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Translation Review
Number Sixty-Three ¥ 2002
The University of Texas at Dallas
Translation Review
The University of Texas at Dallas
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Rainer Schulte
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TRANSLATION REVIEW
No. 63, 2002
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Editorial: The Use and Abuse of the Word “Translation”
Rainer Schulte
Interview with David Unger
Patricia Schoch
The Modern Tradition: Reading Taiwan’s Third Generation of Poets
John Balcom
Translating at the Foot of the Cross: Ambivalent Figures in a Sixteenth-Century Polish Resurrection Play
Rob Sulewski
Partners in Crime
Daniel Jaffe
Ravishing Marie: Eugene Mason’s Translation of Marie de France’s Breton Lai of Lanval
Peggy Maddox
On Teaching Translation at the Introductory Level
Stuart Friebert
“Where’s the Velvet?” Jáchym Topol’s Sestra and the Reception of Alex Zucker’s Translation
City, Sister, Silver
Howell, Yvonne
Multiple Translations of Giacomo Leopardi’s L Infinito
Giuseppe Natale
SPECIAL SECTION: THE DYNAMICS OF RE-TRANSLATION
Interview between Manfred Heid, Director of the Goethe-Institut Inter Nationes Chicago
and Philip Boehm.
Philip Boehm
Re-Translation
William H. Gass
A Case for Re-Translation
Susanne Höebel
Re: Re-Translation
Helmut Frielinghaus
Re-Translating: The Example of Musil
Burton Pike
The Dynamics of Re-Translation: Two Stories
Reinhard Kaiser
A Matter of Voice
John Woods
Cover Art:
Ann Broadway
White Narcisus
pastel on paper
Courtesy of the artist
EDITORIAL: THE USE AND ABUSE OF THE WORD TRANSLATION
By Rainer Schulte
T
he words Translation and Translating have been
resurrected by the American Comparative Literature
Association. The 2002 program of the annual meeting of
the American Comparative Literature Association reveals
a plethora of panel titles in which translation or translating is prominently displayed. The examples speak for
themselves: Self Translation; Translation with No
Original; Authenticity and Betrayal: Dramas of
Translation, Genre and Style; Image as Allegory:
Modernist Translations of the Chinese Underworld;
Translating Female Gender and Sexuality; Translation
Issues and Challenges; Translation and the Celluloid
Navel: Picturing Dreams at Work; Poetry into Prose:
Translation as Mourning; Translation in the Trans-national and Trans-generation Space of Taipei; Narrative
Translations of Identity; Translation in Les Nouvelles
Orientales by Marguerite Yourcenar; and finally
Translating Being.
It is certainly intriguing to observe that the term
translation can be applied not only to the theory and
practice of translation but also to the investigation of
specific topics within the context of the arts and humanities.
There can be no doubt that the translator has become
the most important mediator between cultures and languages in our contemporary global society. Furthermore,
the thinking about the fundamental aspects of the act of
translation has largely contributed to the revitalization of
the act of reading. Hans Georg Gadamer had already promoted the idea that reading is translation. And Octavio
Paz reminds us that when we read a text, we must translate it into the sensibility of our present moment.
If we then look at some of the ways that translation and translating have been used in the larger
context of humanistic and philosophical thinking, we
need to reflect on the basic function of translation as,
first of all, the transplantation of written texts from one
language into another and all the problems that are connected with that activity. That perspective should be the
guiding principle when we practice the art of translation
and when we talk about the process of translation. For
that very reason, it might be appropriate to delineate the
boundaries within which literary and humanistic translations come to flourish and what our commitment, as
literary translators, should be with respect to the craft
Translation Review
of translation.
The German word for translation clearly illustrates
the basic function of what translation is all about.
Namely, ber-setzen (carry across: generally understood to be across a river or a lake) visualizes what translators do. They carry something across the river. The situation on the other side of the river is not the same as the
one on this side of the river. They have to make sure that
what they try to deliver on the other side is in a form that
it can be received. Because they carry a text from one
language into another, the transformation that the text
undergoes in the process of translation has to do justice
to the original source-language work and the new environment of the receptor language. Thus, the translator
must explore all the linguistic, cultural, and historical
layers of the original text and then re-create the text in
the pulse of the new language. It could therefore be said
that translation is neither the source-language text nor the
receptor language text, but rather the activity of transformation that takes place between the two. All the tools
that make this transformation possible belong to the
realm of translation in its most fundamental sense, something that we should always keep in mind when we
speak about translation.
The act of carrying across implies a multitude of
ideas. The translator must be very familiar with the original language, must develop research methodologies that
will do full justice to a comprehensive understanding of
the original work, must be a good writer in the receptor
language and be tuned to the pulse of that language in its
contemporary power, and finally, should display a certain
level of creativity to enact a successful voyage across the
river.
In order for any translation to take place, translators
must have access to a variety of tools that assist them
with their work. It is here that the act of translation generates the necessity for a wide range of research.
Translating a text cannot be separated from the most
intense form of research. Every word, every object,
every expression becomes the subject of intense
research. In other words, the research is guided by the
immediate needs of a moment in a text. If we then see
the act of translation in the larger context of the field of
translation studies, it becomes clear that translation
research is still in its infancy. Translators continuously
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experience frustration, because they cannot find answers
for the questions raised by the text they are translating. I
refer to just one of these problems. The Spanish-speaking world comprises about 22 different Spanish languages on several continents. Expressions that have one
specific meaning in Argentina can connote something
entirely different in Mexican Spanish. There are no specialized dictionaries for the different countries in which
Spanish is spoken. The same could be said for the multiple Arabic languages.
If I look back at the various titles of the panels that
were presented at the annual meeting of the American
Comparative Literature Association, there are not many
that focus on the actual translation process, on the
reconstruction of how specific texts were carried across
from one language to another, on the methodologies that
translators used to give a new life to a work in the
receptor language. Quite a few of the titles, e.g.,
Translation and the Celluloid Navel: Picturing Dreams
at Work, Poetry into Prose: Translation as Mourning,
and Narrative Translations of Identity, to name only a
few, begin to stretch what a word like translation can
actually hold.
It has taken literary translation and literary translators several decades to emerge from the realm of invisi-
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bility. Many literary and humanistic departments in universities are still hesitant to recognize the art and craft of
translation as a respectable critical and scholarly activity.
Thus, it would be unfortunate and certainly undesirable if
translation and translation studies were to be molded into
some kind of fashionable academic canon that comes to
perpetuate the inaccessible jargon that can be attributed
to a great extent to the various scholarly branches initiated by Derridian deconstructionism.
The act of translation and the thinking about translation together with the methodologies that can be derived
from the art and craft of translation have largely contributed to the revitalization of the reading, understanding, and pleasure of works of literature. However translation might be stretched into other areas of scholarly
pursuits, let us not forget that translation is meant to
open up channels of communication between languages
and cultures and also between readers and works of
world literature. When we speak about translation, we
should always keep in mind that the basic function of
translation is to carry the work from one side of the
river to the other, so that the dialogue between nations
can flourish in our global world.
Translation Review
INTERVIEW WITH DAVID UNGER
By Patricia Schoch
Patricia Schoch: How do you choose the material you
translate?
David Unger: I began translating nearly 30 years ago,
when I was a graduate student at Columbia University.
From the start, I have always had the good fortune to
translate the writers or the books that I ve wanted to
translate. I can honestly say that I have never had to
translate a book because of some financial exigency or
need to fulfill an academic requirement. And very rarely
have I tried to snag translation projects; generally, the
books that I ve translated have come looking for me, in
one way or another what Andr Breton calls the
mercy of chance.
I first began translating the work of Chileans Enrique
Lihn and Nicanor Parra, on the recommendation of Frank
MacShane, then director of Columbia s MFA Writing
Division and a translator in his own right. I was, at the
time, a very serious poet (scarf, whiskey breath, bloodshot eyes) and found that translating deepened my own
work, even more so than simply reading Spanish-language poetry. At about that time, Hardie St. Martin a
great translator of Latin American and Spanish poetry
was a featured guest in the Columbia translation workshop. Hardie and I hit it off immediately and he very
generously introduced me to the poetry of Luis Cernuda,
Vicente Aleixandre, and Vicente Huidobro, poets whose
Bavid Unger
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work I later translated on my own. Then poet and critic
Lewis Hyde asked me to cotranslate Vicente
Aleixandre s World Alone. Along the way, I translated
individual pieces by diverse writers such as Luisa
Valenzuela, Roque Dalton, Mercedes Roff , and Mario
Benedetti. In the early 1990s, I became very interested in
the work of female Mexican writers, probably as a consequence of working as the U.S. representative for the
Guadalajara International Book Fair. I read B rbara
Jacobs Dead Leaves, a gem of a book, which Curbstone
decided to publish. Elena Garro s two novellas, First
Love and Look For My Obituary, won the 1996 Sor
Juana In s de la Cruz Prize, and Curbstone was willing
to let me translate it. Silvia Molina s The Love You
Promised Me also won the Sor Juana Prize in 1998, and I
asked Curbstone for permission to translate it. Every
book found me, to an extent: I was born in Guatemala,
so how could I not accept Groundwood s offer to translate Victor Montejo s wonderful young adult version of
the Popol Vuh?
PS: How closely do you collaborate with the author on
each project? What impact does he or she have on your
translation?
DU: A living author is a great, great resource. I owe so
much to those authors who were willing to help me.
Let s face it we can only know so much by ourselves,
and it would be a serious failure not to bring a living
writer into the process. In poetry, the translator can often
know the poem more deeply than the poet who wrote
it can. Cynthia Ozick, in a masterful essay entitled A
Translator s Monologue, implies that the translator is
the best reader of the poem and that he/she must dare to
be equal master of the poem together with the poet.
This tells me that the discovery of the poem s meaning,
in its multifaceted form (linguistic, musical, metrical,
imagistic, and symbolic levels), is a kind of Orphic task.
The writing of a poem requires both conscious and
unconscious elements the poet can help the translator
with those conscious or strategic questions but is often at
a loss to provide the keys for the unconscious elements.
The poets that I ve worked with have always made suggestions but have allowed me to make final decisions.
With fiction, the process has been somewhat different: I
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query the author and also ask him/her to read over my
translation or give it to someone who can read it. B rbara
Jacobs is fully bilingual, so her suggestions were quite
specific, and I was more than happy to accept them.
Silvia Molina, whose English is not as strong, provided
me with directionals a set of keys and bingo!
Always the right one to open the door. For Cuba s
Ediciones Vigia, I translated my wife Anne Gilman s
Frayed Edges; Anne clarified some lines, and Silvia
Molina was kind enough to look over my Spanish version to offer some timely suggestions. In translating the
Popol Vuh, I worked with Montejo (a Jacaltec Mayan
who is also a professor of Anthropology at the University
of California, Davis) and with Patricia Aldana,
Groundwood s Guatemalan-born publisher; for both
Victor and Patricia, the Popol Vuh is not simply a book,
but a sacred text deeply related to their identity as
Guatemalans. If the author is dead as was the case
with translating Cernuda and Huidobro I depended
much more on my own reading of the texts within the
author s oeuvre and on the good advice of friends like
Hardie, Paul Pines, and Jonathan Cohen, all of whom
have been very helpful to me. I don t fool myself for a
minute into believing that because my name is on the
book jacket, I am the sole translator of a particular book.
PS: In your opinion, what would be the ideal relationship between the author of a work and the translator?
DU: To start, I believe that the author must cede full
control to the translator. By this I mean that the author
must, as an act of faith, release his work to the translator and trust his/her ability to do justice to the original
work. I have been fortunate to work with writers who
were willing to trust me. Authors have questioned lines,
phrases, even whole paragraphs, but in the end, they
have trusted me to respect the form and fire of their own
originals. This trust is wonderful, because it makes the
translator more comfortable and, at the same time, free to
come up with a faithful, yet parallel, text. As the translator, I cannot judge whether I have been successful or not,
but I was extremely pleased that my translation of The
Love You Promised Me was one of six finalists for the
2000 IMPAC prize for the best novel in English or
English translation.
In editing Nicanor Parra s Antipoems: New and
Selected (New York, New Directions, 1985), I had to
deal with an author who felt that Alan Ginsberg (who
barely spoke Spanish) should have edited and translated
his book. Parra set up lots of roadblocks (Am I revealing
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dirty laundry? Might this confession help other incipient
translators?), including the sending of individual poems
to several reputable translators, unbeknownst to me and
to them, to see which one would come up with the best
translation. And there were other such stratagems. I had
to ask Parra not to do these things, but he didn t like
being scolded by an unknown poet 36 years younger.
Parra did all he could to kill my book, even though I had
worked very successfully with other Parra translators,
including W.S. Merwin, Edith Grossman, and Miller
Williams. The relationship was less than ideal both
from the translator s and, I m sure, the poet s viewpoint.
PS: Do you see the translator as an insider in the creation of the work, or as an outsider, looking in?
DU: Most definitely as an insider. The translator must,
almost by definition, be able to get into the skin of the
original. This is most true in translating poetry. The
poet/translator has to understand the poem in all its
dimensions, apparent and hidden, to come up with a
translation that a monolingual reader might believe is
authoritative. The act of translation then is the carrying
over of the fullest poetic experience from one language
to another. The translation becomes an act of reconstruction for which inspiration, poetic inspiration, is the most
vital element. As a translator, you can never capture all
the registers of the original, but if you are lucky, creative,
or extremely inspired, you will be able to bring across as
much of the original as possible, always aware that the
act of translation vacillates between utter failure and partial success. Umberto Eco said in Experiences in
Translation (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001)
that the perfect translation is an impossible dream.
Sometimes, you are able to come up with a felicitous line
that reveals some unconscious elements of the original
and makes them apparent in the English, without necessarily being reductive. I don t want to sound theoretical.
But this is what we find in Waylim Yip s Cathay, in particular his examination of Pound s translation of Li Bai s
The River Merchant s Wife: A Letter. Pound was such
a master at making sure that his translations brought
across as many registers of the original poem as possible.
There is nothing monaural about his versions. Too often,
critics and reviewers choose to favor a rendition that is
literal over one that is faithful : faithful to the poetic
spirit that created the text in the first place.
PS: One of your recently translated works, the novel The
Love You Promised Me by Mexican author Silvia
Translation Review
Molina, seems to be exploding stereotypes of the central
importance of the idea of “family” in Mexican culture.
In fact, the family of her central character seems to be as
fractured and dysfunctional as many in the U.S. Also, the
women in Molina’s book — women who abandon their
families and initiate extramarital affairs — hardly fit the
stereotypical role of the matriarchal hub of Mexican family life. How does translating a work that so explodes
stereotypes fit into the idea of the translator’s role in
advancing understanding between cultures?
DU: Women having affairs has been amply portrayed in
contemporary American fiction and is seen by feminists
as giving women the option to explore sexuality and
individuation outside of marriage, especially if the marriage has gone dead. In Mexico, as in most Latin
America countries, married women do have affairs, but it
is all so much more circumspect and certainly not talked
about. What makes Silvia s book so special is not that
Marcela, a married woman, has an affair with an older
married man, but rather how this affair is combined with
her search for her ancestors after the affair goes bust to
help her discover her next step live alone or go back
to her husband. Moreover, Silvia writes delicately and
with what I would call searing honesty. Marcela begins
her affair lightly, but with a full understanding of how it
might affect her marriage and her children. Silvia
plumbed the depths of Marcela s feelings and contradictions without the slightest hint of sentimentality. And by
relating Marcela s deception with that of her own ancestors in the small fictitious Caribbean town of San L zaro,
she has written a novel that has both personal and cultural significance. But let me clarify: I did not translate The
Love You Promised Me because it explodes stereotypes; I
translated it because it was beautifully written and
because it was a profoundly human story. And there was
a coincidence: early in the novel Marcela hears a song,
Nature Boy, whose romantic lyrics reverberate deeply
in her mind and form the leitmotif of the novel.
Coincidentally, this is one of my favorite jazz ballads,
particularly in a recent rendition by the great jazz vocalist Abby Lincoln. So again, in Breton s words, Silvia s
book found me.
PS: One of the most engaging characteristics of The
Love You Promised Me, one that seems to build bridges
from Mexican to U.S. culture — is its inclusion of a
number of English phrases. You, in turn, include several Spanish and French phrases in your translation.
What was your thought process in your decision to use
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this technique, which seems to blur the lines between
cultures? Did Molina have a part in these translation
decisions?
DU: Ezra Pound was asked why he included lines in
Proven al, Chinese, andItalian in his Cantos, without
translating them. Pound said that when something has
been expressed so perfectly in the original, that the reader should learn these languages and read them in the
original. Of course, if we take Pound s dictum to its logical extreme, there would be no translation and we
would all be required to learn upward of 200 major languages. This is impossible. Personally, I try to translate
those Spanish phrases for which I can find verbal equivalencies in English even if there is great loss [the phrase
por si las moscas (literally, in case there are flies)
becomes just in case]. I don t believe that reading fiction
should be a chore; however, it is not unreasonable to
expect English readers to translate certain Spanish
words or a stanza of a Baudelaire poem....I believe
Silvia was pleased by my decision to leave certain
phrases, fruits, etc. in the original tongue.
PS: Verb tense differences between English and Spanish,
as well as the treatment of verbs as contractions in
English, can pose special translating challenges. How
did you address these challenges?
DU: I think that most translators are interested in creating
texts that have a certain readability and flow, especially if
their translations are contemporary works. Using contractions sparingly and using the active, instead of the passive
voice, would be choices translators might make. Certain
writers, however, will assume a more formal narrative
voice; for example, Carmen Boullosa often has her novels
taking place in centuries passed. I don t think that modernizing such writing is in order, because it flies in the
face of the author s intent. Several years ago, I translated
Victor Montejo s young adult version of the Popol Vuh,
the Mayan sacred book. Victor maintained the formality
and decorum of the original Spanish at the same time that
he relaxed some of the language and eliminated certain
repetitions. My own version followed his decisions closely I certainly didn t feel it was incumbent upon me as
the translator to be more faithful to the original than
Victor, a Jacaltec Mayan and a professor of Anthropology
at the University of California, Davis, had been.
PS: Can you describe your processes for deciding issues
of tone, language level, and idiom?
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DU: Basically, I let the original text make these decisions for me. Since I am fully bilingual and feel perfectly
happy reading in either Spanish or English, I feel that I
have a good sense of the pulse of the original work. I
know when the choice of words in Spanish is archaic,
allusionary, and ironic. I do not believe that it is the
translator s business to impose his/her own poetics or
theories of language and culture on the original text.
More important is to hear the distinct voices of characters and to be able to render them successfully in translation.
PS: What in your language background led you to
become a literary translator?
DU: I was four when my parents left Guatemala for
Hialeah, Florida. In one fell swoop, I lost not only my
mother tongue but also all the sensory referents of growing up in a Central American country. Gone were the
mountains and the volcanoes, the taste of zapotes, chilacayotes; the smell of copal and eucalyptus, etc., of my
childhood, and I was forced to negotiate in an all-English
environment. It was brutal. I believe that my first efforts
at speaking English were acts of translation, and
although I cannot remember specific instances, I am sure
that I committed dozens of acts of treachery as I tried to
express myself in English. Later, when I was in graduate
school at Columbia, I felt that I had an obligation to
translate; and when I teach Translation at City College, I
try to impress upon my students that they, too, have an
obligation to use their language skills to bring to monolingual readers the richness of world literature.
PS: Can you describe some of your initial experiences as
a translator?
DU: The first poem I ever translated was Parra s Ultimo
brindis. It was workshopped at Columbia, and I sent
off a final version to the Massachusetts Review. About
two weeks later, I received a letter back from Jules
Chametzky, the editor, in which he said that not only did
they want to publish my translation The Final Toast
but that they also wanted it for the back cover of their
Autumn issue which was just going to press! And they
would pay me fifteen 1973 smackers! I was thrilled. All
serious translators should be treated so kindly. That experience was an enormous ego boost. Then I met Hardie St.
Martin at Columbia, and he was so incredibly generous
to me; I would say I apprenticed with him. More than
that, he in his typically selfless way put me in
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touch with different editors and writers who asked me to
contribute translations. Also, MacShane was then the
director of the Translation Center at Columbia, and the
Center was quite active in supporting translators with
small grants and, in general, creating an environment in
which translation was not only important, but necessary.
Those were heady days .
PS: How did your career as a translator develop from
then on?
DU: In 1975, the Chilean poet Enrique Lihn spent a few
weeks in New York. Together with Patricio Lerzundi and
Jonathan Cohen, we decided to prepare a volume of
Enrique s work for New Directions. Apparently J.
Laughlin had read some of Enrique s poems in other
publications and seemed keen on doing a whole book.
We elicited the support of the then Center for InterAmerican Relations (now the Americas Society), which
in those years helped subsidize translation projects. John
Felstiner was also translating Enrique at the time, and he
joined the project. I kept meeting lots of writers Luisa
Valenzuela, Isaac Goldemberg, Jos Kozer, Reina Roff
and I would translate individual work until the next
project appeared.
PS: Among the many works you have translated, both
poetry and prose, which one presented the greatest translating challenge?
DU: I think translating Vicente Aleixandre s World
Alone/Mundo a solas with Lewis Hyde was the greatest
challenge, in that we were trying to bring to the 1980
poetry audience the work of one of Spain s best
Generation of 1927 poets. I can t speak for Lewis, but
I often felt at loggerheads at not being able to render into
English some of Aleixandre s more opaque surrealist
lines or those in which his Romantic flourishes and rapture seemed hopelessly stilted in English. As a translator,
I ve always wanted to know exactly what the poet meant
or better, what I thought he meant; often I think we came
up with lines that lacked transparency. This project
taught me to avoid translating poets with whom I did not
share a linguistic or stylistic affinity.
PS: How do you go about the translation task? Do you
make a rough draft first, or do you translate one line at a
time?
DU: If it s a novel, I first read it cover to cover.
Translation Review
Somewhere early in my reading of it, I find myself translating certain lines in my head. That s when I know I
have decided that I would like to translate it. I translate
the novel from start to finish, then I begin to edit the
printout. Once I think I have finished this second version, I give it to Hardie, Paul Pines, or Asa Zatz, who are
more than happy to go over this version and show me
what a bad translator I am! I rework my version with
their suggestions. I then query the authors; B rbara
Jacobs and Silvia Molina have been especially helpful.
And then, of course, the editors of the publishing houses
have a go at it. I ve been fortunate to have as editors
Sandy Taylor of Curbstone and Patricia Aldana, both of
whom are excellent readers and writers.
PS: How many drafts do you prepare to get a translation
into final shape?
DU: Usually three drafts are enough.
PS: Would it be possible for you to describe the actual
work process as you go from one sentence to the next? If
you translate one word, and you have several alternatives, do you put these alternatives in during the first
draft, or do you make a fairly clear decision with respect
to what is going to go in?
DU: I usually come up with one version, which I then
put away in a drawer for several weeks. Very rarely do I
put two alternative translations down on the page. When
I reread that first draft, I change quite a bit, and it is at
this point that I come up with my changes.
consider to be better?
DU: It is hard to answer this question honestly without
sounding pompous or arrogant. There are certainly many
arrogant translators around; I remember one, in particular, who said: I speak for Borges. Borges, a master of
the mirror, probably did not even speak for himself .
But yes, I have come up with better lines only insofar
as I have been able to create several levels of meaning
that were implicit in the text but not necessarily in the
specific phrase I translated. I would call these lucky hits
and try and leave my ego out of it.
PS: Could you tell us what you’re working on now?
DU: I just recently finished translating Ana Mar a
Machado s Me in the Middle/Bisa Bea Bisa Bel and
about 16 children s poems, both for Groundwood Press.
With my novel Life in the Damn Tropics coming out this
April from Syracuse University Press, I am putting most
of my energy into completing a collection of short stories, some set in Guatemala and others in the U.S. There
are books that I would love to translate Carlos Franz s
El lugar donde estuvo el paraíso and Silvia Molina s
Muchacha en azul but these projects would pull me
further away from my own writing. I have reached a
point in my life where I am acutely aware of the passage
of time, and if I don t work on my stuff now, it will
never happen. I am not closing the door to translation,
but after nearly 30 years at it, I m taking a well-deserved
break.
Translations
PS: Gregory Rabassa has made the comment that the
more he translates, the more he uses the dictionary.
Would this apply to your translation work?
DU: Not really. Of course, my head is always in dictionaries, but I find that very often I can get bogged down in
dictionaries and they become more traps than sources of
elucidation. If I get truly stuck, I prefer to e-mail the
writer. More important to me is establishing the proper
relation between words, sentences, and paragraphs so
that my final version has consistency. As a novelist and
short story writer, I am very concerned with the total
experience.
PS: Have you ever encountered a translation situation in
which you feel that a line in the original is rather weak
and you come up with a line in your translation that you
Translation Review
Books
Me in the Middle by Ana Mar a Machado. Toronto:
Groundwood Press, 2002.
Bordes deshilachados/Frayed Edges by Anne Gilman.
Matanzas, Cuba: Ediciones Vigia. 2001.
To Be What I Will Be by Silvia Molina. Madrid:
Ediciones Everest, 2001.
The Love You Promised Me by Silvia Molina.
Willimantic, CT: Curbstone Press, 1999. Winner of
the Sor Juana In s de la Cruz Prize in fiction, 1999.
The Popol Vuh version by Victor Montejo. Toronto:
Groundwood Press, 1999.
First Love and Look for my Obituary by Elena Garro.
Willimantic, CT: Curbstone Press, 1997. Winner of
the Sor Juana In s de la Cruz Prize in fiction, 1996.
7
The Dead Leaves by B rbara Jacobs. Willimantic, CT:
Curbstone Press, 1993.
Antipoems: New and Selected by Nicanor Parra. New
York: New Directions, 1985 (editor and co-translator).
World Alone by Vicente Aleixandre. Boston: Penmaen
Press, 1981 (co-translated with Lewis Hyde).
Just Passing Through by Isaac Goldemberg. Hanover,
NH: Point of Contact/Ediciones del Norte co-edition, 1981 (translated with the author).
The Dark Room and Other Poems by Enrique Lihn. New
York: New Directions, 1978 (co-translated with
Jonathan Cohen and John Felstiner).
Selected Translations in Book Collections
Other translations
Translations of Luis Cernuda, Mempo Giardinelli, Isaac
Goldemberg, Vicente Huidobro, B rbara Jacobs, Jos
Kozer, Enrique Lihn, Manuel Ramos Otero, Carlos
Oquendo de Amat, Nicanor Parra, Reina Roffe, Ilan
Stavans, Luisa Valenzuela, and others, published in The
American Voice, Anthology of Contemporary Latin
American Literature, City, Discurso Literario, Echad: An
Anthology of Latin American Jewish Writers, The
Literary Review, Lumen/Avenue A, Massachusetts
Review, New Directions 44, Nimrod, Nuestro, Poetry
Now, Practices of the Wind, Present Tense, Poetry Now,
River Styx, Street, Sun, Translation, Voices Within the
Ark: The Modern Jewish Poets (New York: Avon, 1980),
and Weid.
The Jews in Hell by Isaac Goldemberg in the Norton
Book of Jewish Literature (New York: W. W.
Norton), 2000.
The Fat Man From La Paz by Gonzalo Lemos in The
Fat Man From La Paz: Contemporary Short Stories
from Bolivia, New York: Seven Stories, 2000.
The Centerfielder by Sergio Ram rez in The Picador
Book of Latin American Short Stories, ed. by Carlos
Fuentes, London: Picador, 1999.
Three Mario Benedetti short stories in Blood Pact.
Willimantic, CT: Curbstone Press, 1997.
Seven Roque Dalton poems in The Small Hours of the
Night. Willimantic, CT: Curbstone Press, 1996.
Three Ilan Stavan short stories in The One-Handed
Pianist. Las Cruces, NM: University of New
Mexico Press, 1995.
Apaches in La Granja, in Pyramids of Glass. San
Antonio, TX: Corona Press, 1994.
The Censors by Luisa Valenzuela in Short Shorts,
(Godine Press, 1982). Reprinted in Open Doors
(North Point Press, 1988), The Censors (Curbstone
Press, 1992), Many Worlds of Literature
(Macmillan, 1993), Global Reading Safari (Nelson,
1993) Global Voices (Simon & Schuster, 1994,
Prentice Hall Literature, Platinum (Prentice Hall,
1998).
Translations of Vicente Aleixandre in: A Longing for the
Light (New York: Harper & Row, 1979, reprinted by
Copper Canyon Press, 1985) and Paris Review.
8
Translation Review
THE MODERN TRADITION: READING TAIWAN’S THIRD
GENERATION OF POETS
By John Balcom
T
hings get lost in translation. Every translator is
painfully aware of this fact. Yet, some of what is lost
in translation has nothing to do with the words of a text.
What gets lost is the larger cultural context from which a
text is generated, a context that can also supply meaning.
As a translator of Chinese poetry, I have had to grapple
constantly with the problem of how a translation will be
received by a readership that might have little or no
knowledge of Chinese culture. Taiwan s third generation
of poets have been problematic, because many of them
have consciously worked to reassert the local and the traditional to balance what they perceived to be the increasing Americanization, or globalization, of Chinese poetry.
This article, then, is an attempt, an exercise if you will,
to recover some of the missing context for readers of
modern Taiwan literature in translation, to explain what
has been lost in translation.
The political and cultural history of Taiwan over the
last century or so has proved to be extremely complex.
Colonial, postcolonial, agricultural, industrial, postindustrial, traditional, modern, postmodern: Taiwan has experienced them all in a matter of a few decades. Modernity
and its more recent manifestation of globalization have
been powerful forces influencing the local culture of
Taiwan over the past hundred years.
Modernity, as Anthony Giddens has pointed out, is
inherently globalizing. Giddens says that globalization
can be defined as the intensification of worldwide relations that link distant localities in such a way that local
happenings are shaped by distant events. These days,
globalization is often conceptualized as a circle, in which
power is concentrated in the center and emanates outward toward less powerful peripheral regions. In other
words, the centers of power, be they economic, political,
or cultural, dictate what the periphery will do.1
But globalization also possesses a dialectical nature
a push and pull between tendencies toward centralization and uniformity on the one hand and the sovereignty of particular locales on the other; i.e., that many
times, peripheral areas, when threatened with centralizing uniformity, often will react against the trend and
reassert their own local identity. That search for identity
is carried out under the competing claims of the
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global/center and the local/peripheral. This has certainly
affected the cultural sphere as well as any contemporary
notion of a national literature. Taiwan s third generation of poets can serve as a case study of the impact of
globalization on local culture.
Taiwan s third generation of poets is a loose term
used to identify the poets who emerged in the 1970s. The
second generation of poets are those associated with
China s second wave of modernist writing that evolved
after the Second World War. Most of the second generation of poets arrived in Taiwan as part of the Nationalist
exodus after the founding of the People s Republic of
China (PRC) in 1949. The Nationalist retreat to Taiwan
had profound implications for the island in cultural
terms. The Kuomintang government forbade the use of
Japanese Taiwan had been a Japanese colony for 50
years, and most of the island s intellectuals wrote in
Japanese, but not necessarily in Chinese thus effectively silencing the island s first generation of modernist
poets. The government also proscribed much of China s
early modernist literary heritage as potentially subversive. Furthermore, certain topics, the foremost being politics, were also strictly off limits in the new Free China.
Taiwan s second generation of poets, politically conservative and faithful to the ruling party, stepped in to fill
the void. Many of the poets of this generation grew up
with earlier modernist experiments on the China mainland. After a brief period of anticommunist writing,
mainland writers sought inspiration in western writing
and adopted western models. Calls were made to horizontally transplant all western schools of writing since
Baudelaire. Chinese modernism had begun during the
May 4th period (1919) as a rebellion against the classical
tradition and had first looked to the West; in Taiwan,
now that most of the modern Chinese literary heritage
had been proscribed, writers once again looked for inspiration to the West.
During the 1950s and 1960s, Taiwan s second generation debated the merits of Modernism versus
Romanticism, dabbled in Surrealism, Existentialism, and
nihilism, and made them the fashions of the day. At its
best, the poetry of this period was powerful and original
but, it can be said, profoundly influenced by the West.
9
This is not to say that everything Chinese was rejected in
favor of everything western; generally, it was more a
matter of perceived degree of westernization among generations. But for the second generation, the classical tradition and local traditions tended to take a back seat, at
least in the early days. At its worst, the poetry was imitative, mannered, and intentionally obscure.
What distinguishes the third generation from their
immediate predecessors is a distinct and heightened concern for local and cultural traditions, as well as a more
colloquial diction. By the 1970s, when the third generation of poets was coming of age, the reading public and
the critical establishment were becoming increasingly
disillusioned with the situation of poetry on the island.
Propelled by internal and external factors associated with
globalization, critics and young poets alike began calling
for a return to Chinese traditions and culture. Among the
external historical factors was Taiwan s declining status
in the world and diplomatic isolation the US had recognized the PRC, and Taiwan had lost its seat in a number of important international organizations, including
the UN, GATT, IMF, and the World Bank, to name a few.
Feeling slighted by the West, Taiwan was forced to look
inward. This enforced cultural introspection resulted in a
reassertion of political and cultural nationalism. This
combination of internal and external factors merged. The
third generation, in their attempts to define themselves
against their immediate predecessors, naturally felt justified rejecting the westernization of their predecessors
as a means of finding a way beyond their creative agon.
A return to tradition is what was called for. But they
were caught in a creative bind as modern poets, they
were restricted to using the modern vernacular language
while trying to adapt aspects of tradition. What form
would that return to tradition take, since the classical language had been discarded as a medium for poetry a half
century before? This was the quandary of the third generation of poets. They developed a number of strategies for
adapting many aspects of tradition while hewing to the
modern vernacular as a poetic idiom.
Therefore, on the lexical level, the poems of the third
generation are often quite easy to translate; but for the
reader of the translation lacking knowledge of the larger
cultural context, meaning, in the fullest sense of the
word, can and will be elusive. It is the extralinguistic
features of the poems the intertextuality, traditional
poetic form and structure, forms of word-play peculiar to
the Chinese language, and in some cases the interplay
between text and other art forms such as painting, to
name just a few that often are foregrounded and
10
become critical to the reading, understanding, and ultimately to the enjoyment of these poems.
One of the duties of a translator, therefore, can be
to contextualize this situation, alerting the reader through
explanatory devices such as commentary and notes. In
other words, the translator can provide the reader of the
translated text with the missing lexical and nonlexical
paradigms that govern the generation and reception of a
particular text in the source-language culture and thereby
enhance the reading experience. This article seeks to perform just such a task with regard to a selection of poems
by Taiwan s third-generation poets.
Du Ye (
) (b. 1953) is from Jiayi in west-central
Taiwan. He attended the
Chinese Culture University, first as a physics major, then
as a Chinese major. Eventually, he earned his MA and
PhD in Chinese. His poem Americanized Breasts (
aaaaaaaaa
) is one of his signature works. The poem
is also a delightfully humorous commentary of the
dialectical push and pull of globalization as it was experienced in Taiwan in the 1970s. The poem:
Tonight, you again left your bra
In the girl s dorm of the English department
You arrived with a fiery western song
On your lips
Your breasts bouncing inside your T-shirt, keeping
time
It looked as if
They were struggling to jump out
Tonight, as you bent over to pick up a copy of the
Book of Rites you had dropped on the floor
Your breasts looked out at me from
Your wide, generous collar
And the Book of Rites looked up at your breasts
At that moment
I quickly used 5,000 years of morality
To resist two hundred years of America
Displayed by your body
I admit your thought and behavior
Have all become American
Your dyed hair matches the color of your skin
Even Confucius would have to nod his head
In acknowledgement
But your breasts, released from their bra
Are still Chinese
Classical
They must feel
Translation Review
Bad, the way small American papayas do
When they don t get enough water
If you must flaunt your breasts tonight
Then I, a student in the Chinese department
Know of a breast far bigger than yours
My 5,000 years of Chinese literature is a volup
tuous breast
Are you aware of that?
???????????????
????????????????
?????????????
?????
?????????
???????????????
???????????????
??????????
???
?????????
???????????
??????????
??????
???????????
????????????
???????????
?????
???
??????
???????????
????????????
????????????
?????
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?????
Du Ye s poem Americanized Breasts was included in his collection of love poems titled Glove and Love
(
), published in 1980. The poem is an excellent statement of the dilemmas facing Taiwan s third
generation of poets: the conflicts between the traditional and the modern, the Chinese and the western, and
one generation s artistic identity vis- -vis another s.
The very odd collocation of the adjectival
Americanized (???
) and breasts (?? ) in the
title would have been quite provocative for any reader
of the poem when it first appeared. But the violence
done to the language through this novel collocation is
Translation Review
itself deeply indicative of the problems confronting the
third generation of Taiwan poets.
The nexus of conflict is neatly represented in the
relationship between the speaker, a male college student
in the Chinese department, and his girlfriend, an English
major who is au courant when it comes to all the latest
fashions from America. We learn that she is studying
English (indicating that she is smart and did well on her
college entrance exams and that she is in a department
lots of people want to enter but for which few are chosen), sings western songs, dyes her hair, and, most significantly, she doesn t wear a bra. All of these characteristics are decidedly un-Chinese. In fact, the male speaker
acknowledges that her thought and behavior have all
become American. The male speaker of the poem, by
contrast, is in the Chinese department (indicating that he
didn t have to do very well on entrance exams), and the
possessor, protector, and purveyor of a traditional sense
of morality and culture. In general, he comes across as
quite dull by comparison to the young lady.
For the speaker of the poem, the girl is unquestionably a vibrant young woman. Her apparent rejection of
things Chinese and things traditional seems to both
intrigue and upset him. She embodies all the latest fads
and fashions and all the changes taking place in Taiwan.
But still he still finds her to be classically Chinese; it is
just the packaging (or lack thereof) that has changed. In
other words, there appears to be an artificial, if not
imposed, domination of what is American over what is
naturally Chinese. In this regard, the young woman can
be said to represent the latest poetry of Taiwan, which
was heavily influenced by Anglo-American modernism
the poetry written by Taiwan s second generation.
However, the young man, who can be said to symbolize Taiwan s third generation of poets, insists upon
looking elsewhere for his muse and literary inspiration:
to his 5,000 years of Chinese literary tradition. He compares that tradition to a voluptuous and colossal breast
that provides him with nutritive sustenance, and he
seems to console himself with the thought that the breast
of tradition is bigger than what his girlfriend has to offer.
He rejects the contemporary, which he considers superficial and foreign, opting for the classical.
But although Du Ye s poem seems to pinpoint the
conflict in a cleverly symbolic way, it is also generated
by that very conflict. If we take a closer look at the
breast analogy, we find it somewhat troubling. The solitary breast has been excised and isolated from the organic whole of the feminine body. We must ask ourselves
how a breast detached from the living organism can provide nourishment of any kind? It cannot. The idea is
monstrous, an impossible abstraction. Thus, we can say
that traditional culture has become nothing more than a
11
collection of lifeless fragments and artifacts. The actual
living culture, represented by the speaker s girlfriend, is
a hybrid culture of sorts, a global cultural configuration,
a combination of East and West.
Cultural displacement is a preoccupation of Du
Ye s. Culture and language can be conceived of as
organic wholes, but not impervious to external influence. Du Ye takes great delight in examining the effects
of globalization (Americanization) on Chinese culture.
Another of his poems on this theme is Universal Love,
Not War (
).
I was studying the philosophy of universal love
And putting it into practice
Peaches stood at the border of my heart
Crying so that Mo Tzu was helpless
She accused Orchid of snatching her territory
Of stealing my heart
Orchid scratched Peaches
Later Little Plum joined
The fray
In my tiny heart
They created
A Warring States period of love
Together they destroyed Mo Tzu s system
I seemed to hear
Mo Tzu in a sweat, shouting:
Not war, not war
?????????
