Damn, Anny, I'll write you off my dinner-party list. I see where the
miscomprehension occurred. Pity you didn't know him, boo hoo.
But thanks for your comments, I'm really 'chuffed' about them.
All the Best
Dave
David Bircumshaw
Leicester, England
Home Page
A Chide's Alphabet
Painting Without Numbers
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/index.htm
----- Original Message -----
From: "Anny Ballardini" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, April 19, 2003 1:02 AM
Subject: Re: The Eel
oh no David, I spent a year with his "entire collected works" book, not with
him, sorry if I gave you the wrong idea...
:-) anny
From: "david.bircumshaw" <[log in to unmask]>
> Hi Anny
>
> I'm glad you liked it, I don't have a fluency or even ability in spoken
> Italian but I have a certain reading knowledge of it, I'm so lazy I've
never
> mastered, as it were, another language, but I know dribs and drabs of
them.
> Yes, I'm aware that I altered the closing lines, this was to do with
> 'Englishing' the poem, that is to say to translate something of its
wondrous
> verbal texture into another language, that's why I introduced the unusual
> word 'geminous'. From which the closing lines of my attempt are triggered.
>
> I am in complete awe that you knew the great Eugenio, it would have been
> close to meeting God for me. Bless his Memory.
> I'm very interested in questions of translation - I think that it is only
> possible to 'rewrite' a poem into another language, never to duplicate it.
>
>
> Best
>
> Dave
>
>
> David Bircumshaw
>
> Leicester, England
>
> Home Page
>
> A Chide's Alphabet
>
> Painting Without Numbers
>
> http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/index.htm
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Anny Ballardini" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Friday, April 18, 2003 10:53 PM
> Subject: The Eel
>
>
> 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
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