Nice quotes Stephen. I especially liked Spicer's---Platonic . . . mysterious, mystical. thanks, Judy
----- Original Message -----
From: "Stephen Vincent" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, July 12, 2005 2:29 PM
Subject: On Translation
>I occasionally get asked about how I translated Sappho without knowing
> Greek. I stumbled across these wonderful quotes by some of my forebears in
> these matters, Kenneth Rexroth and Jack Spicer. I am never sure what it
> means when computer folks use the expression "counter-intuitive" to describe
> a kind of learning, but maybe that phrase works for these approaches to
> translation:
>
>
> "(Translation) ... is an important exercise of sympathy on the highest
> level. The writer who can project himself into the exultation of another
> learns more than the craft of words. He learns the stuff of poetry. It is
> not just his prosody he keeps alert, it is his heart. The imagination must
> evoke, not just a vanished detail of experience, but the fullness of another
> human being..."
>
> from Kenneth Rexroth, "The Poet as Translator."
> The World Outside The Window The Selected Essays,
> Edited by Bradford Morrow (New Directions Paperback, 639)
>
> "Things do not connect: they correspond. That is what makes it possible for
> a poet to translate real objects, to bring them across language as easily as
> he can bring them across time. That tree you saw in Spain is a tree I could
> never have seen in California, that lemon has a different smell and a
> different taste, BUT the answer is this - every place has a real object to
> correspond with your real object...perhaps as unapparently as that lemon
> corresponds to this piece of seaweed and, in turn, some future poet will
> write something which 'corresponds' to them. That is how dead men write to
> each other...
>
> from "After Lorca" by Jack Spicer
>
>
> Whether or not one agrees - and forms a translation practice from such
> approaches - I love both the quotes - and the translations of both Spicer
> and Rexroth (not everything, of course).
>
> Stephen V
> Blog: http://stephenvincent.durationpress.com
> Sleeping With Sappho (a faux ebook) at:
> http://www.fauxpress.com/e/vincent/
>
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