????????
????????????
????????
????????????
??????
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????????
??????
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????
Ostensibly this is yet another love poem by Du Ye,
12
but this text, like the previous poem, also deals with cultural conflict. The key to appreciating this poem is being
aware of a misreading of Chinese tradition by the speaker, more specifically in being attuned to a semantic displacement of the poetic sign universal love (
).
The doctrine of universal love was advocated by the
philosopher Mo Tzu (?? ) (fl. 479—438 B.C.). The doctrine perhaps is most closely akin to the Christian golden
rule of love thy neighbor. The semantic displacement
to which I have referred first rears its head in the juxtaposition of the title of the poem with the narrated content
of the poem. The title of the poem, ????
, is composed of the titles of two books of the Mo Tzu text: book
four, titled universal love and book five, titled against
[offensive] war. Therefore, the reader comes to the text
with the expectation of encountering something related
to Mo Tzu s doctrines, and perhaps something dry and
classical.
However, the reader soon finds that something is
amiss. The semantic displacement that generates the text
is apparent almost immediately. The speaker tells us that
he has been studying Mo Tzu s theories as well as putting them into practice. But this simple assertion
devolves into a conflict between several of his lady
friends. Clearly the speaker has confused Mo Tzu s
notion of universal love with the more recent notion
from the West of free love. For anyone who lived
through the Vietnam era, the title immediately suggests
the popular phrase: make love, not war as well as the
entire free-love ethos of the period. Once again, we see a
juxtaposition of the Chinese with the western. The
semantic displacement gives rise to the speaker s
predicament as well as to the irony in the text. The words
of a philosopher from the Warring States period (475-222
B.C.) are reinterpreted through a filter of contemporary
western notions imported to Taiwan. For the speaker,
Chinese tradition is more foreign and more removed
from his existence than contemporary western ideas.
Humorous as the speaker s situation appears, it belies the
vast gap that separates him from his own cultural traditions.
If, as this poem suggests, Du Ye takes this gap as
axiomatic for contemporary culture, what does it mean
for the third-generation poet in his or her attempts to
return to tradition as a means to rescue Chinese culture
and pull it back from the brink of total westernization?
Clearly, given the situation of the speaker, the prospects
are not encouraging.
How have some third-generation poets adapted
aspects of tradition? Wu Sheng ( ? ? ) (b. 1944) was
Translation Review
born in rural Xizhou in Zhanghua county, west-central
Taiwan. He grew up on a farm and attended Pingdong
Agricultural college, majoring in animal husbandry.
Upon graduation, he returned home to work the family
farm and to teach biology in the Xizhou Middle School.
He is perhaps the best known exponent of nativism
dealing with rural themes in literature in Taiwan. His
poem Rainy Season (?? ) is a good example of
this sort of writing:
Have a smoke
Have a drink
Damn this miserable weather
Shoot the bull
Flirtin with somebody else s girl
Damn this miserable day
Bitch and grumble
Figure your pay and what things cost
Damn this miserable life
When it ought to rain it don t
When it ain t supposed to
It rains without lettin up
Does as it pleases
Pourin down rain
Damn, just gotta go on livin
????
?????
?? — ????
?????
??????????
?? — ????
????????
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?? — ????
????, ???
????????
???????????
?? — ??????
There are several things that are immediately apparent
with even a cursory glance at Wu Sheng s poem: it is
Translation Review
written in the local Southern Min dialect; the diction is
colloquial and of a very low register; and repetitive patterns of phonetic reduplicatives occur throughout: line
one: chou chou; line two: he he; line four: kaijiang kaijiang; line five: dou dou; line seven: fa fa, ma ma; line
eight: pansuan pansuan; line eleven: pian pian, as well
as the refrain at the end of each stanza, yi niang, which I
have rendered simply as damn, but which literally
means something more like yo mama.
The phonetic repetition within the poem mirrors the
tedium of a rainy day. But, given the surface simplicity
and the low-register diction, the reader will ask, is this a
poem? Within the larger context of Chinese literary history, the answer is an unqualified yes. If we look at
Wu Sheng s poem in terms of the Chinese literary tradition of rural poetry (?
??) and poems by, say, a
famous poet like Tao Qian (?
?) (365-427), the poem
takes on a deeper significance. Tao Qian is the archetypal
rural poet and the father of the genre. His famous
sequence, Returning to the Farm ( ??????
) is
a measure of his artistry. Here is the first poem of the
sequence:
I ve always been out of step with the world
It s always been my nature to love the hills and
mountains.
By mistake, I fell into the world s snares,
I left and stayed away for thirteen years.
Birds long for their old woods,
The pond fish thinks of the deep water of old.
I opened fields in the south,
A bungler, I ve returned to the farm.
My farm is a little more than ten mu in size
I have a thatched roof over my head.
Elm and willow trees shade the back,
Peach and plum grow in front of the house.
Far off in the distance is the village,
Smoke drifting from kitchen fires.
A dog barks in the lanes,
A cock crows from the mulberry tree.
No dust or clutter here,
There s plenty of leisure in my empty rooms.
After being caged for so long,
I have returned to nature.
?????,
?????.
?????,
?????.
?????,
13
?????.
?????,
?????.
?????,
?????.
?????,
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?????,
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?????,
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?????,
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poem in two quintets as his favored form. His 1976
poem Little Station ( ? ?) is a good example:
?????,
?????.
????????
??????????
???????, ??
????????????
???, ???
The reader will notice the formal regularity of Tao Qian s
poem; also that he is very conscious about creating a literary persona. The speakers in his poems, this one
included, tell us how to interpret their motives and
thoughts and their way of life. He presents us with an
idealized image of himself. Generally, his speakers are
educated, world-weary souls who have returned to the
countryside to live a life of simplicity away from the corrupting distractions of the court. Tao Qian set the standards for this type of poem.
Wu Sheng is no less a conscious artist than Tao Qian.
He too provides us with a slice of life, albeit minus the
idealization. What Wu Sheng gives us is unmistakably
20th-century rural Taiwan, embodied in the diction of the
day. His is a realistic portrait, very consciously created
out of words. His persona is a simple farmer, but one
who lives the boredom and the difficulties of rural life in
contemporary Taiwan. In other words, Wu Sheng s poem
can be read as the latest variation on a very old literary
tradition.
Another poet of Taiwan s third generation who
looked to tradition for inspiration is Xiang Yang ( ??
)
(b. 1955). Xiang Yang was born Lin Chi-yang in Nantou,
central Taiwan. He attended the Chinese Culture
University, where he majored in Japanese. After graduation, he worked as a journalist. As a young poet, he too
grew dissatisfied with what he perceived to be the excessive westernization of modern poetry. He decided that
one of the things missing from contemporary poetry was
the sense of form that is so strongly associated with the
classical tradition. In 1974, he embarked upon a series of
formalistic experiments before deciding upon a 10-line
14
Isn t it like last autumn
Standing timidly in the deep gloom
Under the golden gingko grove of home
Soaked in rain
That small red flower?
Away from home this spring, from the train at dusk
I see an egret
Flap its ash-white wings
Soar among crimson clouds
And disappear!
???????????
??: ????
????????
???????, ??
??!
In the first quintet, the speaker recalls his home, specifically, a small, solitary red flower seen the previous
autumn. In the second quintet, the focus changes to what
the speaker is seeing now from a train window the following spring. Between time remembered and time present, the speaker has left home. Now, sitting in a train, he
sees an egret take flight. Here, the egret can stand as an
expression or objective correlative of the speaker s own
feelings of aloneness in the vast world.
Structurally, this poem follows the traditional thematic progression of a classical poem as outlined by
Yuan dynasty scholars for discussing Tang dynasty regulated verse. This partitions the poem into four parts qi
( ? ), cheng ( ?), zhuan (? ), and he ( ? ), or beginning, development, turn, and conclusion. The poem
begins with the vast and, as it develops, narrows down to
focus upon the little red flower, giving the reader a sense
of insignificance in the presence of the vastness of the
universe. The second quintet initiates a turn in this
case, a change in time and place. The poem concludes by
fusing time present and time past and the small flower
and the egret as manifestations of the mood of the speaker.
In his 10-line poems, Xiang Yang frequently resorts
Translation Review
to the three traditional compositional techniques that
developed out of the exegesis of the Book of Songs,
China s first poetry anthology: fu (? ), or narrative display; bi (? ), or metaphor, and xing ( ? ), or motif. In
the poem quoted above, the motifs of flower and egret
can stand as the correlatives to the speaker s own mood.
And much like a traditional nature poem, the speaker s
experience is manifested in an inherent antithetical structure in which for a particular scene there must be a subjective consciousness to respond to it.2 Thus, although
Xiang Yang uses the modern vernacular in his poetry, his
verse tends to obey many of the rules of classical poetry.
Another poet of note is Luo Qing (?? ) (b. 1948).
Luo Qing was born Luo Qing-zhe in Shandong province
and moved to Taiwan with his parents in 1949. His initial
art interest was painting, not poetry. It wasn t until he
attended Fu Jen Catholic University in Taiwan as an
English major that he really began writing verse. As a
teenager, he studied Chinese painting with a series of
teachers, and some critics like to point out that the highly
visual nature of his writing perhaps stems from his interest in painting. Luo Qing is both a poet and a painter,
and he has integrated both arts within the tradition of
literati painting.3
Aside from his integration of painting and poetry
along traditional lines, Luo Qing adopted other aspects of
tradition for structuring his poems, including some of the
formal aspects used by Xiang Yang, mentioned above.
He also used traditional forms of Chinese word games to
structure poems. A good example is his poem Writing
the Character Tree ( ??
?? ), which was published
in 1971:
Raising a ruckus, arguing, my younger brother
and sister
Ran up to me and asked: How do you write
the character tree ?
How many strokes? How many strokes?
Is it hard? Is it hard?
Looking at my younger sister s little round
mouth
In her round face
I arranged her shining pigtails beside her
mouth
I took the wooden pencil that was handed to
me
Thinking I d say: First let s find a piece of
good wood
Carefully saw and sand it inch by inch
Translation Review
Cut it square, sand smooth
Build a small village
Don t forget to sprinkle ten cute little beans
In the middle
I patted my younger brother s chubby little
legs
Stroked his black hair
Looked into his big, bright eyes
Thinking I d say: One straight stroke
But then I thought I d say: Ten thousand that
way
And then I d say: A big round dot will be
fine
I thought and thought, finally
I looked in the textbook on the desk
I looked and looked, finally
I carefully wrote the character tree
I said: It s easy, it s easy
Just write it slowly and patiently, stroke by
stroke
Like writing the characters for little brother
and little sister
Sixteen strokes altogether
????????
??????:
????, ???? ???
???? ????
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??, ??????
????, ????????
??????, ??????
?????????
????, ?????? .
????????
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?????????
???????????????
??, ?????
???, ?????
???, ????? ??
????, ??
????????????
????, ??
??????, ???
?????
15
?: ????
????????????
???????????
??, ????????
Upon first glance, portions of the translated poem
may look somewhat like nonsense verse. The organizing
principle of this poem is the classical chaizige ( ??? ),
or dissected character verse in which a poem is written
by dissecting and combining characters in a poem. This
is related to chaizifa ( ?? ? ), or the same process used
in creating riddles, including lantern riddles. The origin
of this tradition probably goes back to archaic
glyphomancy, cezi (? ? ). A simple example of this
sort of riddle would be:
????
,
liang xiao liang xiao,
????
.
toushang zhang cao.
tribute to the meaning. Such features are often untranslatable but necessary adjuncts to a full understanding of a
text. How then is the reader of a translation who has no
knowledge or a minimal knowledge of the source-language culture to understand these features? The most
obvious approach would be the addition of commentary,
as I have attempted to provide in this article. Remarks
explaining a poem certainly can detract from the reading
experience, but they can also add to that experience. For
a translator, such notes can stand as honest and humbling
testimony to what she or he has lost in the process of
translation.
NOTES
Anthony Giddens The Consequences of
Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press: 1990, pp. 63-78.
2Stephen Owen, Traditional Chinese Poetry and
Poetics: Omen of the World. Madison: University of
Wisconsin P, 1985, p. 15.
3See Joseph Roe Allen III, Lo Ch ing s Poetics of
Integration: New Configurations of the Literati
Tradition, in Modern Chinese Literature, vol 2 no 2 (Fall
1986), pp. 143-169.
1See
Literally: two small, two small/grass growing on [its]
head. To solve the riddle, one would combine the character for two (? ) with the character for small ( ? )
to produce the character?, which would be done twice: ??
. Finally, a grass radical ( ? ) would be added
above the glyph to produce ( ? ), or the character for
garlic, the solution to the riddle.
In Luo Qing s poem, the same principle is operative.
In this poem, an older brother teaches his younger brother
and sister how to write the character tree (?
). This
involves telling a story about writing the character using
the various components of the word. The speaker tells
them that they have to find a piece of good wood (? ),
which they will cut and sand, inch by inch (? ). After
the wood is ready, they will build a village ? and in the
middle of the village they will plant ten (? ) beans ( ? ).
At the end of the poem, the speaker reminds them that
writing the character tree is the requires the same number of strokes as writing younger brother ( ? ? ) and
younger sister ( ? ? ), a total of 16. This poem is
cleverly built around the process of writing Chinese
characters.
From the foregoing discussion, it is clear that
understanding a poem can go far beyond the words
that make up the text, that extralinguistic features such as
formal qualities and the larger cultural context also con-
16
Translation Review
TRANSLATING AT THE FOOT OF THE CROSS: AMBIVALENT
FIGURES IN A SIXTEENTH-CENTURY POLISH RESURRECTION PLAY
By Rob Sulewski
F
or a number of years now, many scholars of translation studies have been decreasingly interested in the
evaluation of translations. Instead, translations are
viewed rather as subject to different extraliterary contextual factors. To this way of thinking, different translations privilege, and therefore preserve in the translation,
different properties and meanings at the expense of others. A correct translation ceases to be a real possibility,
in this light. (Parenthetically, the questions remain as to
whether or not translators do indeed privilege the aspects
they intend to privilege, and how well they do so, but
these are questions for another occasion.)
Exactly what aspects are privileged and preserved in
a translation is generally determined by, as Mary SnellHornby puts it, a web of relationships, the importance
of individual items being decided by their relevance in
the larger context of text, situation, and culture. 1
Translation thus conceived is embedded in several
systems: linguistic, to be sure, but literary, historical, and
cultural as well. This line of inquiry has been to take the
manipulation overt manipulation of literature via
translation not as something odious, but rather as
inevitable and simply necessitated by the act of translation itself.2 Such manipulation of literature (and this is
even the title of Hermans collection of essays on the
topic) can be fruitfully considered as integrally related to
and determined by how the translation functions in the
target language and indeed target culture itself.3
The original text has a particular function in its original language of course this may involve, for example,
didacticism or proselytism and may or may not be
changed in the target culture and language. The translation reflects this difference when it exists. But even if the
function of the text is similar in both languages, changes
are still likely because of the historical changes that have
taken place in the interim. Viewed from the standpoint of
translation, we may see medieval European mystery
plays as translations of their respective Biblical texts on
at least three different levels: linguistically (Latin to the
vernaculars), generically from the literary standpoint
(narrative to drama), and historicoculturally (ancient
Palestine to medieval Western Europe).
Now, there is a pervasive anachronism in medieval
Translation Review
European mystery plays, in that we are presented with a
cultural image of moral and social life in the Middle
Ages, even though these are Biblical stories being portrayed. V. A. Kolve4 has described these portrayals as the
past played as an image of present time. The enterprise
of incorporating the anachronistic has as its goal the reinforcement if not basic education in the religious
stories and dogmata of the medieval church. Rosemary
Woolf5 has noted that medieval plays were defended by
their contemporaries precisely on such didactic grounds.
They were linguistic translations to the vernaculars for
that purpose. They were books for the unlearned, but
more than that: dramatic images can often be more easily
recalled to memory and possess a stronger emotive
power than narrative alone. Part of the reason for the difference is that drama is enacted live by people (a
strength not lost on medieval preachers), but it also is
because of the kinds of details selected for portrayal in
the plays. Meg Twycross6 notes that these are typically
homely details selected to produce the fullest emotional response possible. Like the original Biblical texts,
therefore, these plays are meant to proselytize.
The problem is that some details in the original
Biblical narratives from which the plays are constructed
are not very homely at all, but alien to the target culture.
What medieval person knows what a procurator is? And
how to portray his guards? To achieve a didactic goal for
that new target audience, you have to translate and
indeed manipulate some of these details into things
more recognizable, more local. And pace Nabokov; you
cannot use footnotes on stage or distribute programs to
the medieval peasants in the audience. Thus, the translated procurator becomes a different kind of local government official, and the guards become European soldiers
in these plays.
Such is the case of the Historyja o chwalebnym
Zmartwychwstaniu Pańskim (The History of the Glorious
Resurrection of the Lord), a play based on the Gospel
narratives from the stationing of the guards to the
appearances of Jesus after the Resurrection. This play is
unique and has an important place in early Polish literature, although it remains virtually unknown outside of
Poland. It is the only known mystery play written in
17
Polish that would take less than one day to perform and
the first Polish play to contain stage directions. Although
other, earlier Resurrection plays were probably written in
Poland, the Historyja is also the earliest play of the
Resurrection to survive intact in the Polish language.
Poet and literary historian Czesław Miłosz believes it
was undoubtedly... the best of the mystery plays in
Polish. Miłosz7 praises its construction and what he calls
its conciseness and realistic vigor. Its most recent editor, Jan Okoń,8 praises this lively play as equal to the
achievements of its Western European counterparts.
This is a unique play in other ways. We know its
putative author: Mikołaj z Wilkowiecka, a monk of the
Jasna G ra monastery at Częstochowa, and significantly,
a native of the peasant villages not far from the
monastery. The play was written at a comparatively late
date, between roughly 1570 and 1580, and for our present purposes, we note that the author himself informs us
in his prologue that he intends his play to instruct us
(proselytize) in what he calls the true history (ista
prawie historyją , line 59) of the Resurrection, illustrate
the way it is (tak jest, line 106) in his 16th-century
world, for our amusement (ku naszemu pocieszeniu,
line 62). These intended functions would seem to be at
odds: how can this text claim both a versimilitude to
16th-century Poland and Biblical fidelity? Mikołaj z
Wilkowiecka negotiates these claims via his act of translating the Biblical story to a 16th-century Polish context,
linguistically, of course, but also culturally. Any cultural
modification or manipulation in the text changes the
play, of course. The situation is perhaps most interesting,
however, where these modifications occur at places
where the original text is ambivalent; that is, where elements in the text seem both to assert and to contradict
the ideology or theology in the text more generally.
Here, I examine the cultural implications of that kind
of manipulation of characters who are ambivalent from
the standpoint of the 16th-century Church.
Reading Ambivalent Figures in 16th-Century Poland
Pilate is one such ambivalent figure in the Gospel
narratives, in which while presiding over Jesus trial, he
nevertheless tries (however ineffectively) to set him free.
This ambivalence is reflected in the European medieval
mystery plays, in which he is sometimes portrayed as a
rather sympathetic figure and other times as a less savory
one.
Here are some examples.9 In the York cycle (viz., the
Dream of Pilate’s Wife), he actually seeks justice for
18
Jesus. His relation to the guards is one of a supportive
commander in Chester and Wakefield, at least initially,
and in the liturgical dramas from Tours (the 13th-century
Ludus paschalis) and Klosterneuberg (the 13th-century
Ordo paschalis), in which he endorses their abilities
before they are stationed at the tomb. He expresses
remorse for Jesus execution in the Italian
Rappresentazione della rezurrezione of the 16th century.
Yet in many instances, often in the same plays, he is not
a consistently benevolent figure. In York, N-Town, and
Wakefield, all English cycles, Pilate assigns the commission of the guards but threatens them with death should
they fail to guard the tomb adequately. In Chester, he
rages at the report of the soldiers after the Resurrection,
threatening yet again to kill them. He also orchestrates
the bribery of the soldiers to keep their silence about the
Resurrection in this play. In all the English cycle plays,
he is the one asking the high priests for advice in the
context of the play not what we would call the consultants of choice regarding the report of the guards. He
is often a worried figure, especially in the 15th-century
French Gr ban Passion, at the news of the Resurrection.
It is the portents surrounding the crucifixion that scare
him in the Chester cycle. In Christ’s Resurrection, an
early 16th-century English Protestant play, Pilate chastises the high priests for not thinking of guarding the tomb
earlier than they do, but then fearing an insurrection
(although not a resurrection), agrees to post the soldiers.
Sometimes Pilate s ambivalence is manifested in
other ways. His name appears in the Christmas
Christigeburtspiel from Oberufer, but in this case, he is a
priest whom Herod consults regarding the report of the
three kings. (Significantly, the other priests in this play
are called Jonas and Caiaphas, again reflecting a certain
ambivalence.)
Faced with Pilate s ambivalence, some medieval
playwrights even reduced his role. In a few instances,
Pilate s role in the Resurrection plays is very small. In
the French 15th-century Semur and 14th-century
Palatinus Passions, Pilate does not deal at all with the
guards, but tells the Pharisees to do as they think best. In
the Passion from Auvergne (possibly 15th century),
Pilate has no hand at all in the commission of the guards.
In the Historyja, Pilate s portrayal is very much like
that of Matthew 27:65, where he simply presents his
guards (and does so by name here in the play) and tells
the Pharisees to do as they think best.
In the Biblical narrative, we recall that Pilate is a
Roman procurator, an official appointed by a distant,
coercive, foreign authority. Linguistically, he does not
Translation Review
seem to need a translator to address any of the native
inhabitants, but nonetheless his questioning of Jesus
establishes his difference, at least ethnically and religiously, from Jesus and his accusers.
This status has been translated culturally and historically in the Historyja. First of all, Pilate is not a procurator, but a starosta. The starostowie were officials
appointed by the Polish king to secure his interests on
the local level, frequently in the face of opposition from
the local nobility.10 (The struggle of local authority
against the encroaching central royal power was, of
course, a common feature of Western Europe as well
during this period.) Like the Biblical Pilate, the Pilate of
the Historyja is an official appointed by a distant, coercive authority. But this latter Pilate is also not a foreigner: not ethnically, and certainly not linguistically either.
Yet the association of what was a foreign representative
in the original text with the starosta underscores the
ambivalence of Pilate, and indeed of the starostowie in
general: they are both Polish and also foreign.
In addition, however, the antagonism between the
nobility and the crown was also religious: the 16th-century kings Zygmunt I (ruled 1506—1548) and ZygmuntAugust (Zygmunt II, ruled 1548—1572) were Catholic
and remained so, in contrast to many of the nobles, who
quickly turned toward Calvinist doctrine during the middle years of the 16th century. To counter the power of the
nobility, the king made grants of huge estates to his
starostowie, making them as influential as any member
of the traditional, noble magnate class.11 The success or
failure of the Reformation in specific Polish towns was
dependent on the starosta who influenced that town s
affairs. But to call Pilate a starosta is also to make him
an antagonist to Protestant consensus. He is thus on the
right side of Trent, despite his role in the crucifixion,
and he lives right on the ethnic border: both Polish and
non-Polish.
Pilate is not the only ambivalent figure to be translated in this way in the Historyja. The soldiers are, too. But
whereas Pilate does have at least a few lines in the
Gospel narratives, the soldiers have none. Yet, as we
shall see, it is largely in their language that the translation the cultural manipulation of the first-century
soldiers becomes apparent.
As in the case of Pilate, the soldiers are portrayed in
a variety of ways in the mystery plays. Sometimes there
is no dialogue from the soldiers at the tomb, as in the
Italian Rappresentazione, in the Tours play, the Chester
cycle, and the Auvergne Passion. When the soldiers do
speak, sometimes they are serious. In the Semur Passion
Translation Review
they are all business at the tomb, stalwart in their intention to do their duty. Sometimes they have other things to
say, as in Christ’s Resurrection, in which they talk about
how crazy the High Priests must be to think Jesus could
rise from the dead. Frequently, however, the plays portray the soldiers in starkly humorous ways. Their bluster
consists of oaths (to Mohammed) in Palatinus, N-Town,
and Wakefield and threats to hypothetical foes (as in
Palatinus, Gr ban, and York). Gr ban has the soldiers try
to impute fear to one another.
In the original Biblical texts, the soldiers are apparently Roman (and therefore foreign) and apparently credible and serious as soldiers. As we have seen, however,
the absence of Biblical dialogue occasioned a fair
amount of creativity in devising personalities and personal histories for the soldiers in medieval drama. The
Historyja is no exception. Here they are Pilate s own
guards he calls them all by name and thus already
ambivalent by their association with him.
In analyzing the linguistically ambivalent position of
the guards, we note that they do speak Polish for much
of the dialogue. They also sing a hejnał known from
another Polish source during their watch at the tomb.
(The hejnał was a call to arms, perhaps most familiar to
tourists to modern-day Krak w, where it is still played
hourly to commemorate a legendary trumpeter slain by a
Tartar arrow in the 12th century.) As early a drama as
Klosterneuberg also has the soldiers sing stanzaic verses
at the tomb, but the use of the hejnał per se is unique and
reinforces the identity of the Polish soldiers as such.
But the soldiers are not linguistically purely Polish,
either. Just as Pilate represents an ambivalent political
position reflecting the status of the Polish starosta, so the
soldiers reflect the ambivalent status of the 16th-century
Polish army.
The constitution of the army at the time was largely
a consequence of the unusual status of the monarchy.
The Polish monarchy was elective, and until the accession of Zygmunt-August, it was also hereditary, with the
candidate confirmed by the Senate on the death of his
predecessor. At the end of the 15th century, the king was
invested with supreme executive power, including the
shaping of internal and foreign policy, command of the
army, supreme jurisdiction of law, nominations of officials, and the summoning of the Sejm (including the
establishing of agenda and the concluding of debates).12
Poland was far from being an absolute monarchy, however, and the king was relatively weak by Western standards. Lacking a regular army, for example, the king at
times had to rely on mercenary troops. These troops were
19
obtained largely from neighboring territories that were
not ethnically Polish.
Now, the soldiers in the Historyja are objects of
laughter because of their defects: bombast, cowardice,
and foreignness. Posted at the tomb, their speech is colloquial: line 1.84: Wierz mi, ż e by rzadu doszedł! ;
Believe me, I ll straighten him out! for example, and
consists of a series of bombastic claims and threats
against notably weaker adversaries. For example,13
TEORON
And you, Peter, with the bald head,
Watch out, or I ll tear your gray beard out.
Watch it, so you don t get the club!
(lines 1.97—99)
or,
PHILEMON
And you, charlatan, laying in the tomb,
Keep quiet in there!
(HE lifts his battle ax.)
So you don t get an ax in your head!
(lines 1.105—107)
Notice whom they are threatening: old men and a corpse:
hardly a danger to armed soldiers.
But these soldiers are also humorous because of their
peculiar language. Much of what they say is Polish, as I
have mentioned, but some of it is not. To Polish ears the
foreign words they say are nonsense. The use of nonsense words to portray otherness is fairly common, of
course. Plutus and Nimrod both speak Italian nonsense in
Dante s Inferno, (Inferno, VII.1, and XXXI.67), and
Jews are often given nonsense to say in medieval Passion
plays, as, for example, in the 1488 Semur Passion, lines
3125—3126, 3250—3253, 5682—5684, and 5843—5848.
However, the language of the soldiers is also humorous,
because although their strange words are meaningless in
Polish (uram gazda [3.5], hej, beszcie [3.8], pro boha
[3.11], and wos ist dos [3.23], for example), they
nonetheless consist of sounds common in the Polish language. The result is that they are very amusing in the
original language in a way hard to convey in English.
Here foreignness i.e., non-Polishness is therefore
equated with the ridiculous.
20
We have therefore an especially pronounced difference here. The soldiers are hires of the high priests, and
as such in the play are on the wrong side of history. They
are also on the wrong side of the linguistic border for the
play s first audience. Not only do they speak other languages besides Polish, their language also sounds funny
to that audience. They are ridiculous, in fact, in great
measure because they are not Polish. Pilate, in contrast,
is never laughed at. Indeed, for the Historyja’s first audience, he speaks our language.
In both cases, Pilate and the soldiers, the figures
have undergone a kind of manipulation to satisfy the
didactic purpose of the play. It simply would not do to
present a procurator to the largely peasant audience, and
making the soldiers into the kinds of soldiers that audience would be used to helps to bridge the cultural gap as
well. But these changes allow, for example, a contemporary reading of the starosta as a semiforeign official of a
distant, often coercive force and the soldiers (and not just
Pilate s) as ridiculous precisely because they are linguistically foreign. When we read these figures in this way,
we do so as the original audience, the 16th-century
Polish peasantry, very likely did.
Rendering the Historyja for a Contemporary
Audience
The translator of the Historyja into modern English
faces challenges of his own. Of course, the translator is
still confronted with problems associated with the audience. In my own translation of the Historyja, I conceived
of the translation from the outset as a text to be performed. Susan Bassnett-McGuire insists quite correctly
that the written and performed texts are coexistent and
inseparable. The translator must treat the written text
that is part of a larger complex of sign systems, involving paralinguistic and kinesic features, as if it were a literary text, created solely for the page, to be read off that
page. 14 It is, of course, important to conceive of the
translation this way, no matter what kind of play one has,
but some guidelines are more useful in this regard than
others. Bassnett-McGuire seems skeptical about the concept of performability, but she includes some criteria
regarding translation that have less to do with acting and
more to do with reception.15 Substituting regional
accents in the S[ource] L[anguage] with regional accents
in the T[arget] L[anguage] and omitting passages
deemed to be too closely bound to the S[ource]
L[anguage] cultural and linguistic context may help the
audience approximate the original sense of the original,
Translation Review
but it has nothing to do with performability (lightening
the demands on the actor).
Yet her concern about performance is extremely
valid. Actors know that some performance texts in the
original language are in fact more difficult to memorize
and to speak than others. Audiences and readers may
delight in the language of As You Like It and The Taming
of the Shrew and find no appreciable difference in the
difficulty of the texts, but whether because of the more
counterintuitive syntax or for other reasons, Shrew is
harder to memorize and perform. In some plays, passages are also challenging from the standpoint of pronunciation. American actors who play Andy in Harold
Pinter s Moonlight with a British accent sometimes find
difficulty with the line, I saw her, I heard her order for
you. (Pinter s experience as an actor doubtless makes
him more apt to minimize these kinds of problems.)
Perhaps the best guideline in this regard for translators comes from Phyllis Zatlin,16 who recommends translators to inwardly hear the various voices in a play.
This hearing is made easier if one is used to that process
as a director or actor: this kind of inner hearing is a
necessary first step in approaching a new text in order to
conceptualize a prospective production or work on an
unfamiliar character. I stress that stage experience is not
essential to the translation process, but it helps.
Many problems of translation involve the difficult
16th-century Polish idiom, with linguistic idiosyncrasies
so unusual as to confuse modern native speakers of
Polish.17
First, the original Polish is in verse consisting of
eight-syllable lines in rhyming couplets, typically with
no enjambment. After several attempts to preserve a form
similar to the original, my final rendering chose to privilege the sense of the line and approximate sentence order
over the verse-form. Retaining the sense of the lines also
had the effect of retaining the brevity of the sentences,
and therefore some of the liveliness of the original.
But even once the sense of the language is ascertained, translating a 16th-century mystery play also presents the unique problem of how to render that sense. The
play often consists of expansions and paraphrases of the
Biblical source-texts in archaic Polish vocabulary and
phrases. To preserve the sense as a modern Polish audience would encounter the original would mean translating the archaic Polish into archaic English. My goal was
rather to render the text as its original audience would
have understood it. There is a danger here, however.
Rendering such a text into a readily understandable, even
colloquial English paradoxically makes the Biblical sto-
Translation Review
ries sound satirized. This effect is amplified as the translation becomes more colloquial. Consequently, whereas a
translation of a modern Polish play (for example, Polish
playwright Sławomir Mrożek) may use a very colloquial
idiom in the target language with felicity, such an idiom
introduces an element of humor that works against a
medieval mystery play and makes it into a lampoon of
the original.
Hence, to allow it to operate on its own terms, a
translation of a mystery play into modern English must
possess some degree of formality. To some extent, this
means that the translated play is somewhat more formal
in tone and expression than the original. Still, I was able
to retain some of the liveliness of the original (again,
largely by retaining the brevity of the original sentences).
I reproduce below two examples related to the
ambivalent figures I brought up earlier to illustrate how I
dealt with the more prominent problems of translation
here, namely, those related to register, foreign terms, and
humor in the original.
The first example is from Part 1 of the play, where
the high priests approach Pilate with a request for guards
at the tomb. Annas speaks first. The original Polish reads
thus:
Pokłona nasza starosćie,
Najwyższemu w tym tu mieście,
Piłatowi ślachetnemu,
A nam panu łaskawemu,
Danemu z państwa rzymskiego,
Do tego miasta sławnego.
5
Pilate grants the clergymen an audience, and Caiaphas
comes directly to the point.
Łaskawy panie starosta,
Rządzicielu tego miasta.
Ja, Kaifasz, i z Annaszem,
Z tym drugim Faryzeuszem,
Tochmy sobie dziś spomnieli,
Cochmy przedtym słychawali,
Iż więc on zwodziciel m wił,
Gdy sięmiędzy ludźmi bawił,
Jeszcze za swego żywota,
Pierwej, niż zszedł z tego świata:
Po trzech dniach z martwych powstane
I zasiękr lować będę.
O t ż go już z krzyż a zjęto,
Iż jutro zachodzi święto;
10
15
20
21
W ogrodzie w grobie włoż ono
I kamieniem założ ono.
The directness of the speech (Jesus is not mentioned at
all by name) gives the impression, and correctly so, of a
prior conversation continued here. As he does so typically in the play, the playwright expands the passage from
the Gospels (in this case, Matthew), adding a few points
of his own: for example, the implication that Jesus is
now in another world, which does not occur at all in the
Biblical account, and the implication of the existence of
paradise to which Jesus will send the Patriarchs at the
end of Part 4.
Annas next speech further places the dialogue as
before the stationing of the guards.
Przeto was barzo prosimy
I odsługować będziemy,
Każ Waszmość strzec grobu jego,
Aż e do dnia do trzeciego,
By snadź jego zwolennicy
I też inszy weń wierzący
Na gr b gwałtem nie przypadli,
Ciała jego nie ukradli,
A ludziom by powiadali
I tak wszędy rozsławiali,
Iż mocą swoją zmartwychwstał,
Jako więc przedtem powiadał.
25
30
Pilate s response is prosaic.
Wszytko u mnie otrzymacie,
O co tu teraz ż ądacie.
A to macie me ż ołnierze,
Z kt rych bedziecie mieć str że...
Pilate then introduces his soldiers.
The relevant passage in Matthew 27:64 simply asks
for the tomb to be secured (custodiri), but in the Polish
version the request is a more specific one for guards.
Annas also makes the request urgently, addressing Pilate
with the noble Waszmość. This is a contraction of Wasza
Miłość, a term used to address the nobility of the period.18 The rationale of Annas follows Matthew closely, in
that both mention the scenario of Jesus followers stealing the body and then lying about it. But there are other
circumstances mentioned here that expand the Gospel
narrative: for example, the theft is ascribed to other followers of Jesus, in addition to the disciples (line 1.28).
Even to those unfamiliar with Polish, the brevity and
22
lack of enjambment in the Polish lines should be obvious
in these passages. Those familiar with the language will
also attest to the liveliness and the opaqueness of the
archaic idiom. My goals, as I mentioned before, were to
preserve that liveliness and approximate sentence order
at the expense of the rhyme and meter and to produce a
neutral if somewhat formal English translation. Here is
my rendering of the passages above:
CAIAPHAS
Gracious lord starosta,
Governor of this city.
I, Caiaphas, with Annas,
And this other Pharisee,
Remembered today
What we heard before:
What that charlatan used to say
When he was still among the people
During his lifetime,
Before he left this world:
After three days I will rise from the dead
And then I will be king.
Since a holiday is coming tomorrow,
He has been taken from the cross,
Placed in a tomb
And sealed inside with a stone.
10
15
20
ANNAS
So we urgently ask you, your lordship,
And we will pay for this:
Give the order to guard his tomb
Until the third day,
So that his disciples
Or those other believers of his
Don t get into the tomb by force,
Steal his body,
Then talk to the people
And spread it around everywhere
That he rose by his own power,
Just as he said he would.
25
30
PILATE
You ll get everything
You ask for.
Here are my soldiers,
They ll be your guards...
50
Translation Review
First of all, the formality of the speech preserves the
sense of each line of the original, but it also prevents too
colloquial a rendering. One could easily imagine the conniving Annas lines rendered in a very informal way that
would make him sound too much like a humorous parody of a stock gangster character, promising money to get
to the guards posted. This kind of anachronistic humor is
not in the original and would work against the kind of
humor that is deliberately evolved in other sections of
the play, such as that of the guards themselves, about
which shortly. This formality also helps to underscore the
very prosaic nature of Pilate s lines. He is clearly an official here, and his involvement in the Pharisees plans, or
indeed in the concerns of the disciples, is strictly neutral.
Second, the playwright chose to introduce Pilate s
peculiar political position in the first line, and I have
retained the term, starosta, knowing that some of the
audience would know the term, and that others would
likely be tolerant of a few foreign terms. This underscores the unique status of the play as a Polish artifact, to
differentiate it from plays of the genre from other parts
of Europe. I did not attempt to find an English equivalent
for the starosta, not only because the political situation is
not precisely analogous to that of 16th-century Poland,
and even using a clumsy alternative like Federal official would draw the play into contemporary political
polemics, a situation I sought to avoid.
I did not retain the Polish formal address at line 25,
WaszmoÀść, and rendered it simply as your lordship. I
felt that another Polish term appearing so soon after
starosta would confuse the audience unnecessarily, particularly because a suitable equivalent exists in English.
Use of this equivalent retains the formality I sought and
preserves the politeness of the original.
Similar problems are associated with the speeches of
the guards. When the guards are posted at the tomb, for
example, the high priests leave them, and the guards,
uninhibited by their masters, are free to behave as foolishly as they wish, without fear of jeopardizing their
promised wages. Here is the original of the lines I have
rendered in English in my above discussion:
TEORON
A ty, Pietrze, z łysą gową,
Wara wąsa z siwą brodą
Byś nie wziął maczugą ową!
Translation Review
FILEMON
A ty, zwodź ca, leź ąc w grobie,
Miej tam pok j dobry sobie.
Byś nie wziął bartą po glowie!
105
TEORON
And you, Peter, with the bald head,
Watch out, or I ll tear your gray beard out.
Watch it, so you don t get the club!
(lines 1.97—99)
or,
PHILEMON
And you, charlatan, laying in the tomb,
Keep quiet in there!
(HE lifts his battle ax.)
So you don t get an ax in your head!
(lines 1.105—107)
I have rendered these lines somewhat more loosely than
the previous example. Teoron s line is more specifically
a warning to Peter to watch his beard and mustache,
implying that Teoron intends to do something untoward
to them. My rendering makes that more explicit for a
modern audience by making a specific threat to Peter s
facial hair. Though the translation is still formal, the
crudeness of the threat serves to characterize the soldiers
as base and, of course, cowardly. Philemon s line contains a very colloquial use of the reflexive pronoun sobie
in the order to keep silence. My rendering here is the
brief Keep quiet in there: a fairly colloquial expression
in its own right, yet brief enough so as not to radically
disrupt the general formal tone of the overall translation.
