Those are interesting, Richard, & I take your point while finding the
translations somewhat abstract sounding in English. I did like the
Rafael
Campo one, but partly because it is a kind of anti-ghazal too I
suspect, in taking on such specifics as it does.
I guess I'm intrigued by the way that translation of the *form* into
english, by such poets as Rich, for example, or Webb & Thompson in
Canada, allowed the poets a certain kind of freedom within the writing
that other 'forms' seem not to have done. Of course, only certain
aspects of the form made it through, the couplets, but unrhymed, more
importantly, the possibility of utter shift between them.
Getting some sense of the original poems by great ghazal-makers in Urdu
or Persian in some translations, as we may do in the two you posted is
something else, & valuable in its own way, as you suggest.
Doug
Douglas Barbour
Department of English
University of Alberta
Edmonton Alberta T6G 2E5 Canada
(780) 436 3320
http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm
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