Hi Anny,
I have occasionally tried some translation work and a while ago I
worked on some Montale poems. The only one that so far seemed vaguely
to work is this one - but you may well think otherwise and I would be
glad of any comments. I have been slowly re-reading Montale over the
last week using a bilingual translation.
Best
Jill
[Meriggiare pallido e assorto ...]
To rest at noon, pale and absorbed
near a sun-blazed garden wall
to listen amongst the thorns and brakes
to the clatter of blackbirds, rustle of snakes.
In cracks of ground or on the vetch
to spy upon files of red ants
now breaking loose, now interweaving
on the summits of their tiny stacks.
To watch between green leaves the beating
of far away, rough gleams of sea
while the quavering creak arises,
the cicada songs from bald peaks.
And going on into the dazzling sun
to feel with melancholy wonder
how all life and its travail is in
this tracking of a wall
with jagged glass set along its rim.
On Saturday, April 19, 2003, at 07:53 AM, Anny Ballardini wrote:
> Dear David,
>
> thank you for your incredible effort, which surprised me. Mine is a
> long
> story with Montale, I literally spent a year with him, first preparing
> colored papers and then hand-writing his poems on them - one by one,
> the
> entire amount he produced, a work of art, not of poetry. A privileged
> dialogue I had with him. I reached a point in which I just drew or
> colored,
> then opened the book and he gave me the right poem for the painting.
>
> I was also taken by the choice of your words, very English of England,
> I
> would say, and by your vivid images. It is interesting to compare the
> poet's
> old voice in this Italy with its disasters but little neurosis, open
> fields - long days, day and night, one after the other in all their
> length,
> with your hand - a many-sided one of contemporary England. I anyhow
> rewrote
> the last lines, which maybe you did not understand properly, in a
> literal
> translation, so that you can get to them:
>
> the brief iris, twin
> of the one which your eyelashes mount
> & which you let intact shine amid the children
> of man, sunk in your mud,
> can you
> not believe her your sister?
>
> Great work, take care, anny
>
>
_______________________________________________________
Jill Jones
http://homepages.ihug.com.au/~jpjones
Latest book: Screens Jets Heaven. Available now from Salt Publishing
http://www.saltpublishing.com
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