The dramatic success of these lines and others like
them depends to some extent on the ability of the actors
themselves to portray the soldiers as bombastic cowards,
yet even a relatively formal translation style does not
destroy that characterization in the original.
When the soldiers speak their foreign gibberish, the
original has:
23
TEORON
Uram gazda! Rata! Przeb g!
Już ci lecę, nie czujęn g!
PILAX
5
Pro Boha! What are we doing here?!
We re shouting as if we re being attacked by bandits!..
PROKLUS
TEORON
Strach, przeb g, strach mięzejmuje!
Hej, beszcie! C ż sięwż dy dzieje?!....
Was ist das, mein herr Pilax;
Unt why you calling him like zat?
Has Christ risen from ze dead?
Devil take him!
Tell me ze troos,
Soon as you have luked inside.
PILAKS
Pro Boha! C ż wż dy działamy?!
By na gwałcie, tak wołamy!....
TEORON
Wos ist dos, mayn herr Pilaksie,
Czemu go wy tak wołacie?
Abo go Krystus zmartwychwstał?
Toć by go nam dyjabli dał!
25
We note that these statements amount to an amalgam
of several languages. Teoron s interjections are
Hungarian, as are those of Proklus. Pilax, on the other
hand, becomes Ukrainian for a moment, and reprimands
his men in Polish for the kind of fear he himself exhibited at the beginning of the scene. He begins with a shout
and a general question as to what the soldiers are doing,
but his own answer, shouting out of fear as if attacked by
thieves, is ridiculous, coming as it does from a professional soldier. Finally, Teoron acquires a thick German
accent at line 3.23. He assumes an air of calm, asking
Pilax, in effect, why he is so excited.
My rendering retains the non-Polish words:
TEORON
Oh! Uram gazda! Rata! By God!
I m falling, I can t feel my legs!
PROKLUS
I m scared! Oh, God! I m scared!
Hej, beszte! What s happening now?!....
24
25
I have not translated the Hungarian or Ukrainian at all
because I wanted, as with starosta, to underscore the
unique provenance of the play, but also, and more importantly, because these words would be as nonsensical as
the original was to the original audience, though perhaps
less ludicrous-sounding to English ears. Rendering the
terms into English-sounding foreign words (from Dutch,
for example) would not be an adequate substitute: they
would not sound as ludicrous to an English ear as the
original words sound to Poles, and it would certainly not
be an adequate historical equivalent (we do not currently
employ mercenaries from the Netherlands).
I have retained Teoron s thick German accent but
given him English to speak. This is in keeping with my
substitution of English for Polish in almost all instances,
but it also retains Teoron s foreignness, since German is
also foreign to English speakers.
By simply retaining the foreign terms from Eastern
Europe, I retain the foreignness of the soldiers for us,
just as for the original Polish audience, and simultaneously emphasize the text itself as Eastern European. That
the play does have this unique provenance does not
detract from the broader problems of translation it occasions (linguistic, to be sure, but cultural as well). I offer
my suggestions as one possible approach to them.
5
Notes
Mary. Translation Studies: An
Integrated Approach, rev. ed. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins, 1995, 35.
2Theo Hermans. Introduction: Translation Studies
and a New Paradigm, in The Manipulation of Literature:
Studies in Literary Translation, Theo Hermans, ed. Croon
Helm: Beckenham, Kent, U.K., 1985, 11.
1Snell-Hornby,
Translation Review
3Ibid.,
13.
Kolve. The Play Called Corpus Christ.
Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1966, 110.
5Rosemary Woolf. The English Mystery Plays.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972, 90.
6Meg Twycross. Books for the Unlearned, in
Themes in Drama 5: Drama and Religion. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1983, 72.
7Czesław Miłosz. The History of Polish Literature,
2nd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983,
96.
8Jan Okoń. Wstęp [Introduction] to Historyja o
Chwalebnym Zmartwychwstaniu Panskim, Jan Okoń, ed.
Wroc?aw: Ossol., 1971, iv.
9In the following discussion, I examine a number of
medieval plays that treat the same Biblical material as
the Historyja. While certainly not a comprehensive list, it
is nonetheless representative of the other plays of the
genre. These plays include the Klosterneuberg Ordo
paschalis, Stiftsbibl., MS 574, Miscellanea from the 13th
century, fol. 142v-144v, as edited in Karl Young, Drama
of the Medieval Church, 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon,
1961, I: 421-429; the Oberuferer Christigeburtspiel, in
K.J. Schr er, Deutche Weichnachtsspiele aus Ungarn
(1858), 61-123; Christ’s Resurrection (ca. 1530-1560),
Bertram Dobell, and John Dover Wilson, eds. Oxford:
Malone Society Reprints, 1912; The Chester Mystery
Cycle, R.M. Lumiansky and David Mills, eds. (EETS, SS
3), Vol. 1: Text, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974,
play XVIII: Skynners Playe (The Resurrection), pp 339356; N-Town play, or Ludus Coventriae or, The Plaie
Called Corpus Christi, Cotton MS. Vespasian D. VIII,
K.S. Block, ed. (EETS, ES 120) Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1922, play 34 (Guarding of the
Sepulchre), pp 312-318, lines 1176-1343; and play 35
(Resurrection), pp 320-327, lines 1415-1647; The
Towneley Plays, George England, with an Introduction
and side-notes by Alfred W. Pollard (EETS, ES 71)
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1897, play XXVI.
Resurrection of the Lord, pp 306-325; The York Plays,
Richard Beadle, ed. London: Edward Arnold, 1982,
Carpenters (The Resurrection), pp 344-355; the Ludus
Paschalis from Tours, Bibl. de la Ville, MS 927,
Miscellanea Turonensia, 13th century, fol 1r - 8v, in
Young, Drama, I: 438-447; the 14th-century La Passion
de Palatinus: Mystere du XIVe siecle, Grace Frank, ed.,
Jacques Ribard, tr. Paris: Champion, 1992, pp 212-239,
lines 1620-1996; The Passion de Semur, text by
P.T.Durbin, Lynette Muir, ed. Leeds: University of
Leeds: 1981, pp 230-268, lines 8178-9572; the 15th-cen4V.A.
Translation Review
tury Parisian Arnoul Gr ban (Mystere de la Passion,
Omer Jodogne, ed. Bruxelles: Palais de Academies,
1965, pp 362-418, lines 27084-31446); the extant fragments from La Passion d’Auvergne, Graham Runnalls,
ed. Paris: Droz, 1982 this is a critical edition of
Bibliotheque Nationale n.a.f. 462, whose relevant section
encompasses pp 224-280, lines 3197-4588); and the
Italian Rappresentazione della resurrezione di Gesu
Cristo, Alessandro d Ancona, ed. in Sacre
Rappresentazione dei secoli XIV, XV e XVI, Alessandro
d Ancona, ed. Firenze: Successori Le Monnier, 1872,
I:329-356.
10Maria Bogucka. The Towns of East-Central
Europe from the Fourteenth to the Seventeenth Century,
in Ma zak, Samsonowicz, and Burke, eds. East-Central
Europe, p 67; and Andrzej Wyczański, The System of
Power in Poland, 1370-1648, in East-Central Europe in
Transition, from the Fourteenth to the Seventeenth
Century, Antoni Mączak, Henryk Samsonowicz, and
Peter Burke, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1985, 144.
11Bogucka 67 and Wyczański 144.
12Wyczański 141.
13All the translations here are from my translation of
the Historyja, Robert Michael Sulewski, Historyja o
chwalebnym Zmartwychwstaniu Pańskim by Mikolaj z
Wilkowiecka: An Annotation, Contextualization, and
Translation, diss. University of Michigan. Ann Arbor,
UMI, 1999, 28549, pp 487-604.
14Susan Bassnett-McGuire. Ways through the
Labyrinth: Strategies and Methods for Translating
Theatre Texts, in The Manipulation of Literature:
Studies in Literary Translation, Theo Hermans, ed.
Croon Helm: Beckenham, Kent, U.K., 1985, 87.
15Ibid., 90.
16Phyllis Zatlin. Observations on Theatrical
Translation, Translation Review 46 (1994): 15.
17Piotr Cieplak. Personal interview, 2 Apr. 1996.
Cieplak directed his own production of the play in
Poland in the mid-1990s.
18Okoń xiv.
25
PARTNERS IN CRIME?
By Daniel M. Jaffe
ostoevsky s Crime and Punishment has been translated into English numerous times over the past 115
years. A comparison of three such translations the
first, the most recent, and the one perhaps most widely
read demonstrates that different translation choices at
specific moments can alter the way a reader understands
not only specific moments but a novel as a whole.
Crime and Punishment is the story of Raskolnikov, a
St. Petersburg student who, after murdering an old
woman moneylender, is haunted by guilt. Initially, translations of the novel were not well received in the West
(R. May, 28). Robert Louis Stevenson, one of
Dostoevsky s few British supporters, wrote the following
about Crime and Punishment:
D
Raskolnikov is easily the greatest book I
have read in ten years; . . . Many find it dull:
Henry James could not finish it; all I can say
is, it nearly finished me. It was like having an
illness. James did not care for it because the
character of Raskolnikov was not objective;
and at that I divined a great gulf between us,
and, on further reflection, the existence of a
certain impotence in many minds of today,
which prevents them from living in a book or
character, and keeps them standing afar off,
spectators of a puppet-show. (Quoted in R.
May 28)
Stevenson and James based their opinions on the French
translation the first English translation was not yet out,
and reportedly, the French version was more racy than the
later English one (R. May, 171, n. 34), thereby presumably exaggerating those qualities of subjectivity that
Stevenson loved and James hated.
The first English translation, by Frederick Whishaw, a
British novelist, appeared in 1886. The first sentence of
Whishaw s translation states: One sultry evening early in
July a young man emerged from the small furnished lodging he occupied in a large five-storied house in the
Pereoulok S , and turned slowly, with an air of indecision, towards the K bridge (5). This is a smooth,
flowing, graceful English sentence.
The most recent English-language translation, that
done by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, opens
26
somewhat differently: At the beginning of July, during
an extremely hot spell, towards evening, a young man left
the closet he rented from tenants in S y Lane, walked
out to the street, and slowly, as if indecisively, headed for
the K n Bridge (3). This is not so smooth, it is choppier, and mirrors the choppiness of the Russian sentence
(125). The choppiness is not mere arbitrary choice on
Dostoevsky s part but rather is reflective of Raskolnikov s
nervous state of mind: he is near delirium while contemplating murder.
Whishaw eliminates from the novel s first page a sentence retained by Pevear-Volokhonsky: His closet was
located just under the roof of a tall, five-storied house,
and was more like a cupboard than a room (3). By omitting this sentence, Whishaw eliminates the claustrophobic
description of the room, thereby undermining
Dostoevsky s use of physical setting as a reflection of the
character s inner state, one of being boxed in. From the
outset, Whishaw is keeping the reader at a distance from
the text and character, lending credence to Robert Louis
Stevenson s concern about the existence of a certain
impotence in many minds , which prevents them from
living in a book or character, and keeps them standing
afar off, spectators of a puppet-show.
One more example from Whishaw: a few pages into
the novel, Raskolnikov visits the old-woman moneylender, whom he s contemplating murdering, and enters her
apartment:
The young man entered a gloomy ante-chamber, divided by a partition, behind which was a
small kitchen. The old woman stood silently in
front of him, eyeing him keenly. She was a thin
little creature of sixty, with a small sharp nose,
and eyes sparkling with malice. Her head was
uncovered, and her grizzled locks shone like
grease. A strip of flannel was wound round her
long thin neck, and, in spite of the heat, she
wore a shabby yellow fur-tippet on her shoulders. She coughed incessantly. The young man
was probably eyeing her strangely, for the look
of mistrust suddenly reappeared on her face.
The Student Raskolnikoff. I called on you
a month ago, said the visitor, hurriedly, with a
slight bow. He had suddenly remembered that
Translation Review
he must make himself more agreeable.
I remember, batuchka, I remember it well,
returned the old woman, still fixing her eyes on
him suspiciously. (Italics added) (8)
The Pevear-Volokhonsky translation of the same passage generally follows Dostoevsky s language more
closely:
The young man stepped across the threshold
into the dark entryway, divided by a partition,
behind which was a tiny kitchen. The old
woman stood silently before him, looking at
him inquiringly. She was a tiny, dried-up old
crone, about sixty, with sharp, spiteful little
eyes and a small, sharp nose. She was bareheaded, and her colorless and only slightly
graying hair was thickly greased. Her long,
thin neck, which resembled a chicken’s leg, was
wrapped in some flannel rags, and, despite the
heat, a fur-trimmed jacket, completely worn out
and yellow with age, hung loosely from her
shoulders. The little old woman coughed and
groaned all the time. The young man must have
glanced at her with some peculiar glance,
because the earlier mistrust suddenly flashed in
her eyes again.
Raskolnikov, a student, I was here a
month ago, the young man hastened to mutter
with a half bow, recalling that he should be
more courteous.
I remember, dearie, I remember very well
that you were, the old woman said distinctly,
still without taking her inquiring eyes from his
face. (Italics added) (9)
A comparison of the first italicized phrases in these
excerpts shows that whereas Whishaw uses entered,
Pevear-Volokhonsky use stepped across the threshold, a
more vivid and more accurate translation. And here, their
accuracy reflects awareness on their part of an image pattern in the Russian that s difficult to preserve in English:
Stepped across. In Russian, the word is perestupil
(128). The first word of the novel s title, Crime, is, in
Russian, Prestuplenie. Perestupil/Prestuplenie.
Perestup/Prestup. The relationship between these Russian
words is visible and audible. The actual meaning of
Dostoevsky s title is closer to Transgression and
Punishment than to Crime and Punishment. The
Russian word in the title Prestuplenie has both the
Translation Review
legal meaning of crime and the religious/moral meaning of transgression. Throughout the novel, Dostoevsky
plays with the image of transgressing or moving
across (Kozhikov 20-21). English does not have a contemporary word meaning both violation of law and
violation of religious/moral value we separate
Church and State; Russia before the Revolution of 1917
did not separate them. So we cannot do in English exactly
what Dostoevsky does in Russian. But PevearVolokhonsky retain the notion when they can. Their
phrase, stepping across the threshold, does not resonate
with the word Crime in the novel s title, but it retains
the concept the trans-gression concept, the image of
moving across a barrier, a boundary and gives the
English reader at least a chance of appreciating
Dostoevsky s image pattern. Whishaw s substitution of
the word entered eliminates all sense of crossing over
and eliminates all chance of a reader noting the pattern
and thereby appreciating one of the novel s central thematic echoes, a dimension of the original s richness.
The two descriptions of the old-woman moneylender
vary in other ways as well: Whishaw s a thin little creature versus Pevear-Volokhonsky s a tiny, dried-up old
crone ; Whishaw s eyes sparkling with malice versus
Pevear-Volokhonsky s sharp, spiteful little eyes. In
both instances, Pevear-Volokhonsky s translation is less
romantic and more realistic as Dostoevsky s prose is
here.
Whishaw describes her as wearing a shabby yellow
fur-tippet, whereas Pevear-Volokhonsky translate it as a
fur-trimmed jacket, completely worn out. Completely
worn out, a phrase Dostoevsky uses, one that foreshadows that this old woman s life is nearly over, that she s
going to be murdered, a foreshadowing eliminated by
Whishaw s omission of the phrase.
And Whishaw omits completely the description of the
old woman s neck as one that resembled a chicken s
leg. This image reminds the Russian reader, at least subliminally, of the Russian folktale witch, Baba Yaga, who
lived in a hut that stood on chicken legs.1 This association
is omitted from Whishaw s translation. He makes the
description more genteel than Dostoevsky does.
In addition to sanitizing the text, blandifying it,
Whishaw dilutes a technique that is one of Dostoevsky s
major contributions to literature the overlapping of
voices.
In this cited passage, the narrator is at first hovering
over both characters, describing the young man stepping across the threshold. Whishaw s watered-down
description of the old woman could be read as being pre-
27
sented by the consciousness of the narrator, a neutral,
graceful voice. But, in Pevear-Volokhonsky s, it can be
read as also reflecting Raskolnikov’s perceptions of the
old woman. With phrases like dried-up old crone,
sharp, spiteful little eyes, neck that resembled a chicken s leg (with its folktale association to a character
whom children find frightening) we can feel the
description as coming from Raskolnikov, this nervous,
anxious, feverish young man, this character who is trying,
in his own mind, to justify the old woman s worthlessness, to justify his murder of her. Another way of thinking
about this is that the narrator s objective description of
her is permeated with Raskolnikov s highly agitated,
emotional, subjective point of view, his consciousness.
This overlapping of narrator s and character s perspectives which is a hallmark of Dostoevsky s style is
so diluted by Whishaw as almost to be absent, whereas
Pevear-Volokhonsky retain it.
Looking at the end of the passage in the Whishaw
translation, in the character s dialogue, the old woman
addresses Raskolnikov as batuchka. Whishaw doesn t
even translate the term, so from his translation, the reader
obtains no information as to what her attitude toward
Raskolnikov is is she cursing at him, calling him you
idiot? is she praising him, calling him my lord and
master? The English reader doesn t know. PevearVolokhonsky translate it as dearie, an ambiguous form
of address, which, although perhaps polite, could be read
as somewhat patronizing, condescending. Actually, the
Russian word batyushka (129) was used in the 19th
century as a rather respectful term and in this context
demonstrates the old woman s awareness that
Raskolnikov, a student who hobnobs with aristocracy, is
of a higher social class than she, a petty merchant.2
Batyushka, which literally means little papa, was actually an affectionate term used by the Russian common
folk in reference to the Czar Little Papa a term that
would bring him into their families and hearts. A close
translation might be that done by Constance Garnett (who
will be the object of criticism in a moment), who uses the
phrase my good sir (5), which captures the respectful
tones of the original.
Is there overall significance to these discrepancies in
translation Whishaw diluting the nasty aura of this old
woman and Pevear-Volokhonsky, perhaps, slightly intensifying it? One can argue that the characterization of this
old woman Dostoevsky s precision in choosing adjectives, images associated with her, and her own choice of
words when speaking affects how the reader reads the
entire novel. This is the story of a protagonist who com-
28
mits murder. The way we regard the victim affects our
sympathies for him. The less vicious the victim seems,
the more innocent and likable she is, the more morally
offensive becomes Raskolnikov s crime, and the harder it
is for readers to sympathize with his agonizing struggle
over whether or not to confess. However, the more
vicious and witch-like she is, the more easily we can
agree with an excuse Raskolnikov makes later in the
novel once he confesses the murder to his girlfriend: I
only killed a louse, Sonya, a useless, nasty, pernicious
louse (Pevear and Volokhonsky, 416).
Dostoevsky balances this victim s characterization
yes, she has spiteful little eyes and a neck like a chicken leg, she s a penny-pinching money-lender suspicious
of everyone, but at least she addresses Raskolnikov with
appropriate respect. We don t like her, but we can t dismiss her as an expendable victim. If we could, then
Raskolnikov s angst over the murder the entire rest of
the novel would be a pointless journey. Dostoevsky
purposely makes her a somewhat rounded character, and
translations that shade her one way or the other are modifying the balance Dostoevsky achieves, are affecting the
way we read the novel as a whole.
No discussion of 19th-century Russian literature in
English translation would be complete without considering Constance Garnett. In the first half of this century, she
was arguably the most famous and influential of all
English translators of Russian literature, having translated, as she did, 72 volumes (R. May, 37). How does her
translation, compared with the Pevear-Volokhonsky translation, handle the texture of Dostoevsky s prose?
Let s look at a moment in the life of the character
Katerina Ivanovna. She is the wife of a drunkard, a dirtpoor woman who feels guilty for having permitted her
step-daughter, Sonya, to become a prostitute so that
Katerina could have some money for her own three little
children. After Katerina s husband is run over and killed
by a carriage, she gradually goes mad. At one moment,
Katerina Ivanovna is speaking to her 10-year-old daughter, Polenka, who is undressing her little brother, taking
off his shirt:
You wouldn t believe, you can t even
imagine, Polenka, she was saying, pacing the
room, how great was the gaiety and splendor
of our life in papa s house, and how this
drunkard has ruined me and will ruin you all!
Father had the state rank of colonel and was
nearly a governor by then, he only had one
more step to go, so that everyone that called on
Translation Review
him used to say, Even now, Ivan
Mikhailovich, we already regard you as our
governor! When I . . . hem! . . . when I . . .
hem, hem, hem . . . oh, curse this life! she
exclaimed, coughing up phlegm and clutching
her chest. When I . . . ah, at the marshal s last
ball . . . when Princess Bezzemelny saw me
the one who blessed me afterwards when I was
marrying your father, Polya
she asked at
once: ‘Isn’t this that nice young lady who
danced with a shawl at the graduation? . . .
That rip should be mended; why don t you
take the needle and darn it now, the way I
taught you, otherwise tomorrow . . . hem,
hem, hem! . . . it’ll tear wo-o-orse!” she
cried, straining herself. (Italics and boldface
added) (Pevear and Volokhonsky, 177)
This, the Pevear-Volokhonsky translation, follows the
original extremely closely, retains the halting nature of
Katerina s phrasing, some redundancy, the free associations Katerina is making and her coughing important
for the reader to hear now in Part II of the novel as foreshadowing her later death from consumption in Part V.
Hem is used to indicate her coughing an approximate sound of the cough that is close to the actual sound
of a person s cough, close the way Dostoevsky s w o r d
khe
i s . Khe, khe, khe, states the Russian (289).
Also, near the end of the passage, Pevear-Volokhonsky
string out and hyphenate the word wo-o-orse in order to
approximate the sound of Katerina straining herself.
Dostoevsky does the same thing, although with a different
word [with the word for tear ( razo-rvet”)] (289). They
retain Dostoevsky s re-creation of the actual sounds that
this consumptive woman is making. Dostoevsky does not
describe them in the text, he makes them, lets the reader
hear the character making these sounds. Immediacy.
Here is Garnett s translation of this same passage:
You wouldn t believe, you can t imagine,
Polenka, she said, walking about the room,
what a happy luxurious life we had in my
papa’s house and how this drunkard has
brought me and will bring you all, to ruin!
Papa was a civil colonel and only a step from
being a governor; so that everyone who came
to see him said: We look upon you, Ivan
Mihailovitch, as our governor! When I . . .
when . . . she coughed violently, oh, cursed
life, she cried, clearing her throat and press-
Translation Review
ing her hand to her breast, when I . . . when
at the last ball . . . at the marshal s . . . Princess
Bezzemelny saw me who gave me the
blessing when your father and I were married,
Polenka she asked at once: Isn’t that the
pretty girl who danced the shawl dance at the
breaking-up? ( You must mend that tear, you
must take your needle and darn it as I showed
you, or tomorrow cough, cough, cough —
he will make the hole bigger,” she articulated with effort.) (Italics, underlining, and boldface added) (156)
The underlined language illustrates how Garnett omits
some of the coughing references Pevear-Volokhonsky
retain. Not only that Garnett eliminates all approximation of the actual coughing sound. In fact, she actually
disrupts the character s monologue and inserts the narrator to explain, she coughed violently. Dostoevsky does
not do that. Garnett explains what Dostoevsky shows,
thereby diluting the vividness and actually distancing the
reader. Next, she has the character clearing her throat,
when actually, Katerina is coughing up phlegm, as
Pevear-Volokhonsky say in a more graphic translation.
Again, Garnett dilutes the vividness of the original, sanitizes the text.
This is one paragraph. One can imagine the cumulative effect of a translator s dilution of an entire novel.
Again, as Robert Louis Stevenson said, many readers of
Dostoevsky are uncomfortable moving into the text and
prefer to remain outside it; some translators help them do
just that.
There is a moment in the novel when Raskolnikov
returns to the scene of the crime, the murder, to the
apartment building where he killed the old woman
money-lender. The Pevear-Volokhonsky passage reads:
Raskolnikov immediately went through
the gateway, but the tradesman was no longer
in the courtyard. That meant he had gone
straight up the first stairway. Raskolnikov
rushed after him. He could indeed hear someone s steady, unhurried steps two flights above.
Strangely, the stairway seemed familiar! Here
was the first-floor window; moonlight shone
sadly and mysteriously through the glass; here
was the second floor. Hah! It was the same
apartment where the painters had been working . . . . (Italics added) (276)
29
Here, Pevear-Volokhonsky keep everything consistently in the past tense; however, in the Russian original,
some verbs are in present tense (those in italics, above)
while others are in past tense (381). If translated following the Russian language tense shifts, the second half of
this passage would read: Strangely, the stairway seemed
familiar! Here s the first-floor window; moonlight shone
sadly and mysteriously through the glass; here’s the second floor. Hah! It’s the same apartment where the
painters had been working. If Dostoevsky s present
tense is retained, the text s movement between past and
present sounds somewhat odd in English, yet there is
greater immediacy at those moments of recognition of
familiar objects and places. These are moments in the
original when it is not the narrator s consciousness relating Raskolnikov s perceptions to us, but Raskolnikov s
own consciousness; we hear him think these thoughts
directly in the present moment, without mediation or filter of narrator or time. Puncture holes in the narrative
past tense, as it were. But this is not the norm in Englishlanguage narrative, where movement between tenses
within a passage is frowned upon because it sounds
strange in a formal context, sounds more conversational.
The technique is much more ordinary in Russian literature, more natural.3
Should translators violate their own culture s conventions of story-telling in order to preserve the story-telling
culture represented by the original text? A translator who
privileges the narrative conventions of the target culture
might well be creating a smooth text that an audience
will find comfortable to read. But might the translator be
preventing readers from fully appreciating the source
culture s way of telling stories? Might the translator be
perpetuating cultural differences, actually maintaining
barriers to appreciation of different worldviews, those
reflected in varying cultural approaches to narrative?
In 1912, The New York Times Book Review contained
a review of Garnett s translation of Dostoevsky s The
Brothers Karamazov . The reviewer states:
Consider: would Russia, its writers, and its fictional
characters have been better understood in the West,
would they have seemed less mad, had their early translators strived to create in readers minds the same vivid,
immediate, and complex visions as those created by the
original texts?
Notes
1I
am grateful to Professor Leo F. Cabranes-Grant of the
University of California, Santa Barbara, for bringing
this association to my attention.
2 I am grateful to Professor Inna Broude of Brandeis
University for elaborating upon this meaning and
implication of the word.
3 Garnett retains the shift to the present (240).
Works Cited
Dostoevsky, F.M. Prestuplenie I Nakazanie [Crime and
Punishment]. Moskva: Khudozhestvennaya
Literatura, 1992.
Trans. Constance Garnett. New York: Bantam,
1988.
Trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.
New York: Vintage, 1992.
Trans. Frederick Whishaw. Ed. Ernest Rhys.
London: J.M. Dent and Sons, 1926.
Kozhikov, Vadim V. The First Sentence in Crime and
Punishment, The Word Crime, and Other Matters.
Trans. Robert Louis Jackson. Twentieth Century
Interpretations of Crime and Punishment. Ed. Robert
Louis Jackson. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall,
1974. 17-25.
May, Rachel. The Translator in the Text: On Reading
Russian Literature in English. Evanston, Illinois:
Northwestern University Press, 1994.
Review of The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor
Dostoyevsky. Trans. Constance Garnett. 30 June
1912. Reprinted in New York Times Book Review. 6
October 1996.
The reader . . . who has a smattering of
Tolstoy or Turgeniev, or both, may already have
got lodged in his head a sort of notion that
Russian novels are inhabited chiefly by escaped
lunatics and uncaught candidates for Bedlam. If
he has, the history of the brothers Karamazov is
admirably fitted to encourage that harmless presumption that Russia is little better than a vast
mad-house in which the keepers share the affliction of the kept. (13)
30
Translation Review
RAVISHING MARIE: EUGENE MASON’S TRANSLATION
OF MARIE DE FRANCE’S BRETON LAI OF LANVAL
By Peggy Maddox
R
eaders interested in medieval English literature
eventually find it necessary and desirable to acquire
some acquaintance with the poems of Marie de France.
For example, the reader who wishes to compare Thomas
Chestre s Middle English romance of Sir Launfal with its
literary sources will want to read Lanval by Marie de
France. Without a mastery of Old French, however, the
reader will have to rely on a translation of the original.1
Although there are now excellent translations of Marie s
lais, notably that by Robert Hanning and Joan Ferrante,
the one by Eugene Mason is still being used.2 First published more than 90 years ago for a general readership
and reprinted numerous times since then, Mason s translation has found its way into scholarly bibliographies and
into at least one representative college anthology of
Middle English literature. A note in the anthology edited
by Thomas Garb ty even invites the reader to compare
the versions of Chestre and Marie (340).
Unfortunately, the reader who compares Sir Launfal
with Mason s version of Lanval will come away with a
false impression not only of Marie s story but also of the
extent to which Chestre was influenced by it. The problem with the Mason text does not result from the inherent difficulty of translating poetry. Apart from intricacies
of style and diction, a narrative poem contains specific
details of plot and character that, if altered or omitted,
will have the effect of creating a different story. To
Mason, all details were open to alteration; he did not
approach his work in the spirit of a modern translator
intent on fidelity to the text:
of a Victorian male. He thought that women should be
modest and submissive; he saw the Middle Ages as
quaint, and he seemed to find any mention of sexual matters distasteful and in need of refining and softening.
He began by couching his translation in a convoluted,
sentimental, pseudo-medieval English and proceeded to
rewrite Marie s story in a manner congenial to the social
and moral attitudes of his own day. Thus, Mason s rendering of Lanval becomes as interesting in its own right
as either of the Middle English variants Sir Launfal
and Sir Landevale or the various Old French versions
such as Graelent, from which Marie is thought to have
derived her own work. However, as long as Mason s
Lanval is presented as a translation of Marie s lai and not
as a variation of it, it needs to be examined for its fidelity
to the original.
Mason worked from the 1820 de Roquefort en face
edition of Marie s lais. If he was insecure with Old
French, he was most likely hindered by the fact that in
this edition, the original is usually a page behind the corresponding lines in the prose translation. Another disadvantage is that sometimes de Roquefort s translation is
vague, embroidered, or inaccurate. Nevertheless, Mason
was not a slave to de Roquefort s interpretations; sometimes he reproduces that translator s errors, but sometimes he repudiates them. Although he did not claim to
be a scholar, Mason was in command of his source
material; when he changed details of plot or characterization, he was probably aware of what he was doing.
Plot and Variations Found in the Four Versions
Not being a scholar myself, I have no pretension to write for scholars. My object is more
modest. I have tried to bring together a little
garland for the pleasure of the amateurs of
beautiful tales. To me these mediaeval stories
are beautiful, and I have striven to decant them
from one language into another with as little
loss as may be. To this end I have refined a
phrase, or, perhaps, softened an incident here
and there. (Aucassin and Nicolette, xvii)
Not only was Mason unconcerned with producing a
scholarly translation of his original, his mind-set was that
Translation Review
The basic plot shared by Graelent, Lanval, Sir
Landevale, and Sir Launfal is this: A knight attached to a
king’s court encounters a beautiful woman from fairyland who agrees to love him and make him wealthy on
the condition that he keep their love a secret. The knight
agrees, but later, in a moment of anger, he alienates his
king by insulting the queen and loses his lover by breaking the oath of secrecy. To save the knight from being
executed, the fairy lover comes to the king’s court;
acquitted, the knight is reinstated with his lover and
departs with her to fairyland.
Ten main variations in the four versions are as fol-
31
lows:
1. The name of the knight is a form of Lanval in
all but Graelent.
2. In Lanval, the knight is of royal birth; in the others, he is only of gentle birth.
3. The king of the story is identified as Arthur in
Lanval, Launfal, and Landevale, but in Graelent he is an
unnamed king of Brittany.
4. In Sir Launfal, the queen is called Gwennere (l.
42). In Landevale, she is Gaynour (l. 353.) In Graelent
and Lanval she is just the queen.
5. In Graelent, the knight refuses the queen s
advances before he has met the woman in the woods.
6. In all the versions except Graelent, the queen
becomes enamored of the knight at a feast and immediately offers herself to him; in Graelent, she falls in love
with him because of his reputation and sends a messenger to bring him to her.
7. The motif of Potiphar s wife is not completely
played out in Graelent: the queen does attempt to seduce
Graelent, but when he rejects her, she does not retaliate
by accusing him of having tried to seduce her; she gets
her revenge by having the king withhold his wages.
8. In all the versions except Graelent, the knight
reveals his secret love when the queen attempts to seduce
him; Graelent, who rejected the queen before he had a
lover, is provoked into breaking his oath at a feast when
the king demands that everyone praise the queen s beauty.
9. In all the versions except Graelent, the fairy lover
sends her maidens to fetch the knight and offers to love
him. In Graelent the knight discovers the fairy bathing
naked in a pool, and it is he who offers himself to her.3
10. Only in Sir Launfal does the fairy give the knight
a magic purse.
In his study of the Launfal manuscripts, George
Kittredge says that the Graelent is, in story, much more
primitive than the Lanval, and doubtless nearer the original Breton lay, which perhaps had nothing at all to do
with King Arthur (17). He says that the Middle English
Launfal, by which he means both Chestre s poem and
Landevale, is well known to be a translation of the Lai
de Lanval of Marie de France (2). After comparing
Chestre s Sir Launfal with Landevale and other Middle
English variants, Kittredge concluded that all came from
a common source:
This identity, extending as it often does to the
32
minutest points of expressing, and that too not
only in lines translated from the French, but in
many others not to be found in Marie at all
shows conclusively that we have not here to do
with the work of two independent translators
one for Chestre and another [for the short
works], but with a single Middle English
version of the Lai de Lanval. (5)
Although Kittredge thought that the Chestre followed
Marie s narrative pretty closely in its essentials (5),
he observed that where differences exist, the short version, Landevale, is much closer to Marie s original than
is Chestre s poem:
In places where Chestre has abandoned the Lai
de Lanval to follow the Lai de Graelent, the
Short Version [Landevale] follows the Lai de
Lanval. 2. Passages occur in Marie and in the
Short Version [Landevale] which are not found
in Chestre at all. 3. In some places the Short
Version [Landevale] shows a closer translation
of Marie than is found in the corresponding
places in Chester. (6—7)
Kittredge concluded that Landevale was not an abridgement of Chestre s poem but rather, together with
Graelent, one of the sources. Mason s translation of
Marie s Lanval follows the general story line that is
shared by all these works, but whether or not it follows it
in its essentials is a matter of opinion. Just as all the
works differ in certain significant details, Mason s
Lanval, although it purports to be a translation, also
differs from Marie s Lanval.
Mason’s Ponderous Style and Invented English
Mason was not unique in his notions of how to
reproduce medieval English. At first blush his style
might remind the reader of Malory s, but a closer examination suggests that his model was drawn from modern
English writers who created a medieval idiom. For
example, Tennyson s Idylls of the King is crammed full
of lightly’s, lo’s, wont’s, and made-them-ready’s. Sir
Walter Scott had Ivanhoe and his fellow knights speak
with an elevated, archaic diction. Earlier than Tennyson
or Scott, Sir Richard F. Burton had created an archaic
English idiom for his translation of the Arabian Nights;
indeed, Mason s style resembles that of Burton more
than it does that of Malory. An example of a medieval-
Translation Review
ism that Malory would not have used but that Burton
certainly did is that of goodly as an adjective. Observe
Mason s adjectival use of goodly in the following examples: (1) mantles of a goodly purple hue; (2) If you are
prudent and discreet, as you are goodly to the view...; (3)
there seemed no goodlier varlet under heaven...; (4)
Beneath the sky was no goodlier steed.
Of some 100 or more examples in the O.E.D. of the
use of goodly from the time of King Alfred until well
past the Renaissance, not one shows the word used to
describe a noun; every example is adverbial. Another of
Mason s favorite medievalisms is the use of right as an
adverb modifying an adjective. This use does occur occasionally in Malory, but not nearly to the extent that
Mason uses it: (1) Right heavy was Sir Lanval ; (2)
Right glad was the knight...; (3) Right merry was the pilgrim...; (4) Right loath was Lanval to depart...; (5) Right
joyous was Lanval to hear this thing; (6) Right evil counsel gave they to my lord...; (7) Right wrathful and heavy
was she...; (8) Right wrathful was the king at Lanval s
words...; (9) Right sorrowful were they because of his
plight...; (10) Two ladies are near at hand, right dainty of
dress.
Mason seemed to think that an -en past participle
was more medieval than the -ed and he includes some
strange verb forms: (1) These two maidens were richly
dressed in kirtles closely laced and shapen to their persons...; (2) When Lanval heard these words he rejoiced
greatly, for his heart was litten by another s torch.
Long, tortuous sentences in which verbs are added to
verbs and simple statements are encumbered by trains of
prepositional phrases and clusters of unneeded verbiage
typify Mason s medieval idiom, completely misrepresenting Marie s clean, direct style. When the two maidens come to invite Lanval to the tent of their mistress, all
that they say in Marie s Lanval is that their lady has sent
them for him and that they will lead him safely to her
pavilion, which is nearby.
Sire Lanval, ma dameisele, / Que tant est pruz e sage
e bele,/
Ele nus enveie pur vus; / Kar i venez ensemble od
nus!/
Sauvement vus i cundurums. / Veez, pres est li
paveilluns!
[Sir Lanval, my lady, / who is worthy and wise
and beautiful, /
sent us for you. / Come with us now. / We
shall guide you there safely. / See, her pavilion
is nearby!] (ll. 71—76)
Translation Review
What Marie says in 32 words Mason says in 58, changing sauvement (safely) to swiftly in the process.
Sir Lanval, my demoiselle, as gracious as she
is fair, prays that you will follow us, her messengers, as she has a certain word to speak to
you. We will lead you swiftly to her pavilion,
for our lady is very near at hand. If you but lift
your eyes you may see where her tent is
spread. (341)
When the queen tells Arthur that Lanval has asked for
her love and insulted her, Marie says:
Li reis s en curu at forment, / Jur en ad sun
serement: / S il ne s en peot en curt defendre, /
Il le ferat arder u pendre.
[The king got very angry; / he swore an oath: /
if Lanval could not defend himself in court / he
would have him burned or hanged.]
(ll. 325—328)
Mason manages to add another 12 words to Marie s 23.
Thereat the King waxed marvelously wrathful
and swore a great oath that he would set
Lanval within a fire, or hang him from a tree,
if he could not deny this thing, before his
peers.
When, at the end of the story, the barons scrutinize the
lady, they agree that Lanval spoke the truth about her
beauty, and acquit him; the lady gets back on her horse
and leaves. Marie says Delivrez est par lur esgart; / E la
pucele s en depart [He was set free by their decision /
And the girl departed] (ll.629—630). Mason says:
Since then Lanval had not spoken in malice
against his lady, the lords of the household
gave him again his sword. When the trial had
come thus to an end the Maiden took her leave
of the King, and made her ready to depart.
(Garb ty 348)
Mason has inflated the 10 words of the original to 44. In
matters of the most insignificant description, Mason
embellishes existing details. Where Marie specifies that
the maiden emissaries are wearing blians de purpre bis
(dark purple mantles). Mason gives them kirtles as
well, echoing the parallel description in Sir Launfal:
33
Har kerteles wer of Inde-sandel (Garbaty 372).
Whereas the towel that Marie s maiden carries is simply
une tuaile (a towel) (l. 64), that of Mason s lady is of
soft white linen (341), which could be another echo of
Sir Launfal: a towayle whyt and fyn (l. 245), although
in Chestre, the towel is of selk. Where Marie has
Lanval come to un pr (a meadow) and dismount by
une ewe curaunt (a running stream), Mason s Lanval
comes to a green mead and stands by a river of clear
running water. Sometimes Mason s embellishments
echo familiar Bible passages. When Marie s Lanval tells
the lady that he wants to stay with her, he says:
Pur vus guerpirai tutes genz. / Jam s ne queor
de vus partir; / Ceo est la rien que plus desir.
