Richard says he's going to translate into blank verse. That too will
probably constrain his decisions, tho less than full-scale replication of
the original's formal patterning. It's possible to suggest the original
form without the constraints of replication. That's the route I usually
prefer. But if one could produce a result as natural in English as the
original is in the source language while maintaining the formal pattern,
why not? I just don't think it's very often likely.
Note that we've been privileging rhyme in this discussion, but that's
usually only a part of the original's pattern. Why not try to replicate
meter as well as rhyme, even when the meter isn't common in English? Hey,
why not just use the same words? Is there a line somewhere? Or how about
translating a Spanish sonnet, for instance, into an English sonnet--what do
you do about meter? Spanish sonnets are unmetered--it's just a ten syllable
count per line and make it sing nicely. Would that seem a reasonable
solution in the translation--an abbaabbacdecde rhyme scheme, but no
recurring meter? I think it would read as a mistake, but if the reader
decides he can dispense with the expected iambic pentameter, why not the
rhyme? Lots of assonances can convey some of the feel of the original.
In translating onetries, it seems to me, to translate not only from one
language to another but from one culture and epoch to another. It's an
interesting balance--one doesn't want to suggest that this can actually be
accomplished, so one maintains a little strangeness, but one also wants by
and large to translate what would have been everyday diction into everyday
diction, and the ornate into the ornate.
A year or so ago Jan Clausen published a book of love poems by Sor Juana de
la Cruz, the great Mexican Baroque poet, the ancestress of all subsequent
post-conquest poetry. The fun of the originals is their extraordinary
command of baroque tropes and grammatical play. Clausen stripped all that
away. In American plain speech there was nothing left. The lack of rhyme
was in comparison trivial.
There are of course poems that make no sense without their rhyme and may in
fact be untranslateable for that reason alone. I'm thinking of nursery
rhymes. There are also poems that are simply untranslateable. I recently
had to select some of my own for translation into Spanish. The selection
was limited by the bounds of possibility--a poem built on word associations
couldn't conceivably be made to cross over, nor could one built entirely of
puns. So it goes--some things will remain available only to those who read
the source language.
As to the Campo, your tolerance of it bewilders me--almost every rhyme word
is forced into position merely to maintain the rhyme. I'll stay with ghastly.
Mark
At 06:36 PM 2/6/2005, you wrote:
>Hi Richard
>
>The question of preserving formalities in translation fascinates me as an
>impossible problem. For example, I have sometimes thought that I would like
>very much to do a translation of Sonnets for Orpheus that preserves the
>rhymes, since the rhymes are such a lovely part of the poems in German -
>but without the kinds of bent English that happens when you do that sort of
>thing - (the fact that I haven't done so, of course, would tell you
>something...) A poem's formality, its metrical play, is of course part of
>its body and meaning. And no doubt the most untranslatable part.
>
>Mark, are you suggesting that it's a waste of time to attempt such
>transitions? It may be difficult and often unsuccessful, but Richard's
>decision to take into account the formality of particular poems and to
>wonder if there are English equivalences makes total sense to me.
>
>I don't agree, btw, that the Campo poem is "ghastly" - the only phrase that
>grated my ears was "the joy of it all". I enjoyed the dance of ghazals he
>posted and briefly thought that I should like to play with the form myself,
>something I haven't done - and where was Richard saying that poetry
>shouldn't evolve, as the ghazal has in English?
>
>A question, Richard - in Persian, are the couplets end-rhymed?
>
>Best
>
>A
>
>Alison Croggon
>
>Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
>Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
>Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
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