I'm curious, Stephen - how do they translate the "found" bits where the
poetic effect depends on your understanding French words in a different
context, like place-names? If you translate Vierge in a place-name,
fr'instance, it comes out unFrench as Virgin (oh, that railway company),
if you don't, you don't understand why it chimes with Marie, etc
etc.(That's in a poem called something something *naturel*, in my
sagging memory) There's a lot of that Oulipian sort of thing going on in
that book. (OUvroir de LIttérature POtentielle). I no longer believe in
poetry translation - imitation, yes (Nachdichtung), crib, yes, but not
traduttore= traditore. But even novels come out of the machine bleached
or discoloured, and they're something else again ("He's something,
Else", as Frieda von Richthofen said to her sister.)
mjay
Stephen Vincent wrote:
>By the way, speaking of Ouilipo, particularly for its wonderfully diverse
>and exhaustive embrace of Paris, I suggest folks keep their eyes for Jacques
>Roubaud's "The Form of a city changes faster, alas, than the human heart."
>It's coming out from Dalkey Archive Press in July and is translated by Keith
>and Rosemarie Waldrop. I got an advance review copy and I can't put it
>down, well, I did for this!
>
>Stephen
>http://stephenvincent.net/blog/
>Currently home of the "Tenderly" series,
>A serial work in progress.
>
>
>
--
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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