[for you I shall abandon everyone. / I want
never to leave you. / That is what I most
desire.] (ll.128—130)
Mason s wording is not only wordier (33 to 18 in the
original), it also echoes Orpah begging Ruth to let her go
with her:
For you I renounce my father and my father s
house. This only I pray, that I may dwell with
you in your lodging, and that you will never
send me from your side. (342)
In the account of Lanval s generosity with his new
wealth, Marie tells us that Lanval vesteit les jugle rs
(Lanval clothed minstrels) (l.211), but Mason says he
clothed them in scarlet (343). Beside borrowing phrasing, Mason also borrows a folk motif that was not originally in Marie s story, that of the Fortunatus purse that is
never empty. When the lady tells Lanval that he will no
longer have to worry about money, Marie says
Mut est Lanval bien herbergez: / Cum plus
despendra richement, / [E] plus avrat or e
argent.
[Now Lanval is well cared for. / The more lavishly he spends, / the more gold and silver he
will have.] (141—142)
Mason s wording suggests that she gives him a literal
purse:
To her bounty she added another gift besides ...
He might waste and spend at will and pleasure,
but in his purse ever there was to spare ... the
34
more pennies he bestowed, the more silver and
gold were in his pouch. (342)
Garb ty reinforces the impression that the lady has given
him a magic purse by footnoting this passage: This is
the purse of Fortunatus which is never empty (342 fn
11). There is no mention of a purse in Marie s Lanval; of
the four versions being discussed, only Chestre s
includes a magic purse I wyll the geve an alner (purse,
wallet) / Imad of sylk and of gold clere (ll. 319—320).
Some of Mason s words are ugly or inappropriate in
their context. For example, he describes Lanval as
heavy of hand. The usual connotation of having a
heavy hand is that a man hits hard, but Mason uses it
in the sense of generous. Where Marie says that
Lanval took the saddle off his horse, Mason tells us that
Lanval unbitted his steed and left him at his provand
in the meadow. As Lanval enters the magical pavilion,
Mason s beautiful fairy is lying upon a bed spread with
napery, a word more evocative of a restaurant than a
love bower. His description of the lady when she comes
to the court at the end of the story is spoiled by badly
chosen words that make her sound sickly, evil, and possibly suffering from a head wound:
...her eyes were like flowers in the pallor of her
face. She had a witching mouth, a dainty nose,
and an open brow. (347)
Mason uses genuine medieval words like seisin, dolent,
varlet, and guild, but with problematic effect. Dolent,
although strangely archaic, can still pass; it looks enough
like doleful, and it is clear from the context that Lanval is
sad. Varlet would seem to be appropriate enough,
because it derives from an Old French word that Marie
would have known; however, Mason uses it where Marie
could have used it but chose not to, and with good reason.4 With seisin (or rather Garb ty s gloss on it),
Mason s diction begins to affect details of plot and characterization. The cumulative effect of Mason s linguistic
choices is to alter the relationship between Lanval and
his lover, thereby changing his original to such a degree
that a reader reading the Mason translation would never
realize what an unusual departure from the conventional
male-written romance is represented by the Lanval of
Marie de France.
Misrepresentation of Character
Marie s Lanval is a foreigner in Arthur s court. He is
poor and friendless; the other knights envy him and
Translation Review
would like to see something bad happen to him. Mason s
hero, on the other hand, is loved and admired by the
other knights. When the hero forsakes the town, Marie
has him lying on the ground mulling over his problems
when the mysterious maidens appear; Mason s Lanval is
trying to go to sleep to forget his troubles, but cannot get
comfortable.5 Marie has the knight follow the fairy messengers without editorializing on his state of mind. That
he is shaken to the extreme by this otherworldly event is
clear from the fact that he forgets all about his horse,
leaving it unsaddled and untended in the meadow. A
knight who was thinking clearly would not do that.
Mason, on the other hand, dispels the sense that the
knight is about to embark on a strange, possibly dangerous adventure by heartily assuring us that Lanval was
right glad to do the bidding of the maidens and that
all his desire was to go with the damsels (341).6 Mason
seems to want to portray Lanval as being hearty and
manly, even when to do so is contrary to Marie s characterization. When Mason s Lanval is suffering because his
lady will not come to him after he breaks his oath, he
does not faint outright like Marie s knight, but only
comes nigh to swoon ; where Marie s Lanval abjectly
begs the lady to speak a sun ami (to her friend),
Mason s knight asks her to speak to him friend to
friend, suggesting a conversation between equals.
Despite his efforts to depict Lanval as unfailingly masculine, Mason only succeeds in making him prissier than
Marie s knight by editing the erotic passages. In the
pavilion scene, where Marie deluges us with carnal
images, Mason gives us echoes of the story of Ruth. In
the garden scene just before the queen makes her offer,
Marie s Lanval is engaging in mental stimulation with
thoughts of kissing, touching, embracing, and having his
pleasure; Mason s Lanval simply thinks of the time when
he might have clasp and greeting of his friend. All this
is not to say that just because Marie s Lanval is preoccupied with sex that he is manly. Indeed, the most curious aspect of this lai is the way Marie makes use of gender reversal. Marie s Lanval is not a knight at all; he is a
kept woman. His lover, whom he swears to obey, right or
wrong, gives him clothing and money. She visits him in
secret, for only one purpose. When he reveals their relationship, she drops him. When that happens, he weeps
and faints and begs like an abandoned woman and has to
be tended by the other knights. After a great deal of
humiliation and abasement, he is at last rescued by a lady
on a white horse.
Mason s editing also alters the queen s character. She
is not nearly so frank in Mason as in Marie. In Marie, the
Translation Review
queen plainly offers sex: Ma dr erie vus otrei (267).
Drüerie always carries the meaning of physical love. The
queen uses the word again when she maligns Lanval to
her husband and wants to make him angry enough to
take action: E dit que Lanval l ad huni / De dr erie la
requist (317). Lanval uses it when he is mourning the
loss of his lover (336). Graelent uses this word just after
he has raped the lady in the wood to tell her the kind of
relationship he wants to have with her (Weingartner
l.301). Mason s queen is not so clear about what she is
offering: You may receive a queen s whole love, if such
be your care (344). Marie s queen is to all appearances
remorseless. She becomes impatient with the interruptions in the trial because she wants to see Lanval executed. According to one reading, she is just tired of waiting;
in another, she is impatient because the trial is interfering
with her next meal.7 Mason s queen, however, seems to
have a conscience: the Queen was growing wrathful,
because of the blame that was hers (347). Mason even
manages to tone down Marie s sex-goddess fairy. Both
Chestre and the Landevale poet make the most of the
lady s nakedness. In Landevale we read that she was
Almost nakyde and that Al her clothes by-side her
lay (Kittredge 23; 96—97). Chestre writes For hete her
clothes down sche dede / Almest to her gerdyl-stede, /
Than lay sche uncovert (289—291). Mason s diction
shrouds the nakedness of the lady in words touched with
sanctity and innocence: she is whiter than any altar
lily ; she is like the new born rose ; she wears a vesture of spotless linen ; the rondure of her bosom is
more untouched than hawthorn (emphasis added).
Embellishment of Incidents With Effect of Changing
Interpretation
In the detail of the trembling horse, Mason departs
both from Marie and from de Roquefort. He does not
seem to associate the stream with the other world from
which the fairy lover has come. Such a river is featured
in Graelent, and that hero must cross it at the end of the
story. The obvious explanation of the trembling of
Lanval s horse on a hot day is that it senses the presence
of magic. De Roquefort has Lanval cross the river and
then dismount. He says that the horse is trembling
because of the cold (207). Mason says that Lanval wanted to cross the river, but that the actions of the horse prevented him:
Sir Lanval would have crossed this stream,
without thought of pass or ford, but he might
35
not do so, for reason that his horse was all
fearful and trembling. Seeing that he was hindered in this fashion, Lanval unbitted his steed,
and let him pasture in that fair meadow, where
they had come. (341)
This embellishment suggests that Lanval was on his way
somewhere but allowed himself to be deterred from his
unknown purpose because he couldn t control his horse.
Avoidance of Sexual Allusions
Mason s reluctance to translate Marie s explicit sexual allusions results in delicate and ambiguous circumlocutions. It has already been shown how he obscures the
nudity of the lady in the pavilion scene. He also does his
best to soften the suggestion that the lovers consummate their newly made contract. Marie clearly has the
lovers go to bed, Delez li s est al lit cuchiez (l. 153),
where they entertain each other until evening and then
get up for supper. Mason follows Marie in limiting whatever goes on between the new lovers to the daylight
hours; but he keeps them out of bed: the Maiden granted him her kiss and her embrace, and very sweetly in
that fair lodging [they] passed the day till evensong was
come (342). Both Chestre and the Landevale poet
rescheduled supper so that the lovers could enjoy an
entire night together. Here is the interlude in Landevale:
After soper the day was gone, / To bedde they
went both anone.
Alle that nyght they ley yn fere / And did
what thir wille were.
For pley they slepyde litille that nyght.
(Kittredge 24;146—149)
people have often told me that you have no
interest in women. You have fine-looking boys
with whom you enjoy yourself.
Mason is not alone in wanting to avoid this unbecoming
charge against the hero. In Sir Launfal, the queen calls the
knight a coward and says only Thou lovyst no woman,
no woman the (689). In Landevale, which is usually fairly close to Marie s wording, the queen calls the knight a
coward and an harlot ribawde and says Thou lovyst no
woman ne no woman the. In the Middle English of the
period, harlot was a masculine noun; it was an insult
equivalent to knave or scurvy fellow, but it did not
seem to have the connotation of homosexual. The feminine, promiscuous meaning for the word came later. Both
Mason and Garb ty skirt the fact that the queen is accusing Lanval of pederasty. Mason gives us this:
Lanval, she cried, well I know that you
think little of woman and her love. There are
sins more black that a man may have upon his
soul...
Garb ty footnotes the passage:
The queen accuses Lanval of misogyny, if not
more. This was a serious matter in a courtly,
chivalric society based on the code d’amour,
but evidently especially repugnant to a woman
of her passionate temperament. The accusation
is poignant enough for Lanval to break his
vow of silence. (344 fn 21)
Poignant does not seem quite the word to describe the
effect of the queen s accusation on a man who just a few
lines back was fantasizing about a woman s body:
Here it is in Sir Launfal:
Whan they had sowped, and the day was gon, /
They wente to bedde, and that anoon, / Launfal
and sche yn fere. / For play lytyll they sclepte
that nyght, / Tyll on morn hyt was daylyght.
(Chestre ll. 346—350)
The scene in which the queen accuses Lanval of having
homosexual preferences is definitely one that Mason
judged to be in need of refining. Even Chestre and the
author of Landevale were loath to follow Marie on this
one. In Marie s Lanval the queen s insult is explicit:
36
Lanval s en vait a une part,/Mut luin des
autres; ceo l est tart/Que s amie pu st
tenir,/Baiser acoler e sentir;/L autrui joie prise
petit, Si il nen ad le suen delit.
([Lanval] was impatient to hold his love, to
kiss and embrace and touch her; he thought little of others joys if he could not have his
pleasure.)
The reader who had only Mason s translation to go by,
however, would not be aware of Lanval s erotic imaginings. Here is what he is thinking according to Mason:
Translation Review
[Lanval could hardly wait] till he might have
clasp and greeting of his friend. The ladies of
the Queen s fellowship seemed by kitchen
wenches to his sight, in comparison with the
loveliness of the Maiden.8
At the end of the story, when Lanval s lady finally
arrives, Marie recapitulates the semi-nude scene of the
pavilion:
She was dressed...in a white linen shift that
revealed both her sides since the lacing was
along the side. Her body was elegant, her hips
slim, her neck whiter than snow on a branch,
her eyes bright, her face white, a beautiful
mouth, a well-set nose, dark eyebrows and an
elegant forehead, her hair curly and rather
blond; golden wire does not shine like her hair
in the light. (author s translation)
Mason avoids the hips and the naked sides:
Passing slim was the lady, sweet of bodice and
slender of girdle. Her throat was whiter than
snow on branch, and her eyes were like flowers in the pallor of her face. She had a witching mouth, a dainty nose, and an open brow.
Her eyebrows were brown, and her golden hair
parted in two soft waves upon her head. (347)
In Marie, to make sure that everyone can see her gorgeous body, the lady drops her cloak:
Sun mantel ad laissi chaeir, / Que meuz la
pu ssent veer.
She let her mantel fall so that they might see
her better. (605-606)
Mason makes the gesture less blatantly sensuous by
making it ambiguous:
She loosed the clasp of her mantle, so that men
might the more easily perceive the grace of her
person. (347) 9
The Ultimate “Immasculation” of Marie’s Female
Text
Mason s attempt to subordinate Marie s strong
female character to the hero begins with the word seisin.
Translation Review
The fairy is warning the knight what will happen if he
reveals their love affair: Never again will you have
seisin of that body, which is now so tender in your eyes.
This is the word that Marie uses, but in modern English
it is so unfamiliar that it must be glossed. Garb ty does
so in a footnote: I.e., possession, a feudal term usually
referring to property, specifically land (342). This word
seisin can in ordinary usage merely refer to possession in
the sense of having; i.e., if Lanval wishes to keep touching her, he needs to keep the love a secret. The effect of
the footnote is to distract the reader from the fact that it
is the woman who is placing conditions on the knight,
not giving him control over her. The lady is laying down
conditions in this scene, not offering herself as chattel. In
Marie s story, it is the knight who is weak and submissive, not the woman. The woman, not the man, sets the
geis and dictates the terms. She leaves Lanval without a
word when he breaks the contract. He swoons and weeps
and must be cared for by others. No matter how he abases himself, she turns a deaf ear to his suffering and refuses to come to him. Whatever the conventions of courtly
love, in terms of the reality of a woman s life in 1150,
Lanval s predicament is that of a woman; he is not in
charge of the situation.
Mason does the greatest violence to Marie s original
in his rewriting of the final scene. Marie s treatment of
the departure from the king s court differs considerably
from Graelent. In all the versions being compared,
Graelent, Landevale, and Sir Launfal, the hero rides
away from the king s court in the company of his fairy
lover. In Graelent, which precedes Lanval, and Sir
Launfal, which derives from Lanval, the knight is mounted on a horse of his own. Marie s innovation was to put
the knight on foot, to deprive Lanval of the very thing
that makes a knight a knight: his horse. The Landevale
poet follows Marie in that his knight jumps onto the back
of the lady s horse, but he tropes the action in such a way
as to neutralize the effect that it has in Marie s story, suggesting that women are moody and that the fairy will get
over her pique. Although the lady has come to save
Lanval from execution, it is not at all clear that she is
willing to take him back as her lover. In Graelent, the
lady specifically tells the knight that she has only come
to save his life and is not interested in having him back.
He follows her to the river, where he falls off his horse
and nearly drowns before she pulls him out and takes
him to fairyland with her. In Sir Launfal, the fairy groom
Gyfre brings Blaunchard to Launfal, who mounts and
rides away with the fairy:
37
The knyght to horse began to sprynge,
Anoon, wythout any lettynge,
Wyth hys lemman away to ryde. (Chestre 1015—17)
In Landevale, the knight jumps onto the back of the
lady s horse; at first she is angry, but he talks his way
back into her favor; the writer leaves us with an image
that obscures the fact that the knight is riding behind his
lover on the same horse: So they rodyn euyn ryghte, /
The lady, the maydyns, and the knyghte (Kittredge 32;
22—23). He further weakens the image of a submissive
man with an implied wink and a nudge:
Loo, howe love is lefe to wyn/Of wemen that
arn of gentylle kyn!/The same way haue they
nomyn/Ryghte as before she was commyn.
The implication is that women can be managed and that
everything is just as it was before Landevale broke his
oath. In both of the Middle English versions, the knight
departs with his dignity intact. Marie s final scene, however, emphasizes the submission of the man to the
woman. It is clear that the lady does not intend to take
Lanval with her. She only came back to save him from
being executed. She is in a hurry. She rejects the king s
offer of hospitality, even after preparations for a visit
have been made on her behalf by her maidens. The line
and the girl departed incorporates the idea that in taking leave of the king, she has remounted her horse.
While the lady is mounting her palfrey at the palace
door, Lanval is scrambling up onto a mounting block
which is in the yard for the use of heavy men. As the
lady rides past the block, Lanval takes a flying leap and
lands on the rear of the horse. Not a word is spoken by
either, and the noble knight goes off to fairyland riding
pillion behind his lady. Perhaps this undignified, submissive image of the knight offended Mason s masculine
Victorian sensibilities. Perhaps he just misread the original.10 In any case, he completely reverses the image that
Marie intended to leave us with. Here is Mason s picture:
Now without the hall stood a great stone of
dull marble, where it was the wont of lords,
departing from the Court, to climb into the
saddle, and Lanval by the stone.11 The Maiden
came forth from the doors of the palace, and
mounting on the stone, seated herself on the
palfrey, behind her friend. (348)
This is what Marie intended for us to see:
38
Outside the hall stood/a great stone of dark
marble
where heavy men mounted/when they left
the king s court;
Lanval climbed on it./When the girl came
through the gate
Lanval leapt, in one bound,/onto the pal
frey, behind her. (633-640)
A medieval listener or reader as familiar with the types
of horse as we are with the difference between a sports
coupe and an SUV would not miss the significance of
the fact that the knight who rode into the story on a
destrer (war-horse) rides away on a palefrei (saddle
horse). Considering his aversion to words with sexual
connotations, it is surprising that Mason uses the word
ravished in his translation of the final lines: The
Bretons tell that the knight was ravished by his lady to
an island (348), particularly since both Chestre and the
Landevale poet avoided the word. Sir Launfal was take
ynto fayrye. Landevale was broughte. Marie uses ravi
to put the crowning touch on her picture of the feminized
knight making his final submission: La fu ravi li
dameiseaus (644). Like seisin in the earlier scene, ravi
has more than one connotation. Kathryn Gravdal traces
the development of the word in her discussion of rape in
French literature and law:
The classical Latin rapere bears the seeds of
an ambiguousness that will be fully developed
in Old French. Some of the more common
meanings of rapere are to carry off or seize; to
snatch, pluck, or drag off; to hurry, impel, hasten; to rob, plunder; and, finally, to abduct (a
virgin). The key semes are those of movement
or transportation, appropriation or theft, and
speed or haste. From rapere is derived the popular Latin *rapire, which gives the Old French
ravir. By the end of the twelfth century, ravir
can mean to run at great speed; to carry off by
force; or to be carried off at great speed.
Ravissant designates, in the twelfth century,
some one or thing that carries others off by
force. But as early as 1155, the Latin raptus in
the sense of abduction brings about the shift
toward a sexual meaning: rap (c. 1155) or rat
(c. 1235) designates abduction by violence or
by seduction, for the purposes of forced coitus.
The connotation of swiftness is coupled with
that of force. (4)
Translation Review
From beginning to end, Lanval is the story of a man
who is dominated by a woman in the manner that
medieval women were dominated by men. In trying to
make Lanval conform to his idea of what the relationship
of a knight and a lady should be, Mason altered the central theme of the original. Mason s translation gives us
the story of knight meets lady; knight suffers a little for
lady; knight rides off with lady clinging to his manly
back. Marie de France s Lanval is the story of lady summons knight; lady ravishes knight; knight is carried off
clinging submissively to lady’s back. In decanting
Marie s story from Old French into English, Mason
seems to have left the original story in the bottle.
Works Cited
Brians, Paul. The Lais of Marie de France Study Guide
(12th Century) online
http://www.wsu.edu:8000~brians/love-in-thearts/marie.html
Chestre, Sir Thomas. Sir Launfal. Medieval English
Literature. Garb ty, Thomas J., Waveland Press Inc.,
Prospect Heights, IL (1984), 1997.
De Roquefort, B., ed. tr. Poésies de Marie De France,
poète Anglo-Normand du XIIIe siècle, ou récueil de
lais, fables et autres productions de cette femme
célèbre, Tome Premier. Chasseriau, Paris, 1820. This
is the en face edition to which Mason refers his readers, so I conclude that it was his source.
Ewert, A., ed. Lanval. Marie de France LAIS,
Blackwell s French Texts, Basil Blackwell, Oxford,
1969, Lanval 58—74. This contains the original text
only. There are minor variations between this text
and the one in de Roquefort that was Mason s
source.
Garb ty, Thomas J., ed. Middle English Literature.
Waveland Press Inc., Prospect Heights, IL (1984),
1997.
Gollancz, Sir Israel. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
The Early English Text Society (1940). OUP,
London, 1964.
Gravdal, Kathryn. Ravishing Maidens: Writing Rape in
Medieval French Literature and Law. Philadelphia,
University of Pennsylvania Press, c 1991. New cultural studies series.
Hanning, Robert and Ferrante, Joan. Lanval. The Lais of
Marie de France. Durham, NC, Labyrinth Press,
1978. This is a good line-by-line English translation.
Kittredge, G. L. Launfal (Rawlinson Version),
American Journal of Philology, X,,I (1889) 1—33.
Translation Review
This article contains the complete text of the Middle
English Sir Landevale, which Kittredge calls the
Shorter Version of Sir Launfal.
Laskaya, Anne and Salisbury, Eve, ed. The Middle
English Breton Lays. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Western
Michigan University for TEAMS 1995 online
http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/salisbr.ht
m
Mason, Eugene. French Mediaeval Romances. (1911).
London, J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd., 1932. This is the
volume that contains both The Lay of Sir Launfal
and Graelent. The introduction, which treats
chiefly of Marie de France and her work, is noticeably more pompous and condescending than the
introduction to the other volume.
Mason, Eugene. Aucassin & Nicolette and other
Mediaeval Romances and Legends. (1910). London,
J. M. Dent, 1925.
Shoaf, Judith P., tr. Lanval online www.clas.ufl.edu/english/exemplaria/lan.html. This is an English verse
translation that I think captures the tone and style of
the original.
Tuffrau, Paul, tr. Lanval. (adapt e) Littérature Française,
Texts et Contexts. Tome I. R.-J. Berg, Holt, 1994.
76—82. This is the modern French version that I read
before coming to Mason s translation in Garb ty. The
image of a knight riding submissively behind a
woman as she rides away is striking; Mason s different ending sent me to the Old French to see which
version corresponded to the original.
Weingartner, Russell, ed., tr. Graelent. Garland Library
of Medieval Literature, Vol. 37, Series A. New York,
Garland, 1985. This is an en face edition.
Notes
Unless otherwise specified, the OF text of Lanval
cited is Ewert; the line-by-line English translation is that
of Hanning and Ferrante. Citations indicate line numbers.
Mason s Lanval is cited from Garb ty.
2 Competent translations by Paul Brians, Anne
Laskaya and Eve Salisbury, and Judith P. Shoaf can be
found on line. See bibliography for URLs.
3 Mason s reluctance to translate overtly sexual
scenes can be seen in his translation of Graelent. In this
anonymous lai, which Marie is thought to have used as a
source for Lanval, the knight not only propositions the
lady; when she rejects him because of difference in rank,
he rapes her: en l espoisse de la forest / A fet de li ce
1
39
qu il li plest (Weingartner ll, 295—6). Mason completely
suppresses the rape (which de Roquefort did not) by
making the transition between the lady s refusal and her
capitulation with this passage: Sir Graelent was not
abashed by the dame s proud spirit, but wooed and
prayed her gently and sweetly, promising that if she
granted him her love he would serve her in all loyalty,
and never depart therefrom all the days of his life. The
demoiselle hearkened to the words of Graelent...
(Aucassin & Nicolette 150).
4 Before sending him away, the lady gives Lanval
new clothes and Marie says Suz ciel nen ot plus bel
dancel (Ewert 176) (there was no more handsome
young man under the sky (Maddox). Mason translates
the word dancel ( deimosel is the reading in his source,
but it is probably a scribal error) as varlet (343). Hanning
and Ferrante render it youth. Garb ty gives a measure of
authority to Mason s choice of varlet by footnoting it as
a young man of gentility. (343). However, it is not
clear that the English word varlet ever had that meaning.
Elsewhere in Lanval, Marie uses the word vallez to mean
servant boys (281). The word and the related English
words varlet and valet seem always to have had the connotation of servility. Marie could have used the singular
form of vallez to describe Lanval in the clothing scene,
but did not. When Marie does use the word, she is referring to Lanval s supposed petits amis; all the more reason not to use it to describe the hero.
5 Compare Lanval, who cannot get comfortable
enough to nap outside on a sunny day with a knight like
Sir Gawain on his journey to the Green Chapel in the
dead of winter Ner slayn wyth the slete, he sleped in his
yrnes (Gollancz 27; 1729).
6 Mason could have been influenced by the
Landevale poet, who describes the hero as assenting to
the summons blythely and going with them hendly
(23).
7 Warnke and Rychner give je not (fasted); Ewert,
atendeit, waited, which is not quite as callously selfish (Hanning and Ferrante, fn 120).
8 Mason made up the bit about the queen and the
kitchen wenches. The wenches don t come in until
later, when he is insulting the queen.
9 In Graelent, it is the queen who removes her cloak
so that everyone can get a good look at her body: He
[Arthur] had the queen mount/Onto a high bench and
remove her cloak (Weingartner 23; 433—434). Mason s
rendering of this scene in Graelent gives the impression
that the queen is simply removing her overcoat: the
King commanded the Queen to put off her royal robes,
40
and to stand forth upon the da s (Aucassin & Nicolette,
152—153). It is at this point in Graelent that the hero discloses the existence of his much more beautiful lover.
10 De Roquefort s translation is more accurate than
Mason s, but he left out the word derrière, so the image
is ambiguous; Lanval could be in front.
11 Garb ty s footnotes this phrase: i.e., mounted by
the stone (348).
Translation Review
ON TEACHING TRANSLATION AT THE INTRODUCTORY LEVEL
By Stuart Friebert
O
nce upon a Bucharest moon, sitting at Marin
Sorescu s kitchen table he was drawing me while
I was interviewing him for a volume of Selected Sorescu
in English I thought for a fleeting moment that it
might be useful to assemble a text for teaching translation to beginners. We had been using translation as an
entry-level creative writing course at Oberlin, to give
young writers a chance to practice fundamentals while
working on various masterpieces from other languages.
Hah , Sorescu said, passing me his take on my face
in red ink, when I asked him if he d review a draft of
such a text, Let s better tell a few jokes, drink a little
local cognac, but definitely not to Ceausescu s health,
and let it go at that. He was whispering now.
Well, returning to teach translation yet once more,
after having retired in 1997, I am perhaps foolishly
emboldened to suggest some things I ve tried while
teaching this marvelous subject for over 25 years,
because Sorescu is no longer alive (alas!) to warn me off
again. Sparing the reader a long account of all the
approaches I ve used (larded with the injunctions, exhortations, and the requisite anecdotes), I ll just list some
basic ingredients of what has proved to be reliable
recipe, eaten by large numbers of students, some of
whom have gone on to become fellow cooks: of some
400 books I have of former students, fully 40 are volumes of translations. So here is what has worked pretty
well, in case you re of a mind to start teaching translation, or even just beginning to practice it yourself alongside other writing projects. If you have already been
teaching it, you ll find opportunities to disagree, perhaps
even strongly. I certainly hope so!
Theory s important, but resist the urge, as Seamus
Heaney once noted at Oberlin, to deconstruct rather than
construct. In other words, pay some attention to the
many views about the nature and substance of the craft,
of course, by assigning, say, reading that ranges from
George Steiner s After Babel, at one end of the spectrum,
to Robert Bly s The Eight Stages of Translation at the
other. One way to do so is to put a substantial bibliography on reserve and allow students to choose whatever
appeals to them, so long as they read around a few hours
weekly in this critical literature and log in a journal their
responses to what engages them. Provide some opportunities in class for sharing their entries and taking com-
Translation Review
ments from others. At mid-term, I ask for some samples
of their reading notes and let the theory aspects go at
that, for now. Later, of course, one must start arguing
with experts to develop one s own essential aesthetic and
methodology. Now on to the nature of the two main parts
to my course.
Part I: The Exercise Portfolio
Over the first two-thirds of the term assuming a
semester-long schedule line up a series of presentations (around 7 or 8 I would recommend) in whatever
languages/literatures you can persuade colleagues and
visitors from farther afield to present to challenge your
class. If you are fortunate enough to have a decent budget, invite visitors to offer a master-class separate from
your structure, even give a reading, and the like. This
particular time around, I have invited writer-translators to
present texts from classical Chinese, ancient and modern
Japanese, French, Spanish, Turkish, and modern
Vietnamese. It helps to have people in town like David
Young and Jiann Lin, to present Du Mu (the subject of
their current collaboration); Ana Cara, who brought her
friend and mentor Borges to Oberlin some years ago and
is working on his milongas; G neli G n, the TurkishAmerican writer and award-winning translator; Janice
Zinser to discuss Ponge; and Bruce Weigl and his daughter, Hanh, to present current Vietnamese poems. Bruce is
the well-known poet, translator, and memoirist. Besides
making any remarks they wish to about the craft, and
about the language and literature surrounding the writer
they introduce us to, including any tips from their own
experience, guests are asked to provide us with barebones literals of the text(s) they want students to translate and walk us through, taking questions and comments
as they go. I strongly urge guests to bring hithertountranslated texts, which adds considerable excitement
and raises the energy level. Comparative studies of others versions, though instructive and helpful, seem to
crowd beginners, I ve found, and they give up more easily, don t discover hidden resources in themselves. Fairly
brief texts, hence mainly poems or short prose, bring out
the best in beginners as well, not to mention texts guests
really love and have struggled with themselves. I beg
guests for their own versions but show them to students
41
only after the exercise portfolio is due. One last note:
since I m fluent in German, I like to take a turn presenting an assignment myself. If I begin the parade of presentations, I spend some time reviewing what I call the
manners and morals of translating anyone s work from
anywhere, from securing rights to honoring the work
itself. I urge contacting writers one wants to translate.
Writers have often, in my experience, delighted in knowing someone is interested in introducing their work in
English, even if the translator is a beginner. In some
instances, former students have established life-long
working relationships with writers they initially began
translating for this class.
Some logistics: if you do two 75-minute classes
weekly, say Tuesday/Thursday, as I do, schedule guests
for the Thursdays so students will have a weekend to
work on their initial drafts. Since I am currently working
with 21 students, and there are 7 exercise-presentations, I
ask 3 students to volunteer each time to put their solutions on the worksheet. Each then has about 25 minutes
to read her version, talk about her sense of the piece, her
general approach, frustrations and delights, then take
questions and comments. The class in turn is encouraged
to leave any comments for the presenters to collect that
could not be addressed in class because of time constraints. I also encourage students to make use of anyone
else s superior solution, just footnote the borrowing and
briefly mention why it s being lifted. I myself enter
class discussions as little as possible, passing my comments along in private, because I like students to forge
partnerships with fellow students via in-class
exchanges; via sharing other, written comments that
might carry over to joint projects at a later date. I introduce my own written comments gingerly: you might try
this, I m just one reader, so , and most often,
please see me right away if my comments aren t clear
or, worse, are not going down well. Everyone who has
ever taught knows how crucial it is to sense what a student can and cannot hear particularly beginners.
Here s a beneficial, parallel assignment to the weekly
exercises: students are required to try their hand at what I
call companion pieces, inspired, shall we say, by interacting with the foreign texts. I don t grade these pieces but
do give them careful review. Students say writing these
companions gets them to raise their sights and often
results in their strongest work to date. Not surprising, of
course. Working on masterpieces will make a difference in how one thinks about one s work.
These are only guidelines, and I happily confess that
some guests have found other, productive ways to
42
engage the class. Let me repeat that when the guests
introduce hitherto untranslated material, students respond
with their strongest instincts and attention, which can
result in misses, even misrepresentations, and downright messes, but often yeasty, so to foster an initial, pullout-all-stops approach, I recount what Miroslav Holub
said when I first showed him some pretty mangled
attempts to come to grips with his remarkable poems. He
pointed to an outrageous mistranslation, that night in
Prague, slapped his thigh and laughed, I like it, we keep
it! When the poem in question was eventually allowed to
appear in Czech (back from my translation), there was
my mistake ! Working with such a generous soul as
Holub, one could eventually make one s way through
Purgatory.
Okay, all your guests have come and gone, and midterm is upon you. So here is what I look for in the exercise portfolio: two versions of each piece guests have left
with us to work on, an early attempt and a final-for-now
version; five journal entries of responses to a range of
reading in the references on reserve; one entry on a critical source students have located on their own, outside the
course s reading list; a companion piece to each translation; and a brief introductory statement (say 3—5 pages)
under this rubric: Some Things I ve Learned on the
Way to These Translations.
Part II: The Final-Project Portfolio
Early in the course, I announce that for a final project, to occupy us after the exercises are completed, students will be expected to work together in small groups
three is a good number, one to break a tie vote, I joke;
two is a minimum; no one may work alone, even given
sufficient outside help or personal expertise, for reasons I
hope are transparent, but note Ezra Pound s famous dictum, It takes two to translate, one who knows the language out of which, one who knows the language into
w h i c h . The mission is to identify a writer or writers
whose work cries out for translation into English and
whom students want to translate with all their heart and
soul. To facilitate matching up well in teams, I compile a
list based on students responses to (1) languages and/or
literatures I am fluent in; (2) languages and/or literatures
I would be interested in working on, even with little or
no expertise in this regard I love to tell the tale of
Christine Molinari, with deep Italian roots, who nonetheless confessed she would really rather work on
Hungarian, for unknown reasons. Long story short: she
eventually mastered the language so well that she moved
Translation Review
to Budapest, met among other writers the poet Csoori,
and he himself told me he couldn t hope for a better
translator than Christine.
The list mentioned above quickly gives students
ideas for connecting with other students they don t
already know or might not have suspected share similar
interests. Turning in their responses, students often mention books by writers they would love to entice others to
work on with them; writers they ve met while studying
abroad; even writers in their family from other lands, you
name it! So, using anything and everything, from foreign
students on campus, to alumni living abroad, to contacts
with foreign writers, to gramma s uncle s book of
Swedish poems, the groups embark on a journey to narrow their specific choices of texts to render, divvy up
responsibilities who does what and how much on
the way to preparing a seminar-style report to the class in
the remaining sessions, during which they supply us with
samples of their work together, highlighting why this
writer, why this work? Other general discussion topics
might include, for instance, how we approached the task,
our ways with particular solutions, even our fights! And
finally to take questions and comments that may be helpful to the presenting group as it prepares a manuscript to
turn in at term s end. Let me add that I give each student
two grades for this final effort: one that all group members receive for the project as a whole; and one individually, based on a personal statement each student also submits, about his or her specific contributions to the group
project. We end the course with a class reading: everyone
reads a favorite translation, as well as a favorite companion piece. Finally, I urge everyone to continue translating
next semester, perhaps on a one-to-one basis with a
sponsoring faculty member.
Announcing
ALTA 2002 Conference
25th Anniversary
October 16-19, 2002
Embassy Suites,
Downtown
Chicago, Illinois
For information, click on the following
links at ALTA Website:
(http://www.literarytranslators.org)
Keynote Speaker: Clare Cavanagh
Current Panel Proposals
Current Workshop Proposals
Bilingual Readings
Fellowships for Beginning Translators
Accommodation Information
Translation Review
43
ANNA KARENINA
SELECTED POEMS
LEO TOLSTOY
VICTOR HUGO
Translated by Richard Pevear
and Larissa Volokhonsky
“Pevear and Volokhonsky are at once
scrupulous translators and vivid stylists of
English, and their superb rendering allows
us, as perhaps never before, to grasp the
palpability of Tolstoy’s ‘characters, acts,
situations.’” —James Wood,
The New Yorker
Translated by Brooks Haxton
Penguin
Penguin Classic
864 pp. 0-14-200027-2
$16.00
Penguin Classic
80 pp.
0-14-243703-4
$12.00
SELECTED WRITINGS
J O S É M A RT Í
Translated by Esther Allen
with an Introduction by
Roberto González Echevarría
400 pp. 0-14-243704-2
$15.00
PINOCCHIO
A LITERARY REVIEW
CARLO COLLODI
SØREN KIERKEGAARD
Original Translation by M.A. Murray,
revised by S. Tassinan, with an
Introduction by Jack Zipes, and
Illustrations by Charles Folkard
Translated with an Introduction
and Notes by Alastair Hannay
Penguin Classic
224 pp. 0-14-243706-9
Penguin Classic
160 pp. 0-14-044801-2
$13.00
$10.00
THE SHAPE OF WATER
A SALVO MONTALBANO
MYSTERY
ANDREA CAMILLERI
AU BONHEUR
DES DAMES
Translated by Stephen Sartelli
(THE LADIES’ DELIGHT)
ÉMILE ZOL A
Viking
176 pp. 0-670-03092-9
$20.95
Translated and Edited by Robin Buss
Penguin Classic
464 pp. 0-14-044783-0
$12.00
CHRONICLE OF THE
NARVÁEZ EXPEDITION
THE DAMNED
A LVA R N Ú Ñ E Z
C A B E Z A VA C A
(LÀ-BAS)
J.-K. HUYSMANS
Introduction by Ilan Stavans
Revised and Annotated Translation
by Harold Augenbraum
Translated with an Introduction
and Notes by Terry Hale
Penguin Classic
320 pp. 0-14-044767-9
Penguin Classic
$8.00
Translated and Edited by Robert Cook
Penguin Classic
AND OTHER WORKS
Translated with an Introduction
and Notes by A.C. Spearing
208 pp. 0-14-044762-8
Translated by Andrew Bromfield
“A simmering ragout of modern satire,
Buddhism, and Egyptology.”
—The Guardian
P E N G U I N
$14.00
AND OTHER WRITINGS
MAX WEBER
VICTOR PELE VIN
256 pp. 0-670-03066-X
384 pp. 0-14-044769-5
THE PROTESTANT
ETHIC AND THE
SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM
$13.00
HOMO ZAPIENS
Viking
$12.00
NJAL’S SAGA
THE CLOUD
OF UNKNOWING
Penguin Classic
160 pp. 0-14-243707-7
Translated and Edited with an
Introduction and Notes by
Peter Baehr and Gordon C. Wells
Penguin Classic
384 pp. 0-14-043921-8
$16.00
$24.95
P U T N A M
I N C.
ACA D E M I C M A R K E T I N G D E PA RT M E N T • 3 7 5 H U D S O N S T R E E T • N E W YO R K , N E W YO R K 1 0 0 1 4 - 3 6 5 7 • w w w. p e n g u i n p u t n a m . c o m / a c a d e m i c
44
Translation Review
“WHERE’S THE VELVET?” JÁCHYM TOPOL’S SESTRA
AND THE RECEPTION OF ALEX ZUCKER’S TRANSLATION
CITY, SISTER, SILVER
By Yvonne Howell
O
ver a decade ago, the European and North American
reception of the Latin American boom writers
alerted some translators and translation theorists to
thorny problems of acknowledgement in reviews of
translated literature. Some of the most serious issues they
raised were the tendency to [focus] almost exclusively
on a translation s potential role in English, comparing it
to other similar works in North American literature
(Maier, 248), and a paradoxical urge to promote literature from other cultures at the expense of that literature s
source identity.1 There has been no systematic study of
the Western reception of translations of post-Soviet literature from Russia and Eastern Europe, although one can
expect such a study to provoke a fruitful discussion of
political and cultural assumptions behind American perceptions of the other Europe, potential NATO allies
who are judged through the prism of our expectations
and fears.
