¡Bemsha SWING!

19 oct 2006

Cavalcanti:

Una figura de la donna mia
S'adora, Guido, a San Michele in Orto,
Che di bella semblanza, onesta e pia,
De' peccatori è refugio e conforto

Pound [elements added by translator in italics]

My Lady's face is it they worship there,
At San Michele in Orto, Guido mine,
Near her fair semblance, that is clear and holy
Sinners take refuge and get consolation.

Minor padding? But why must translation always move in the direction of more, rather than fewer words? The additions don't add any greater clarity. They are there to pad the meter.

I don't know why you need two verbs, take and get, for a single action, where the Italian is content with a single verb: "is." She doesn't give them comfort, nor do they take comfort from her. Rather, she IS their refuge and comfort, at one and the same time. That's so much more direct.

I don't know why you have to specify that the sinners are near her fair semblance. That spatial relation is implicit in the original: the sinners are those worshipping at this particular church. Pound's "near" takes them futher away, in some sense.

This poetry is rather unforgiving of the translator, I fear. There's not a lot of lee-way. The only redundancy in the original is the repetition of figura and semblanza, two words that may be nearly synonymous. My literal version is in brackets below.

[An image of my lady / is adored, Guido, at SMIO, / which {image}, of beautiful aspect, chaste and devout, / is refuge and comfort for sinners].

4 comentarios:

Anthony Robinson dijo...: Hm....wasn't Pound always fussing about such things? Metronome, etc.

Particularly heinous are the totally uncessary additions in the first line.; 10:32 p. m.
Jonathan dijo...: Indeed, Tony.; 11:11 p. m.
Henry Gould dijo...: Seems like, as you say, Pound was aiming for a metrical version - to make it "sing" in a way the italian does. The century of free verse, which Pound helped set in motion, has weakened the imperative for such things.

Nabokov's famous Pushkin labors hinged on this issue (verbal accuracy vs. "artful" imitation).; 7:16 a. m.
Jonathan dijo...: Well, it doesn't "sing." It's metrical, but the verse itself is not very adroit.; 8:18 a. m.

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Blurbs & Reviews

"Jonathan Mayhew’s new work belongs to a certain class of surprising books: those so obviously necessary once they appear that it apparently required a stroke of genius to come up with the idea for them."

--Daniel Katz

"Jonathan Mayhew's Lorca is less the distinctive Spanish poet, whose murder in 1936 marked the beginning of the Civil War, than he is an American invention. From the 1940s to the end of the century, our poets have invoked Lorca-in translation, of course-as a Romantic, exotic, radical, and, in many cases, gay icon-the poet of mystery and the duende. The Lorca myth, Mayhew argues persuasively, has enriched American lyric, but it has also been an obstacle to a more adequately grounded understanding of Spanish poetry in the 20th century. Apocryphal Lorca is revisionist criticism at its most acute."

-Marjorie Perloff

"Enhanced by copious notes and an excellent bibliography, this book offers a perceptive, intriguing assessment of the Garcia Lorca created by the postwar generation of American poets." (Choice )

"Mayhew is a critic who is at the top of his game; he combines a breadth of knowlege of the field with acute analysis."

--John C. Wilcox, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

"Let me just cut through all the usual, boring book review preliminaries and say the following thing: Jonathan Mayhew has, in Apocryphal Lorca, written an amazing book. "

--Brandon Holmquest, Calque

"The great merit of Mayhew's study is his sustained effort to document and interrogate Lorca's reception, unique among American encounters with foreign literatures in its nature and extent."

--Lawrence Venuti, TLS.

"Se trata de Jonathan Mayhew y su extraordinario estudio Apocryphal Lorca. Translation, Parody, Kitsch. Esta obra se ocupa no de García Lorca sino de cómo los escritores estadounidenses han reinventado a Lorca, desde Spicer y Rothenberg hasta O’Hara y Koch. Asimismo, es una discusión de la Deep Image —¡cuánto hay que desmenuzar de ese capítulo!— y la manera en que la poética norteamericana se ha apropiado de lo lorqueano (o lorcaesco) y del concepto de lo 'otro' que éste representa. Éste es un libro repleto de sutilezas, de tesis, apuntes, datos."

--Heriberto Yépez

"Apocryphal Lorca, sin embargo, es mucho más que un estudio de las vidas posteriores de Lorca en la poesía americana entre principios de los años 50 y 70. También ofrece un acercamiento histórico a la traducción de su obra, descubriendo reseñas de prensa significativas y discurriendo acerca de reconocimientos críticos. El texto es elegante y fresco; el análisis amplio e históricamente específico."

--María Delgado, Revista de Literatura

¡Bemsha SWING!

19 oct 2006

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