Everywhere there is politics. If you say "politics," with an eye on leaders
talking from all sides of their mouths, the scandals, the back door
deal-making, sure it’s the topic of poems but not often worth much
development in discussions of poetry. Where you can’t get away from poetry
politics is not in political poetry but ideology and the way our words have
back door harmonies wielding agendas.
Where there’s no power play invoked in poetry (however minute) you have
simple-minded sweet talk, no? Think about what makes many amateur poets so
bad? They’re in la-la land (naïve of the politics of poetry, that it’s not
always a fairy tale). And things which make this love song translation
interesting include the context of a titillated Dalai Lama, the hilarious
Orientalist translation (“silvery moon has peeped out”? - - there’s a line
from poetry 101) and perhaps the fact that it’s very “politically” correct
in Western countries to feel sorry for developing Tibet and we feel
compelled to read it. These three political items are bound up in the poem.
Without reference to politics what could I talk about (what isn’t suggestive
of power)?
Calling this translation “Orientalist” is political, suggesting an
accusation that the translator rides on the tails of colonialist
representations of anything Asian as simpler, without it’s own historical
context and reason for being written (they will say “it’s Universal”). The
“young maiden” suggests not only the Lama’s libido but that the reason for
translating it has something to do with the insertion of meaning into a
vacuum, the West’s logocentric dream of pumping up the East (a derivative of
missionary instincts).
===
Love song by the 6th Dalai Lama:
shar phyogs ri bo'i rtse nas
dkar gsal zla ba shar byung
ma skyes a ma'i zhal ras
yid la 'khor byas byung.
(From the mountain peaks in the east,
The silvery moon has peeped out.
And the face of that young maiden,
Has gradually appeared in my mind)
The 6th Dalai Lama knew that at least poetry is more important than politics
(not to mention young maidens). Part of me senses that mixing politics with
poetry always leads to dead ends.
-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask]
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Jon Corelis
Sent: Thursday, August 03, 2000 9:06 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Why our dialogue sucks
> From: "Paul Taylor" <[log in to unmask]> Save Address - Block Sender
>
> From: Scott Hamilton <[log in to unmask]>
> > Here are some titbits, from a text I was
> > just reading today
> Sorry if you've already done so, and I missed it, but could you please
> give a reference for your quotes?
It's a regurgitation of the same tired old propaganda which Beijing
has been cranking out since the fifties. Most of it comes from The
Revolutionary Worker, the prime English language organ for the
recruitment of what Lenin called "useful idiots" among the
overprivileged bourgeoisie. Lenin's essay "On Left Wing Communism: An
Infantile Neurosis" is most enlightening on this whole phenomenon.
Aside from the patent tendentiousness of the polemic, it seems to me
quite mad to attempt to refute the views of Govinda (who incidentally
was a German) on the aesthetics of language by pointing out that
remnants of feudalism survived in Tibet until relatively recent times.
But at any rate I myself, being part of a society routinely sustained by
atrocity, am not about to insist that ideas can have no value unless the
culture which produced them is unbesmirched by oppression. If we all
followed that principle, pretty soon none of us would be able to believe
in anything at all.
But the depressing thing about this exchange is how it illustrates
that no one seems to want to talk about poetry. Most of the things I've
sent
here which are actually about poetry are ignored unless someone finds a
way to use them as a jumping off point for personal or political carping.
====
All poetry is difficult to read,
-- The sense of it, anyhow.
Browning
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