J chym Topol s novel City, Sister, Silver (Sestra) was
an immediate critical sensation when it arrived on the
Czech literary scene in 1994. It won the Egon Hostovsk?
Prize for the best Czech book of the year and was the
only post—Velvet Revolution book included in the writers and critics list of the 100 Greatest Czech Prose
Works of the Century (ahead of all but one of Kundera s
novels on the list). It was recognized as a landmark literary achievement, destined to be read, studied, and talked
about as the point of departure for a new era in the
development of Czech prose. What Czech critics saw in
this epic novel (the original is 488 pages) was a stunningly new and serious attempt to transform the literary
and artistic resources of the Czech language, to make it
express the profoundly different spiritual and social reality of the post-Communist Czech Republic. The basic
structure of the novel follows the picaresque adventures
of the protagonist, Potok, as he makes his way through
the new reality of post-Communist Czechoslovakia and
Central Europe. Potok s name implies flow, which is
precisely what Time has ceased to do in the central
metaphor of this novel. Time has exploded, so that
suddenly the city (Prague) and even sleepy Czech villages have been catapulted into the post-present,
Translation Review
sprayed with time s explosive colors (81). The consistent pattern of imagery that associates a fabled city, the
explosion of time, and the acceleration of social change
is sharply reminiscent of Andrei Bely s apocalyptic
vision of Petersburg at the turn of the previous century.
The novel is divided into three parts, whose headings
have become the title of the novel in English (the title of
the Czech original is simply Sestra [Sister]). The hero is
a young man of Topol s generation; i.e., he grew up in
the decaying ideological and social torpor of the old
regime and came of age just as the Berlin Wall came
down and his country entered a new era of chaotic freedoms. Potok is a part-time actor, until the gaping holes in
post—Cold War economic and social regulations prompt
him and his friends to engage in various types of business, gang intrigues, and unregulated travel throughout
Central Europe. The hero s first-person narration renders
a world that is fast-paced, full of drugs and sex, often
phantasmagoric, and lived among the underground and
marginal layers of society. Potok is a splendid eyewitness
guide to this new world, because he, too, is sucked into
the vortex of global capitalism, which propels people
across formerly rigid national and social boundaries. The
various subplots and digressions in the hero s saga are
ultimately all subordinate to the novel s overarching concern with language, time, freedom, and morality.
I asked Catbird Press s editor for copies of every
North American review of Alex Zucker s translation City,
Sister, Silver.2 Originally, I was interested in seeing how
the theme of translation would be handled in these
reviews. Topol presents the explosion of the old political
and social order as an explosion of the Czech language,
and therefore Alex Zucker was faced with the task of
rendering into English a novel that is self-consciously
about the Czech language. How would the particular
although certainly not unique problems of this type of
translation be confronted by the reviewers? The short
answer is that they were not. The longer answer, which
forms the substance of this article, is that issues of cultural translation, or even what one might call geopolitical
translation, coalesced to form a striking pattern in the
underlying narrative structuring the North American
45
reviews of Topol s novel. I found that most of the issues
cultural critics raised in the reception of Third World literary texts in English translation (Spivak, 253) were
newly provoked by the reviews of City, Sister, Silver. In
this article, I demonstrate that the North American
reviews of Sestra all follow a strikingly similar pattern.
In conclusion, I suggest one possible alternative reading
of Sestra, one that sheds a different light on Topol s
novel and Zucker s translation than the one unanimously
forwarded by the eight North American reviews.
The American reviews of Topol s novel all follow a
master narrative. This narrative begins with utopia lost
(fall of communism) but quickly reminds us that the previous (communist) utopia was a false one and was challenged by a generation of writers who were, in their own
way, also utopian visionaries. Both utopias are now discredited, and the novel under review can be best understood as an only partially successful attempt to give
voice to the dystopian specter of an imploded society, in
which there is no common language, ethnicity, legal
structure, or ideological agenda. In short, the reviews
assume a false utopia replaced by confusion, violence,
and mutual incomprehension. Within the confines of this
set of assumptions, the reviewers are insightful and
cogent in both their praise and their critique of the
novel.3 An analysis of the reviews, taken together, suggests that a set of underlying strategies for approaching
new translations from Eastern Europe has formed the
discourse of Western reception of these works.
The Review Titles
Reviewers think of catchy titles for their pieces, and
in the case under consideration, the titles reveal a discourse of post—Velvet Revolution disillusionment and
alienation. The Bummer of Freedom, Life is
Elsewhere, Changelings in a Czech Land, Schemes,
Scams and Rackets, and Reality Czech all evoke a
vision of failed hopes, bungled opportunity, and the failure of Western-style democracy (which is supposed to
guarantee personal freedom as well as an uncorrupted
legal and political system). Ironically, the code words for
contemporary alienation are taken from the underground
dissident vocabulary of the previous era of socialism,
e.g., Kundera s Life is Elsewhere and Heinlein s
Stranger in a Strange Land.
Situating East European Literature
The American reviews of Topol s novel all follow a
46
master narrative. This narrative begins by emphasizing
the dark aesthetic response to the fall of communism.
Post-Soviet literature is characterized as an exploration
of the dark, apocalyptic, sinister, and surreal; it depicts a
violent, fragmented, incomprehensible reality. The opening topos of each of the more substantial reviews invokes
a Western literary tradition of the dark side to set the
stage for the consideration of Topol s novel to follow. In
the consistent discourse of the reviews, the literary
responses to the fall of communism (and the strictures of
socialist realism) can be best situated in a tradition that
stretches from de Sade to Dostoevsky to the Decadents
to postmodernism. Not surprisingly, almost every review
includes a mention of Kafka at the beginning as well.
This situates the translation under discussion within a
Central European tradition of metaphysical uncertainty,
without engaging one of Topol s primary motifs, which
is the expulsion (literally and figuratively) of the German
presence in the literary construction of Prague.
The Dissident Legacy
All but the shortest reviews invoke the previous generation of well-known Czech dissident writers after situating the novel in a literary tradition but before they
begin to discuss Topol himself, or his novel. We might
note here that whereas Topol s novel will be described as
a daunting challenge to any translator, the tacit assumption is that writers like Kundera and Havel did not pose
particularly insurmountable problems for translators.
Their Czech language could be rendered into something
that sounded normal, even noble, to North American
readers. A few of the reviewers point out the previous
generation of Czech writers had a clearly defined evil,
the false utopia of socialism, to write against. The difficulty that faces the translator of the new literature is that
he or she must give a sense of the relationship between
language and ideology that forms the linguistic backdrop
of the original. As long as there was a literary Czech language that described reality as dictated by (communist)
ideology, there was an eloquent, ironic undermining of
this language in the writings of moral and political dissidents like Kundera, Klima, Havel, etc. Topol s generation
has no more use for either. The new reality Topol
describes is a heady mixture of freedom and chaos; the
focus of his critique is no longer communism, but capitalism, as it is manifested in most of the emerging
world. Some of Topol s most striking use of language is
motivated by his need to attack the familiar ills of capitalism yawning income gaps, global drug trafficking,
Translation Review
environmental destruction without resorting to the
Czech language the communist media used to attack
these same things.
Topol’s Ideological Credentials
The third topos of what I discern as the master narrative underlying this set of reviews is an account of
Topol s personal and political profile. A premium is
placed on the humanistic Western credentials: from
Michelangelo to Shakespeare to Havel s Charter 77, this
young man has Western values flowing in his veins.
Depending on the length of the review, the following
autobiographical facts are invoked at this point: his
grandfather was Catholic scholar who wrote on
Michelangelo; his father was a dissident who translated
Shakespeare, at age 15, J chym Topol was youngest
signer of Charter 77; and Topol was denied a university
education in Soviet-era Czechoslovakia. Instead, he did
manual work and an underground publication (the
Revolver Revue). One reviewer s elaboration of Topol s
biography points explicitly to the Cold War images these
facts rely on for their power: Topol s early dissident
activities, in the 1980s, are described in the language of a
spy novel. He made several clandestine trips to Poland
and organized a cloak and dagger meeting between
Polish and Czech dissidents.
The Novel
Each of the reviews moves from a consideration of
Topol s real-life credentials to a discussion of the novel s
characters, plot (or lack thereof), and imagery. The
reviewers despair over divining any order or hope in
Topol s narrative chaos. Much is made of the fragmentation, chaos, violence, and hallucinatory quality of his
vision. The elements of the plot that are most frequently
mentioned are the initial scene of Germans fleeing
Prague; Potok s participation in gang activities; and confusion over the role of the title s sister, who is the
protagonist s love interest and the motivation for his
picaresque wanderings.
The Quality of Translation
Toward the end of the reviews, there is an assessment of the English translation. This is an instructive
breakdown, with three reviews concluding that something is certainly lost in translation, while two reviewers
suggest that the English translation is a net gain over the
Translation Review
nominally coherent original. On both sides, the reviewers go beyond a facile smoother is better approach, but
their comments point to the enduring problems of reception when literature in translated from a culture that
assumes a primal connection between language and reality. One reviewer praises the translation by comparing it
to A Clockwork Orange but still assumes a loss of comprehension in the English translation. One reviewer
makes an insightful objection to Zucker s decision to use
certain contractions an, kina, dunno across the board as
a way to approximate the frequency of Topol s morphological and orthographic deviations from Standard
Literary Czech. She notes that the faux slang template
makes the English prose more predictable (even in its
substandard variant) than the strikingly unpredictably
idiomatic Czech in the original. Conversely, one reviewer enthusiastically claims that without any knowledge of
the Czech original, he nevertheless received an amphetamine rush from the hum that comes off of each page
of Zucker s English prose. The remaining reviews all
note that the language of the novel is difficult and
assume that something is lost in the translation.
In conclusion, an analysis of the American reviews
of Topol s novel reveals an underlying template. This
template helps shape a possible reading of the novel as
post-Velvet dystopia. I do not wish to make the claim
that this template is fundamentally wrong or that it leads
inevitably to a false reading pf the novel. Like all such
patternings, it probably reveals more about the desires
and fears of observing culture than about the true nature
of the culture observed. In what follows, I make a case
that if we instead read Topol s novel against the narrative
of translation the story of the Tower of Babel then
many of the vexing questions of comprehension raised
by the old template are resolved.
***
Topol writes as if he believed that one s language
structures one s perception of reality. In fact, I would
argue that the Czech language is the true heroine of his
novel. Topol s language is a living, moving, developing
consciousness that has the power to shape reality, as well
as respond to it. Like the protagonist in Boris Pasternak s
book of poems My Sister — Life (both feminine nouns in
Russian: moiia sestra — zhizn’) Potok s enigmatic
spiritual sister is both a woman (Černa, the bar floozy,
the replacement of She-dog and his final love, his spiritual sister) and the Czech language: Čern is Česk ř eč.
From this point of view, it makes sense that in the open-
47
ing scene the German language the language in which
the Czech writer Kafka still wrote is finally leaving
Prague. The novel opens as the narrator and his lover/sister, his language, watch the Germans, and presumably
the literary influence of Kafka s language, bail out of the
city.4 There is a lot of violence and eroticism in his relationship to this girl/woman/language. He spends the rest
of the novel trying to make amends, to get his language
back or to birth a new language into existence. Insofar
as he is successful, Čern cum česk řeč is his to keep by
the end of the novel. The picaresque and hallucinatory
adventures along the way add up to a series of linguistic
experiments, while the pockets of order one finds in
Topol s narrative chaos consistently make an equation
between the fate of language and the fate of humanity. To
review this dimension of the novel, I propose that we
refer back to another master narrative, one I think may
be more appropriate than the outdated narrative of the
Cold War.
What is the master narrative of translation itself?
How do we structure our thoughts on translation as
necessity, as impossibility, as an inevitability of the
human condition? The master narrative of the fact of
translation is, of course, chapter eleven of Genesis, the
story of Babel. In this story, a still united humanity
speaks a common language and builds civilization
together, brick by brick, in perfect communicative harmony. In their utopian unity of language and purpose,
they come close to reaching the gods. In what is perhaps
a symbolic statement of the irreconcilability of human
nature and utopian society, God scatters the builders of
Babel and destroys their linguistic unity. From now on,
different tribes will communicate, at best, through translation. Utopia is no longer possible, although the cultural
memory and cultural longing for the pre-Babylonian
state continues to inspire to this day. It is a master narrative, as Walter Benjamin suggested in The Task of the
Translator, of a lost utopia that might be regained, or at
least glimpsed, in the effort of translation.5 Is it possible,
in fact, to read Topol s novel as a journey toward the lost
harmony of pre-Babel, instead of as a journey ever further into post-Babylonian difference and dissent? I think
it is. First of all, Topol provides the reader with a hint of
how we might read his novel in the inverted Tower of
Babel parable of chapter 13, titled That Time in Berlun.
The Kingdom of the Kanaks. The Dark Lady. I Find a
Queen, and Lose Her. (Tehdy v Berlunu. Království
Kanak?. Ta Temná. Najdu Královnu. A Ztrácim.)
The opening scene in this chapter is a humorous
recounting of how the narrator and his pal, Kopic, are
48
nearly caught by the ticket checker while riding on the
Berlin metro. The reader knows that not only do they not
have subway tickets, they have no valid identification
documents of any sort. The narration of this situation is
humorous because it deftly parodies the first line of
Genesis 11 : And all the earth was one language, one
set of words. As the narrator, Potok, tells it, all the earth
does seem to speak a single language consisting of
American brand names and a kind of eurotrash slang of
German and Slavic words: They ride under the štr se
and encounter the kontrola, who is not fooled by
Kopic s faked heart attack and Potok s sobs. They wonder why even though their odezhda” (Russian for the
Czech oblečeni ) is super, consisting of pepita saka,
trojeans and even a cap with Phi Beta Kappa on it,
they always get singled out for the look on their ksicht.
As in Genesis 11: 2-4, they have journeyed from the
East and joined a kind of construction project. In
Genesis, of course, the construction will be of bricks and
bitumen (mortar) and will be a city and a tower with its
top in the heavens.
In Topol s fable, Potok his friend pull the brake and
smash out a window to escape the next ticket control,
and encounter a subterranean construction project. A
multitude of little black guys are digging up dirt and
carting it off in wheelbarrows ( spousta malejch
černejch mrštnejch. Kopou a hl nu vodv žej na
kolečk ch.) The leader, a small, very black man with a
tusk through his nose, explains that they are Kanaks, and
they are tunneling their way to Kanakland.6 In other
words, in Topol s inverted parable, they are tunneling
downward through the globe, rather than upward to the
heavens, to reach their homeland on the other side but
this time loaded with stolen goods from German supermarkets. Potok even briefly envisions joining their team,
because certainly Kanakland is a kind of heaven: could
be nice in Kanakland palm wine, beaches . In
Genesis, the tower to heaven is never completed, because
God intervenes, saying As one people with one language for all, if this is what they have begun to do, nothing they plot will elude them. Come, let us go down and
baffle their language so that they will not understand
each other s language. Babel, which is both the name of
the city (meaning gateway to God ) and a pun on the
word for confusion (the Hebrew balal) is thus both the
manifestation of a utopian aspiration and the origin of
confusion on earth.
It is a master narrative, as Derrida has shown, of a
utopia that must at once be urgently hoped for (complete
mutual understanding) and urgently avoided (linguistic
Translation Review
imperialism of the one ruling language), a narrative of
eternal longing (which makes translation necessary) and
eternal frustration (translation turns out to be impossible).7 This master narrative would structure reviews of a
different kind of novel, one in which the hero s journey
is simultaneously a fight against the imposition of a single world language and a struggle to revive the highest
aspiration of human culture the urge toward harmony,
communal building, unity.
In Topol s parable, there is no need for divine intervention to create confusion and difference among the
motley population of refugees who inhabit Europe s
underground: Melonesian Kanaks, Japanese lesbians,
Slavic drifters, British and Dutch losers are all included
in Potok s list of honorary kanaks the megarace of
the tunnel. The inverted moral of the story is Potok s
revelation that actually, we are all Kanaks, and that a
single secret and open tongue comes into being among
this disenfranchised eurotrash. Topol pursues this point
in chapter 13 by inserting one of his characteristic philosophical riffs one of several passages scattered
throughout the novel that connect the fate of language to
the fate of humanity:
And as I stood around, picking up all sorts of
words and expressions as the tribes mixed
together in byznys to survive . Stealing cash
and words from each other . Experiences and
words it struck me maybe something was
happening here, maybe this mixing was giving
rise to a new mother tongue a Kanak one
and maybe it was a tongue of peace, a preBabylonian one I mean they re poor, they
gotta communicate till everything s tremendous again and we all look like the billboards
and pitch in to rebuild .. (233)
Topol s meditation in chapter 13 harkens back to the
Benjaminian notion that in our collective human consciousness, there is a common language of truth, a certain utopian intention that all languages may point to but
no single human language can capture in its entirety. The
practical corollary of this utopian vision, for Benjamin, is
the desirability of a word-for-word approach to translation:
Rather, the significance of fidelity as ensured
by literalness is that the work reflects the great
longing for linguistic complementation. A real
translation is transparent; it does not cover the
Translation Review
original, does not block its light, but allows the
pure language, as though reinforced by its own
medium, to shine upon the original all the
more fully. This may be achieved, above all,
by a literal rendering of the syntax which
proves words rather than sentences to be the
primary element of the translator. For if the
sentence is the wall before the language of the
original, literalness is the arcade. ( The Task of
the Translator, p. 79.)
Topol s self-consciously experimental Czech and disrupted syntax takes the word, not the sentence, as its primary
unit of meaning. He writes this way not so much to defy
translation (although that may be the immediate result)
but rather to direct our thoughts to the gap between language, translation, and utopian societies. If every language contains within itself a linguistic worldview, or
mode of perceiving the world, then the only way to
translate smoothly into another language is to betray
the mode of perception dictated by the original. If, on the
other hand, the translation takes the intention, or perceptual mode of the original, literally and manages to convey this intention, then although the result will be a
strange and bumpy read, it will faithfully reflect the
worldview of the original.
In Des Tours de Babel, Derrida takes Benjamin s
call for a word-oriented translation at least one step further.8 His deconstruction of the Tower of Babel reveals
both the utopian impulse we have spoken of, in which
the desire for a peaceful transparency of the human
community reigns eternal, and the colonizing, imperial
premise behind the narrative, in which a single languageworldview is to be imposed upon all peoples.
( Inversely, when God imposes and opposes his name
[Babel-babble], he ruptures the rational transparency but
interrupts also the colonial violence or the linguistic
imperialism ([Derrida, 226]). This theme is tantalizingly
present throughout Topol s novel: his Czech and even his
half-drawn human characters are doing battle against
American-English—dominated global capitalism.
In conclusion, the master narrative that structures
American reviews of Topol s novel in translation is based
on a set of assumptions that seeks to close the gap
between the literary ideologies of the Cold War ( bad
official literature vs. good dissident literature ) and the
anti-ideology of postmodernism ( if it s dark, maybe it is
intellectually therapeutic, but it won t sell ). Topol s
novel is not adequately served by this template, whereas
the fundamental questions of language and ethics laid
49
bare by the master narrative of translation the Tower
of Babel can show movement and light in the otherwise chaotic darkness of Topol s novel.
Notes
See Carol S. Maier, “Questions of Review,” in
Translation Perspectives IX, Marilyn Gaddis Rose, ed.,
Center for Research in Translation: Binghamton
University, 243–265. Of the many cultural critics and
translation theorists who contributed to this discussion,
of particular relevance here are Asad, Talal, and John
Dixon. “Translating Europe’s Others,” Europe and Its
Others. Proc. of the Essex Conference on the Sociology
of Literature, July 1984. Francis Baker, et. al., eds. Vol.
2. Colchester: U Essex, 1985. 170–77. Bhabha, Homi.
“How Newness Enters the World: Postmodern Space,
postcolonial Times, and the Trials of Cultural
Translation,” The Location of Culture. New York:
Rouledge, 1994. 212–35. Hermans, Theo, ed. The
Manipulation of Literature: Studies in Literary
Translation. New York: St. Martin’s, 1985. Spivak,
Gaytri Chakravorty. In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural
Politics. New York: Methuen, 1987. Andre Lefevere,
“Translation: Who Is Doing What For/Against Whom
and Why?” Translation Perspectives IX, Marilyn Gaddis
Rose, ed. Center for Research in Translation:
Binghamton University, 45–55.
2 I received copies of the following reviews from
The New Republic, Los Angeles Times, Newsday,
Washington Post, Philadelphia City Paper, Rain Taxi,
Publishers Weekly, St. Louis Magazine: Bookmarks. In
no way do I mean to criticize the work of the authors of
these reviews or imply that their reviews are somehow
less valid. On the contrary, I learned much from these
reviews, which were written by people with great literary
insight. By noticing a structural similarity to all the nonCzech reviews, I was able to entertain the notion of an
alternative structure for a review of a translation, one that
accounts for a different one of the novel’s many tonalities. Neil Bermel’s review in The New York Times Book
Review came out only after I had completed this study;
in fact, Bermel’s review is the exception to the reviewing
pattern described above. My own review of Topol’s book
appeared in the journal Slavic and East European
Review.
3 If, however, we are going to get answers to all the
questions the reviewers fail to resolve, we have to move
beyond this rather outdated master narrative. Is there
really no development in this novel, only the illusion of
movement? Who is the sister, and what is her role? Is
1
50
there any relation between the initial scene of Germans
fleeing Prague and the final scene of the “sister’s” reappearance, presumably for good?
4 The bizarre name he gives to the female lover in
the first chapter — “She-dog” — makes sense when one
recalls the primary metaphor he uses for the Czech language in this same chapter — it is a “dog’s tongue.”
5 “The Task of the Translator” (1923) was originally
written by Benjamin as an introduction to the translation
of Baudelaire’s “Tableaux Parisiens.” Reprinted in
Illuminations, ed. by Hannah Arendt. New York:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1968, 69–82.
6 Kanaks are one of the Melonesian ethnic groups,
socially looked down upon by almost all the other peoples of Polynesia.
7 Jacques Derrida, from “Des Tours de Babel,” translated by Joseph F. Graham. In Theories of Translation,
ed. Schulte and Biguenet. University of Chicago Press,
1992, 218–227.
8 He points out that the city of Babel receives its
proper name as the name of God, i.e. “it is a tower or
city that receives its name from an event during which
YHWH ‘proclaims his name.’” This name is not translated when we translate the Bible into various languages.
But in the original language of the story, “bavel” also
serves as a common noun, meaning confusion. This word
we translate as “babble,” or something else in other languages. So, there is already a fatal problem of translation
encoded in the Tower of Babel story: how do we translate a text written already in several languages at a time,
to render the effect of plurality? Topol’s novel begs this
question, because his frequent use of English words cannot jar in the English-language translation as they do in
their original position within Czech.
Translation Review
MULTIPLE TRANSLATIONS OF GIACOMO LEOPARDI’S “L’INFINITO”
By Giuseppe Natale
L Infinito
Sempre caro mi fu quest ermo colle*,
E questa siepe, che da tanta parte
Dell ultimo orizzonte il guardo esclude*.
4 Ma sedendo e mirando, interminati
Spazi di l da quella, e sovrumani
Silenzi, e profondissima qu ete
Io nel pensier mi fingo*; ove per poco
8 Il cor non si spaura. E come il vento
Odo stormir* tra queste piante, io quello
Infinito silenzio a questa voce
Vo comparando*: e mi sovvien l eterno,
12 E le morte stagioni, e la presente
E viva, e il suon di lei. Così tra questa
Immensit s annega il pensier mio*:
E il naufragar m dolce* in questo mare.
Giacomo Leopardi (1819)1
eorge Steiner, in After Babel,2 outlines a process of
reading that develops like a double spiral: departing from the text, it moves externally toward literature
at large and internally toward the author s mind. This
dual hermeneutic motion is particularly suitable to
L’Infinito because of the intrinsic dual nature of the
poem itself: L’Infinito is at the same time a poetic creation and a reflection on poetic creation. On the one
hand, a textual study that develops externally can
enable the translator to identify the syntactical, lexical,
and phonetic elements of this finely engineered poem
and to place it meaningfully in the literary framework
that generated it. On the other hand, a textual study
that develops internally toward the author s mind,
toward the referential framework in which the act of
creating L’Infinito took place, can indirectly shed some
light on the mechanics of creation described in the
poem.
L’Infinito belongs to the first series of idylls that
Giacomo Leopardi composed between 1819 and 1821,
and that were later included in his collection of poems
titled Canti (1831). Leopardi defined his idylls as canti
that portray situazioni, affezioni, avventure storiche :
idylls take form when a place permeated with old mem-
G
Translation Review
ories stirs certain sensations in the poet s mind. The
description that Leopardi gives of idyll deviates substantially from its accepted definition in the ancient and
classical tradition. In ancient times, eidullion, the
diminutive of the Greek term eidos, broadly referred to
a short lyric, in contrast with the lengthier eide, used to
describe grand lyrical poems like the Pindaric odes. In
the classical tradition, the acceptation of the term
changed. Idyll now indicated a short poem evoking the
serene atmosphere of country life, as ideally opposed to
the disorderly city life. In its later evolution, during the
Renaissance, idyllic poetry ceased to be a separate literary entity and flowed into the greater body of bucolic
poetry. The term idyllic thus came to describe mainly
the tone of an artistic creation rather than a category of
composition. By the 19th century, when L’Infinito was
composed, idyll as a lyric form had undergone a further
change, brought about by the Romantic revolution.
Idyllic poetry now did not simply refer to the contemplation of a tranquil scene or episode of rustic life but
also entailed the emotional participation of the poet. In
the Romantic idyll, the poet s musings did not necessarily resolve into the bucolic and the picturesque but
could be instead the prelude to the narration of a tragic
theme.
Margaret Brose, in her essay Leopardi and the
Romantic sublime, links L’Infinito to the greater
Romantic lyric, as that form, identified by Abrams,
that replaced the greater ode, the elevated Pindaric.
The idyll, says Abrams, usually depicts a determinate
speaker in a particularized outdoor setting, who carries
on a soliloquy with himself or the outer scene, or an
absent or silent human auditor. The speaker begins
with a description of the landscape; ...an aspect in the
landscape evokes a varied but integral process of memory, thought, anticipation, and feeling ...In the course of
this meditation the lyric speaker achieves an insight,
faces up to a tragic loss, comes to a moral decision, or
resolves an emotional problem. 3
According to Abrams tripartite scheme, Romantic
idylls are built on the interplay of the poet s mind and
nature, on a repeated out-in-out process. In
Leopardi s poem, this process finds expression in the
dichotomous opposition of definite and indefinite,
where the former represents reality and the latter the
51
poet s imagination. This interpretation finds a direct
confirmation in a comment by Leopardi recorded in his
Zibaldone, two years after he composed the idyll:
In regard to the sensations which are pleasing by virtue of the indefinite alone, see my
idyll on L’Infinito, and picture to yourself a
country terrain dipping so sharply that at a
certain distance the eye cannot reach the valley; and a row of trees, whose ending is lost
to sight, either because of the length of the
row, or because it is running down hill, etc. A
factory, a tower, etc., seen so that it seems to
stand alone above the horizon, which is out of
sight, produces a most effective and sublime
contrast between the finite and the indefinite,
etc.4
If the contrast of infinite and indefinite produces a
series of sensations in the poet s mind, the contrast of
finite and indefinite, of physical landscape as opposed
to immensity, is the spark for poetic creation. In
Leopardi, finite and indefinite are opposite, complementary entities, antipoetic and poetic matter. This contrast is reflected in the idyll s lexicon. Leopardi, as
Brose remarks, divides lexicon into two basic categories, termini and parole, a distinction that reflects the
dual nature of language. Scientific and philosophical
languages deal in terms which present a univocal idea
of a given object or concept: these termini fix meaning
and delimit semantic flexibility. Parole, conversely, do
not present a precise idea of an object, but are polysemic and call up clusters of images that, by virtue of
their indefiniteness, suggest the infinite. In L’Infinito,
a lexical dichotomy is perceivable between precise, referential terms, like colle and siepe, opposed to
vague, poetic words, like pensier and eterno. The
terms describing a physical reality are not important in
themselves but only as antitheses to words, as boundaries to be transcended through the action of imagination.5 As a result of this dialectical process, terms
describing natural reality are belittled, divested of their
referential value; conversely, words that convey an idea
of limitless indeterminacy, like spazio and silenzio,
are amplified, semantically pluralized into spazi
and silenzi.
Whereas the formal structure of L’Infinito faithfully
conforms to the greater Romantic lyric identified by
Abrams, the philosophical conclusions of the idyll
move away from Romanticism. In the synthesis of the
52
dialectic process that closes L’Infinito the thought
disappearing in the infinite there is no suggestion of
that mystical fusion with the universe that can be found
in many Romantic poets and philosophers. There is no
echo of that unity of universe that was at the basis, for
instance, of Schelling s transcendental philosophy.
For Schelling, spirit is nature come to the stage of clarity and consciousness, and nature is spirit still in its
visible, undeveloped stage. Mind and nature thus
have a common origin, and their identity can be found
in the Absolute, where all antitheses disappear. In
L’Infinito, this synthesis does not occur at the meeting
point of nature and mind but only in the poet s mind,
not at the hedge but on this side of the hedge, not in
nature but in imagination. The central point in the idyll
where the synthesizing process begins is also its quasisymmetrical center, the first part of the seventh line, io
nel pensier mi fingo. In Leopardi s lexicon, fingere
is not simulation but rather invention through poetic
meditation: it is through the act of fiction that all
antitheses in the end disappear. As many critics have
remarked, however, the closing of L’Infinito should not
be read according to the philosophy of idealism. It does
not suggest a fusion with the object of external perception: the ideas. It is instead imbued with sensationalism,
more specifically with the Lockean psychology6: the
drowning of thought into the immensity is a merging
of feeling into spirituality. In this final image, as De
Sanctis has remarked, one should not see a denial of
life but rather the supreme value of sensation.
Structure of L Infinito
Leopardi s idyll has been defined as an itinerarium
mentis in infinitum, in which the mind, after going
through a progression of contrasts and binary oppositions past/present, subject/object, silence/sound,
proximity/distance reaches its final liberation
through the faculty of imagination. Its structure can be
described as symmetrical or specularly symmetrical,
depending on which element is being emphasized. The
idyll opens with an indefinite temporal marker, sempre, a nonspatial continuum in which events can occur
in succession from the present to the past or in a
reversed succession, from the past to the present. What
follows on the same line, however, the other temporal
marker fu and the deictic questo, make clear that
the direction of narration is from past to present. The
time progression is further defined by the present tense
esclude and by the two presents progressive seden-
Translation Review
do and mirando. Another present progressive
appears in the 11th line, vo comparando, which introduces a reversal in the interplay of past/present: le
morte stagioni are brought back to the present by
means of memory. The following qualifying adjective
presente, the deictic questa, and the present tense
s annega, reestablish the previous temporal direction,
from past to present. The final time marker in the poem
is the present infinitive naufragare, a verb form that
functions as a substantive while retaining its verbal
characteristic: naufragare concludes emblematically
all the previous time shifts by mirroring the undetermined temporal dimension of the initial sempre.
The contrastive structure of the idyll is also visible
in the relationship of subject and object. In the first two
lines, the narrating I and the natural landscape represented by the nouns colle and siepe, are conjoined
by the pronoun mi and by the adjective caro, both
qualifying the object in terms of its relation to the subject. Object and subject seem to depart in the third line,
when the description moves from the hill to the farthest
horizon; however, the complementarity of narrating I
and nature is immediately reinstated: l ultimo orizzonte is in fact defined in terms of the poet s vision,
il guardo. Nonetheless, this time the sequential order
of subject/object is inverted, a reversal that is a prelude
to the greater semantic inversion introduced in the
fourth line by the adversative conjunction ma. Here,
the object is reflected in the poet s mind, as in an endless series of mirrors: the outer horizon, internalized
and multiplied, becomes an endless succession of
spazi. The adjacency of subject and object is
enhanced in line 11 by the medial diathesis of the
intransitive verb sovvenire, introduced by the
first-person indirect object pronoun: mi sovvien l eterno is halfway between I remember and it comes to
my mind. The process of internalization of the object
is completed in the last two lines, when the thought
flows into the sea of immensity: as in the first line, subject and object, the doer and the receiver of the action,
are combined.
The same contrastive structure is applicable to
those nouns and adjectives in the idyll that refer to
silence and sound. The first allusion to sound, or rather
to the absence of it, occurs in lines 5 and 6, in the
enjambement sovrumani silenzi, an expression that
contains in itself both subject ( human ) and object
( silence ). Profondissima quiete could be considered
a useless pleonasm, since quiete indicates absence of
noise as well as absence of movement, except for the
Translation Review
fact that its image contains an inverted symmetry of
sovrumani silenzi : the prefix super- works in contrast to the superlative suffix - issimo : sovrumani
silenzi and quiete profondissima describe silence
extending far upward and far downward. Sound reappears in line 8. The rustling of il vento is in conjunction with the narrating I, implicit in the verb odo.
This is the sound that activates the imaginative process
in the poet s mind. Sound is again contrasted to silence
in the next line, through the comparison of infinito
silenzio to questa voce. In the last line, the two elements finally merge: the lively sound of the present
season disappears, flowing into the eternal sea of
silence.
The spatial contrast in L’Infinito is determined by
the several demonstrative adjectives questo and
quello, expressing proximity and distance, respectively, and strategically positioned in the idyll. The initial
deictics quest ermo colle and questa siepe in lines
1 and 2 are set in opposition to di l da quella in line
5, a feminine demonstrative adjective probably referring to the feminine noun siepe. The poet s eye focuses first on the hill, then on the hedge, and then his
vision converges on the interminati spazi beyond
them. This alternate sequence of proximity and distance
anticipates the other series of deictics in lines 9 and 10,
where queste piante and questa voce are set in
opposition to quello infinito silenzio. Here the deictics provide a metaleptic substitution of the visual field
with the aural field, as the rustling wind calls forth the
reaction of the poet s imagination.7 In the final section,
the metalepsis is reversed: questa immensit and
questo mare entail a shift from the aural field to the
spatial field. In the last line, proximity finally prevails
over distance, as imagination prevails over reality.
Symmetries and inversions in L’Infinito are reflected in the phonetic structure of some of its lexemes.
Margaret Brose maintains that L’Infinito is built upon a
chiastic pattern, and that all the inversions converge
upon a central axis located in lines 7 and 8. A double
phonetic chiasmus, Brose says, can be seen between the
first and last lines, caro / mare, and colle / dolce :
The phonetic chiasmus is intensified by the euphonic
recurrence of ar in the last line, naufragar/mare ; as
well as its inversion in the virtual center of the poem s
central line: spaura. It recurs again (in an extended
form conflating ar+ra) in the key verb denoting the
poem s structure: comparando. 8
In L’Infinito, all these tightly controlled patterns of
symmetries and inversions are encapsulated in a loose
53
syntactic and prosodic frame. Some critics have suggested that Leopardi used this laxness of formal structure intentionally to imitate the free flow of thoughts
and mental associations. L’Infinito is in blank hendecasyllables, a form that frees the poet from the
restraints of rhyme. Even in its most canonic configuration, regular hendecasyllable is still the most varied
and free metrical form in Italian verse. The rhythm of
the hendecasyllable is predominantly iambic, and its
stresses fall on the even syllables. Other than a required
stress on the 10th syllable, however, there is no specific
rule requiring stresses to be in a certain position. The
rhythmic effects that can be created by this accentual
elasticity are extremely varied. Common usage has the
rhythmic accents placed on the fourth and the sixth syllable, although these two stresses do not occur at the
same time but in alternation.9 The prosodic variability
in L’Infinito can be exemplified through the pivotal
lines 4 through 6, pivotal in the sense that they introduce the stream of thoughts of the poet: (4) Ma sedendo e mirando, interminati/ (5) spazi di là da quella, e
sovrumani /(6) silenzi, e profondissima qu ete. In all
three lines, the sixth syllable is stressed, but their
rhythm in the initial part is quite different. In the fourth
line, the stress on the third syllable and the main stress
on the sixth produce an anapest; in the fifth line, the
stress falls on the first and on the fourth syllable, creating a dactyltrochaic rhythm; in the sixth line, there is a
strong stress on the second syllable and another one on
the sixth, so that only by emphasizing the light stress
on the first syllable of profondissima it is possible to
create an iambic rhythm. In the final part of all three
lines, there are no marked stresses between the sixth
and the 10th syllables. Furthermore, because of the use
of enjambement, the stresses on the last syllables are
hardly noticeable. The prosodic flexibility in these
lines, as in the rest of the poem, is also made possible
by the careful alternation of bisyllabic and multisyllabic
words.10
In addition to metric flexibility, L’Infinito is also
characterized by the lack of a rigid syntactic structure
and by the presence of ambiguous connective nexuses.
Both factors contribute to enhancing the sense of indeterminacy that the poem conveys, because syntactic
flexibility brings semantic ambiguity: ove, for
instance, is a polisyntactical conjunction, in the sense
that it can be interpreted as a locative as well as a consecutive conjunction ( where or whereas ); come is
a conjunction expressing time ( when ), but it could
also be interpreted as causative ( as, since ). The
54
second part of the idyll is instead characterized by polysyndeton. The repeated use of the conjunction e in
such close succession is not just a rhetorical device but
rather is clearly evocative of the mental poetic process:
the use of coordinating conjunctions expresses a continuous stream of images as opposed to a discrete series of
events.
As Brose remarks, all the prosodic elements in
L’Infinito (rhythm, polysyndeton, enjambements) combine with the phonic elements (dieresis, synaloepha,
and assonance) to create a continuous melodic flow.11
The analysis of the internal structure of this idyll, in
fact, would not be complete without at least mentioning
the precision of its phonetic system, meticulously dissected by various critics,12 like the melodious succession of sounds obtained through the balance of open
and closed vowels in bisyllabic words ( qui te, qu sto, qu llo, v nto, v ce, m rte, d lce,
m re ); or like the careful avoidance of perfect rhymes
in favor of assonances and consonances, obtained
through the recurrence of certain vowels and consonants (9 p s, 12 s s, and 14 r s in the first eight verses;
14 e s in the first three verses). The terseness of the
phonetic system, the paucity of dependent clauses, the
ordinariness of lexicon, all combine to create an apparent effect of naturalness and simplicity, resulting, to use
Momigliano s definition, in a sublime poverty of
style.13
L Infinito: Its Translatability and Untranslatability
The apparent stylistic simplicity of L’Infinito
hides, in reality, an extremely refined poetic structure,
polished to the most infinitesimal detail, as an examination of the original manuscripts proves. With its total
coherence of design among all its elements, L’Infinito
exemplifies what Croce called the indivisibility of the
aesthetic expression, the identity of form and substance
on which he based his notion of untranslatability. The
first English translators and critics at once recognized
the virtual impossibility of properly rendering L’Infinito
into a different language. As Ghan Singh points out in
his study on Leopardi and England, however, the early
commentators were unable to separate general problems
of language from specific problems caused by
Leopardi s style and lexicon. H.F. Brown, in his review
of the first translation of L’Infinito by Townsend, attributed part of the infelicities in the English version to the
difficulty of rendering Italian polysyllables into English
monosyllables. Another set of difficulties, in Brown s
Translation Review
view, arose from the content: Leopardi s poetry, Brown
contends, is immense in scope, while at the same time
lacking in detail, probably referring to Leopardi s preference for vague words. As to style, the reviewer says
that Leopardi is a rhetorical poet, in the sense that the
rhythms of his poetry are dictated by the reciting voice
and the listening ear. All these factors, combined with
his disposition to deviate from regular metric patterns,
make Leopardi a perplexing author to render into
English.14 Also for the anonymous reviewer of The
Poems of Leopardi translated by Morrison, the arbitrary
adaptation of meter is one of the main difficulties in
rendering Leopardi s poetry into English. According to
the reviewer, to translate the free structure of
Leopardi s modern ode requires a greater mastery than
to render more rigid forms, like the ancient sonnet or
the madrigal. The reviewer casts his doubts about the
possibility of ever having a perfect translation of
Leopardi into English.15 His comment was prophetic.
