It's also way more dynamic metrically.
A comparison of the two versions suggest places where the first one you
sent distorts the original.
This version still fails to escape cliche (some of which must be integral
to the poem--the dying man's presumed revery), and a degree of
tranlaterese. And rhyme still distorts the larger purpose--"stay" for
"rest" of "lie down" or whatever, seems at the service of "say," which in
any case is weaker than "answer" or "respond." I also wonder about the
passive "plum trees are broken."
Nuff said.
Mark
At 11:20 AM 1/2/2006 -0500, you wrote:
>Mark Weiss wrote:
>
>>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.
>
>I agree that the first version, even with Hungarian translator names,
>seems like an effort to Anglicize Radnoti. No way for me to evaluate
>this, of course. There is another version of Forced March out there that
>seems more risk-taking, if throwing breaks into the line is risk-taking,
>but I have no clue about whether this version gets closer to the muscle of
>the language itself.
>
>'Forced March'
>
>You're crazy. You fall down, stand up and walk again,
>your ankles and your knees move
>but you start again as if you had wings.
>The ditch calls you, but it's no use you're afraid to stay,
>and if someone asks why, maybe you turn around and say
>that a woman and a sane death a better death wait for you.
>But you're crazy. For a long time
>only the burned wind spins above the houses at home,
>Walls lie on their backs, plum trees are broken
>and the angry night is thick with fear.
>Oh if I could believe that everything valuble
>is not only inside me now that there's still home to go back to.
>If only there were! And just as before bees drone peacefully
>on the cool veranda, plum preserves turn cold
>and over sleepy gardens quietly, the end of summer bathes in the sun.
>Among the leaves the fruit swing naked
>and in front of the rust-brown hedge blond Fanny waits for me,
>the morning writes slow shadows---
>All this could happen The moon is so round today!
>Don't walk past me, friend. Yell, and I'll stand up again!
>
> -- Miklos Radnoti
>
>Ken
>
>--
>Kenneth Wolman
>Proposal Development Department
>Room SW334
>Sarnoff Corporation
>609-734-2538
>
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