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But so >what? Why suggest that I am not glad for translations, when I manifestly >am? Ah, Alison did I suggest this? sorry if you thought so, I was a bit goofing around with my first paragraph and had taken you at your word that you were glad for translations. And that 68 slogan is closer to my goofing. As for how to communicate with a void? I don't know the answer to that one, I suspect it is sometimes why I am incommunicable, anyway I'm not so interested in talking about how I am, so I'll just say that I never meant to suggest that you have >have...suggested that Haviaris did not have his reasons for>translating as he did best, Rebecca ---- Original message ---- >Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2005 12:48:31 +1100 >From: Alison Croggon <[log in to unmask]> >Subject: Re: Mark, two translations/same Cavafy poem >To: [log in to unmask] > >On 17/1/05 12:09 PM, "Rebecca Seiferle" <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > >> Well, it's curious this idea that translating poetry 'can't be done' since I >> try to do >> it all the time, and am always glad for translations, particularly from >> languages I >> can't read in the original. So that seems a bit of a logical conundrum, no? >> and >> perhaps beyond reason, since that would make all translators fools for >> impossibility. > >It's an unexceptionable truth that translating can't hope to remake a poem, >with exactly the same sonic and formal properties and exactly the same >cultural and linguistic resonances. How can it? That's an impossible >ideal. In a Borgesian sense, perhaps the perfect translation might be the >careful writing out of the poem, word by word, in its own language. But so >what? Why suggest that I am not glad for translations, when I manifestly >am? My thinking is more like that 1968 surrealist slogan: Be realistic! >Demand the impossible! > >I read translations - as I read all poetry - primarily as a reader. >Admittedly, a reader with a special interest in writing, with all sorts of >temporal variabilities - what I might enjoy at one time, I might not enjoy >at another - and also with constancies: I am the kind of reader who, as it >were, reads with my ear first, and where my ear leads, my mind follows. I >am always excited by works which stretch my particular sensibilities, which >challenge and excite me: isn't that what reading poetry is about? And >surely suspending one's predilections is always the task of encountering >anything new - you restore them on the re-reading, in the process of >exploring understanding. With really exciting work, those predilections are >restored irrevocably altered: you might never read anything in the same way >again. With less exciting work, you might find your biases reinforced: >which is not, I would think, a good thing. No reader is truly a void; >reading seems far too dynamic an activity for that. How can you communicate >with a void? > >I have never suggested that Haviaris did not have his reasons for >translating as he did. > >Cheers > >A > >Alison Croggon > >Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com >Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au >Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com