As the poet Vernon Watkins remarked years later,
many have translated L’Infinito, but no one has ever
succeeded in rendering it into English, so elusive is its
cadence. Most of the English translators of L’Infinito
have tried to solve the problem of its irregular prosody
by exploiting the affinity of blank verse with free hendecasyllable. Blank verse is basically iambic pentameter, an unrhymed decasyllable that imitates the caesuras
and enjambements of classical hexameter.16 The fact
that the two types of verse are built on a similar measure does not mean that they can be substituted one for
the other. The imperfect correspondence of Italian free
hendecasyllable and pentameter has been highlighted by
Lascelles Abercrombie, in his Principles of English
Prosody. Abercrombie quotes Leopardi s Canti as an
example of irregular versification, in which meter is the
result of variable patterns in a nonregular order.
Leopardi s Canti are here described as part-rhymed
verse and are compared to the irregular versification in
Milton s Samson Agonistes. The verse of Leopardi,
Abercrombie maintains, has nothing in common with
the varied irregularity of Milton s poetry. English verse,
for Abercrombie, can bear a greater irregularity without
ceasing to be metrical, whereas a slight divergence
from the regular pattern is sufficient to create an anomalous prosody in Italian verse.17 Therefore, it is not possible, despite the claims of a scholar like Postgate, to
base poetry translation on a set of mathematically
established correspondences between metrical forms.18
Imitation from one language to another, says
Figueroa, has to be sua operatione: what /s/s do in
Translation Review
one language, we have no reason to believe is what /s/s
do in another; what dactylic hexameter did for Homer it
does not do for modern English. 19 Even if a perfect
correspondence of the two systems of versification
existed a dovetail match between hendecasyllable
and pentameter it would not be a guarantee of correct metrical transposition. The translated text must be
independent from the movement of the original phrasing and find its own natural movement, according to the
inborn rhythm and musicality of the target language.20
As Mounin remarks, if all the difficulty of translating
consisted in establishing a counterpart between forms,
the problem of translation would have long since been
solved. The exterior faithfulness to the exterior musicality of a poetic work produces ineffective translations.
Fidelity to form is inadvisable, except in those rare
cases of intentionally imitative musicality, for instance
in the translation of a poem like Verlaine s Chanson
d’automne. This prescription can be extended to all the
grammatical and syntactical aspects of the poem. In
L’Infinito, Mounin says, there is an inversion in the first
verse, two gerunds in the fourth, a durative in the 11th,
an infinitive used as a noun in the last. In the name of
grammatical faithfulness, some French translations say
Toujours il me fut cher ce coteau solitaire, an inversion that is a rhythmic nonsense; assis l et regardant,
which is pseudo-French; je m en vais comparant, an
archaism already obsolete in 18th-century French; il
m est doux de naufrager, so unusual that is almost
unintelligible, mainly because naufrager improperly
acquires a transitive meaning.21 Like metrical form,
syntactic and grammatical forms also are deeply rooted
in the language structure and cannot be transferred from
one language to another. The Italian sentence structure
derives from Latin, and like Latin it is characterized by
parataxis (albeit in a lesser degree). As the studies by
Auerbach on Latin have shown, given the centrality and
flexibility of syntax in language structure, style
acquires a strategic importance in composition.
Syntactic articulation not only offers the possibility to
build complex subordinate clauses but also allows a
greater suppleness in reasoning. A different word order
in two languages might therefore be the external sign of
a deeper difference in conceptualization. Unlike Italian,
English syntax is quite simple, and it favors coordinate
clauses and a quite rigid sentence structure. The distortion caused by retaining the word order of L’Infinito is
even greater in an English translation than in a French
translation, because English is more divergent from
Italian syntax than French is. Always dear to me was
55
this lonely hill the syntactic calque of Sempre caro
mi fu quest ermo colle is not only rhythmically
off-balance, but its eccentric displacement of words
also diffracts semantic transmission. In short, using
Popovič s definition of equivalence, it can be said that a
linguistic equivalence of L’Infinito is only partially possible, given the limited homogeneity of the two languages. The same can be said for a paradigmatic equivalence, because the two linguistic systems have a limited grammatical and syntactic affinity. What can instead
be attempted in an English translation is a stylistic
equivalence (that is, a functional equivalence of elements in both original and translation aiming at an
expressive identity with an invariant of identical meaning ) and a textual equivalence (that is, the equivalence
of the syntagmatic structure of a text).
The translator of L’Infinito, Buffoni maintains,
must aim for a rendition not dictated by original metrics
or syntax, a rendition halfway between the poetic
license of Lowell: That hill pushed off by itself was
always dear/to me, and the hedges near/it that cut away
the final horizon and the prosaic rendering of Kay: It
was always dear to me, this solitary hill, and this hedge
which shuts off the gaze from so large a part of the
uttermost horizon. 22 This translation should serve as a
bridge connecting the reader to the original and should
carry all the elements contained in the idyll with propriety and restraint. What is needed, Buffoni concludes, is
not faithfulness to the original but loyalty. 23 To
convey all the elements of L’Infinito is obviously
impossible, given the proven inseparability of its form
and content. What a translation respectful of the original should instead try to convey is its essential element, or in Popovič s terminology, to provide an
invariant of identical meaning. The essence of this
idyll, as Leopardi said in the Zibaldone, lies in the contrast between infinito and indefinito. This contrast,
as seen before, is obtained through a set of symmetries
and inverted symmetries that can be summarized thus:
(1) finite vs. infinite; (2) parole vs. termini; (3) subject
vs. object; (4) silence vs. sound; (5) proximity vs. distance; (6) past vs. present; (7) bisyllables vs. multisyllables; (8) singular vs. plural; and (9) coordinating conjunctions vs. subordinate conjunctions. These are, to
use William Frost s definition, the pillar symbols of
Leopardi s idyll. The contrast between these elements is
the axis on which a respectful translation of L’Infinito
must revolve, the yardstick by which its effectiveness
can be measured. The poetic success or failure of the
various translations of L’Infinito can be determined by
56
how effectively, semantically and stylistically, the translator is able to convey these pillar symbols compatibly
with the resources and limitations of the target language.
The Infinite
The contrast between finite and indefinite is implicit in the idyll s title. Infinito, which derives from the
Latin infinitus, is in fact a compound formed by the
prefix in- (not) + finitus (finite). The title also contains an insoluble grammatical ambiguity, because
infinito is both a noun and an adjective used as a
noun. The same ambiguity was contained in the original
title, Sopra l infinito, eventually discarded by
Leopardi. Sopra means above in this case the
title Sopra l infinito would refer to the location of the
hill overlooking an invisible valley as well as on,
about in this case the title would suggest a meditation on boundlessness. In either case, infinito could
still be intended both as a noun and as an adjective.
Although in Italian this grammatical distinction is
mainly academic, the question of whether infinito is a
noun or an adjective used as a noun is of some relevance for the translator when the target language differentiates between the two forms. Rilke, for instance, facing in his German version the insoluble dilemma noun
or adjective, Unendliche or Unendlichkeit, decided to
leave the title untranslated.24 In English, infinite as an
adjective and as a noun have the same form, although
infinite is more commonly used as an adjective than
as a noun. In the American Heritage Dictionary, infinite as an adjective is defined as 1. Having no boundaries or limits, and 2. Immeasurably great, as in duration or extent. Infinite as a noun is defined as
something infinite. With the only exception of
Barricelli, who leaves his translation untitled, in 11 of
the 12 English versions here analyzed the translator
renders the title as The Infinite, thus leaving the
ambiguity unsolved. However, what most translators
disregard is that l infinito in the title is in strict correlation to l eterno in line 11, which can also be an
adjective or a noun. If L infinito indicates the absence
of limits in space, then l eterno indicates the absence
of limits in time; if L Infinito is rendered as The
Infinite, then out of consistency l eterno should be
rendered as the eternal. Only three translators establish a connection between the two terms (Lowell,
Flores, and Nichols). Townsend translates l eterno as
the eternal things, so opting for the adjective form,
Translation Review
and Smith translates it as the eternity of time, opting
for the noun form. All the others (Morrison, Cliffe,
Trevelyan, Heath-Stubbs, Casale, Barricelli, Fowler)
translate it as eternity, choosing to use a noun without
the definite article. Eternity points indirectly at what
could be a different and perhaps more accurate solution
for the title: Infinity. Although it is a noun, infinity
carries the senses of both adjective and noun, quality
and object: again, according to the definition in The
American Heritage Dictionary, infinity indicates the
quality or condition of being infinite and also
unbounded space, time, or quantity.
If the distinction between noun and adjective is
basically of little or no consequence for the English
translator, to establish the function of the article l
before infinito is instead important, because here the
usage of English and Italian differs. Whereas in Italian
the definite article is required before specific nouns and
also before nouns used in a general or abstract sense, in
English it is required only in the first case. The English
translator has then to determine whether the l before
infinito is used strictly as a deictic, pointing at a
specific infinite, in which case the article should be
retained, or whether it is used in a general or abstract
sense, in which case it should be omitted. Not even the
analysis of the original title can be helpful in solving
the dilemma. Sopra l infinito suggests separation: of
the poet from the surrounding space, and of the poem
from its content. Leopardi willfully eliminated this idea
of separation with the new title L Infinito. 25 The last
line in the idyll, with the dispersion of thought into
immensity, also dispels any suggestion of separation.
According to this interpretation, the title should refer to
infinity in an abstract sense. If this is the case, the definite article should be omitted in the English translation,
because its use would delimit what is instead boundless.
Other images in the idyll: quello infinito silenzio,
questa immensit , questo mare, however, seem to
suggest that the poet is indeed referring to a specific
infinity: in this case, the definite article should be
retained.
The contrast between definite and indefinite also
finds expression through the opposition of parole and
termini. As discussed before, parole in Leopardi
convey indeterminate ideas and are poetic; termini,
on the contrary, indicate precise objects and are antipoetic. In L’Infinito, vague words like pensier and eterno can be regarded as parole, and well-defined natural objects like colle and siepe as termini. To
retain this lexical distinction in an English translation is
Translation Review
particularly important, in consideration of the fact that
English tends to emphasize the effect of clarity, and it
can potentially turn parole into termini. Nonetheless, the English terms adopted by most translators,
thought and eternal on the one side, and hill and
hedge on the other, can be considered adequate
equivalents. In Leopardi, poeticalness is also expressed
through the use of synonyms. Using a word that has a
meaning similar but not identical to the meaning of
another word amplifies its semantic field. The conceptual reverberation so created also produces an effect of
indeterminacy comparable to that of parole. In
L’Infinito, there are two pairs of near synonyms, silenzio / quiete, and annegare / naufragare. Silenzio
implies absence of noise, whereas quiete implies both
the absence of noise and of movement. Again, finding
adequate synonyms in English should not be a problem,
also considering its richness in lexicon. All the English
translations examined differentiate between the two
terms, although the equivalents they use are not always
accurate. Townsend and Morrison resort to the pair
silence and rest. In this coupling, the original
semantic affinity between silenzio and quiete is
partly lost, because rest describes only inactivity,
without any specific reference to movement or silence.
The same thing can be said for the pair silence and
calm (Trevelyan, Barricelli, Fowler). The main senses
of calm are nearly or completely motionless and
not agitated. Calm is a closer semantic match compared with rest ; it too is slightly out of focus, because
it does not explicitly convey the idea of silence. The
same can be said for silence and peace in Casale s
translation: the primary sense of peace is serenity,
rather than absence of movement or sound. Silence
and quiet (Cliffe, Stubbs, Flores, Nichols) and
silence and quietude (Smith) are semantically closer to the original, because quiet can refer to something both making no noise, and/or not moving.
Curiously, no translator resorts to still or stillness,
which carry exactly the same spatial and aural meanings as implied in the original. The other pair of near
synonyms in L’Infinito is s annega and naufragar.
S annega is the middle intransitive form of
annegare, whose literal meaning is to drown. Here
Leopardi uses it in a figurative sense as to dissolve :
my thought is dissolving into immensity.
Naufragare, literally to be wrecked or shipwrecked, is also intransitive, and also it is used figuratively as to sink or to lose oneself. Also in this
case, all the English translations differentiate between
57
the two terms, and also in this case, the equivalents
found are not always semantically accurate. One solution is the pair drowned and shipwreck (Townsend,
Smith, Trevelyan), or also drowning and wreck
(Morrison). The English to drown and to shipwreck
both convey a stronger physical and metaphorical sense
than the Italian annegarsi and naufragare. To
drown in the intransitive form is to die by suffocating
in water or another liquid. The verb to drown can be
used figuratively only in the transitive form, as to
deaden one s awareness of, as by immersion, for instance in the sentence to drown one s cares in drink.
To shipwreck, for its part, is only transitive, and it
means literally to cause a ship or its passengers to suffer shipwreck, and figuratively to ruin utterly. This
latter sense distorts the meaning of the original: il
naufragar m dolce in questo mare does not suggest
destruction, but rather willful surrender. The other
pairs, go down and wreck (Lowell), drifted on
and wreck (Cliffe), suffer from the opposite defect,
because both to go down and to drift on are too
generic and do not carry the physical quality of s annega. The same can be said for drowned and sinking (Nichols) and drown and lose (Flores). The
strength and beauty of the two verbs s annega and
naufragar, as critics have noted, lie in the images they
convey, in the fact that their literal meaning does not
overshadow the figurative sense. The other pairs
drowned and foundering (Stubbs, Casale,
Barricelli) and founders and shipwreck (Fowlers)
retain better the original balance of figurative and literal. Founder, in particular, is more closely semantically related to the original: to founder is an intransitive
verb coming from the Latin fundus, meaning bottom, and it evokes the image of a sinking ship.
This semantic comparative study can also be applied
to the other binary oppositions identified as coming from
the Latin fundus, meaning bottom, and originally
referred to a ship s sinking in L’Infinito (subject/object,
silence/sound, etc.). This analysis, however, cannot
abstract from the other formal components of the poem.
The effectiveness by which these binary oppositions are
rendered in translation must be set against the form the
translators have elected to use. According to the classification proposed by Lefevere, the 12 translations here
analyzed can be divided into the following categories:
rhymed translation: Morrison; poetry into prose: Smith;
blank verse: Townsend, Cliffe, Trevelyan, Heath-Stubbs,
Casale, Barricelli, Nichols; interpretation: (imitation)
Lowell, (version) Flores, Fowler.
58
Translations
In the introduction to his Masterpieces of Giacomo
Leopardi, a selection of poems rendered in prose,
William Fletcher Smith acknowledges that prose translation cannot convey the artistry of the original verse.
The obvious disadvantage of prose rendition is that it
cannot reproduce all those connotative effects created
by verse through the position of words in the line or
through their organization in more lines. William Ellery
Leonard has thus summarized the advantages of verse
compared with prose:
(1) verse permits a wider and more apposite
choice of syntactical constructions than the
more conventional idioms of prose; (2) verse
gives to the many repetitions of ideas, words,
phrases, and clauses, which in a prose translation often seem mere jejune verbosity, their
proper relevance and copiousness...; (3) verse,
by its very cadences, by its metrical
emphases, possesses, for driving home the
central meanings and for distinguishing the
nicer contrasts and other relations of the
ideas, an instrument scarcely available in the
more pedestrian rhythms of prose.26
For its part, prose has the advantage compared with
verse of allowing a choice of words that are semantically closer to the original, because words can be selected
for their denotative value rather than for their formal
value (like length or stress pattern).27 A prose rendition
of verse usually aims at giving semantic rather than
aesthetic information, because it cannot carry some of
the unforeseeable qualities of verse: a possible surprising sign or a surprising order in which signs are
arranged.28 The advantage of prose rendition is also stylistic. Because prose can avoid the restrictions of meter,
it is usually more adherent to the structure of the target
language. This results in a natural, flowing style that
shuns the phonetic and syntactic syncopation characteristic of many verse translations. Because of the contrasting demands of source language and target language, however, no translator can keep entirely to his
preestablished parameters. Translations of poetry into
prose, as Lefevere says, are usually fairly elegant in
language, avoiding the distortions and verbal antics one
finds in verse translations. They are accurate, closer to
the source text than a verse translation could ever be.
On closer investigation, however, prose translation
Translation Review
turns out to be less respectable than tradition would
have us believe. It results in an uneasy, hybrid structure, forever groping towards a precarious equilibrium
between verse and prose and never really achieving
it. 29 The analysis of Smith s version reveals in fact
fluctuations in both directions. The first sentence,
Always dear to me was this lonely hill and this hedge
that from so great a space of the horizon shuts off my
sight, follows the syntactic order of the original so
closely that it is actually closer to a literal translation
than to prose. The inversion dear to me was in the
first sentence ( caro mi fu ), and I go comparing in
the third sentence ( vo comparando) are both grammatical calques of the original forms. These obviously are
not oversights on the part of the translator but rather a
deliberate search for stylistic effect. As Lefevere
remarks, the prose translator has much looser control
over the rhythm of the text because he has abandoned
the verse form. Therefore, to compensate for this loss,
he has to look for other ways in which to achieve an
effect similar to that of the source text. One option
available to him is to model the syntax of his target
text closely on that of the source text, even though this
process might lead to sentences that sound very contorted. 30 The prose translator also has to compensate
for the loss of emphasis that the original poet might
have placed on certain words, because he cannot direct
the attention of the reader to specific terms or images
the way poetry can. The visual leveling of words is particularly detrimental in L’Infinito, a poem whose communicative value lies to a large extent in the visual
arrangement of words. This can be seen in the many
complementary terms strategically positioned in the line
or connecting distant lines and in the several enjambements that create a tension between a line and the other.
The prose translator must therefore try to make up for
these losses in communicative value. To make a word
stand out in prose, one option available to the translator
is to charge that word with connotative values, even if
it means to deviate from its strict semantic meaning. In
other words, the translator can give a poetic touch to
his prose. In doing so, however, he implicitly moves
away from prose and toward verse, thus contradicting
his own premises. In Smith s version, a trace of poetic
embellishment can be seen in the term supernal, used
to render sovrumani. Sovrumani stands out in the
verse because it is part of an enjambement and also
because, like interminati, its syllabic length slows
down the enunciation, so drawing the reader s attention.
Supernal carries a slight semantic shift from sovru-
Translation Review
mani : whereas sovrumani/Silenzi refers to silence
considered from a human perspective and has no mystical implication, the poetic adjective supernal transports it to a celestial, heavenly altitude. Smith s version
deviates from the poem s communicative value in
another instance as well. The translator disregards
reproducing the vital symmetrical relation connecting
the end of line 1, quest ermo colle, to the last line,
questo mare. Although he translates correctly the first
unit of the dyad as This lonely hill, he chooses for
the sake of elegance to render the second with such a
sea. His choices basically reflect the fact that there is
not a clear dividing line separating poetry and prose.
The prose translator, whenever he sees the opportunity,
has to trespass his self-imposed boundaries to take full
advantage of subtleties of style and musicality.
In the introduction to his translations, Smith says he
chose prose over verse because prose served him better
in his attempt to convey the spirit of Leopardi
through the images of his poems. The visual component
of poetry, which Pound called Phanopoeia, that is the
casting of images upon the visual imagination, is in
fact one of the elements that can be more easily transferred from one language to another.31 The success of a
transferred image, the American translator Jay Smith
says, can be regarded as a sign of good poetry. For
instance, in any translation of Dante, you would know
immediately that he was a great poet, because, even in
the abstract passages there re always these marvelous
concrete, visual images which can t be destroyed in
translation. 32 The transfer of images, however, is not
totally successful in this version of L’Infinito, and for
that matter in all the other English versions as well.
However, one cannot infer from this that Leopardi is
not a great poet. The problem with L’Infinito is not its
lack of images on the contrary, it could be said that
the poem relies almost entirely on visual imagination
but that its images are not always concrete. This is
once again a result of Leopardi s contiguous use of
parole and termini. Images of nature, like colle,
siepe, and piante, obviously transfer well, whereas
the same cannot be said for the other nouns and verbs
that express indeterminacy. Images in Leopardi are precise, and at the same time their outlines are blurred.
The final sentence in Smith s version: Thus in this
immensity my thought is drowned; and sweet to me is
shipwreck in such a sea, although it gains in exactitude, does not have the same visual power as the original. This reveals what is perhaps the greatest danger
inherent in prose translation. Because prose places its
59
emphasis upon semantic communication, it tends to
clarify those elements of vagueness, mystery, and
silence that the original poet had deftly embedded in his
words. In short, the danger in prose translation is to
shed light on what should instead be an écriture d’ombres.33
Morrison s rhymed version obtains the opposite
effect, creating more shadows than those already contained in the original. In the introductory preamble to
his translations of Leopardi s Canti, Morrison starts by
saying he has kept clear of paraphrasing. Here,
Morrison is probably referring to Dryden s well-known
definition of paraphrase as translation with latitude,
that is, where the author is kept in view by the translator, so as never to be lost, but his words are not so
strictly followed as his sense; and that too is admitted
to be amplified, but not altered. Morrison s stated goal
is to provide a rendition that is faithful and at the same
time not slavish. However, what strikes the reader
immediately in collating the original and the translation
is the evident divergence from the original in both form
and content.
Morrison s version mirrors the fascination with
end rhyming by the Victorian translators. His version is
in pentameter stanzas, and its verses are organized in
quatrains, in alternate rhymes (ABBA). A coherent patterned division like this creates, as Stauffer says, a
feeling that the thought, too, must be coherent : rhymes
and stanzas hold the thought together. 34 The main
problem with applying such a rigid structure to
L’Infinito is that thought is forced to progress in suspended sequences, whereas in the original its progression is almost uninterrupted. John Heath-Stubbs, a
blank-verse translator of L’Infinito, remarks that what
distinguishes Leopardi from other contemporary
Romantic poets is precisely the role of imagination, that
is, imagination is an instrument that produces, simultaneously or in rapid succession, the most disparate
images, keeping the mind in a state of continuous activity.35 As previously stated, in L’Infinito, thought overrides the line division through enjambement: in run-on
lines, the metrical pause does not coincide with the conceptual pause, and the thread of logic continues to the
next line. Unlike run-on lines, end-stopped lines are
self-contained, and suggest a sense of conclusion. Even
though Morrison also uses enjambements, these do not
connect the same terms as the original, and their power
is somehow limited by rhyme-links. The artificial
caging of thought in Morrison s translation is evident,
for instance, in the passage from the third to the fourth
60
stanza: I hear surge through the rustling leaves that
sway / I aye compare its whispers with that all /
Pervading silence deep, and I recall / Eternity, and ages
passed away!// The present lives... Here, the English
version introduces a stoppage after away, emphasized
by the exclamation mark, absent in the original ( e le
morte stagioni/e la presente . Furthermore, Morrison
distorts the meaning of the whole following line, first
by rendering la presente [stagione] as the present
lives ; second, by introducing a foreign body into the
line, and all its stress with me. This Tennysonian
lament, totally absent in the original, is used to fulfill
the metrical expectations of the line, which is a perfect
iambic pentameter. The rhyming translator, Lefevere
says, does not tie himself to the metre of the source
text, as the purely metrical translator usually does, but
he soon finds out that the restrictions of a self-imposed
metre are just as severe. Unlike his metrical colleague
he must always be on the look-out for the right
rhyme-word, and he is therefore even more restricted in
his freedom of choice. 36 In case he does not find the
right rhyme-word, Lefevere adds, he might decide to
settle for a poor rhyme or assonance. In Morrison s version, this shows in the last stanza, in the imperfect
rhyming of infinite and sight. When even these
rhyme-saving devices fail, Lefevere adds, the translator might be forced to distort not just a word, but an
entire line to achieve his aim : this is the ultimate and
worst subterfuge the rhyming translator is forced to use
if he is to preserve his rhyme. 37 In Morrison, distortions are visible, for instance, in the first line in the
third stanza, I hear surge through the rustling leaves
that sway. To create the rhyme away/sway, Morrison
once more introduces an image absent in the original,
that of the swaying leaves (not to mention the noun
leaves itself, which is a synecdoche of piante ). The
same can be said for breast, in the third line of the
second stanza, which replaces the original cor, here
used, one suspects, for its rhyming with rest.
Finding the right rhymes, Lefevere says, solves
only half of the problem. Ending a line is one thing,
and filling it with the right number of stresses is another. One very often finds that, precisely because he is so
concerned with ending the line in the prescribed way,
the rhymer does not have enough material to put into
it. To procure the necessary number of words or stresses, says Lefevere, the translator can obviate with superfluous modifiers (either expanding words or through
tautology) and unconnected stopgaps (an improvised
substitute for something lacking), which sometimes
Translation Review
makes the lines into which they are inserted much
more contorted than they need to be. 38 The use of
fillers is obvious in Morrison s rhymed version:
although English is a more synthetic language than
Italian, Morrison expands Leopardi s poem from the
original 15 lines to 16. A superfluous modifier can be
seen here in the pleonastic use of two adjectives,
unbroke, and unfathomed, to render the five syllable of profondissima; a case of stopgap is the adverb
Howe er, clearly inserted as a filler: also the synalepha reveals that its main function is to accommodate
the required number of syllables.
Several balances and oppositions are lost in the
translation a result of the superimposition of a stanzaic
form. In the original, for instance, the relationship of
subject and object finds an equilibrium in the medial
verbs, those constructions in which the poetic subject is
not the grammatical subject but meets the object
halfway: Io nel pensier mi fingo, e mi sovvien
l eterno. In Morrison, the two are rendered as my
thoughts at will do summon scenes of boundless space
behind and I recall/eternity, respectively. In the former, the use of the possessive adjective my is an adequate substitute for the medial form, in the latter the
syntactic construction is subject—verb—direct object,
which implies a separation of subject and object. A rendition for the latter could have been, for instance, to
my mind eternity occurs (Cliffe), which contains a
possessive adjective and so would have saved the symmetrical relationship. In this case, very likely the choice
of the transitive recall has been dictated by its
rhyming with all. This is not the only case of disregarded symmetry. The contrast silence/sound ( quello
infinito silenzio and questa voce ) is rendered by
Morrison as I aye compare its [the wind s] whispers
with that all / Pervading silence. His translation contains an unjustified shift from the singular ( voce ) to
the plural ( whispers ). Conversely, in the opposition
singular/plural silenzio and silenzi, for syllabic reasons there is a shift from the plural to the singular,
silence and not silences, space and not spaces.
Another case of missed symmetry, this time not ascribable to metrics but simply to misinterpretation, regards
the fundamental opposition of proximity and distance,
conveyed through the deictics questo and quello.
This opposition could be easily duplicable in the target
language: English makes a similar distinction between
the demonstrative adjectives this and that, the latter
being the farther removed. Instead of this hedge, and
this hill, as properly rendered in many other transla-
Translation Review
tions, in Morrison we have that hedge, and that hill.
Spazi di l da quella, where quella refers to siepe
and is therefore an important spatial marker, is elliptically rendered as the space behind.
The analysis of Morrison s version of L’Infinito
evinces that the unfaithfulness to the original form
inevitably brings about an unfaithfulness to its content.
If to this one adds the fact that Morrison also distorts
the crystalline style of Leopardi with his artificially
archaizing Victorian diction, it can be concluded that
his version, despite his claims of fidelity, is very close
to Dryden s definition of imitation: that is, where the
translator assumes the liberty, not only to vary from the
words and sense, but to forsake them both as he sees
occasion. As Lefevere points out, not unlike his prose
counterpart, also the rhyming translator fights a losing battle against the limitations he imposes on himself. 39 In this particular version, the search for rhyming
has caused a distortion in its basic communicative
value. By superimposing an alien form on the original,
the rhyming translator has ended up, to paraphrase
McLuhan, by transmitting the medium rather than the
content.
The problem of poetic form is partially eluded with
the use of blank verse, a more cognate form of the original than rhyming pentameter. Blank verse translations
are the great bulk of all the existing English translations
of L’Infinito, whether in the traditional iambic pentameter of Townsend and Cliffe or in the freer form of
Barricelli and Nichols. The predilection of so many
translators for this form can be explained in two ways.
On the one hand, the use of blank verse can facilitate a
mimetic imitation of poetic imagination: blank verse, as
Heath-Stubbs rightly sensed, is more functional than
other forms in reproducing the progression of thought.
On the other hand, blank verse can be used to attain an
equivalent effect, precisely a textual equivalence (in
Popovič s definition, the equivalence of form and
shape). A similarity in form and structure allows the
translator to adhere more closely to the pillar symbols
of L’Infinito, those symmetries and correspondences
distributed throughout the poem with quasi-geometrical
precision.
As Lefevere says, the advantages of blank verse
over rhyme and the other forms in general are twofold:
a greater accuracy and a higher degree of
literariness. 40 A closer investigation, however, reveals
that blank verse can be more restrictive than one might
expect. Blank verse writers, Lefevere says, have (i) the
obligation to adhere, as closely as possible, to the met-
61
rical scheme, whether traditional or self-imposed, and
(ii) the no less strict obligation to try to escape from the
deadening regularity which that same metrical system
tends to impose on the poem as a whole. Even though
some variations on the metrical scheme are allowed,
these are limited in number and can be applied only a
limited number of times, because otherwise they tend to
reinforce what they are supposed to weaken. 41 The
analysis of the different blank verse translations of
L’Infinito confirms Lefevere s claim. All these versions
are definitely more exact than Morrison s version.
Nonetheless, like Morrison s rhymed translation, they
also contain a series of semantic distortions as a result
of the requirements of form. Cliffe, for instance, introduces a filler in line 2, the adjective green attributed
to hedge : an unjustified addition, except that this verbal trick allows him to create a perfect pentameter line,
from both a syllabic and an accentual point of view.
Cliffe is evidently aware of the pivotal function of symmetries in L’Infinito, because he uses green as a filler
again in line 9, before the second term of the dyad
siepe / piante ( Amid the green leaves rustling ).
Variations caused by metrical requirements also affect
the syntactic structure of the poem, specifically the
opposition coordinate/subordinate clauses, respectively
governed by the conjunctions ma, ove, come,
cos , and e. In Cliffe s translation, two of the four
subordinate clauses are introduced by the coordinating
conjunction and : ove per poco / il cor non si spaura
becomes and as with terror is my heart o ercast ;
Cos tra questa/immensit becomes And so in
this/Immensity. The insertion of the two coordinating
conjunctions is certainly justified from a poetic point
of view, because it provides the extra syllable needed
and it is also in agreement with English syntax, which
favors coordination over subordination. However, the
presence of the coordinating and dulls the syntactic
contrast coordinate/subordinate and eliminates what in
the original is a pause in the continuum of thought. The
use of and is also caused by Cliffe s attempt to artificially introduce antique wording with o ercast. It
would therefore be sufficient to restore the normal
spelling of the adjective, overcast and to eliminate
the conjunction and to have the same required number of syllables. Despite this and other minor flaws, the
blank verse translation by Cliffe is overall more effective than all the translations so far analyzed, both in
retaining the layout of pillar symbols and in imitating
the progression of thought. This is basically true of the
other blank verse translations as well, as an analysis of
62
their texts would prove.
If it can be theorized that blank verse is an effective
instrument in conveying the structure and the dynamic
tension of the original, conversely it can also be
hypothesized that the less structured modes of rendition
are detrimental. This is the case, for instance, with
interpretation, according to its definition given by
Lefevere. In interpretation, Lefevere says, the writer
basically keeps the substance of the source text but
changes its form. The theoretical advantage of interpretation over rhymed translation and blank verse, freeing the writer from any formal limitation, in the translation of L’Infinito becomes a liability. In fact, as we have
repeatedly seen, in L’Infinito form is not only the
poem s involucrum, or its supporting framework, but
also its substance: the dissolution of the original form
inevitably brings about the dissolution of its content.
This proves to be true also for the three interpretations
of L’Infinito here examined, although in different
degrees.
The translations by Flores, Fowler, and Lowell
cover different areas of the interpretative spectrum,
ranging from quasi-fidelity (Flores) to almost total reinvention (Lowell), with Fowler s translation in an intermediate position. In Flores version, there is no metrical
or rhythmical correspondence to the original, but other
correspondences are retained. By collating the structures of original and version, it can be seen that conformities prevail over discrepancies. Images develop
more or less in parallel, enjambements are on the same
lines (even though they emphasize different words),
syntactic cruxes are located in similar positions, and
finally also the various symmetries basically correspond. Where Flores version diverges is mainly at the
denotative level. Natural images, for instance, present
all sorts of geological and botanical variations. In line
1, colle is rendered as hidden knoll, a hillock
instead of a hill (not to mention the adjective hidden
as a free addition); in line 2, siepe is rendered as
shrubbery, a bush instead of a hedge; in line 9,
piante is rendered as greenery, verdure instead of
trees. In Leopardi, as mentioned before, idylls take
form when a place permeated with old memories stirs
particular sensations in the poet s mind. His definition
bears a striking resemblance to that of Eliot s objective
correlative: The only way of expressing emotion in the
form of art is by finding an objective correlative , in
other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of
events which shall be the formula of that particular
emotion. Now, what stirred Leopardi s poetic emotion
Translation Review
was a certain set of objects and no other: a hill and
not a hillock, a hedge and not some shrubbery.
Compared with the distortions in the rhymed and blank
verse translations, these semantic shifts seem particularly unjustified because they are not dictated by requisites
of rhyme and meter. The version, says Lefevere,
strikes the reader as possessing a greater communicative value than the source text itself. The emphasis
seems to lie in the shock value of words and images,
rather than on a balanced whole : a description that
perfectly fits Flores version.42 Even though in this
translation there is no clear departure from the original
pillar symbols, the semantic variations introduced here
produce the same result: colle and siepe are part of
the dyadic relationship subject/object: by altering the
latter, the translator affects also the former.
In Fowler s version, the departure from the pillar
symbols is more pronounced, and distortions occur both
at the semantic and the structural levels. The first two
and last two lines are revelatory in this respect. The
first lines of Fowler s version read: They were always
friends, this hill where no one comes/And this hedge
here. Compared with the original, Fowler describes
the images of nature from a slightly different angle. He
removes the indirect object pronoun mi, crucial in
establishing the connection object/subject, and replaces
ermo with the oblique where no one comes. In the
last two lines, however, Fowler retains the indirect
object and gratuitously creates a new image with the
adjective pacific : and it seems to me a gentle
thing/To suffer shipwreck in this pacific ocean.
Therefore, this version also fails to reproduce the symmetrical relationship of subject/object linking the first
and the last lines.
Finally, Lowell s imitation is the translation that
formally distances itself the most from the original, as
even a simple cursory look at its structure would reveal.
Using once again the symmetry subject/object as a paradigm, we can see that what is synthetically contained
in the original in two lines is now distributed over six
lines. The opening and the end of the poem are shaped
as follows: That hill pushed off by itself was always
dear/ to me and the hedges near/it...; It s sweet to
destroy my mind/ and go down / and wreck in this sea.
The relation subject/object is basically retained, but not
the symmetry between the two indirect objects mi.
Also, to save the rhyming couplet dear/near, Lowell
disregards another case of symmetry, questo colle and
questa siepe, rendered as that hill and the
hedge. 43 The semantic and structural shifts are too
Translation Review
numerous to be listed here. However, this translation
should not be judged by the same yardstick as used for
the other translations. As Lowell states in the introduction to his book of Imitations, his translations are partly
self-sufficient and separate from their sources and are
not inspired by faithfulness or literalness: Boris
Pasternak had said that the usual reliable translator gets
the literal meaning but misses the tone, and that in
poetry the tone is of course everything. I have been
reckless with literal meaning, and labored hard to get
the tone. 44 As a precaution against any possible criticism, Lowell sets the parameters according to which his
versions should be viewed, by saying: I have been
almost as free as the authors themselves finding ways
to make them ring right for me. 45 An analysis aimed at
determining how effectively the original structure is
carried over into English is clearly inapplicable here,
since Lowell programmatically sets himself to restructure the source poem. In creating his own tone, Lowell
abandons the rhythmic and metric framework of the
original, built on free hendecasyllables, and constructs a
new framework based on free verse. He creates a new
set of rhymes, assonances, symmetries, and syntactic
nexuses, in a natural style that reflects the musicality of
modern language. In his imitation, all these elements
have become the new pillar symbols, and the original
images are compressed or expanded to fit the new
structure.46 In this light, one can explain the redundancy
by which Lowell renders the series of adjectives
sovrumani, profondissima, and interminati :
When I would sit there lost in deliberation, / I reasoned most on interminable spaces / beyond all hills, on
their antediluvian resignation / and silence that passes
beyond s man s possibility. Leaving aside the questionable semantic value of the newly created concept
antediluvian resignation, one cannot fail to notice the
musicality inherent in the passage and its carefully built
net of rhymes and assonances.
A certain amount of compensation is unavoidable in
any translation, as even the most fervent literalists, such
as the Romantics, admit.47 As proven here, however, in
imitation compensation techniques inevitably lead to
overcompensation. The danger inherent in this method
is that by additions of new words and images, the character of the original author progressively disappears.
This danger was already perceived by Dryden, who in
his comparison of the imitations of Ovid and Virgil stated:
... not only the thoughts, but the style and
63
versification of Virgil and Ovid are very different: yet I see, even in our best poets, who
have translated some parts of them, that they
have confounded their several talents; and, by
endeavouring only at the sweetness and harmony of numbers, have made them both so
much alike, that, if I did not know the originals, I should never be able to judge by the
copies which was Virgil, and which was Ovid
... In such translators I can easily distinguish
the hand which performed the work, but I
cannot distinguish their poet from another.
Suppose two authors are equally sweet, yet
there is a great distinction to be made in
sweetness, as in that of sugar and that of
honey.48
The uniformity of rendition is easily verifiable in
Lowell s Imitations, a selection of poems from different
authors and periods, ranging from Homer to Pasternak.
In one instance, for example, Lowell uses the same
image for two different poets, Leopardi and Montale.
The opening of Lowell s Infinite is That hill pushed
off by itself. This is a quite incomprehensible image,
unless one examines it in parallel to a similar image in
Montale s Dora Markus: Fu dove il ponte di legno/
mette a Porto Corsini sul mare alto, which is rendered
by Lowell as It was a plank pier/ pushed from Porto
Corsini into the open sea. In Lowell s poetic idiolect,
one can infer, something pushed is something jutting or protruding. The hill, being of natural formation, is pushed off by itself, whereas the plank pier,
being manmade, is simply pushed. What matters here
is not so much the strangeness of the concept, but the
fact that the past participle pushed creates an image
used in two totally different contexts, regardless of
what could be the style or lexicon of the original
authors.
Allen Tate has likened Lowell s book of Imitations
to Pope s translation of Homer: Of [Lowell s] passage
from Homer ... one may say what Bentley said to
Alexander Pope: A pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but it is not
Homer. This is true of Lowell, but it is irrelevant. What
is wrong with Lowell s fragment of Homer is something quite different. It is not good Lowell. 49 Likewise,
one may say of this imitation of L’Infinito that it is not
Leopardi, and furthermore that it is not good Lowell.
The problem with his imitation is not the liberties he
takes with Leopardi s original, but the fact that he stops
halfway. The contrivance of certain images, like that of
64
the silence that passes / beyond man s possibility,
suggest in fact that his imitation is not free from the
bonds of its source. I have been almost as free as the
authors themselves, Lowell says. And perhaps the key
to this unsatisfactory translation lies in that almost.
