Hi Rebecca--

The question of how a translator works--from the original, from a literal
trot, from an already existing translation--is one that has given me much
pause as I have worked on the Saadi, and it will continue, I am sure, to
make me think as I work on the rest of the books I will be doing. (I
actually have a five book contract!) I speak and understand some
contemporary Persian, though I do not read the language--and I especially do
not read 13th century Persian--and so if someone reads the Saadi to me-- as
my wife or others sometimes do if I need to consult the original--I can
often understand decent amounts of it, though I find it helps me not as much
as I thought it would in figuring out how to render Saadi in English.

The translations I am using, while they are not literal, are, in general
scholarly, meaning that they strive for a kind of literal accuracy, and they
are generally recognized by Persian scholars--as I understand it--to be the
most accurate in terms of meaning that we have in English. They are,
however, deadly boring to read. You are right that there is the danger,
working as I do, that my translations will be more reflective of my
sensibility than of Saadi's (and I would argue that this is the case with
Barks' Rumi and that Barks admits as much when he says he wants to free the
poems into their essence, as if there could an essence separate from him as
the reader/translator), but here I rely on the people who know Saadi who
read my translations when I am done, and they have, uniformly, said
otherwise, which is reassuring. Having said that, though, I have to admit
that my choice of blank verse as the form in which to render Saadi
absolutely arises from my own sensibility, and while I have written here
about the connection to Pope and Dryden, and there is another connection to
Shakespeare that I have not written about here, the original impulse to use
free verse came from my experience listening to Persian-speakers recite
Persian poetry, of Saadi, say, or Rumi or Hafez, and the way they pay
attention to the music of the language in the recitation of it. There is a
stateliness to it, a majesty, that for me, in English, only blank verse
approximates. I have done some reading on Persian prosody and there is no
way that I no of to reproduce the meters of that language without forcing
English into acrobatics that it really cannot sustain. Rhyme schemes are
different, they could be replicated, and rhyming is extremely important in
Persian poetry--witness the ghazal--but I have chosen to go with unrhymed
verse mostly because I do not want to lose the stateliness of blank verse,
which could disappear in rhyme--but also because I have a pretty tight
schedule of deadlines to meet and I think forcing myself to search for
rhymes would make it hard to meet them.

Saadi uses, as I understand it, a lot of different forms throughout the
Gulistan, including rhymed prose, which one translator actually did
replicate. The problem was that Saadi ended up sounding like Ogden Nash, but
without Nash's humor. A similar thing is true of those 20th century
translations that have worked to make Saadi rhyme--he often ends up sounding
like Mother Goose or a writer of doggerel. Granted, this may have something
to do with the skill of the translator, but these translators were not
amateurs, they spoke and read Persian fluently, and were poets themselves,
and well-known as translators of other works of classical Persian
literature. Not an excuse to give up on rhyme, just a small allusion to some
of the difficulties.

What it comes down to, I think, is that, based on everything I have read and
my experience listening to Persian poetry, I have decided that, had he
written in English, Saadi would have written blank verse. It is the form
that feels right to me, given my own limitations in terms of knowing the
original, given whatever gifts I have as a poet/translator, and given what I
know of the cultural and historical contexts of Persian poetry, of Persian
poetry in English translation and of English poetry in general. Of course I
am, ultimately, "wrong," as all translations are "wrong" in some way, but,
like I said, it feels right and so I am sticking with it.

>>Do you feel that Saadi is making 'explicit statements'?<<

In the samples I have online, Saadi does not make explicit statements,
though he does in many other places in The Gulistan. He does it even more, I
think, in the Bustan, which I am working on now. Here, for example, is my
preliminary draft of "Nushirvan's Advice to Hormuz" (basically a king
advising his son), which seems to me a good deal closer to Pope and Dryden
than either Marvell or Donne:

I've heard that with his dying breaths Nushirvan
advised his son Hormuzd on how to rule:
"Guarantee the poor their peace of mind.
Do not allow your privilege to bind you.
None who call your kingdom home will be
at peace if privilege is all you live for.

No judge will find a shepherd innocent
who slept and let the wolf among the sheep.
Go! Stand guard! Protect the poor and needy.
The crown you wear would not exist without them.

A tree, my son, is nourished through its roots.
Just so, a monarch's strength passes to him
through those he rules. Do not betray their trust
unless you have to; you'll leave yourself rootless.

Do you need a road to guide you? Hope and fear
mark the path walked smooth by the devout:
hope for good; fear of evil. Prudence
leads a man by nature down that trail.
Find it in a prince and you have found
the foundation of his rule. To those who hope,
he offers his indulgence, hoping himself
that the Creator will be indulgent as well.
Fearing the harm that harm brings to those
who cause it, this prince favors hurting no one.
A prince who doesn't have these qualities
will fill his land with conflict and unrest.

If life hobbles you, learn to accept your fate,
but if you gallop freely, go where you will.
You'll never have the room you need to run
in a kingdom where the king abuses power.

Fear the bold and proud among your subjects,
but fear as well the one who does not fear
heaven's Just Ruler. A lord who lays waste
to the hearts of his people will only see in dreams
the prosperity he wants for his domain.
Tyranny will earn him only ruin,
and ruin will be the legacy he leaves.

Look to the future. Sound the depths of these words.
Your people shelter and support your rule,
so don't kill anyone without just cause.
See to the comfort of those who tend your land.
Their happiness will mean a greater yield.
To repay with evil the good someone has done you
is to unman yourself in full public view."

And now I really should be getting back to work on the Bustan. This
discussion is really, really interesting, though, and very helpful to me.
It's forcing me to think beyond what I have been thinking and to question my
assumptions, all of which is always to the good.

Rich Newman