Benny Bunter
Well-known member
It's nice to be nice
Poetry
- Thread starter jenks
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Benny Bunter
Well-known member
Curtain
jenks
thread death
After @Benny B wrote about Season in Hell I got my copies of Verlaine and Rimbaud off the shelf. It’s been a very enjoyable week revisiting these two. Very different poetical techniques but both super charged, full on, electric poets. The sneering violence of Rimbaud at times is fantastic. Verlaine is much more sparse, emptier, simpler French that even I can translate. If Rimbaud is about excess and movement, Verlaine appears distilled and far more still.
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
What translation of Rimbaud you got? Got the impression the one I have is maybe a bit duller than others out there (it's the Martin Sorrell) Luka reckons it's a shit one. I've asked several times on here but no one's ever responded.
woops
is not like other people
there's John ashbery translation too but i don't know which one is the best
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
Gonna dump this here and read it later
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY JOHN ASHBERY
He is affection and the present since he opened the house to foaming winter and the hum of summer, he who purified drink and food, he who is the charm of fleeting places and the superhuman deliciousness of staying still. He is affection and the future, strength and love that we, standing amid rage and troubles, see passing in the storm-rent sky and on banners of ecstasy.
He is love, perfect and reinvented measurement, wonderful and unforeseen reason, and eternity: machine beloved for its fatal qualities. We have all experienced the terror of his yielding and of our own: O enjoyment of our health, surge of our faculties, egoistic affection and passion for him, he who loves us for his infinite life
And we remember him and he travels. . . And if the Adoration goes away, resounds, its promise resounds: “Away with those superstitions, those old bodies, those couples and those ages. It’s this age that has sunk!”
He won’t go away, nor descend from a heaven again, he won’t accomplish the redemption of women’s anger and the gaiety of men and of all that sin: for it is now accomplished, with him being, and being loved.
O his breaths, his heads, his racing; the terrible swiftness of the perfection of forms and of action.
O fecundity of the spirit and immensity of the universe!
His body! The dreamed-of release, the shattering of grace crossed with new violence!
The sight, the sight of him! all the ancient kneeling and suffering lifted in his wake.
His day! the abolition of all resonant and surging suffering in more intense music.
His footstep! migrations more vast than ancient invasions.
O him and us! pride more benevolent than wasted charities.
O world! and the clear song of new misfortunes!
He has known us all and loved us all. Let us, on this winter night, from cape to cape, from the tumultuous pole to the castle, from the crowd to the beach, from glance to glance, our strengths and feelings numb, learn to hail him and see him, and send him back, and under the tides and at the summit of snowy deserts, follow his seeing, his breathing, his body, his day.
Genie
BY ARTHUR RIMBAUDTRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY JOHN ASHBERY
He is affection and the present since he opened the house to foaming winter and the hum of summer, he who purified drink and food, he who is the charm of fleeting places and the superhuman deliciousness of staying still. He is affection and the future, strength and love that we, standing amid rage and troubles, see passing in the storm-rent sky and on banners of ecstasy.
He is love, perfect and reinvented measurement, wonderful and unforeseen reason, and eternity: machine beloved for its fatal qualities. We have all experienced the terror of his yielding and of our own: O enjoyment of our health, surge of our faculties, egoistic affection and passion for him, he who loves us for his infinite life
And we remember him and he travels. . . And if the Adoration goes away, resounds, its promise resounds: “Away with those superstitions, those old bodies, those couples and those ages. It’s this age that has sunk!”
He won’t go away, nor descend from a heaven again, he won’t accomplish the redemption of women’s anger and the gaiety of men and of all that sin: for it is now accomplished, with him being, and being loved.
O his breaths, his heads, his racing; the terrible swiftness of the perfection of forms and of action.
O fecundity of the spirit and immensity of the universe!
His body! The dreamed-of release, the shattering of grace crossed with new violence!
The sight, the sight of him! all the ancient kneeling and suffering lifted in his wake.
His day! the abolition of all resonant and surging suffering in more intense music.
His footstep! migrations more vast than ancient invasions.
O him and us! pride more benevolent than wasted charities.
O world! and the clear song of new misfortunes!