Although Lowell questions the status of the original by
declaring himself more a creator than a re-creator, the
relationship of dependency has not been completely
reversed.
Imitation, like all the previous forms analyzed, fails
to provide an adequate rendition of L’Infinito. To quote
Lefevere once again, the reasons why most translations, versions, and imitations are unsatisfactory renderings of the source text is simply this: they all concentrate exclusively on one aspect of that source text only,
rather than its totality. 50 As we have repeatedly seen,
however, to render the totality of L’Infinito is practically impossible. The translator of L’Infinito must choose
an approach between the two extremes theorized by
Schleiermacher: either he moves the reader toward the
writer or he moves the writer toward the reader. The
two extremes correspond to literal translation and imitation, respectively. The first option is represented here
by Smith s prose version, which exhibits a certain elegance but serves mainly as a bridge to the original; the
second option is that of imitation, represented here by
Lowell s version, which attempts to naturalize and
modernize Leopardi s poem. In between are the rhymed
translation by Morrison and the various blank verse
versions by Cliffe and many others, which attempt to
reach a balance of form and content. Each one of these
translations, as we have seen, is both loyal and disloyal
to the original, in the sense that each one retains certain
pillar symbols and fails to reproduce others. The concentration on a particular pillar symbol can be a result
of the translator s conscious desire to highlight certain
aspects of the poem; or it can be a consequence of his
failure (either programmatic or fortuitous) to complete
one or more of the eight stages identified by Bly.
Smith, for instance, certainly reached stage three, in
which the literal version is rephrased according to the
genius of the target language, but did not go beyond
that. Morrison never completed stage four, in which the
poem is rendered according to the spoken language.
Fowler never went through stage seven, in which unjustified deviations or misappropriations on behalf of the
translator are corrected.
The lack of correspondence between translation and
original, as we have seen, reveals itself in various forms
of distortion: rhythmic, phonetic, syntactic, semantic,
Translation Review
and stylistic. And yet, behind all the possible distortions, lies, to use Popovič s definition, the invariant
core of L’Infinito.51 In spite of all possible shortcomings, none of these translations can be rejected, because
each of them contains a key to the core of the text.
Also, for all of these translations, a comment made by
Sell s could be used, based on the comparative analysis
of three English translations of Lorca s Romancero
Gitano:
In the study of the elements analyzed, it is
clear that for one translation problem several
solutions are possible and that the overall solutions offered by each translator can be considered a creation which, in a sense, reproduces
the original and is at the same time a new
work.52
The house of fiction, as Henry James said, has
not one window, but a million pierced, pierceable.
Each translation of L’Infinito is a window opened by
each translator, to which the reader can go and look at
the core of the original from a particular angle. And
given the tantalizing difficulty of this idyll, many new
windows will be opened.
Notes
Legend: enjambement; * lines containing prolepsis or inverted order; bold face, connectives. The notation system is adapted from Blanca Maria de las Nieves
Mu iz Mu iz, Tradurre L’Infinito (intorno ad alcune
versioni spagnole dei Canti leopardiani), in La
Corrispondenza Imperfetta, ed. Anna Dolfi and Adriana
Mitescu (Roma: Bulzoni Editore, 1990).
2 George Steiner, After Babel (New York and
London: Oxford University Press, 1975).
3M. H. Abrams, Structure and Style in the Greater
Romantic Lyric, in : Harold Bloom, ed. Romanticism
and Consciousness (New York: Norton, 1970) 201—202,
quoted in Margaret Brose, Leopardi and the Romantic
Sublyme, in Poetics Today vol. 4, 1, 1983, 49.
4 Circa le sensazioni che piacciono pel solo indefinito puoi vedere il mio idillio sull Infinito, e richiamar
l idea di una campagna arditamente declive in guisa che
la vista in certa lontananza non arrivi alla valle; e quella
di un filare d alberi, la cui fine si perda di vista, o per
lunghezza del filare, o perch esso sia pure posto in
declivio, ec. ec. ec. Una fabbrica una torre ecc. veduta in
modo ch ella paia innalzarsi sola sopra l orizzonte, e
1
Translation Review
questo non si veda, produce un contrasto efficacissimo e
sublimissimo fra l infinito e l indefinito, ec. ecc. ecc.
Zibaldone, 1429–1431 [1¡ agosto 1821], trans. Renato
Poggioli, in The Poem Itself, ed. Stanley Burnshaw (New
York: Holt, Rinehart, Winston, 1960), 276.
5Zibaldone, I: 135—137, April 1820, quoted in Brose,
op. cit., 54.
6 For Locke, Brose points out, the idea of infinity
is actually derived from sensation: the mind extrapolates
from empirical experience the sensation of space, duration, and number, and then reconceptualizes these in
terms of an endless repetition. John Locke, An essay
concerning human understanding, ed. Peter H. Nidditch
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), II, 17, quoted
in Brose, 56.
7As Brose points out, the contrastive structure of
L’Infinito involves two other kinds of metalepsis, a substitution of the visual field with the imaginative field,
and of the temporal field with the spatial field. Brose, op.
cit., p. 59. Cf. also Poggioli, who in these lines sees a
shift from the intuition of infinity to that of eternity.
Poggioli, op. cit., 277.
8Another pattern of phonetic chiasmus is the acrostic
alliteration in vento and eterno. The chiastic reversal
voov can be seen in voce and vo comparando, as
opposed to mi sovvien. Brose, op. cit., 65—66.
9Example of accents on second and sixth syllables:
Le donne, i cavalier, l arme, gli amori... (L. Ariosto);
accents on fourth and eighth syllables: Le cortesie, le
audaci imprese io canto... (L. Ariosto); accents on
fourth and seventh syllables: E un incalzar di cavalli
accorrenti... (U. Foscolo).
10As Mandelbaum remarks in reference to Divine
Comedy s tercets, the hendecasyllable often has ... an
internal balancing needle. Around that needle, when the
obligatory stress on the tenth syllable is complemented
by an initial iamb and consequent stress on the second
syllable, we can generate not only homeopodic (or superimposed) symmetry, but antipodic (mirror) symmetry...
Allen Mandelbaum, Introduction to Dante s Inferno
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 1980), xxi. Cf. also Giuseppe Sansone, La struttura ritmica dell Infinito, Forum Italicum 4, 331—337.
11Brose, op. cit., 67.
12Cf. for instance Mario Fubini in Metrica e Poesia
(Milano: Feltrinelli, 1962), 66—69.
13As Francesco Flora points out, Leopardi s lexicon
is, from a literary point of view, very ordinary, formed
almost solely of trite words and expressions from academic language and Arcadia. In Leopardi s poetic lan-
65
guage ... il fato acerbo o duro; la vita il viver, anzi il
viver mio; il tempo l et , l etade, la stagion... In questa
lingua che pare fissata una volta per sempre da
Francesco Petrarca, e ripresa da Metastasio, l anima
l alma; il cuore quasi sempre cor... Ebbene, proprio con
queste parole, nei loro giri pi letterariamente tradizionali, e che a prenderli staccati paion consunti e perfin ridicoli, proprio con queste voci sollevate in una musica che
le fa risuonare sotto un nuovo arco, ove par che sian
dette per la prima volta, Giacomo Leopardi ha creato i
suoi pi originali incanti. Quel vieto frasario il poeta rinnova con un semplice tocco e da letterario lo trasforma
in poetico. Tutta l Arcadia si riscatta in poesia.
Giacomo Leopardi, Canti, con una scelta di prose, ed.
Francesco Flora (Milano: Mondadori, 1963), 7—8.
14H.F. Brown, MacMillan’s magazine, vol. LVI,
May—October, no. 798, 1887, pp. 88—105. By Brown, see
also S.A. Symonds: A Biography (1903). Quoted in G.
Singh, Leopardi e l’Inghilterra (Firenze: Le Monnier,
1968), 68—69.
15The ideal translator of Leopardi, the review suggests, to be the most successful should first imbue his
mind with the works of three English poets: Cowper,
Wordsworth and Shelley. Athenaeum, 3838, May 1901,
quoted in G. Singh, op. cit., 94—95.
16Introduced in the XVI century by H.H. Surrey in
his translation of books II and IV of Virgil s Aeneid,
blank verse was used in theater for the first time by Th.
Norton and Th. Sackville in Gorboduc (1560). Perfected
by Marlowe, blank verse will become the reference point
in the complex evolution of Elizabethan theater, the
meter of English dramatic poetry from Shakespeare s
time onward. It will be as important in epic poetry, from
Milton to Keats and Tennyson.
17Lascelles Abercrombie, Principles of English
Prosody (1923), quoted in G. Singh, op. cit., 105.
18 Some classical scholars, for example, notably
Professors J.P. Postgate and A.E. Housman, apparently
have convinced themselves that for certain Latin or
Greek meters there are analogous optimum English
meters into which any translation should be made. Thus
if the original is in hexameters, the translation should be
in blank verse; if in elegiac couplets, in pentameter couplets; and so forth. Postgate invokes mathematics in his
consideration of poetic forms, and extends his arithmetic,
by unimpeccable logic, to the number of lines permissible in a translation of a given Latin original. W. Frost,
op. cit., 20. Cf. Postgate, Translation and Translations
(Bell, 1922), 65 ff., 74, 83, 91 f.
The line is so obvious and so basic an organizing
66
agent in poetry generally that upon some translators it
has exerted an irrational, almost hypnotic influence,
causing the production of those line-for-line versions
which still occasionally appear. W. Frost, op. cit., 49.
19Figueroa, Problems in translation, 96.
20Cf. Giuseppe Sansone, Traduzione ritmica e
traduzione metrica, in la Traduzione del testo Poetico,
F. Buffoni ed., 18.
21Mounin, op. cit., 142—144.
22Robert Lowell, Imitations (New York: Farrar,
Straus and Giroux, 1965, 4th ed.), 25.; George R. Kay,
ed. The Penguin Book of Italian Verse (Harmondsworth
1958, 1962). 272.
23Buffoni then cites as an example of respectful
translation this version by Brose: Always dear to me
was this solitary hill,/ And this hedge, which from so
great a part / Of the farthest horizon excludes the gaze./
But sitting and gazing, boundless / Spaces beyond that,
and superhuman / Silences, and profoundest quiet / I in
my mind create. This translation is in a way in contradiction to his prescriptions: while it is true that this version is more respectful of the original than Lowell s, it
is also true that it adheres to the original word order even
more closely than Kay s. F. Buffoni, Leopardi in lingua
inglese come paradigma della simbolicit del compito di
un poeta traduttore, in La Traduzione del Testo Poetico,
op. cit., 109, 111.
24Cf. Buffoni, 107.
25Cf. Mu iz, 131.
26William Ellery Leonard, preface to his translation
of Lucretius (Dutton, 1921), xi, quoted in W. Frost,
Dryden and the Art of Translation (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1955), 19.
27Cf. W. Frost, op. cit., 18—19.
28Cf. Max Bense, in Augenblick, n. 1/58. An application of the semantical informative function of translation can be found in Longfellow s rendition of the Divina
Commedia. The only merit my book has is that it is
exactly what Dante says, and not what the translator
imagines he might have said if he had been an
Englishman. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, quoted in
William J. De Sua, Dante into English (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1964), 65.
29A. Lefevere, Translating Poetry, op. cit., 42.
30Lefevere, op. cit., 47.
31Literary Essays of Ezra Pound, op. cit., 25.
32The Translation of Poetry, op. cit., 31.
33The concept of écriture d’ombres and of the missing word in modern literature is discussed in G. Steiner,
After Babel, op. cit., 183.
Translation Review
34Cf.
Stauffer s comment on structure in Arnold s
poem Isolation. D. Stauffer, The Nature of Poetry, op.
cit., 233.
35John Heath-Stubbs, Poems of Giacomo Leopardi
(1946), and Irigo Jones and J. Heath-Stubbs, Giacomo
Leopardi: Selected Prose and Poetry, (1966), quoted in
G. Singh, Leopardi e l’Inghilterra, op. cit., 141.
36Lefevere, 49.
37Lefevere, 51.
38Lefevere, 52—54.
39Lefevere, 61.
40Lefevere, op. cit., 76. The superiority of blank
verse over rhyme as a more accurate instrument of reproduction was emphasized by Longfellow. In discussing his
translation of Dante s Divine Comedy, he said: ... while
making it rhythmic, I have endeavoured to make it also
as literal as a prose translation... In translating Dante,
something must be relinquished. Shall it be the beautiful
rhyme that blossoms all along the line like a honeysuckle
on the hedge? It must be, in order to retain something
more precious than rhyme, namely, fidelity, truth, the
life of the hedge itself... Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,
quoted in William J. De Sua, Dante into English (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1964), 65.
41Lefevere, op. cit., 61.
42Lefevere, op. cit., 76.
43Cf. Buffoni, op. cit., 109.
44Robert Lowell, Imitations (New York: Farrar,
Straus and Giroux, 1965, 4th ed.), xi.
45Lowell, op. cit., xiii.
46 As to structure, various features of the source text
are compressed, others expanded . Lefevere, op. cit.,
78.
47 Wordsworth, writing to the editors of the
Philological Museum about a specimen of his translations from the Aeneid, said, Having been displeased in
modern translations with the addition of incongrous matter, I began to translate with a resolve to keep clear of
that fault, by adding nothing; but I became aware that a
spirited translation can scarcely be accomplished in the
English language without admitting a principle of compensation. Quoted in C. Day-Lewis, On Translating
Poetry, 16.
48Dryden, preface to Sylvae: Or, the Second Part of
Poetical Miscellanies (1685), in Theories of Translation,
op. cit., 24.
49The Translation of Poetry, op. cit., 5.
50Lefevere, 99.
51 It is an established fact in Translation Studies that
if a dozen translators tackle the same poem, they will
Translation Review
produce a dozen different versions. And yet somewhere
in those dozen versions there will be what Popovi calls
the invariant core of the original poem. This invariant
core, he claims, is represented by stable, basic and constant semantic elements in the text, whose existence can
be proved by experimental semantic condensation.
Transformations, or variants, are those changes which do
not modify the core of meaning but influence the expressive form. In short, the invariant can be defined as that
which exists in common between all existing translations
of a single work. Bassnett-McGuire, op. cit., 26—27.
52Nivea E. Aponte Sell s, Problemas de la
Traducci n Po tica Ilustrados por Tres Traducciones del
Romance Son mbulo, trans. Kathleen Kelly, in
Problems in Translation, 166—168.
Appendix
The Infinite
This lonely hill to me was ever dear,
This hedge, which shuts from view so large a
part
Of the remote horizon. As I sit
And gaze, absorbed, I in my thought conceive
The boundless spaces that beyond it range,
The silence supernatural, and rest
Profound; and for a moment I am calm.
And as I listen to the wind, that through
These trees is murmuring, its plaintive voice
I with that infinite compare;
And things eternal I recall, and all
The seasons dead, and this, that round me lives,
And utters its complaint. Thus wandering
My thought in this immensity is drowned;
And sweet to me is shipwreck on this sea.
Frederick Townsend, 1887
This lonely knoll was ever dear to me
and this hedgerow that hides from view
so large a part of the remote horizon.
But as I sit and gaze my thought conceives
interminable spaces lying beyond
and supernatural silences
and profoundest calm, until my heart
almost becomes dismayed. And as I hear
the wind come rustling through these leaves,
I find myself comparing to this voice
that infinite silence: and I recall eternity
67
and all the ages that are dead
and the living present and its sounds. And so
in this immensity my thought is drowned:
and in this sea is foundering sweet to me.
Gian Piero Barricelli, 1986
The Infinite
I always did value this lonely hill,
And this hedgerow also, where so wide a stretch
Of the extreme horizon s out of sight.
But sitting here and gazing, I find that endless
Spaces beyond that hedge, and more-than-human
Silences, and the deepest peace and quiet
Are fashioned in my thought; so much that almost
My heart fills up with fear. And as I hear
The wind rustle among the leaves, I set
That infinite silence up against this voice,
Comparing them; and I recall the eternal,
And the dead seasons, and the present one
Alive, and all the sound of it. And so
In this immensity my thought is drowned:
And I enjoy my sinking in this sea.
J.G. Nichols, 1994
The Infinite
They were always friends, this hill where no one
comes
And this hedge here, that from so large a part
Of the ultimate horizon shuts out the eye.
Sitting in contemplation, I form unbounded
Distances on the other side, silences
Past man, and deepest calm. Then my heart comes
Close to taking fright; and, as the breeze
Rustles among the leaves, I keep comparing
That infinite silence to this small voice: recall
Eternity, and the seasons that are gone,
And the living present one, the sound of it.
And so my thought founders, lost in this
Immensity; and it seems to me a gentle thing
To suffer shipwreck in this pacific ocean.
Alastair Fowler, 1987
The Infinite
This lonely hill has always been so dear
68
To me, and dear the hedge which hides away
The reaches of the sky. But sitting here
And wondering, I fashion in my mind
The endless spaces far beyond, the more
Than human silences, and deepest peace,
So that the heart is on the edge of fear.
And when I hear the wind come blowing through
The trees, I pit its voice against that boundless
Silence and summon up eternity
And the dead seasons, and the present one,
Alive with all its sound. And thus it is
In this immensity my thought is drowned:
And sweet to me the foundering in this sea.
O. Mark Casale, 1984
The Infinite
Dear to me always was this lonely hill,
And this hedge that excludes so large a part
Of the ultimate horizon from my view.
But as I sit and gaze, my thought conceives
Interminable vastnesses of space
Beyond it, and unearthly silences,
And profoundest calm; whereat my heart almost
Becomes dismayed. And as I hear the wind
Blustering through these branches, I find myself
Comparing with this sound that infinite silence;
And then I call to mind eternity,
And the ages that are dead, and this that now
Is living, and the noise of it. And so
In this immensity my thought sinks drowned:
And sweet it seems to shipwreck in this sea.
R.C. Trevelyan, 1941
The Infinite
This lonely hill was always dear to me,
And this hedgerow, that hides so large a part
Of the far sky-line from my view. Sitting and gazing,
I fashion in my mind what lie beyond
Unearthly silences, and endless space,
And very deepest quiet; then for a while
The heart is not afraid. And when I hear
The wind come blustering among the trees
I set that voice against this infinite silence:
And then I call to mind Eternity,
The ages that are dead, and the living present
Translation Review
And all the noise of it. And thus it is
In that immensity my thought is drowned:
And sweet to me the foundering in that sea.
John Heath-Stubbs, 1966
The Infinite
Dear ever to my heart that lonely hill
Hath been, that hedge, too, which extending wide
The view of farthest horizon doth hide.
Here as I sit and muse, my thoughts at will
The Infinite
That hill pushed off by itself was always dear
to me and the hedges near
it that cut away so much of the final horizon.
When I would sit there lost in deliberation,
I reasoned most on the interminable spaces
beyond all hills, on their antediluvian resignation
and silence that passes
beyond man s possibility.
Here for a while my heart is quiet inside me;
and when the wind lifts roughing through the trees,
I set about comparing my silence to those voices,
and I think about the eternal, the dead seasons,
things here at hand and alive,
and all their reasons and choices.
It s sweet to destroy my mind
and go down
and wreck in this sea where I drown.
Robert Lowell, 1958
The Infinite
This hidden knoll has been always dear to me,
And this shrubbery, that keeps obscure
So much of the ultimate horizon.
But sitting now and gazing, illimitable
Spaces yonder, and superhuman
Silences, and profoundest quiet
Come to mind; where still the heart
Knows scarcely fear. And listening to the wind
Rustling in this greenery, to
That infinite silence I compare
This voice: and I ponder the eternal,
And the dead seasons, and the present
And living, and its sound. Thus in this immensity
My meditations drown:
And it is sweet to lose myself in this sea.
Do summon scenes of boundless space behind,
Of silence passing human ken, and rest
Unbroke, unfathomed, whereat the breast
In awe doth well-nigh sink! And when the wind
I hear surge through the rustling leaves that sway,
I aye compare its whispers with that all
Pervading silence deep, and I recall
Eternity, and ages passed away!
The present lives, and all its stress with me,
Howe er. Thus in the boundless Infinite
My fancy sinks, like drowning man from sight
How sweet to suffer wreck on such a sea!
J.M. Morrison, 1900
The Infinite
I always loved this solitary hill
And this green hedge that hides on every side
The last and dim horizon from our view.
But as I sit and gaze, a never-ending
Space far beyond it and unearthly silence
And deepest quiet to my thought I picture,
And as with terror is my heart o ercast
With wondrous awe. And while I hear the wind
Amid the green leaves rustling, I compare
That silence infinite unto this sound,
And to my mind eternity occurs,
And all the vanished ages, and the present
Whose sound doth meet mine ear. And so in this
Immensity my thought is drifted on,
And to be wrecked on such a sea is sweet.
Francis Henry Cliffe, 1903.
Kate Flores, 1966.
Translation Review
69
The Infinite
Always dear to me was this lonely hill and this
hedge that from so great a space the horizon shuts
off my sight. But sitting and gazing I fashion in my
thought the interminable spaces there
beyond the hedge and the supernal silences and the
profound quietude; wherein my heart becomes
almost bewildered. And as I hear the wind sounding in these trees, I go comparing that infinite silence with this voice of the wind; and I
become aware of the eternity of time and the extinct
ages and the age present and living
and the sound of it. Thus in this immensity my
thought is drowned: and sweet to me is shipwreck
in such a sea.
[(1) Always dear to me was this solitary hill, (2)
And this hedge, which from so great a part (3) Of
the farthest horizon excludes the gaze. (4) But sitting and gazing, boundless (5) Spaces beyond that,
and superhuman (6) Silences, and profoundest quiet
(7) I in my imagine (create); wherefore (8) The
heart is almost filled with fear. And as (9) I hear the
wind rustle through these plants, that (10) Infinite
silence to this voice (11) I go on comparing: and I
recall to mind the eternal, (12) And the dead seasons, and the present (13) And living one, and the
sound of it. So in this (14) Immensity my thought is
drowned: (15) And the shipwreck is sweet to me in
this sea.]
Margaret Brose
Fletcher Smith, 1939
The Infinite
It was always dear to me, this solitary hill, and this
hedge which shuts off the gaze from so large a part
of the uttermost horizon. But sitting and looking
out, in thought I fashion for myself endless spaces
beyond, more-than-human silences, and deepest
quiet; where the heart is all but terrified. And as I
hear the wind rustling among these plants, I go on
and compare this voice to that infinite silence: and I
recall the eternal, and the dead seasons, and the
present, living one and her sound. So in this
immensity my thoughts drown: and shipwreck is
sweet to me in this sea.
George R. Kay
70
Translation Review
SPECIAL SECTION:
THE DYNAMICS OF RE-TRANSLATION
M
anfred Heid, the director of the Goethe Institute in
Chicago, has made a major contribution to the field
of literary translation. From 1996 on, he has organized
an annual symposium on the translation of contemporary
German authors into English. These symposia take place
in conjunction with the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translation
Prize, a recognition for the best English translation of a
German work published during the previous year. The
topic for the 2001 Helen and Kurt Wolff Symposium was
The Dynamics of Re-translation. The panelists and
speakers included well-known American translators of
German and German translators of English.
The conceptual frame for the conference was outlined in the program s opening statement: Works in the
original never change. Language changes, however, and
translations follow the rhythm of generations. With every
generation, the need arises to carry a translated text into
the pulse of the present language. The Symposium presents the multiple incentives that moved the translators to
recreate the power of the original text and to forge new
interpretive perspectives for literary works through the
art and craft of translation.
In the following pages, the panelists express their
insights into the art and craft of re-translation seen
through the eyes of two different languages, English and
German.
Manfred Heid
Translation Review
71
INTERVIEW BETWEEN MANFRED HEID, DIRECTOR OF THE
GOETHE-INSTITUTE INTER NATIONES CHICAGO
AND PHILIP BOEHM
By Philip Boehm
Philip Boehm: As I understand it, the central office of
the Goethe Institute has long followed a decentralized
policy of assigning each branch a “specialty,” and that
the particular focus of the Chicago institute has been on
literary translation.
Manfred Heid: That s not quite exactly right. The central office of the Goethe Institute in Munich doesn t
interfere with the program work of the individual branches. Each institute first conducts its own analysis of the
specific cultural milieu and then designs a program in
dialogue with its local partners. Beyond that, there are
agreements on the regional level; in other words, among
institutes in the US and Canada and since 2002 the
region also includes Mexico to avoid any redundancies or overlaps. The fact that literary translation wound
up becoming a Chicago specialty is something of an
anomaly: after all, the city is everything but a major center for the publishing industry. It has to do with the book
fair of the American Booksellers Association, which for
many years was held here in Chicago. My predecessor,
Hans-Georg Knopp, had the brilliant idea of making the
fair the occasion for presenting a prize to help foster literary translation from the German The Helen and
Kurt Wolff Prize for Translators. The first prize was
awarded in 1996, the year I was transferred to Chicago.
After that, we slowly added some other events on contemporary literature and literary translation. And suddenly the Goethe Institute in Chicago had its special focus.
So it wasn t something that was ordained; rather, it
evolved.
PB: I see. And the actual “mission” of the Institute in
Chicago?
MH: The institute s official mission is the promotion of
cultural cooperation among people and institutions of
our two countries. What I personally consider important
is the chance to create long-lasting relationships among
individuals and institutions relationships that will outlive any one event. Bringing in a German band to give a
72
concert is ultimately less important than the chance for
musicians or composers to rehearse with their peers day
in and day out, in a way that all parties can really get to
know and appreciate one another as people. The Chicago
music scene is full of such examples. With literary translation, we re trying to help set up a similar human network with the help of various translation associations.
PB: In your six years as director of the Chicago Goethe
Institute, you’ve established a number of ongoing events,
such as the symposium held in tandem with the Wolff
Prize presentation, the “Literary Spring,” and the translation workshops featuring a German author and the
author’s English translator — as well as numerous single
encounters featuring writers and translators. Did you
establish similar events at your previous posts?
MH: The Chicago program grew organically out of the
Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator s Prize; the other events
are merely new branches on the same tree. At my previous post, in Singapore, contemporary literature and translation didn t even figure into the equation, because there
was simply no demand. Programs involving contemporary design, for example, were more important there.
That was fun too.
PB: One result of these events in Chicago is increased
contact and activity among the translators themselves, in
ventures not directly sponsored by the Goethe Institute —
visits with German publishers, symposia in Berlin and
Straelen, etc.
MH: The success of our work always depends on working with the right partners. Here, too, the magic word is
network. In Germany, our most important partners are
the Literarisches Colloquium Berlin, the European
Translators Collegium in Straelen (whose spiritual father
is the Becket translator Elmar Tophoven), and the
Verband deutschsprachiger bersetzer. In the United
States, they include ALTA and the German Book Office,
as well as a number of very personal contacts with indi-
Translation Review
vidual translators, authors, critics, and editors in the publishing houses, all of whom we can turn to for advice
when needed. Right now, Breon Mitchell is laying the
groundwork for an American Center for Translation that
would serve translators in the United States as a place to
work and as a clearinghouse for information. We hope
that will not be too long in coming.
different systems and ways of thinking. It s extreme in
the case of Berlin, where mirror institutions had existed
that now must be dismantled or reconstructed without the
unnecessary doubling. A task of that order would have
been difficult even in the good old days of bigger budgets.
PB: Have you yourself ever translated literary texts?
PB: What’s astounding is that this increased activity has
happened despite a steady decrease of funding.
MH: Naturally we re sad to see the budget cuts of the
last few years. But, after all, we re not alone. All of our
translation projects are joint ventures with German and
American partners. And in the meantime, they ve developed enough dynamic of their own so that they can continue with fewer means of support.
PB: On the subject of support: state subsidy of culture
has been a political prerogative for German governments
since Adenauer, and despite the recent cuts in subsidy,
Germany continues to fund the arts both on a federal
and local level far beyond what we know here in the
United States. Are you willing to risk a prognostication
for the near future?
MH: I doubt the Europeans will ever see our public subsidy of culture decrease to the level in the United States,
but the American example is frequently discussed there
as well, in these times of tight budgets. The fat years are
over. We too will have to turn to private donors. We ve
never learned how to do that. And this is an area in
which we can learn a lot from our American friends.
PB: Before 1989, certain Eastern European governments
subsidized culture beyond their financial means, and in
so doing may have inculcated an unrealistic sense of
“entitlement” among artists who are now grappling with
the new marketplace reality. Might a similar phenomenon occur in Germany?
MH: That was an extreme byproduct of the former
socialist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe. Money
could only come from the state, and the state imposed its
conditions. In Western Europe, we had the good fortune
that the responsibility for how the allocated public funds
were implemented rested almost entirely with the individual recipient, without strict interference from the
state. Of course, with the unification of East and West
Germany, we now have different realities in one culture,
Translation Review
MH: Never professionally. As a young student, I once
translated a French journalist s exciting account of a
hitchhiking trip around the world. It was never published, but it did spark my interest in translation and
comparative linguistics. In T bingen, when I was studying Romance languages and literature, I became fascinated by the scholarly work of Mario Wandruszka, who
later became my dissertation advisor. His approach
involved using a comparative analysis of translations as a
lens to highlight qualities specific to particular living
languages. Later, when the Goethe Institute sent me to
Paris to provide support for German teachers and
Germanisten, I set up a translator s circle in which a
group collaborated on rendering a specific literary text. I
considered this a great way to expand and deepen one s
linguistic proficiency. By a happy coincidence, at about
the same time I happened to meet Elmar Tophoven, the
Becket translator I mentioned earlier, who suggested that
our circle focus on a text he was working on. So once a
month, we compared the proposals of the group with
those of the great master Tophoven. And now and then it
happened that the groups suggestions were considered
better. These encounters with Mario Wandruszka, and
especially with Elmar Tophoven, had a tremendous influence on how I view the art and craft of translation.
PB: Perhaps it should be noted that, as a native speaker
of Alemannic, you have lived in what might be called a
“translated” space ever since childhood.
MH: My first language was the Alemannic dialect of the
central Black Forest. I didn t learn High German my
second language until I started school at the age of
six. To this day, I remember vividly how difficult it was
for me to think mir sin gsi and have to write wir sind
gewesen. That s why I have so much sympathy for my
Swiss German friends when they occasionally point out
that German is for them a foreign language. Later on,
when I was in school, I once botched an assignment we
had been given in French class, to translate a passage
into German. My French teacher came to me and said:
73
Well, you do speak the local dialect don t you? You
people never learn proper German anyway. Needless to
say, this was not exactly sound pedagogy.
PB: So what do you speak at home now? Your wife
Patricia is English; are you all fully bilingual, or have
you developed your own lingua franca, a “heidische
Haushaltsprache” so to speak … perhaps even an outpost of Alemannic?
MH: Definitely not Alemannic. That would be difficult
for my wife, and it would be too much for me to expect
my children to speak German, English, and Alemannic
all at the same time. When I m at home, we speak
German. But when my wife is alone with the children,
they only speak English. As a result, the children are
fully bilingual in German and English but they don t
speak Alemannic.
PB: Has the presence of German in the schools in and
around Chicago changed much in the last few years?
MH: It hasn t changed very much at all, but unfortunately the trend is a declining one. This has less to do with
German, though, and more to do with the fact that the
American school system assigns such a low priority to
foreign languages.
PB: And what about German studies at the high school
and college level?
MH: German Studies programs and departments of
Germanistik are still trying to adapt to the circumstances,
because the programs abroad can t follow the same paths
they do in Germany. They need to have other accents and
directions. The only question is: Which ones? If we only
knew that, we d be one step closer to finding the right
solution.
MH: Of course, it s regrettable that the larger houses no
longer have as many people who know German, or other
languages, for that matter. This is why we have been
working with the Frankfurt Book Fair and the German
Book Office to develop other, less direct ways of getting
publishers to look at works by new authors for example by commissioning sample translations or by supporting ventures such as the London-based journal New
Books in German.
PB: It’s also true that you at the Goethe Institute in
Chicago have consistently taken the lead in recognizing
translators, always giving them equal billing as the
authors of the original texts — while many U.S. publishers still prefer to market books in such a way that deliberately veils the fact that the book was translated at all.
MH: Translators have always received too little recognition for their efforts and achievements. By the same
token, however, good publishers have long known that a
good original requires a good translator. Just think about
the colloquia regularly scheduled between G nter Grass
and his translators from all over the world which are
promoted by his publisher. The Helen and Kurt Wolff
Prize administered by the Goethe Institute is similarly
intended to call attention to the quality of translations
and to encourage publishers to engage only the best
translators.
Here at the Chicago Goethe Institute, whenever we
host bilingual literary events we place authors and their
translators on the same footing, in the hope that this will
help make authors and publishers more keenly aware
what a vital role the translator plays in re-creating a
given work in a foreign language.
My only remaining wish might be that the literary
critics would pay more attention to the quality of translations than they have up to now. But of course, for that,
you need critics who can read books in the original.
Which brings us right back where we started.
PB: We’ve often talked about the difficulty finding U.S.
publishers for books translated from German or other
languages. Many see this as being related to a decline in
the number of editors able to read in other languages.
Although basic language proficiency is central to so
many cultural enterprises, it seems essential in the book
industry. Apart from its long-range work goal of providing support for German programs in the schools, the
Goethe Institute has recently been working with German
publishers to help remedy this trend.
74
Translation Review
RE-TRANSLATION
By William H. Gass
I
am reformulating the brief remarks I made at the
Goethe Institute Conference in Chicago about my own
efforts at re-translating. I began by observing that I had
about as much business in this business as a weevil in a
biscuit. I have studied French and German, but my grasp
of any other language than my own is feeble. I slipped
into this activity gradually, over a long time, the way one
unconsciously forms bad habits; and had the ultimate
consequences of my efforts been put to me bluntly at any
early time, I would have laughed.
For many years I taught a course called Philosophy
and Literature. I varied my materials constantly and particularly liked to choose texts that would be unfamiliar to
my students. On the whole, that meant selecting relatively avant-garde writers like Stine and Beckett, or foreign
writers of any kind, because Americans are so provincial.
Rainer Maria Rilke was the one choice that tended to
show up each semester, even though I sometimes
assigned the Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, rather
than the Elegies.
Over the years, I became increasingly dissatisfied
with the translations of the Elegies I was using because,
in my classes, it was the philosophical material I tended
to stress epistemology, ontology, aesthetic theory
and I felt that the renderings I had been working with did
not bring Rilke s ideas out with sufficient clarity. I began
to try my hand.
I am talking of a period of 30 or 35 years, during
which I fiddled with this elegy or that, finally adding
some of my versions to the syllabus.
So where there were multiple meanings, I forwarded
the philosophical; where there was unclarity or confusion, I tidied it up or explained it away; where there
seemed too much intellectual softness, I hardened it
about the way sliced bread feels when dried.
Of course, I warned my students of the biases in my
versions, but in class they naturally still held the whip
hand. Meanwhile, as I grew more familiar with the
insides of these poems, the problems of translation itself
became more evident, as well as more interesting. Issues
of synonymity not only with regard to different languages, but within one language began to intrigue me.
And offered the class further philosophical problems.
My experience with English dictionaries encouraged
me to acquire numerous German ones. I obtained every
Translation Review
version of Rilke s work in English I could. And I began
to study the many renderings of the Elegies. Over and
over, I found more of the translator in the translations
than the translated.
With all my ponies in place, and decades of spare
time, although these moments came in bits and pieces,
my amateur efforts proceeded. At last I felt bold enough
to publish two elegies in a major poetry magazine, and I
received unsolicited encouragement from several
German scholars. In Germany, I was asked to read some
of them, and to my surprise they were more than politely
received.
It became clear that the Elegies were the ultimate
expression of ideas that Rilke had worked and reworked
in poem after poem over his entire career. That is: he had
already re-translated them himself.
When I decided (a bit of hubris) to combine my
readings of the Elegies with some of my classroom
commentary to make a book, and aware of the inadequacies of my German when measured by Rilke s, I turned
to my good friend, Professor Heide Ziegler, and accepted
the assistance she had often offered. At that time, she
was a distinguished Americanist and former president of
the University of Stuttgart. Since then, she has become
the chancellor of the International University at Bruchsal,
an institution she founded herself: an extraordinary
achievement, especially for a female academic in
Germany who had to push her program along in the teeth
of opposition from the educational hierarchies.
I am somewhat ashamed to say that I allowed her to
work with me on the Elegies daily for nearly two
months. During this time, during which my ego was
squeezed of its juice, I continued to believe that I understood my poet better than any other translator had. So I
also continued to feel that my book might have something to offer, although it hadn t been written yet.
Heide provided me with line-by-line commentaries
on the poems, but she was careful (knowing my aversion
to advice regarding my own work) to avoid suggesting
any translations herself. She was a pitiless critic, however, and when I rewrote lines to meet her objections, you
think this is an improvement? was a frequent response.
She was particularly helpful, as a highly educated native
speaker would be, with historical, cultural, and other
shadowy meanings that Rilke s upfront sense might cast.
75
In the body of the book, there are about 40 other
poems, including the great Requiem for a Friend, that I
could not in all conscience ask her to help me with. I had
already taken up too much of her valuable time. I was
merely writing a book, she was founding a university.
I was led, by my method of comparison shopping, to
understand that translating was a way a very superior
way of reading, because it, in effect, surveyed the
poet s choices and uncovered his otherwise hidden reasoning for them. I was also comforted by the conviction
that it was more important for the translator (of poetry
like Rilke s) to possess skills with his own language that
might match those of the author in his than to be fluent
in the poem s own tongue alone. My ideal was represented by Rilke s translations of Paul Val ry, because Rilke
was a wonderful poet in both languages.
The German tendency toward sappy abstraction and
a weakness for sentimentality was always a problem,
especially in expostulations that began Oh land, Oh
mother, and Oh God. Worse, and more illuminating
for me, was the impatience I felt with Rilke s own piety
toward poetry, his sense of the decorum due to it that
bordered on church.
I was better suited, I quickly learned, for the Elegies
than I was for the Sonnets to Orpheus. They have a
swiftness, a delicacy, a concision, a depth, that I can
understand and appreciate but cannot render.
76
Translation Review
SINCLAIR LEWIS, BABBITT: A CASE FOR RE-TRANSLATION?
By Susanne Höbel
H
aving been involved in recurrent discussions on retranslation, both in Germany and in the United
States, I am still not convinced of the validity of the
claim that works of literature require frequent re-translations. The reason for this argument is usually that translations age quickly and need to be modernized and
adjusted to the language of the present day, so as not to
lose touch with the modern reader.
In the collection of essays by John Updike More
Matter, which I translated into German last year, there is
a review of the Library of America edition of two novels
by Sinclair Lewis, Main Street and Babbitt. As I was
looking at the Lewis novels in search of the quotations
used by Updike in his essay on Lewis, I started to consider them from the point of view of the translation.
Main Street, first published in New York in 1920, is
available in a relatively new German translation, a retranslation, by Christa Seibicke that came out in 1996,
whereas Babbitt, originally published in 1922, was translated into German by Daisy Brody in 1953. It is this second novel that I shall focus my attention on.
The German reader is struck by the novel s depiction
of modern life. Set in the early 20th century, the novel
takes place in Zenith, a city built of sober towers of
cement, steel and stone, sturdy as cliffs and delicate as
silver rods. Highways cut across the city, limousines
with slender bonnets and noiseless engines race along
the streets and across concrete bridges. The well-to-do
live in elegant neighborhoods where the houses are fitted
with central heating, dishwashers, and vacuum cleaners
and have tiled kitchens. Cinemas provide family entertainment, and young girls wear short skirts and rolled
down stockings and show a bit of leg when leaping
about. There is a sense of money-making energy, of
speed and nervousness, of people shaping a society that
they are proud of and creating a value system that is
worth protecting.
