So let me be provocative in turn. Long before Sophocles the Iliad in
Greek had become a version of the Iliad, as Wordsworth's lyrical
ballads are versions of Wordsworth, not only because the language
had/has changed, but because what's not in Homer's or Wordsworth's
poems is what they assumed their primary audiences didn't need to be
told. We all select from our environments (using the term very
broadly) not what we assume as common to us and our imagined readers
but what makes the occasion of the poem different from what we might
expect. That commonality once gone and a Sophocles living 500 years
later in a city larger than any Homer had imagined on the other side
of the Aegean had to imagine not just the heroic age but Homer's
imagination of the heroic age.
Was Sophocles' interpretation of Homer inferior to the original? Or
was it equally rich but different?
Mark
At 05:12 PM 5/8/2006, you wrote:
>Pope's Iliad is an imitation - of course, people were expected to
>have at least a nodding acquaintance with the original - as with the
>same author's Horace imitations, which stray quite far. Cribs are to
>help anyone (like schoolchildren) read the original. I expect any
>English speaker can read French with a bit of help from a crib, the
>same way Eliot taught himself (reading) Italian by reading Dante
>with facing prose cribs in the old Temple Classics, or Pound used
>Fenellosa's cribs (thus Rihaku for Li Po) to do his own imitations
>of Chinese poets. Of course, a genius can get the gist out of a
>creaking old translation: Brecht used Giles' English versions of Li
>Po et al for his Chinese poems & was congratulated by a Chinese
>Sinologist for having got literally closer to the original Chinese
>than his crib had without knowing any Chinese at all. I wouldn't
>believe in reading if I were offered one, and only one,
>interpretation which I could not deviate from, since an
>interpretation is always inferior to its text, though an imitation,
>which is essentially a per/version, isn't. But I admit I was being
>deliberately provocative.
>best
>mjay
>
>Mark Weiss wrote:
>
>>>I no longer believe in poetry translation - imitation, yes
>>>(Nachdichtung), crib, yes, but not traduttore= traditore.
>>
>>
>>As a rule, one doesn't translate place names, although on occasion,
>>and only on occasion, something germaine is lost. Here's one: a
>>reading of Rochester's "An Evening's Ramble in St. James' Park"
>>gains little from knowledge of the park as it is today--it takes a
>>slew of education or footnotes to be aware of what it meant to
>>Rochester (who wrote that the past is another country?). Translate
>>it into Spanish as El parque de Santiago and you 've elucidated
>>nothing and you've added a bunch opf extraneous matter, as
>>Santiago, the patron saint of Spain, aka Matamoros, is never far
>>from Spanish consciousness.
>>
>>Imitation's the easy way out--it skips all the complications of
>>understanding the source culture from the outside or one's own from
>>the inside. And cribs are for schoolchildren. One hopes to convey
>>to the reader in the target language what makes the poem compelling
>>in the original and something of the context within which it was
>>written. But as with any reading of anything, the translation is an
>>interpretation--however I read, say, Asphodel entails a selection
>>of the available possibilities. So maybe one shouldn't believe in reading.
>>
>>Me, I'm doing carpentry today, and trying for very exact
>>measurements, so that the pieces will fit together easily. But it's
>>almost impossible to make a perfect cut. I suppose I could say I no
>>longer believe in measurement. But it would be nice to have a bed to sleep on.
>>
>>I guess I'm saying that belief is beside the point. We have a
>>choice of partial or total incomnprehension. I'll choose the former.
>>
>>Why, by the way, do you think that cribs and imitations aren't betrayals?
>>
>>Mark
>
>--
>
>The self that shines in the greying sunshine
>of the immediate is actual, though it is
>not all that is there. - Douglas Oliver
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