I think someone mentioned a poet in Spanish who translated non-existent
originals. An Irish practicioner in this vein was James Clarence Mangan
(1803?-47?). Even the name 'Clarence' was adopted from the Duke of
Clarence in Richard lll, who drowned in a butt of malmsey, Mangan having
a considerable thirst.
He described his fake translations as "the antithesis of plagiarism", but
since he was also a fairly accomplished traditional translator from
German, French, and other European languages, his contemporaries (and
later scholars) have always been unsure where the fictional/nonfictional
border runs on the road from the familiar, through Hungarian, into
Turkish and Persian.
His other niche reputations were for his Catholic Nationalist poems
(though some at least of these seem rather exercises in opportunism than
in 'sincerity') and for apparently intensely personal poems of deep
spiritual anguish. This was all on the basis of some very selective 19th
century editing of his work. One poem appears in the standard selected as
"Broken Hearted Lay', and true to its title would make even Lawrence
Upton reach for his Prozac. It's much more interesting in its original
magazine publication where a final verse, later edited out, announces the
earlier verses as tedious claptrap, and launches into nonsense verse with
nonce words.
Interestingly, also, he frequently wrote poems or prose sketches which
seem in his usual very personal style, but reveal themselves in the end
as advertisments for the journals which published them. He wrote two
autobiographical fragments. When challenged by a friend on the evident
inaccuracy and outrageousness of one, he replied "I must have dreamed
it", and promply abandoned the narrative.
Also, translated Balzac's 'completion' of Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer,
as "A Very German Story" over the signature B.A.M. To bam, in the slang
of the time, was to hoax. Could also stand for Balzac and Mangan/Maturin.
Overall, a very intriguing writer, probably known to Poe, and certainly
read by Melville, who annotated his copy.
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Trevor Joyce
Apple Cork IS&T
Phone : +353-21-284405
EMail : [log in to unmask]
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