Definitely not helped by his translators.
The holy grail for translators is a version of the poem that loses nothing
of the original. That's of course impossible--one understands very quickly
(or ought to) that, since one can't get everything, one has to establish a
hierarchy of value--what one thinks can be sacrificed, what not. The
decision in both these cases seems to be to sacrifice almost everything to
rhyme and meter.
The translator's responsibility, it seems to me, is to convey as much as
possible of what the poem means (in the simplest sense) while approximating
the eloquence of the original. Which is to say that if the translation
reads as lousy poetry no one will pay it much attention. Possibly explains
why Radnoti isn't better known to English speakers.
Here's something else to chew on. The use of formal devices in English
inevitably refers to the tradition of their use. That tradition--what the
use of a device recalls--will be very different in the original language.
The sonnet is a clear case. If, let's say, I translate a modern Spanish
sonnet into English with all the bells and whistles I place it in a
tradition that goes back to the Elizabethans by way of Milton, Keats, and
Wordsworth. But the Spanish tradition to which the sonnet refers in the
original is entirely different. Is the carrying-over of the form perhaps a
gross mistranslation?
After all of which, the Radnoti appears to be more documentary than Celan,
and far less powerful.
Mark
At 10:13 AM 1/2/2006 -0500, you wrote:
>David Bircumshaw wrote:
>
>>Inner-restin'. For me, the key to Celan is that poem 'Psalm'. That is to say
>>I read Celan as, rather than a holocaust poet, as a religious poet who has
>>been stripped of his would-be faith, so I see his work as devotions to a
>>deity who is not there.
>>
>>Best
>>
>>Dave
>>
>Equal time please for Mikos Radnoti, a poet from the other end of Europe
>who could not give in to the lure of the Seine because a bullet found him
>first.
>
>Forced March
>
>He's foolish who, once down, resumes his weary beat,
>A moving mass of cramps on restless human feet,
>Who rises from the ground as if on borrowed wings,
>Untempted by the mire to which he dare not cling,
>Who, when you ask him why, flings back at you a word
>Of how the thought of love makes dying less absurd.
>Poor deluded fool, the man's a simpleton,
>About his home by now only the scorched winds run,
>His broken walls lie flat, his orchard yields no fruit,
>His familiar nights go clad in terror's rumpled suit.
>Oh could I but believe that such dreams had a base
>Other than in my heart, some native resting place;
>If only once again I heard the quiet hum
>Of bees on the verandah, the jar of orchard plums
>Cooling with late summer, the gardens half asleep,
>Voluptuous fruit lolling on branches dipping deep,
>And she before the hedgerow stood with sunbleached hair,
>The lazy morning scrawling vague shadows on the air...
>Why not? The moon is full, her circle is complete.
>Don't leave me, friend, shout out, and see! I'm on my feet!
>
> (translated by George Szirtes)
>
>from "Razglednicas"
>
>III.
>
>The oxen drool saliva mixed with blood.
>Each one of us is urinating blood.
>The squad stands about in knots, stinking, mad.
>Death, hideous, is blowing overhead.
>
>IV.
>
>I fell beside him and his corpse turned over,
>tight already as a snapping string.
>Shot in the neck. "And that's how you'll end too,"
>I whisper to myself; "lie still; no moving.
>Now patience flowers in death." Then I could hear
>"Der springt noch auf," above, and very near.
>Blood mixed with mud was drying on my ear.
>
> (translated by Zsuzsanna Ozsváth and Frederick Turner)
>
>A cursory examination suggests Radnoti is well-remembered in Hungary.
>But despite C. K. Williams' essay about him in an issue of APR from about
>10 years ago, he's never seemed especially "hot" outside it.
>
>K.
>
>--
>Kenneth Wolman
>Proposal Development Department
>Room SW334
>Sarnoff Corporation
>609-734-2538
>
>I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up
>where I needed to be.
> -Douglas Adams
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