 |
 |
First, my [untutored] thoughts on translation: if a poem is beautiful in the original language, it makes sense to me that the translator should aim for a similar beauty in the new language. With the hope that the reader will be similarly moved. Now to love... Eros, agape, philein. Different concepts, or different colours of the one? When writing poetry it has always bothered me that English really has only the one noun, "love", that expresses anything close to the depth of emotion people feel. (If anyone knows of another, do tell me!) OK, we have desire, ardour, lust, caring, passion, affection, devotion, reverence, heartache, and lots of other words that poetry is frequently better without - but when you really need to lay it on the line, there's only one choice. It might be nice to be have a specific noun for the love between sexual partners, without having to resort to Greek (or perhaps French?) borrowings which may come across as pretentious. Or to have nouns expressing different degrees of love, different strengths of bond. Or for the love of cars. Chocolate. Ski-ing. Music. Or for the love that you do things for instead of for money. On the other hand, English having the one word for all of it means you can be wonderfully ambiguous and have all sorts of layers of meaning that you might not even be aware of. Other people will explain them to you - either that, or they'll think you're writing about sex yet again. Hope this makes sense - it's kind of late. No love poems tonight. Janet --------------------------------------- Janet Jackson <[log in to unmask]> www.arach.net.au/~huxtable/janet ---------------------------------------