He has known us all and loved us all. Let us, on this winter night, from cape to cape, from the tumultuous pole to the castle, from the crowd to the beach, from glance to glance, our strengths and feelings numb, learn to hail him and see him, and send him back, and under the tides and at the summit of snowy deserts, follow his seeing, his breathing, his body, his day.
jenks
thread death
i have the Sturrock and Harding selection that has some of his letters as well - it's a parallel text and i enjoy looking at the French which i can do little bits of sometimes. With the Verlaine it was much easier to translate into workable English and even quibble with some of the translations, but with Rimbaud, he uses so much more ornate and complex language, i wouldn't know where to begin (ought to point out, I've only got schoolboy French)
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
Yeah, that was quite surprising to me, considering all the hellish stuff that came before. It comes right at the end of Illuminations in the edition I have, so possibly one of the very last things that he wrote before abandoning poetry forever? I dunno, I think the timeline of when he wrote them is very much disputed.
Can confirm btw that the John Ashbery translation I posted is better than the one I have, which makes sense, surely the best translators of poetry have to be strong poets themselves (not that I've read much Ashbery and really get what he's about, but he's obviously good). Might be worth getting hold of a copy.
Would be good to read a biography of Rimbaud/Verlaine, from the little I've read about their story it sounds almost too insane to be true.
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
I think Sorrell does a good job on this one.
Seascape
Silver chariots, and copper -
Steel prows, and silver -
Smack the foam -
Heave the thorn-stumps out.
The currents of the great expanse.
Huge lines scored by back-tracking tides
Circle away to the East,
Towards the limbs of the forest -
Towards the piers of the jetty,
A salient whipped by whirlpool-light.
Seascape
Silver chariots, and copper -
Steel prows, and silver -
Smack the foam -
Heave the thorn-stumps out.
The currents of the great expanse.
Huge lines scored by back-tracking tides
Circle away to the East,
Towards the limbs of the forest -
Towards the piers of the jetty,
A salient whipped by whirlpool-light.
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
Here's an Ezra Pound translation of an earlier one:
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
Looool look at how shit the Sorrell version is in comparison!
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
"Gal with the big bubs" Vs "barmaid with the obligatory well-filled blouse"
🤣
🤣
jenks
thread death
From my version. This one at least a throws to have a regular rhythmic patterning.
Rimbaud and his boots. Forever walking and wearing than out. Born with that itch to always be on the move. This poem is all about his potency - he knows he’s full of the sap of spring.
I do think it’d be an interesting challenge to pick a bit of verse - maybe Verlaine at first - and maybe a few of us have a go at translating. The end result is we might be a bit more forgiving (or we produce a definitive version)
Rimbaud and his boots. Forever walking and wearing than out. Born with that itch to always be on the move. This poem is all about his potency - he knows he’s full of the sap of spring.
I do think it’d be an interesting challenge to pick a bit of verse - maybe Verlaine at first - and maybe a few of us have a go at translating. The end result is we might be a bit more forgiving (or we produce a definitive version)
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
That's better than the Sorrell one but still nowhere near as good as Pound's is it? He gets rid of all the unnecessary words - just 'Bread, butter at the Green Cabaret', no need to say he 'asked' for or 'ordered' it. Plus 'a great chope of foamy beer' is great, makes it sound so delicious.
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
Amazing how much they all embellish and alter stuff.
Here's an attempt by Google translate
at the cabaret-vert, five o'clock in the evening.
for eight days, I had torn my boots
on the stones of the paths. I entered Charleroi.
- at the cabaret-vert: I asked for sandwiches
Butter and ham that was half cold.
Blessed, I stretched my legs under the table
Green: I contemplated the very naive subjects
Tapestry. - And it was lovely,
When the girl with huge nipples, bright eyes,
- That one, it's not a kiss that frightens him! -
Laughing, brought me slices of butter,
Warm ham, in a colored dish,
Pink and white ham flavored with a pod
Of garlic, - and fills me the immense tankard, with its foam
That gilded a belated ray of sunshine.
Here's an attempt by Google translate
at the cabaret-vert, five o'clock in the evening.
for eight days, I had torn my boots
on the stones of the paths. I entered Charleroi.
- at the cabaret-vert: I asked for sandwiches
Butter and ham that was half cold.
Blessed, I stretched my legs under the table
Green: I contemplated the very naive subjects
Tapestry. - And it was lovely,
When the girl with huge nipples, bright eyes,
- That one, it's not a kiss that frightens him! -
Laughing, brought me slices of butter,
Warm ham, in a colored dish,
Pink and white ham flavored with a pod
Of garlic, - and fills me the immense tankard, with its foam
That gilded a belated ray of sunshine.