How does the German version handle this description of modern life in the early 20th century? I shall look
at a few passages and give some examples of the
German translation. Babbit wants to explain to his wife
that he needs to have a break from it all and says, Ich
kann s nicht mehr aushalten! Muss mich schonen und
pflegen! Ich sag dir, ich muss unbedingt alles und
jeder w chst mir zum Hals heraus! Ich muss unbedingt
Translation Review
. Apart from the fact that the idiom zum Hals herauswachsen does not exist, the feeling of the passage is
ponderous and quaint. The ambitious and powerful
industrialist, who admittedly is held up to ridicule by the
author, is here reduced to a whining, weak individual.
When Babbitt tries to convince his young son that he
should go to the university and study law, the German
voice of the 17-year-old Ted sounds like this: Ach jemine! Kannst mir s glauben, ne Menge Kerls, die durch
die Universit t gegangen sind, verdienen bei weitem
nicht soviel wie solche, die fr h praktisch gearbeitet
haben . ja, der arme Schlucker macht nicht mehr als
1800 Dollar im Jahr, und kein Reisender oder Agent
lie§e sich s gefallen daf r zu arbeiten. This is not the
voice of a young man eager to embark on the adventure
of life and rebellious of his father s plans for him; rather,
he sounds like an old-fashioned, middle-aged man with
no gumption at all.
At the end of a vacation that Babbitt spends away
from his family with his friend Paul, he complains: Paul
ist frisch und munter wie ein junges F llen, aber ich
glaube wahrhaftig, ich bin abgetakelter und nerv ser, als
ich zuerst war. The awkward sentence structure lets the
English sentence shine through, and again Babbitt strikes
us as a pathetic, ineffectual man who is bumbling along.
The use of hendiadys favored by the translator,
whether they are called for by the English original or not,
make the German text sound awkward and quaint. In the
above quote, for example, Paul is frisch und munter,
some minor surgery will help Mrs. Babbitt to get back on
her feet auf ja und nein, for at present she is schwach
und matt ; when Ted gets himself an old car, his driving
is described as Er raste und schlitterte um alle Ecken.
Sometimes we are even reminded of German nursery
rhymes of the Wilhelminian era. Eunice, the one with the
ankle socks and short skirts, flies after Ted ber Stock
und Stein.
Although I started off from the position that I do not
fully subscribe to the notion of re-translations, I had to
admit that this particular translation struck me as less
than adequate. The sound of it seemed not only outdated
for our time but also unsuitable for the time at which the
novel was written.
What happened? Did the translator think she had to
use antiquated language because the book was already 30
77
years old when she translated it? Or is this an example of
language of the postwar era being numbed by the stultifying experience of the Nazi era?
This is impossible to decide, yet the impression
remains that the present translation does less than justice
to the original novel of an American writer who was,
after all, awarded the Nobel Prize for literature.
In the meantime, projects of re-translations of major
literary works are either in progress (Tom Jones by
Henry Fielding, Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger) or
have been accomplished (Moby Dick by Herman
Melville), and I think the time has come to reconsider
and eventually to re-translate the novels by Sinclair
Lewis.
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78
Translation Review
RE: RE-TRANSLATION
By Helmut Frielinghaus
T
here is always need for re-translations, and we all
can list plenty of reasons for this. Yet to my mind,
the demand for re-translation should be considered
carefully, and each case should be looked at individually.
Although listening to the radical proponents of re-translation is stimulating, some skepticism may also be
helpful.
Is it in fact true that all translations age (whereas the
original is said not to)? I don t wholeheartedly agree. In
Germany, we have two famous examples: Luther s translation of the bible and the translation of Shakespeare s
plays by the two romantic poets, Schlegel and Tieck,
which is used in theatre performances to this day.
Luther s bible translation has been partially revised every
now and again especially in the second half of the
20th century, when it was fashionable to adjust everything to a simple use of language. Had it not been tampered with, it is possible (who knows?) that the German
language would not have taken a turn to the vulgar so
quickly and would have proved more resistant toward
American language influences. (The French language, as
we all know, is far more stable in that respect and more
resistant than German.)
One aspect people in favor of re-translation often fail
to take into account is the sound of the times that all
translations preserve, sometimes even those that are deficient in some way. Translators know that Annemarie
Horschitz-Horst s German translations of Hemingway s
work are riddled with mistakes, yet these translations
carry the special sound of the 1930s, the 1940s, and the
1950s.
Annemarie Horschitz-Horst met Hemingway and had
an affair with him, and he gave her the exclusive right to
translate his work into German. There is no denying it:
she was a contemporary of the author, she was living
when he wrote his books, and she translated his works
soon after their completion. The particular sound of these
bad Hemingway translations had a strong influence on
well-known German authors after World War II.
Something is always lost in re-translation. What is
this something ? It is difficult to pin down: The unmistakable sound of a certain period, a particular characteristic of the author s voice, the music, the sound related
to the circumstances under which the work, and often
also the translation, was produced just think of the
Translation Review
language of the people of the 1960s and 1970s, the
poignant atmosphere of certain periods that we have
lived through, the circumstances, the ambience that
influences language, the slang and special idiom of subcultures.
In the last few years, while translating and in part retranslating Raymond Carver s short stories, I was often
surprised to discover how much the atmosphere, the
tone, and the pitch in many of these stories from the
West Coast reminded me (as someone who is of the same
generation as Carver) of the languages of the 1960s and
1970s in Germany. There seems to be something that we
could call the sound of a particular time, and it seems
that this tone can be international, a peculiarity that we
can recognize only in retrospect and from a great distance.
Therefore, before we embark on a re-translation
and there will always be cases in which this is necessary
we should be very clear about what can get lost in
this delicate process.
Just as there are splendid re-translations of (to name
but three classical examples) Kafka, Thomas Mann, and
Musil in the United States, new translations have also
been published in Germany, whenever this seemed necessary, and with impressive results. I am thinking of the
works of (and again a few examples will have to suffice)
Malcolm Lowry, Jean-Paul Sartre, Italo Svevo, Thomas
Wolf, Virginia Woolf, and a large part of Nabokov s
work that was written in English and Russian.
Immediately after the Second World War, after
German readers had been isolated from virtually all
international literature during the Nazi period, many
works of literature were translated quickly and hurriedly,
often by translators who were very enthusiastic about
their work but did not possess the skills to carry it out.
Today translators in Germany work more professionally,
and translations of literary works are of a higher quality
than they were in the 1950s and 1960s.
79
RE–TRANSLATING: THE EXAMPLE OF MUSIL
By Burton Pike
O
ne of the enduring mysteries of translation is why
literature has to be re-translated every half-century
or so. Somehow the original works are good for centuries, but even translations considered classic in their
time need to be replaced periodically. Tastes and values
change, and Constance Garnett s translations of the
Russian classics, or Helen Lowe-Porter s translations of
Thomas Mann, for all their virtues, have come to seem
old-fashioned and, to the linguistically attuned minds of
later translators, inaccurate. But many considerations and
factors are involved in re-translating a classical literary
work.
Robert Musil s The Man without Qualities, written
between 1924 and 1942, is a special case. A re-translation into English was published in 1995, only some 35
years after the initial translation. This re-translation came
about as the result of pragmatic circumstances that will
almost always be found to lurk behind the apparently
simple decision that a work needs to be re-translated:
edition, publisher, and market.
The initial translation of The Man without Qualities
in the 1950s was based on a preliminary, inadequate, and
incomplete German edition; a vastly improved and
expanded German edition although still not complete
was published in 1978. Aside from having a betterestablished text, the 1978 German edition contained
much material that had not been in the earlier one. Also,
the earlier translation, commissioned in England, was
only fitfully and partially available in the United States:
at the time, publishers in both countries were unenthusiastic about Musil. Translating Musil was a hard sell, and
only slowly and with difficulty were publishers convinced that Musil should be made available in English.
To this day, every work of Musil that has appeared in
English has been brought out by a different publisher.
On textual and editorial grounds, then, as well as
because of some general dissatisfaction with the earlier
translation, a new translation of The Man without
Qualities was called for, and ultimately the project was
initiated and strongly supported by an American publisher with deep pockets, Alfred A. Knopf, a division of
Random House, and by the editor in charge of the project, Carol Janeway.
Aside from the edition question, the first translation
of The Man without Qualities, although expert, was gen-
80
erally felt to be insufficient. I say insufficient and not
inadequate, and to my translator s mind there is an
important difference. The first translators, Eithne Wilkins
and Ernst Kaiser, had done excellent work in translating
Musil s earlier prose fiction, but by the time they took up
The Man without Qualities, they seemed to have lost not
their accuracy but their energy. Musil s sharply incisive
prose and scintillating wit did not come across in their
translation, ingenious as many of their solutions were to
the difficult problems posed by the high-wire act of
Musil s prose.
Because everything connected with Musil becomes
complicated and tangled as was true for Musil too,
even during his lifetime it was only to be expected
that the new translation of The Man without Qualities
would not be a straightforward undertaking. The first retranslator, Sophie Wilkins (no relation to Eithne Wilkins,
the first cotranslator), had begun the project, and I was
subsequently called in as editor. When Ms. Wilkins
growing vision problems led to her deciding not to continue, I was engaged to complete the work myself, translating the posthumous fragments. So this re-translation
was not a collaboration in the usual sense: Sophie
Wilkins and I worked on this project sequentially. Our
editor at Knopf, Carol Janeway, herself a translator from
German, provided valuable input to both of us.
I believe that every translation and re-translation is
an individual undertaking that establishes its own rules
and guidelines. Although I have taught courses in translation theory and practice for a number of years, I remain
skeptical about the notion that translation has a theory, at
least a theory that can be of use in guiding translators.
Translation theory in the abstract is properly part of language theory and belongs to other kinds of critical discourse. More pragmatically oriented theories of translation over the past 300 years, from Dryden to Nabokov,
have kept repeating the same three alternative premises:
that translation should be lexical, or that it should maintain a foreign flavor in the second language, or that it
should read as if originally written in the second language.
The fact is that the process of translating literary
works from one language to another is not amenable to
theory. Each language, each work, presents its own problems that call for solution with the tools available and the
Translation Review
skill of the individual translator. In 1987, I attended a
translation conference in Straelen, Germany, that was
endlessly fascinating: gathered together for five days in
this small village were translators from 17 countries, all
of whom were translating Musil s works into their
respective tongues. Just listening to the 17 different sets
of problems faced by these translators was an exercise in
humility. Some languages dispense with gender markings, some with personal pronouns. Verb moods proliferate or shrink. The expressivity of vocabularies in different languages and cultures varies wildly. The word
love in oriental cultures carries quite different connotations than it does in Western Judeo-Christian culture.
A basic and intractable problem in translating Musil
into English is that English is a ruthlessly concrete language, with a vast vocabulary in which every thing has
its own name. But English is poor in dealing with
abstract categories and is deficient on the level on which
discrete objects are grouped. For instance, English has no
word for Dichtung but must specify novel, short story,
play, lyric poem, or epic poem. English, and later
American, science and philosophy have for centuries
been pragmatic rather than theoretical. It is difficult in
English to group categories or to speak or write abstractly, as recent American literary theory abundantly demonstrates.
Musil played as a virtuoso on all the language registers available to him, and of course Austrian German
offers a hall of mirrors to such a writer. It is important to
note that Musil, who was cosmopolitan in outlook and
lived for some time in Germany, used Austrian German
not as his primary vehicle in The Man without Qualities
but rather as a marker for his themes and characters. He
does not generally write Austrian, but he gives an
Austrian twist to his idiom when it is called for in the
novel. He does this very deliberately, even commenting
on it in the novel, at the end of the chapter called
Kakania (his name for the old Austro-Hungarian
Empire): Events that might be regarded as momentous
elsewhere were here [in Austria] introduced with a casual
Es ist passiert
a peculiar form of it happened
unknown elsewhere in German or any other language,
whose breath could transform facts and blows of fate
into something as light as thistledown or thought. 1
Musil makes every character speak in his or her own
idiom, a combination of his or her personality, background, social class, caste, profession, and education.
Diotima talks like a hazy soul on a misty pilgrimage, her
husband Tuzzi like a wizened diplomat, Count Leinsdorf
like a feudal lord gazing in considerable surprise at the
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20th century. General Stumm von Bordwehr speaks like
an army general. The sex-murderer Moosbrugger thinks
and speaks in an insane language all his own. Musil
demonstrates how the characters, each speaking his or
her individual language, are always talking past each
other instead of communicating with each other. This is
also what happens in the novel on the level of the great
Parallel Campaign and with the uprising of the
non—German-speaking Austrian national minorities: on
every level, the language of Kakania is the language of
Babel.
English prose style wants to be clean and direct. To
write otherwise in English is to write against the grain.
We in America do not have even England does not
have the infinite linguistic or social gradations of the
old Hapsburg Empire with which Musil has so much fun.
So do what one may, and however he may be translated or re-translated, on both linguistic and cultural
grounds Musil is always going to sound more straightforward and more concrete in English than he does in
German. When The Man without Qualities is re-translated 50 years from now, this problem will still be there.
In my own translations of Musil, I have rejected as a
guiding principle that the translation should be lexical,
because with Musil, as with most great writers, it is the
rhythm of the sentence and not the isolated individual
word that is the basis of his style. I also rejected making
the translation sound foreign to constantly remind the
English-speaking audience that the novel was not written
in English. That approach would simply make the novel
sound like bad English. Several years ago the English
writer Penelope Fitzgerald wrote a splendid novel about
the young Novalis called The Blue Flower, which won
the Booker Prize. She wrote it in English, but to give it
period and place flavor, she made the English sound like
an awkward translation from somewhat archaic German.
As a native speaker of English she knew what she was
doing, and the result is splendid and fresh. But if her
work had been an actual translation from a German original, we would surely judge it harshly and would certainly not consider it for a translation prize.
Instead of following the lexical and foreign-sounding
paradigms, I preferred to follow as my basic guiding
principle in my translation: if Musil had written his novel
in English, what would he have written? A particular
problem was that Musil was trained as a scientist, not as
a literary person. His style is unique in German; it does
not come out of a literary tradition, like Kafka s or
Thomas Mann s. Musil created his own style, which
somehow had to be captured in English in all its brilliant
81
incisiveness, metaphorical richness, and urgency. In such
a case, the translator or re-translator usually looks to his
or her own language for a model that approximates the
original. Much of the success of the Leishman-Spender
translation of Rilke s Duino Elegies was that they normalized Rilke to the long and elegant poetic tradition of
the English elegy even though this did some violence
to Rilke s granitic, experimental language. The closest
equivalent in English to Musil would seem to be the
English social novel, as practiced in Musil s time by
Anthony Powell. But Powell s portrait of English society
in decline is pale indeed beside the stunning energy of
The Man without Qualities. So for translators and retranslators, there was no model to follow: Musil s novel
is a unique case.
Let me spell out a few other points that will, I think I
can say with confidence, bedevil future translators of this
work:
Most basically, The Man without Qualities, long as it
is, is unfinished. Even the 1978 German edition was not
intended to be definitive, aside from the question of
whether an unfinished work, in the absence of authorial
indications, can ever have a definitive edition. The Man
without Qualities continues to present numerous editorial
problems and questions beyond those that had to be
addressed in the 1995 translation. Some decades from
now, a new German edition will call for a new English
translation on editorial grounds alone.
Then too, future re-translators will have to pay close
attention to the idiosyncratic narrative technique Musil
developed for this novel, a technique he called essayism, An outside voice intersperses general thoughts
linked to those given to the characters but expands the
perspective beyond the characters limited viewpoint. As
I mentioned, each character is imprisoned within the language of his or her own world. However, Musil s essayism is not sprinkled through the novel in isolated blocks
separated from the narrative, as is the case with Hermann
Broch s The Sleepwalkers, for instance, but itself forms
an integrated matrix of narration. The characters are
embedded in the essays. This essayistic technique, which
Musil derived from Emerson and Nietzsche, had to be
presented in English in all its sparkling originality. Let
me give you two brief examples:
In Goethe s world the clattering of looms was
still considered a disturbing noise. In Ulrich s time
people were just beginning to discover the music of
machine shops, steam hammers, and factory
sirens. [Yet] even today those who want to make
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an impression will mount not a skyscraper but a high
horse; they are swift like the wind and sharpsighted,
not like a giant refractor but like an eagle. Their feelings have not yet learned to make use of their intellect; the difference in development between these
two faculties is almost as great as that between the
vermiform appendix and the cerebral cortex.2
Notice the expression In Ulrich s time. Musil does
not write: In our time. Later in the novel it strikes
Ulrich that
the basic law of this life, the law one longs for, is
nothing other than that of narrative order, the simple
order that enables one to say: First this happened
and then that happened. It is the simple sequence
of events in which the overwhelmingly manifold
nature of things is represented, in a unidimensional
order, as a mathematician would say, stringing all
that has occurred in space and time on a single
thread, which calms us; that celebrated thread of the
story, which is, it seems, the thread of life itself.
Lucky the man who can say when, before, and
a f t e r ! This is the trick the novel artificially
turns to account [It makes] the reader feel a cozy
glow, and this would be hard to understand if this
eternally dependable narrative device, this tried
and true foreshortening of the mind s perspective,
were not already part and parcel of life itself. Most
people relate to themselves as storytellers, and the
impression that their life has a course is somehow
their refuge from chaos. It now came to Ulrich that
he had lost this elementary, narrative mode of
thought to which private life still clings, even though
everything in public life has already ceased to be
narrative and no longer follows a thread, but instead
spreads out as an infinitely interwoven surface.3
Notice here that Ulrich is a mathematician by profession, and that the last sentence also ties the essay to the
character.
Another factor future re-translators of Musil will
need to take into account is the vitality and rhythm of the
prose, a speaking rhythm for all the complexity of the
style. This rhythm seems to me something that the original translators missed, and it is something that many
translators working now seem to miss: they are fixated
on words as discrete lexical units and do not pay enough
attention to sentences as rhythmic units. This narrow
focus on lexicality seems to me to have been a bad habit
Translation Review
of the word-besotted 20th century, when all uses of language were cut into slices in the microtome and put
under the microscope, when words were either assumed
not to mean what they say or to demonstrate the impossibility of saying anything. Even Freud, a major sinner in
this regard, remarked that a cigar is sometimes just a
cigar. Often a free translation can get much closer to
recapturing the original than would a strictly lexical
translation. I think literary translation benefits when the
translator steps back a little and sees beyond the individual words.
Today s English will not be tomorrow s. What words
mean today is not what they will mean tomorrow. What
constitutes speaking rhythm in today s English will not
hold true for the future. Those looking for a cautionary
tale about the fate of language should read Russell
Hoban s novel Riddley Walker,4 written ostensibly 500
years in the future in a crude, barely comprehensible
English as reconstructed by a few survivors after the
annihilation of England by an atomic bomb. The retranslating mind shudders at the prospect of having to
translate The Man without Qualities into Hoban s vision
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of the English language of the future.
Notes
The Man without Qualities, transl. Sophie Wilkins
and Burton Pike (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1995), I,
31.
2 The Man without Qualities, I, 33.
3 The Man without Qualities, I, 708-709.
4 Expanded edition (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1998 <1980>).
1
83
THE DYNAMICS OF RE-TRANSLATION: TWO STORIES
By Reinhard Kaiser
E
ven if it were possible, we wouldn t be very happy to
go to a theater and see there nothing but historical,
original, contemporary productions: Goethe produced by
Goethe, Shakespeare by the actors of the Globe, and so
on. As interesting as they might be, they certainly would
not satisfy us completely. It would be very engaging to
see Goethe s Faust in an outstanding production from the
past, featuring great actors like Gustav Gr ndgens or
Bruno Ganz; but it would be very boring and unjust to
declare these productions to be the definitive ones and to
cut the whole story at this point. Movies and video
recordings of productions from the past are always welcome, but not least because they might thus be compared
with new interpretations, new productions of the wellknown pieces. The same is true for music, and for all
forms of art that are valuable (and available) only
through interpretation and actualization. (This is true
although perhaps less visible even for an old painting
or a literary text that is not enacted but only read or seen
silently and directly.) There is always an element of
staging and of reinterpretation, which may be more or
less apparent but is always present. In theater or for
Mozarts s music, it is quite clear, but it exists even in the
case of the Nibelungenlied or Beowulf: a new, inviting
edition, typeset in a way that makes it more accessible
than the original or mere copies of the original manuscript would be. This kind of editorial and publishing
work is also a sort of staging .
Even literary critics sometimes seem to be surprised
when told what kind of work a translator really does: not
merely linguistic slave or servant work but rather something artistic, more comparable to a musician who brings
a partita to hearing, or to an actor who performs a role,
or to a director or producer who brings a play to the
stage, be it a new one or a classic. All those performing
artists are free in their approach to the works they deal
with. Degrees of freedom may vary, but there is at least
some freedom. And if they do not grasp the chances
offered by this freedom, they don t do their job as they
should. I think the same is true for translators, who
seemingly are so closely bound by a contract that obliges
them to be true to the text. In my time as a reader, editing translations, I have often heard the phrase: What
shall I do, it s like this in the original! but only as an
excuse for bad translation. People reduce themselves to
84
slaves of the text and duck away behind their self-inflicted nonsignificance. The degree of freedom for a translator is certainly smaller than for a theater producer who
easily makes the characters of a Greek tragedy smoke
cigarettes. Perhaps it is more like the freedom a pianist
has in interpreting a classical sonata. But one thing is
important: freedom is there; it has to be recognized and it
has to be grasped.
On an individual level for the pianist or the translator this does not mean that one is entirely free to
choose between a whole gamut of possible interpretations. Unless one is a genius in taking on different disguises or emulating different styles, everyone has to find
his or her unique vision, his ideal, and to follow it. But
on a general level, this kind of freedom means that there
is not one ideal solution for all those who are trying to
find one. At any given moment, there may be different
solutions, different valuable, good interpretations or
translations that may coexist. In playing the Moonlight
Sonata by Beethoven in his own way, a pianist does not
hinder other people from playing that piece in their way;
he may even invite them to do so. And if he is a little
wise or at least aware of what he is doing, the message
accompanying his interpretation is not: That is the one
and only way to do this job, but rather: That s the only
way I am able to do it.
My stories concern two authors who, at first glance,
have little in common, except that both are women, each
with her own sense of humor; one is British, the other
American: Nancy Mitford and Sylvia Plath. The point of
comparison is the re-translation part of each story.
Hans Magnus Enzensberger, the German poet, essayist, and editor of the very respectable, very high-brow
Andere Bibliothek, which has published one book every
month since 1985 fiction, nonfiction, all kinds of surprising things once phoned me and asked what I
thought of the idea of publishing a book belonging to
that rather dubious genre of society novel ? Since the
beginnings of the Andere Bibliothek, I had worked as a
freelance coeditor with him, but until that moment I did
not know anything about Nancy Mitford and her novels.
Well, there is something in them˙, Enzensberger told
me. But you should read the original, there are translations, made in the fifties, but you know. I was curious, read the first of Mitford s novels, was very amused,
Translation Review
and proposed to Enzensberger to do the translation
myself. He agreed. And because up to that point, I had
translated only nonfiction, I was happy about my first
novel: In Pursuit of Love. It was the beginning of a long
re-translation process involving all four novels that
Nancy Mitford had published after the Second World
War all of them previously translated into German.
They had found their readers in the 1950s and 1960s, but
then they were forgotten; and, as far as I know, no genuine literary respect had ever been attached to them.
They belonged to the large field of Unterhaltungsliteratur: printed for the market, sold out and that was it.
I tried to do my best in re-translating the four novels
of Nancy Mitford; and after a certain time, while they
appeared, one after another, over several years, I got the
impression (from newspapers reviews, from lectures I
gave in bookstores, from what people told or wrote me
on the subject) that, by my doing so, respect for Nancy
Mitford s books was growing in Germany. People and
even literary critics understood that there was something new to be detected in them. It was as if Nancy
Mitford had moved to a higher level but, mind you,
only partly because of my work; also because of her
appearance in the catalogue of the highly respected
Andere Bibliothek. And it must not be forgotten: even
my translation work was in a certain sense inspired by
the thought that Hans Magnus Enzensberger (by merely
asking me to make a new translation) wanted me to find
the real literature in Nancy Mitford s novels, something
that, in its own right, would allow them to be placed
beside, say, the books of Evelyn Waugh. Unlike the preceding translators, whose job it had been to translate
amusing novels for one season and who had done just
that, I was called upon to regard Nancy Mitford s fancy
and wittiness as something serious. It did not mean
that the wit lost a part of its wittiness or became
pompous. On the contrary... I hope. But the attention
paid to the book not only my own attention, but primarily that of the editor and later that of the producer
and the whole publishing house made something new
out of the book. A society novel was staged as a classic
of comic literature, and was recognized and accepted as
such by the reading public.
The other story of a re-translation project that I
would like to tell you is also about restaging a book
in this case, one that had long been accepted as a kind of
classic of modern literature, even in Germany: The Bell
Jar / Die Glasglocke by Sylvia Plath. A literary editor for
Suhrkamp, the German publishing house that had sold
the first translation of Sylvia Plath s novel for almost 30
Translation Review
years, approached me:
We want to publish a new translation of The Bell
Jar and you are the one who should do it for us.
Me? Why me?
You have a feeling for comic effects and wit.
You ve translated Nancy Mitford, haven t you?
But The Bell Jar is such a sad story.
Not in all respects, it s also very funny.
I was surprised.
Are we talking about the same book? I read the
Suhrkamp translation 20 years ago; I don t remember too
much of it, but what I do remember is a black, sad,
depressing, suicidal thing...
That s why we are asking you to re-translate it .
So you see, there was the publisher s idea as to what
should be stressed in a new translation. The idea was not
to remodel the whole book into something that it wasn t,
but rather to make visible (or readable) certain facets that
until then had gone more or less unremarked. I read the
English book and found that there was indeed something
new to detect, something that could perhaps be made
more recognizable by introducing a sarcastic or comic
note. It was a demanding and interesting experience for
the translator to confront the sarcastic and the depressing
elements. What I hope emerged in the end was a colorful, very bright, and garish picture of the United States in
the 1950s, written with an intrepid sense of humor and
self-irony, despite a most depressing psychic and psychiatric background a courageous piece of literature in
which the author in a way succeeds in salvaging herself
one more time if not for ever.
85
A MATTER OF VOICE
By John E. Woods
I
effectively scare off competitors once the copyright runs
out in another decade or so. In that case, you hire a translator to re-translate.
And so why do I re-translate? The answer is obvious:
I get hired by a publisher prompted by just such mundane considerations. And how do I go about it? The same
way I tackle any translation. I read the book in the original German, I listen to its voice. And it is my task
ultimately an impossible one, as any translator will admit
to recreate that voice (or the many voices controlled
by that voice) on as many levels as possible in English.
Of course my own reading ear conditions what I hear; of
course my own native tongue conditions what that voice
can say; of course contemporary American readers will
hear things neither the author nor I intended and miss
others. A translation is always a new text for new readers
in a new context.
Let me rephrase question four, Why re-translate
Thomas Mann?, as a series of other questions. What
voice do I hear when I read Thomas Mann in the original? What voice do German speakers both Mann s
contemporaries and ours hear? What voice do
English-speaking readers hear when they read Helen
Lowe-Porter s standard translations? What voice did she
hear? How great are the discrepancies between these various voices? It is my judgment that the Lowe-Porter
voice is often quirky, occasionally inaccurate, and ultimately too far from the voice of Thomas Mann that I
hear and I would contend that the vast majority of
Mann s German readers hear.
Let me come right out and say it: I m afraid the
voice Helen Lowe-Porter heard was far too much her
own. Hers was a monumental task, and she carried it off
with considerable dignity. There are several generations
of English-speaking Mann readers who are devoted to
her purplish prose, and I do not wish to deprive them of
their joy in it. But the voice of Thomas Mann that
American readers have heard until now is that of a prude,
a man with a Teutonically challenged sense of humor, a
writer given to flights of odd diction and turgid, occasionally sloppy syntax. Although Lowe-Porter s accuracy
and felicity improved over time I regard Doctor
Faustus as her best work, but that may be because she
and Serenus Zeitblom were soul mates she nevertheless fudges far too often, omitting words, phrases, or
86
Translation Review
have merely a few random comments to offer on the
subject of re-translation chiefly, I suppose, because
it has been my experience that translation does not lend
itself to grand theory. In trying to organize my thoughts
into a somewhat less haphazard form, I decided to move
from the general to the particular. The result is simply a
series of four questions: Why is any work of literature retranslated? Why do publishers pay for re-translation?
Why do I do the work? Why re-translate Thomas Mann?
The clich answer to the first question is that every
generation deserves its own translation or something to
that effect. Hogwash! That is merely a bit of generational
solipsism. Great translations, like great literature, abide.
There is no denying, however, that language is a temporal and social phenomenon. Sooner or later every text
ends up being written in Old Church Slavonic. At some
point, sad to say, Shakespeare will have to be translated
into whatever becomes of our beloved English. The tides
of linguistic history and the undertow of mass culture
have not brought us to that point just yet, but they will.
Assuming, however, that a text is still comprehensible,
why should an older translation from the German or
Italian or Chinese be less readable, less definitive, than
an older original text a novel by Defoe, for example,
or an essay by Swift? Indeed, because an older translation is of necessity rooted in the language of its period, is
it not to be preferred?
Yes, it is. But not if and it s a big if it fails
egregiously, or semiegregiously, in terms of either accuracy or felicity or both, those being, after all, the norms
by which every translation lives and dies. And if an older
translation is found truly wanting in that regard, then a
re-translation may well be in order. But that does not
mean that we readers will get one. That is up to the publishers.
Why, then, do publishers pay someone to re-translate
one text and not another? The answer is obvious:
because there s a buck to be made. And there s money to
be had because of the laws of copyright. If the copyright
has run out, a new translation even one that is no real
improvement on a fine old standard that has stood for 50
years or more may yield a profit. There is also money
to be had by ensuring that a title on your backlist gets a
solid new translation to replace a questionable old one. If
the new one establishes itself in the marketplace, you can
whole sentences that she evidently thought defied solution. She paid little attention to Mann s leitmotifs, which
can range from a recurring adjective or phrase attached
to a character, to whole paragraphs that reemerge
restyled for a new context. She had a tin ear for irony.
And all too often, she broke the majestic periods of
Mann s dense and dancing syntax into smaller units,
when it is their very grandeur that mirrors the scope and
balance of his mind. The voice of each great Mannian
period is, to my ear, like the voice of a movement from a
Mozart sonata.
Why retranslate Thomas Mann? Why do I even
attempt it? First, because I know I hear a great voice
when I read Thomas Mann. Second, because I hope that
on the basis of what I hear, I am able to provide a translation for new readers who will hear echoes of that
splendid voice. Here, then, are three voices Mann s,
Lowe-Porter s, and my own speaking the opening
paragraph of Part One, Book One ( The Stories of
Jacob ) from Mann s magnum opus, Joseph and His
Brothers.
Thomas Mann:
Es war jenseits der H gel im Norden von
Hebron, ein wenig stlich der Stra§e, die von
Urusalim kam, im Monat Adar, an einem
Fr hlingsabend, so mondhell, da§ man
Geschriebenes h tte lesen k nnen und das
Laubwerk des ziemlich kurzst mmigen, aber
mit starkem Gezweige auslandend Baumes,
einer bejahrten und m chtigen Terebinthe, die
hier einzeln stand, nebst ihren traubenf rmigen
Bl ten vom Lichte kleinlich ausgearbeitet
erschien, schimmernd versponnen und h chst
genau zugleich. Der sch ne Baum war heilig:
Unterweisung war in seinem Schatten verschiedentlich zu gewinnen, sowohl aus
Menschenmund (denn wer ber das G ttliche
aus Erfahrung etwas mitzuteilen hatte, versammelte Zuh rer unter seinen Zweigen) als auch
auf h here Weise. Wiederholt n mlich war
Personen, die, das Haupt an den Stamm
gelehnt, einen Schlaf getan hatten, im Traume
Verk ndingung und Bescheid zuteil geworden,
und auch bei Brandopfern, von deren
Gebr uchlichkeit an dieser Stelle ein steinerner
Schlachtisch mit geschw rzter Platte Zeugnis
gab, auf dem eine kleine, leicht rauchende
Flamme lebte, war oft in Laufe der Zeit durch
Translation Review
das Verhalten des Rauches, durch bedeutsamen
Vogelflug und selbst durch Himmelszeichen
eine besondere Aufmerksamkeit erh rtet worden, deren solche fromme Handlungen zu
F §en des Baumes sich erfreuten.
Helen Lowe-Porter:
It was beyond the hills north of Hebron, a
little east of the Jerusalem road, in the month
Adar; a spring evening, so brightly moonlit
that one could have seen to read, and the
leaves of the single tree there standing, an
ancient and mighty terebinth, short-trunked,
with strong and spreading branches, stood out
fine and sharp against the light, beside their
clusters of blossom highly distinct, yet
shimmering in a web of moonlight. This beautiful tree was sacred. In more than one way
enlightenment was to be had within its shadow: from the mouth of man, for whoever
through personal experience had aught to communicate of the divine would gather hearers
together under its branches; but likewise in
more inspired manner. For persons who slept
leaning their heads against the trunk had
repeatedly been vouchsafed dispensations and
commands in a dream; and at the offering of
burnt sacrifices, the frequency of which was
witnessed by the stone slaughtering table,
where a low fire burned on the blackened slab,
the behaviour of the smoke, the flight of birds,
or even a sign from heaven itself had often, in
the course of the years, proved that a peculiar
efficacy lay in these pious doings at the foot of
the tree.
John E. Woods:
It was beyond the hills to the north of
Hebron, a little to the east of the road from
Urusalim, in the month of Adar, on a spring
evening flooded by moonlight bright enough to
render writing legible and to reveal in precise tracery yet shimmering like gossamer
the smallest detail of the leaves and clustered
blossoms of a solitary tree, an aged and mighty
terebinth, which despite a rather short trunk
flung its sturdy branches wide. This beautiful
tree was sacred. Beneath its shade counsel
87
might be obtained in various ways, both from
the mouths of men because those who were
moved to share their experience of the divine
would gather listeners beneath its branches
and by higher means. For those who had slept
with their heads leaning against its trunk had,
in fact, repeatedly received instruction and
prophecy, and during the many years of burnt
sacrifices offered at this spot as attested by
the blackened surface of a stone slaughtering
table where a slightly sooty flame guttered
the behavior of the smoke, a telling flight of a
bird, or even some sign in the heavens had
often reinforced the particular fascination that
such pious acts at the foot of the tree enjoyed.
The standard answer for why re-translation:
Every age needs its translation, etc.
88
Translation Review
CONTRIBUTORS
John Balcom is an Assistant Professor in the Chinese
Program of the Graduate School of Translation and
Interpretation at the Moneterey Institute of International
Studies. Recent publications include Frontier Taiwan
(contributor) and Wintry Night, a novel by Li Qiao (cotranslator), both published by Columbia University.
Philip Boehm has translated numerous works from
Polish and German, by authors including Franz Kafka,
Bertolt Brecht, and Christoph Hein. His rendering of
Malina by Ingeborg Bachmann won the Austrian State
Prize for Literary Translation, and that of Traces by Ida
Fink was a finalist for the 1997 National Jewish Book
Award. Forthcoming with Metropolitan Books is his
translation of Words to Outlive Us: Voices from the
Warsaw Ghetto. He is also a playwright and theater
director.
Stuart Friebert, founder and director of The Writing
Program at Oberlin for many years, retired in l997. He
has published a dozen volumes of poetry (most recently,
Funeral Pie/co-winner of The Four Way Book Award),
and seven volumes of translations (most recently, Judita
Vaiciunaite, Fire Put Out By Fire: Selected Poems/with
Viktoria Skrupskelis).
Helmut Frielinghaus, born 1931 in Germany, editor and
publisher, from 1995 to 2001 free-lance journalist
(Theater heute, Neue Zürcher Zeitung), editor (of G nter
Grass) and translator (Raymond Carver, John Updike) in
New York, lives now in Hamburg, Germany.
William H. Gass’s most recent book is a study of Rainer
Maria Rilke entitled Reading Rilke: Reflections on the
Problems of Translation. He has received many major
awards, among them the Lannan Foundation Life-Time
Achievement Award and the National Book Critics Circle
Award for Criticism.
Susanne Höbel, born in 1953 and living in Hamburg,
Germany. Freelance literary translator since 1990, translator of, among others, two books by Nadine Gordimer
and two volumes of essays by John Updike. In 2001and
2002 member of the Helen and Kurt Wolff Prize Jury.
Member in ALTA and Vd (Verband deutschsprachiger
bersetzer).
Yvonne Howell went to Prague in 1984 to study the
Translation Review
political and cultural significance of Czech science fiction, and ended up staying for a full 16 months, with a
somewhat expanded research agenda. She subsequently
received her PhD in Slavic Languages and Literatures
from the University of Michigan. She is the author of
Apocalyptic Realism: The Science Fiction of Arkady and
Boris Strugatsky, as well as several articles and chapters
devoted to Russian and Czech literature, and translation
studies. She is currently an Associate Professor of
Russian at the University of Richmond, VA.
Daniel M. Jaffe is the translator of Dina Rubina s
Russian-Israeli novel, Here Comes the Messiah! (Zephyr
Press, 2000). Daniel s own novel, The Limits of Pleasure
(Harrington Park Press, 2001) is a finalist for ForeWord
Magazine s Book of the Year Award.
Reinhard Kaiser, born 1950, is a translator (from
English and French into German) and writer. He lives in
Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Margaret (Peggy) Joan Maddox currently teaches
World Literature at the University of Arkansas where she
is completing work on the Ph.D. in Comparative
Literature. The subject of her dissertation is the image of
Joan of Arc in popular culture.
Giuseppe Natale was born and raised in Turin, Italy. He
graduated cum laude from the University of Turin with
his thesis on the Canadian poet Leonard Cohen. He then
moved to the United States, to continue his studies at the
University of Washington, Seattle, where he obtained his
M.A in Italian with a thesis on Dante s Divine Comedy,
and his Ph. D. in Comparative Literature with a dissertation on poetry and translation. Natale has translated into
Italian several major American novels, such as Toni
Morrison s Beloved, Alice Walker s The Temple of My
Familiar and Thomas Pynchon s V. and Gravity’ s
Rainbow. He currently holds an Assistant Professor position at UNLV, where he teaches Italian literature and culture, and graduate seminars in Translation Studies.
Natale has also worked as a consultant for various publishing companies, contributing his expertise in Italian
literature, American literature, and the fine arts.
Burton Pike is Professor Emeritus of Comparative
Literature and German at the Graduate School, City
University of New York. He edited and co-translated
Robert Musil s The Man without Qualities and a volume of Musil s essays, and has translated work by
89
Proust, Ingeborg Bachmann, and Alissa Walser.
recently his School for Atheists, and the works of contemporary authors such as Ingo Schulze and Christoph
Ransmayr. He has also retranslated three Thomas Mann
novels, Buddenbrooks, The Magic Mountain, and
Doctor Faustus, and is currently working on Mann s
Joseph and His Brothers. He lives in San Diego.
Patricia Schoch is a doctoral candidate in the School of
Arts and Humanities at The University of Texas at Dallas
(UTD). Additionally, she is managing editor of
Management Magazine, a publication of the UTD School
of Management.
Rob Sulewski teaches at the University of Michigan. He
has translated medieval drama from both Polish and
Italian, and drama by modern Polish playwright
Slawomir Mrozek.
John Woods is the translator of many books, including
much of the fictional prose of Arno Schmidt, most
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