hey, translate this!
So, I promised a longer, deeper reflection on the art of translation. Let me start by reminding all and sundry that translation is at once a compromise and an ascetic discipline. 'Tis a compromise, for one can never fully carry over the whole of a work from one language to another. Some consider that a reason not to translate at all. [They actually stand on moral high ground - sometimes.] Translation is an ascetic discipline dear reader because one must submit to the work at hand, subordinating one's ego and, if one is an artist of any drive and talent, one's own disposition and desires as such. Of course, one finds in the doing that in this translation is like all art - for the poet, as an example, the work is more important than the momentary fluxion of desire. What a poem wants to be - and here I am wantonly Platonic, though an artist needn't be to strive after form - is all. You simply cannot write a sonnet as a ballade, though some have tried. Again, more on that later.
Why translate? That is the question that determines many of the moral and formal and linguistic limits to the task. Consider - one translates to provide an aid to reading in another language. In this case, yes, despite what I said before, a prose 'translation' of a poem might do the trick. I have, for instance, a small collection of lyrics by Ronsard. You have the French, and at the bottom of the page, quite literal renderings in prose to help the reader through the difficulties of syntax and grammar and vocabulary. The editor offers as well a brief look at French prosody. Here the focus clearly is the French original. The prose versions serve as props to the reader, nothing more. They are, therefore, functional, not aesthetic. The same could be said of the various prose versions that accompany Latin and Greek poetry in the Loeb Classical Library - again, they are aids to reading the original.
Please note that the prose versions in the above are rarely, if ever, called 'translations'. Even if they are so called, they don't serve the purpose of a literary translation, which is to carry over to the target language something of the style, form, music, and thus the experience, of the original. These literary translations come into two types, often overlapping - the scholarly translation, and translations done by poets for their own reasons.
First, you have scholarly translations. These are often rendered by folks proficient in verse - we are talking about poetry here - but who are not necessarily poets. [Need I say that a facility for verse does not make one a poet? The point would have been self-evident a century ago, but in the past few decades intelligent readers have lost the distinction.] Sometimes these are competent merely, sometimes they are damn fine, but the purpose remains the same - see previous paragraph. Among the best scholarly translations are those by Nancy K Armstrong, who has done wonders - or so my friend who knows Russian tells me - with Puskin's Little Tragedies and the poetry of Anna Akhmatova. Others who do fine work in this way are Walter Ardnt, Angela Livingstone, and John Felstiner. Again, these translations serve those who know little if anything of the original language, and are thus meant to offer more of a feel for the original than a prose version can offer. How much or little each one succeeds can only be determined in the doing and the reading in comparison with the originals - here friends who know other languages can help. These are also helpful to those who know the original language, inasmuch as they offer yet another way into the reading of the works themselves. Oh, and not all scholarly translations are equal - for instance, one should avoid the 'translations' of David Slavitt as one would a rabid badger.
Second, you have translations by bona fide poets. Some of these poets are also bona fide scholars, but not all of 'em need be. A poet translates another poet for many reasons - love of the poet's work, a desire to more fully explore the richness of the target language, the challenge of shaping an equivalent form in the target language, and so on. Translation, in fact, is one of the most helpful ways a person can practice poetry in between bouts of actual inspiration. It also offers a way of gaining greater purchase on a fellow poet's work. Sometimes these translations can become quite idiosyncratic, and thus risk leaving the field of translation altogether. The work of Robert Lowell comes to mind here. What's more, the fact that a fellow is a published poet is no guarantee of their ability to translate poetry. Simply put, a bad poet will be a bad translator of poetry. Thus, we have the symptom known as Robert Bly.
Now, a poet will usually attempt fidelity to the form and style of the original. Sometimes, though, while translating a formal metamorphosis takes place, and the result isn't so much a translation as, again, a variation. For instance, Yeats in 1892 rendered a version of Ronsard's 'Quand vous serez bien vielle' - a sonnet in Petrarchan form - into what's called a douzain, or 12 lined lyric. In the doing, he also thematically altered the poem. Here you have the French as found in Sonnets pour Hélène [1597]:
Quand vous serez bien vieille, au soir, à la chandelle,
Assise auprès du feu, dévidant et filant,
Direz, chantant mes vers, en vous ésmerveillant :
Ronsard me célébroit du temps que j’étois belle.
Lors vous n’aurez servante oyant telle nouvelle,
Désjà sous le labeur à demi sommeillant,
Qui au bruit de mon nom ne s’aille résveillant,
Bénissant vostre nom de louange immortelle.
Je seray sous la terre et fantôme sans os :
Par les ombres myrteux je prendray mon repos :
Vous serez au foyer une vieille accroupie,
Regrettant mon amour et vostre fier désdain.
Vivez, si m’en croyez, n’attendez à demain :
Cueillez dès aujourd’huy les roses de la vie.
Now, compare the variation by Yeats:
When you are old and gray and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book
And slowly read and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep.
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.
And bending down beside the glowing bars
Murmur, a little sad, 'From us fled Love.
He paced upon the mountains far above,
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.'
This is not one of Yeats's finest poems. Note also that, as usual, he leaves the physical, the sexual, behind in pursuit of disembodied glory. Still, something in the original obviously started him areflectin' and drove him to weave this variation on a theme. Such is the way with many poems. Such variations, while forged often in love for the original, are not translations - they are related by blood or marriage, but fall outside the immediate family.
Compare, to see the significance of such claims, Anthony Weir's translation of Ronsard's sonnet, from his book of translations entitled Tide and Undertow [1975]:
When you are very old, at evening, by the fire,
spinning wool by candlelight and winding it in skeins,
you will say in wonderment as you recite my lines:
“Ronsard admired me in the days when I was fair.”
Then not one of your servants dozing gently there
hearing my name’s cadence break through your low repines
but will start into wakefulness out of her dreams
and bless your name — immortalised by my desire.
I’ll be underneath the ground, and a boneless shade
taking my long rest in the scented myrtle-glade,
and you’ll be an old woman, nodding towards life’s close,
regretting my love, and regretting your disdain.
Heed me, and live for now: this time won’t come again.
Come, pluck now — today — life’s so quickly-fading rose.
Not all is perfect here - I don't know that I like the dashes in the final line. And is Ronsard's rose 'quickly fading'? Whatever this version's faults, and I shall not pause to find any more, this remains an attempt at a proper translation by a poet. To my mind Ezra Pound was the greatest practitioner of this art in the twentieth century.
How to finish?
Learn how to pronounce the original, while accumulating different translations and versions in, if possible, bilingual texts. Moreover, while there will never be a 'definitive' edition, objective criteria do exist for discerning the elect. What's more, there are always open questions with regard to form and syntax. [Can one keep the rhythmic punch of Dante's Italian while rendering a good, English terza rima? What is the significance - theological, philosophical - of Dante's invention?] Keep 'em in mind, revolve 'em from time to time, and see where they lead. Finally, whatever you read, read it with passion and love - this love will leave you ever unsatisfied with any translation. You will desire the original, and translators will become fellow travelers and helpers along the way. Why o why would one read, say, Dante, or Celan, or Ronsard, and not desire the original? Why, my only friends, why take the easy road?
After all, every encounter with a new artist requires us to learn anew how to read, how to listen. This is true even - perhaps especially - if they write in our 'native' language. Thus, reading any work well takes time, discipline, desire, love - love more than all and any. Without love, you will rush; without love, you will never see the matter and the mirth in the language; without love, you will waste your time in trying to save it. If it takes ten years to read a work you love, then so be it. Let me say again for all who come near - in this as in all things, it's all about love, and love is a matter of labor through time.
Peace out.