That was rude!
     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.

     Below I said that I was 'wantonly Platonic', but that is not really accurate now is it?  No, for all that I love Plato - and I do love the old bastard - in matters formal and aesthetic I tend to the Thomist, perhaps even Aristotelian simply put, which would, as all the kids will tell you, lead me to Duns Scotus for one.  Whatever - I still tend to think of art as a virtue of the practical intellect ordered to the good of the thing made, which near as I can tell is Thomist, while my search for each poem's thisness would seem vaguely Scotist. 
     Then too I don't really think there is such a thing as Platonism...
     So much for labels as a means to greater understanding...
     In any case, I don't imagine a realm of forms 'out there' somewhere to which the finished work more or less corresponds.  No no, dear reader - 'form' is inherent in the matter itself.  Without form, matter would be incoherent and thus, in a way, nonexistent.  [That's not precise.  Sue me.]  Thus, a poem 'wants to be' something - a sonnet, say, or a form yet to be found.  The poet's job being complex, just one part is finding that form in the matter - words, words my only friends.  Don't ram a sonnet into a ballade, as I said earlier.  Don't take a new form and try to make it ring with those changes found only in a blank verse meditation.  Now, I said the form was found - that's as much as to say that it's invented, don't you know - invenio, anyone?  Invent, find, the new form; invest the seemingly old form with new energy because the poem at hand demands it; in short, poet, do your job.
     How's that for bold, precise, innovative tuition?
     Peace out.

     I find this most helpful, and commend it to all.  Allow me to quote at length:

The Lord’s Prayer is simply the rest of the Catechism in prayer form. Let me demonstrate:

1st petition: Our Father who art in heaven
1st commandment: I am the Lord your God

2nd pet: Hallowed be Thy name
2nd comm: Do not misuse the name of the Lord your God

3rd pet: Thy kingdom come
3rd comm: Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy

4th pet: Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven
4th-10th comm: Love your neighbour as yourself

5th pet: Give us this day our daily bread
1st article: I believe in God … the maker of heaven & earth

6th pet: And forgive us our trespasses…
2nd art: And in Jesus Christ … was crucified, died … and rose again

7th pet: And lead us not into temptation but deliver…
3rd art: And in the Holy Spirit.

[Thanks to John H.]

     I give you Nabokov's Verses and Versions:  Three Centuries of Russian Poetry.  The translations face their Russian originals, which is all too rare these days.  If you go to this here page, you can find transliterations of all the poems in the book, along with the best, easiest to use guide to the transliteration itself that that I've found.  I plan to use it to free myself, finally, of the need for such transliteration.  I find it a hinderance in Greek - why should Russian be any different?  I would, in a perfect world, simply set about the formal study of Russian, in addition to a few other languages.  The world, alas and alack, ain't perfect, and this will have to suffice for the time being.

     On second thought, I love Bach more.  Just listen to his 'Christmas Oratorio'; consider his Sonatas and Paritas for Violin; he's just the finest.  Unless Mozart is, of course...

     Always loved Bach and Mozart.  Now, Mozart has edged out Bach as my favorite.  Don't know why.  Need I a reason?  Bach is yet the greatest theologian ever.  I just find Mozart more, how to say, playful.  At least I do at the moment.  Oh, and find myself more and more in love with opera.  And, and, I have no use for this fantasia of Mozart the drunken child writing his music in a frenzy of animal instinct and autochthonous rhapsody.  Maybe it's better to say, on reflection, that the two will always pull me in different directions.  Is there any significance to that?  I don't think so. 

     The Library Thing thing has been most interesting o my brothers and sisters.  When I viddy that Author Cloud it takes me back.  Why, in my cracked gulliver I conjure the days and hours reading von Balthasar, say.  As you can see, he is among the more dominant of my fellow travellers.  It is so too true that your humble narrator spent most of his time in 2001 and 2002 reading all he could grab by the old man.  Much of my labor since has been spent unwinding me from him.  Now, dear readers, I've moved on, as the kids say, and have layed out some pretty, pretty polly in the doing o my brothers, sisters, only friends.  In other words, it's up to me to like read Anselm and Holderlin and the like and parse 'em up in my gulliver all openlike.
     In short, my only friends, I'm a different sort than I was now six to seven years ago.  Still, there's the old man, taking up room in my closet, dominating my cloud, all when I would keep on moving o my brothers and sisters.  A part of my history, I suppose you'd say all nostalgialike.  Glad it's there I am, but wouldn't want to dwell, wouldn't want to dwell...
     Peace out my droogs... 

