which is sure to be good (his Fondane and Valery are great)...otherwise, I've just looked a few of Howard's translations which more work as examples of his having a kind of masterful fun ("souvenirs, I've got a million"), haven't compared them much to others... tbh I don't have much of a thought about how translation should be done although I've done a few contemporary francophone books--wasn't good enough to keep at it!
Thanks, didn't mean to imply you especially valued his Fleurs! I don't really know anything about Howard beyond having read a few of his translations and your Tablet article. I have no general theory of translation either—or I think "fidelity" is important but can mean a million different things, some of them opposed to each other—I just know which ones I like.
Lol I don’t think Proust ends the book quite that way! I appreciated how blatantly a tribute the climax of Portraits is to the bridge collapse in Sula btw. Probably agree about the Ivy stuff- they should have some awareness of where they stand etc etc
Rosanna Warren read from (I believe) Richard Howard's version of "Andromaque, je pense a vous..." in Houston at a conference where Blake's friend NRB also gave a paper, and it was quite an extraordinary experience, being borne along by it. Celan's Dickinsons are indeed good; meanwhile, his version of Mandelstam's "Tristia" is, for me, better than any English version (though doubtless this effect is increased by the fact that my German is not altogether fluent, so I am tricked into believing that I am at once hearing and understanding a foreign language that I do not understand -- namely, Russian). In a shameless plug, I invite your readers to check out my post "Selected Poems," in which I venture a "retranslation" of Celan's German version of Shakespeare's Sonnet 5 -- one of his major performances sa translator: https://ashesandsparks.substack.com/publish/posts/detail/68099038?referrer=%2Fpublish%2Fposts
Thanks, Paul, this is remarkable, I wish I'd remembered it to link in the post—I think I read it when we began our correspondence. "Winterhard"! If I were the steward of more capital, I'd commission you to do Celan's Dickinson. Dickinson, though, like the Shakespeare of the sonnets, is already writing half in some other half-heard, half-glimpsed language, even in English.
I just read or reread Howard's "Cygne" and agree with you about the force of it...the heaviness of the translation seems somehow warranted here by the poem's subject matter and the character of its earnestness and plangency. I hope I won't sound too philistine if I say how much of my appreciation of Dillon/Millay is founded on their commitment to maintaining the rhyme schemes.
Eliot Weinberger, whose writing introduced me to classical Chinese poetry, said its untranslatability is like the meaning of life or what happens after we die -- something one should think about every once in a while before getting on with things. I have no idea what Li Po or Han Shan "really" sound like but having met them through their mediators Pound, Snyder, Rexroth etc I still feel as if I know them across time and space, which is imo one of the most miraculous aspects of literature.
(Also re Celan and the weirdness of translation, I saw a newer translation of "Death Fugue" that renders it "Death is a master from Deutschland" rather than "Germany" and I couldn't help but think that, though obviously German speakers would read it differently, the three hard syllables of "Germany" better fit the mood of the poem than the faintly comical "Deutschland," which brings to mind the fat lederhosen kid from The Simpsons)
Yes, and I've had a similar experience with those poets too. Maybe because that tradition values the image so strongly it can cross boundaries in the same way drama and narrative can.
I also saw a translation of "Death Fugue" that left a number of things in German, including "Deutschland." I guess the idea is to carry his defamiliarization of German over into English, in line with theories that translation should be estranging rather than domesticating? I agree with you that, whatever the fancy intention, it tends to lower the tone.
We'll be getting a new Baudelaire in a couple of years on FSG from Nathaniel Rudavsky-Brody, which is sure to be good (his Fondane and Valery are great)...otherwise, I've just looked a few of Howard's translations which more work as examples of his having a kind of masterful fun ("souvenirs, I've got a million"), haven't compared them much to others... tbh I don't have much of a thought about how translation should be done although I've done a few contemporary francophone books--wasn't good enough to keep at it!
Thanks, didn't mean to imply you especially valued his Fleurs! I don't really know anything about Howard beyond having read a few of his translations and your Tablet article. I have no general theory of translation either—or I think "fidelity" is important but can mean a million different things, some of them opposed to each other—I just know which ones I like.
Lol I don’t think Proust ends the book quite that way! I appreciated how blatantly a tribute the climax of Portraits is to the bridge collapse in Sula btw. Probably agree about the Ivy stuff- they should have some awareness of where they stand etc etc
I see now the obvious Sula influence/tribute, but at the time I thought I was mainly referencing a somewhat recent event:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-35W_Mississippi_River_bridge
In an immodestly imaginary future, the formalists and the historicists can quarrel over the interpretive priority of Sula vs. the news in my work.
Rosanna Warren read from (I believe) Richard Howard's version of "Andromaque, je pense a vous..." in Houston at a conference where Blake's friend NRB also gave a paper, and it was quite an extraordinary experience, being borne along by it. Celan's Dickinsons are indeed good; meanwhile, his version of Mandelstam's "Tristia" is, for me, better than any English version (though doubtless this effect is increased by the fact that my German is not altogether fluent, so I am tricked into believing that I am at once hearing and understanding a foreign language that I do not understand -- namely, Russian). In a shameless plug, I invite your readers to check out my post "Selected Poems," in which I venture a "retranslation" of Celan's German version of Shakespeare's Sonnet 5 -- one of his major performances sa translator: https://ashesandsparks.substack.com/publish/posts/detail/68099038?referrer=%2Fpublish%2Fposts
Whoops - wrong link; here is the page with my retranslation of Celan's German Sonnet 5: https://ashesandsparks.substack.com/p/selected-poems
Thanks, Paul, this is remarkable, I wish I'd remembered it to link in the post—I think I read it when we began our correspondence. "Winterhard"! If I were the steward of more capital, I'd commission you to do Celan's Dickinson. Dickinson, though, like the Shakespeare of the sonnets, is already writing half in some other half-heard, half-glimpsed language, even in English.
I just read or reread Howard's "Cygne" and agree with you about the force of it...the heaviness of the translation seems somehow warranted here by the poem's subject matter and the character of its earnestness and plangency. I hope I won't sound too philistine if I say how much of my appreciation of Dillon/Millay is founded on their commitment to maintaining the rhyme schemes.
Quite so, quite so!
I just had a laugh the other day thinking about Millay... she and her lover were quite bohemian and all that, but not nearly so bohemian as to consider jumping a turnstile! (To wit: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/14404/recuerdo)
(Which, being inclined to render unto Caesar what is Caesar's I consider just as well, of course.)
Perhaps turnstiles didn't exist back then. Some historicist can enlighten us!
See, that's being a thoughtful steward of one's capital!