Poetry in translation/reading in other languages
- Thread starter Benny Bunter
- Start date
mixed_biscuits
_________________________
The Antarctic: weird place!
Nothing's there to greet the face
Neither streets nor horses nice
Only wind and lots of ice
The wind is cold the wind is biting
Then I chanced upon a sighting:
A stony building not manmade
A lapidary pasillade
That issued forth from natural wealth
A soundless tribute to itself
You wanna see it? Let's make tracks
It surely beats a TK Maxx
Bonus words: South Pole, void, music
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
Quite nice but minor league romantic rhyming stuff unfortunately, you wouldn't like it.translate him
Alfonso Cortés - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
Not that it's bad poetry, but I was hoping for something a bit more unhinged and interesting when I read that bio.
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
Got put onto this from a Borges lecture - Tennyson's translation of The Battle of Brunanburh from old English.
I love Ezra Pound's version of the Seafarer (and the Homer via old English of Canto 1) but I reckon this is an even better rendering of old English. It's a shame Tennyson never followed up on it and did more translations cos he captures the sonorous alliteration perfectly.
I love Ezra Pound's version of the Seafarer (and the Homer via old English of Canto 1) but I reckon this is an even better rendering of old English. It's a shame Tennyson never followed up on it and did more translations cos he captures the sonorous alliteration perfectly.
jenks
thread death
I haven’t read it for a while but I used to love Christopher Logue’s loose and free translations of a number of the books from the Iliad https://www.poemhunter.com/christopher-logue/ebooks/?ebook=0&filename=christopher_logue_2012_3.pdf
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
Have you read the Chapman version? I really enjoyed that.
Matthew Arnold's long essay comparing all the different translations of Homer is really interesting too, but a bit dispiriting - he more or less concludes that they're all deeply flawed and the only way to get anywhere near the originals is to learn Ancient Greek.
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
I mean, Arnold is probably right, but it's hard not to think he only wrote it to show off and make the average reader feel thick. Same with Pound's ABC of Reading. It's almost enough to put you off bothering at all.
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
My, admittedly uneducated, opinion is Chapman's Homer is the best we'll ever get, for all its supposed flaws, because it was written at the height of English, the Shakespearen/KJ Bible era, when the language was still flexible and wild and free. I think after the Elizabethan era things like word order and grammatical rules started to solidify and become more strict - and you can see that by the time you get to Milton (not that Paradise Lost isn't great, but it's so much more stiff than Shakespeare).
I have a bit of an aversion to any modern versions for those reasons. And I really don't like what I've seen of Pope's Homer translations. Also, Ruskin gave Pope a proper kicking in that essay about the pathetic fallacy which just confirms my suspicions that you're better off with Chapman.
Same goes for Golding's Metamorphoses - they're just so lively and fun to read apart from anything else, who cares how 'accurate' they are? You're never going to learn Latin.
I have a bit of an aversion to any modern versions for those reasons. And I really don't like what I've seen of Pope's Homer translations. Also, Ruskin gave Pope a proper kicking in that essay about the pathetic fallacy which just confirms my suspicions that you're better off with Chapman.
Same goes for Golding's Metamorphoses - they're just so lively and fun to read apart from anything else, who cares how 'accurate' they are? You're never going to learn Latin.
woops
is not like other people
The Frugal Way
It is calmness, the frugal way,
The misfortune that no longer has a name.
It is my thirst cut out:
Witchcraft, ingenuity.
Chase me, follow me,
But numberless and resembling,
Such as I will be.
Already the stars,
Already the pebbles, the torrent...
Every visible step
Is a lost world,
A burned tree.
Every blind step
Rebuilds the town,
Across our tears
In the torn air.
If the gods' absence, their smoke,
This fragment of quartz contains it all,
You must escape,
But in the number and the resemblance,
Tense white writing,
Above an approximate abyss.
If the shot of a word touches you
At the desired moment,
You yourself take shape,
Increase of storms,
At the spot where I disappeared.
And the instrumental unspeakable
Ascends like a fragile fire
Of an annihilated double body
Through the feathery night
Or this other love.
It is calmness, the frugal way,
The misfortune that no longer has a name.
It is my thirst cut out:
Witchcraft, ingenuity.
It is calmness, the frugal way,
The misfortune that no longer has a name.
It is my thirst cut out:
Witchcraft, ingenuity.
Chase me, follow me,
But numberless and resembling,
Such as I will be.
Already the stars,
Already the pebbles, the torrent...
Every visible step
Is a lost world,
A burned tree.
Every blind step
Rebuilds the town,
Across our tears
In the torn air.
If the gods' absence, their smoke,
This fragment of quartz contains it all,
You must escape,
But in the number and the resemblance,
Tense white writing,
Above an approximate abyss.
If the shot of a word touches you
At the desired moment,
You yourself take shape,
Increase of storms,
At the spot where I disappeared.
And the instrumental unspeakable
Ascends like a fragile fire
Of an annihilated double body
Through the feathery night
Or this other love.
It is calmness, the frugal way,
The misfortune that no longer has a name.
It is my thirst cut out:
Witchcraft, ingenuity.
Jacques Dupin translated by me
woops
is not like other people
@version says all the mallarmé transitions he's found are crap so i've found this excerpt online
which someone has translated as follows
here's my version
Who once would pass, over my beautiful slumbers -
Those of a spoiled child - ever letting fall,
Like snow, white bouquets of perfumed stars
From her ill-closed hands.
mallarmé said:
which someone has translated as follows
someone said:
here's my version
Who once would pass, over my beautiful slumbers -
Those of a spoiled child - ever letting fall,
Like snow, white bouquets of perfumed stars
From her ill-closed hands.
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
Had yet another go at reading a throw of the dice will never abolish chance the other day, had a look at alternative translations on the net - I just can't get anywhere near understanding it. Looks good on the page though.
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
I'll be shocked if this turns out to be any good. The Oxford world classics of Rimbaud is mostly terrible - you can only just about get away with the prose poetry but anything in verse...This was the one I ended up getting in the end.
Same goes for all the English translations of Valéry I've seen.
version
Well-known member
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
Any good?
Luka's got the Wallace Fowlie one of a season in hell I think, which I wouldn't mind getting my hands on.
Luka's got the Wallace Fowlie one of a season in hell I think, which I wouldn't mind getting my hands on.