     So, for those who might be interested, and for those authorities listening in, here you have my Library Thing profile.  [C'mon, admit it - you've been dying to know....]  I've only cataloged books I can get my hands on here in my room.  That includes the two boxes over there in the corner.  Five boxes in the closet remain untouched.  Nothing surprising, I'm sure - just some books.  To get an idea of how they're distributed so far, here's that there Author Cloud.  I can't make much of it.  In any case, there you have the sum total of my rather weird reading habits.  Oh, and don't imagine that I've read every page of every volume with care so's as to parse and examine 'em all in detail.  I read what I want from each book I have - sometimes that means I go from cover to cover.  Sometimes, it means that I leave the damn thing sitting around, certain that I'll get around to it.  Oh well.

     Jeremy offers his reading statistics for the year passing as we speak.  Since I'm trying to put off some fairly onerous tasks, and since it sounds like fun, I thought to try the same thing.  There's a wrinkle, however...or is it a spanner?  Hm.  Well, anyway, the question is, do each of Shakespeare's plays count as a 'Book', or does the big Complete Shakespeare count as one?  What of plays read in multiple versions?  For instance, I read Midsummer Night's Dream in both the big Complete Shakespeare, and in the Arden Shakespeare stand-alone with all it's lengthy introduction and critical apparatus.  Can I say that I read, therefore, two books?  Or did I read the same book twice?  Or, did I read one big book, and yet another smaller one.  
     Is that pedantic?  Does it sound like I'm just playing for time?  
     Well, being generous - to include thusly books merely skimmed, trolled for information, read and tossed aside, along with those I really liked, we get the following -

Total consumed in one way or another - 38, which breaks down like so near as I can figure,

Poetry - 10 [counting the Big Book O' Shakespeare, which would also count under 'Plays' I suppose]
Fiction - 7
Non Fiction - 21;

alls which can be broken down further it seems:

AD - 1900 - 15
1900 - present - 23.

And, yes, I own the means of production, as you would expect.

     Note:
     All figures are in 1982 valuations, and are estimates based on good faith approximations of guesses made in haste, all in an attempt to pass the time without accomplishing anything.  No representations are made with regard to, inter alia, arithmetical accuracy, memory, or anything else you may think of while reading this. 
     All reading done for professional purposes - i. e., various licenses and suchlikethatthere - is omitted in order to at least appear humane.  Please do not rely solely on these figures when making a decision regarding your own reading in the future.  Consult a reading professional to work out a plan to meet your own personal retirement and other reading goals. 
     Thanks for your time.

     So, I finally get around to that there Library Thing [which is in something called 'Beta' - not, one can hope, as in 'Betamax'], and the damn Thing is down due to network problems.  Most annoying - I have all these tasks to put off 'til tomorrow don't you know.  Dear readers out there, if you have suggestions for your humble narrator, factotum without portfolio, and all around shirker, please let me know.

Walking Just After Dark


Moon a thin crescent just above the horizon,
ragged high clouds flying fast on a wind

so cold, we walk for no reason
at all but the pleasure of walking again

beneath a sky full of stars.  The night
sky, stars, the moon and its earthshine belong

not to me nor to you, for we’ve not the wit
for such a caper.  The sky wheels on

for no reason at all but the pleasure
of he who confects it by a sheer

fiat – the night sky, stars, the moon
and its earthshine, you and I, are nothing more

than a whimsicality of fire
and dust given breath, held on a promise alone.

