I'm not in any way practised in the ghazal form, but I wouldn't want to
argue with Douglas's point here about the whole form being 'translated' by
writers in English. The same thing has happened with that vey popular form
the pantoum, which as it has arrived in European/American literature
substitutes other rules and traditions for the Malay ones of the original
pantun form.

best     joanna

----- Original Message -----
From: "Douglas Barbour" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, February 11, 2005 4:31 AM
Subject: Re: Translation and the ghazal


> Very interesting points, Richard, & I'm not sure if Olson says anything
> about that or not, but I take your points. I would argue that in some
> way the whole form has been 'translated' by those writers in English,
> Mark mentioned one, there was Rich, others, certainly including
> Thompson, & then Webb who called many of hers anti-ghazals. And I heard
> a poet read some last night, more in the 'tradition' of the Canadian
> etc versions. So, yeah, perhaps it's become a specific form (or formal
> constraint of sorts) min english that in many ways has little to do
> with the form in Persian or Urdu. As I say, in a sense these poets were
> given their go-ahead by Aijaz Ahmad when he asked them to write
> versions of Ghalib & explained what he thought was central to Ghalib's
> ghazals, at any rate, & asked them to try for something along those
> lines.
>
> Doug
> On 9-Feb-05, at 4:09 AM, Richard Jeffrey Newman wrote:
>
>> Doug,
>>
>> I wish I had my copy of Call Me Ishmael Tonight here with me--someone
>> has
>> borrowed it and I haven't gotten it back yet--because he makes a
>> point, I
>> think, that is interesting to think about; and if I am merely
>> remembering
>> that he makes this point to give it some sort of authority outside my
>> own
>> thinking, well, I still think it's interesting to think about.
>> Basically,
>> the point is this: the emphasis in the West on the mystical,
>> associative,
>> "drunken and amatory," disunifying, etc. aspects of the ghazal, to the
>> almost complete exclusion--at least until recently--of the very precise
>> formal requirements and formal skill necessary to write a successful
>> ghazal
>> in any of the languages to which the form is native fit very neatly
>> into the
>> mystical and mystifying stereotypes of the east that are held in the
>> west.
>> (The kinds of connections between the couplets which Thompson, as you
>> quote
>> him, says are not there--and, as I read your quote, I think he means
>> even in
>> the original--are in fact provided by the rhyme and refrain that the
>> ghazal
>> form contains, and sometimes those connections are even narrative
>> ones.)
>>
>> Now, this is not to say that the English-language/American ghazal as
>> characterized by Thompson is any less valid a poetic form; nor is it to
>> suggest that people who write such ghazals are somehow
>> racist/imperialist/whatever because they do not write within the
>> ghazal's
>> formal requirements. But it's interesting to think about in terms of
>> how
>> poetry "moves" from one language to another, how translation
>> contributes to
>> that movement, the cultural and political shadings of that movement,
>> and so
>> on. Most translations of ghazals in English, for example, even by
>> scholars
>> of Persian poetry, do not follow the formal requirements, and so who
>> can
>> really blame poets in the West, who I am assuming learned about the
>> form
>> from such translations, for proceeding as if the formal requirements
>> didn't
>> exist or were a part of the form that could be "left behind," so to
>> speak.
>>
>> The end result, of course, is that the English-language ghazal has at
>> least
>> two variations--one that has the rhyme and refrain and one that
>> doesn't, and
>> that opening up of the form ultimately results in more possibilities
>> for
>> poets, which is a good thing. It is also interesting to think about
>> what
>> would happen to the form in, say, Persian or Urdu, if the freer English
>> ghazals were translated back into those languages. And who knows, maybe
>> there are poets in those languages who are playing with the form in
>> such
>> ways as well.
>>
>> Richard
>>
>>
>
>
> Douglas Barbour
> Department of English
> University of Alberta
> Edmonton  Alberta  T6G 2E5 Canada
> (780) 436 3320
> http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm
>
> Reserved books. Reserved land. Reserved flight.
> And still property is theft.
>
>                        Phyllis Webb
>