     I give you Paganini's 'Caprice no. 24'.  Does anyone know who the guitarist is?  She's fantastical she is.
     UPDATE:  She's one Li Jie.  According to my voluminous research, conducted in the last five minutes and involving at least a glance at some three websites, a few critics compare her unfavorably to Segovia.  That's like saying a poet ain't as good as Shakespeare - what does it really tell us?
     UPDATE TO THE UPDATE:  Okay, so there are two Li Jies out there.  Both are from China, both play guitar, but one plays, apparently, Indie Influenced pieces - don't know what to think of 'em.  Strange world, eh? 
     UPDATE TO THE UPDATE TO THE UPDATE:  Here's a later, older Classical Li Jie - such feeling in her playing...too many classical players are machines without feeling...imagine the technician who thought he'd nailed 'Blow Wind Blow' because he got all the notes right. 

     Just looking over the work written during the last twelve months.  Of my many noodlings and scribblings, I would redeem as through fire some fourteen poems, three fictions, three of them there unclassifiable Xenophonic dialogues, and five ER posts [of these, three would require some drastic editing to pass into posterity.]  Twenty-five pieces worth saving - that's not a bad haul.

     John H asks the following in response to the last post:  'Is a prose translation of the Iliad a mark of barbarism? How about Beowulf? Chaucer? Piers Plowman?'  He then offers the following conjecture:  'Perhaps this is a sign that Milton's 17th century English is slipping over the same linguistic horizon as writers of earlier forms of English'.  I'm glad he asked.
     Now, I have little time tonight, so can't offer a proper response.  That will have to wait.  I can, however, say rather laconically - I'm opposed to translations of any kind for Chaucer and Langland.  The former especially is not that difficult to get with some effort.  Moderate modernization of spelling may work for 'em - the original spelling of Chaucer's poems, however, is not usually as difficult as that of Langland and, for that matter, the Pearl poet.  In any case, those who make a modicum of effort will have that effort rewarded by a bounty of musical and, hence, intellectual complexity, and that is the greatest pleasure of all.  Besides, why would you want to spend the time reading Chaucer's works, and not take the time to learn a bit of Middle English?
     As for Beowulf, it's in a Germanic dialect closer to the roots than Middle English, with its Norman influences.  The script is also rather difficult.  So, while I would ideally like us all to learn the language, a decent translation is a good thing.  As for the translator, I find Chickering to be the best at giving a feel for the rhythm of the original.  He also offers sufficient commentary to help folks know what the hell's going on - Heaney doesn't do that.  I also find Heaney's language kind of flat.  [That bothers me, and pains me to say.  Love Sweeney Astray, for example, though I have no idea how close it is to the original.]  Anyway, a translation of Beowulf is fine, for a while.
     In short, with Beowulf we get into questions of translation in general, and the moral, aesthetic, linguistic constraints [all intertwined, of course] that govern the enterprise.  It's in this context that I would address any kind of translation of The Iliad - suffice it to say for now that, yes, a prose 'translation' would be an abomination.  To say more about that, and about translation, will require more time. 
     As for Paradise Lost, it hasn't slipped over any horizon - neither has The Canterbury Tales, for that matter - but we have.  We're lazy and ignorant and morally lax - I'm in the lot with humanity here, so no Olympian purity for me.  The difficulty in reading a work like Paradise Lost, King Lear, a sonnet by Hopkins, the lyrics of Zukofsky, or The Changing Light at Sandover, is intractable, and a feature of the enterprise itself.  All great works, of whatever vintage, offend against the kind of standard, easy to scan usage we're taught in school, and so I would submit it's just a difficult to learn how to read, for example, the finest works of Seamus Heaney as it is to master Milton.  Consider again these further examples - try reading Ciaran Carson's The Twelfth of Never, or Robert Creeley's For Love, or Berryman's Dream Songs, and tell me if you don't need considerable effort in order to learn the dialect of the work.
     This is why more and more of us avoid the effort [not that vast numbers of people have ever cared].  At the same time, those of us who went to a university especially have been conditioned to think there are certain Great Books we should at least be able to talk about - so, we look for an easy, accomodating way of getting what we think is the 'content' without having to deal with the nasty complexities of the real thing.  That's why I liken the exercise to cyber sex and other simulacra of reality.
     With that, I must close.  The pizza should arrive any minute now.  Again, John, thanks for the questions.  It's good to have to think.
     Peace out.