Why Read Literature?

The Decline of the English Department

"In this country and in England, the study of English literature began in the latter part of the 19th century as an exercise in the scientific pursuit of philological research, and those who taught it subscribed to the notion that literature was best understood as a product of language. The discipline treated the poems and narratives of a particular place, the British Isles, as evidence of how the linguistic roots of that place — Germanic, Romance, and other — conditioned what had been set before us as “masterpieces.” The twin focus, then, was on the philological nature of the enterprise and the canon of great works to be studied in their historical evolution."

The the ancillary role of literature to science goes beyond the folk tales collected by those philologists, the Brothers Grimm. For example, pick up an old burgundy copy of the Book of Knowledge (before the Internet, we had these collections of facts called encyclopedias):

Volume 4 (1957).
"Time and the Seasons"

1. The Round of the Year by Coventry Patmore
2. Days by Ralph Waldo Emerson
3. Time, You Old Gipsy Man by Ralph Hodgson
4. The Garden Year by Sara Coleridge
5. Written in March by William Wordsworth
6. Song from Pippa Passes by Robert Browning
7. Why It Was Cold in May by Henrietta Robins Eliot
8. June (from the Vision of Sir Launfal) by James Russell Lowell
9. Summer is Icumen In
10. When the Frost is on the Punkin' by James Whitcomb Riley
11. November in England by Thomas Hood
12. The First Snow-Fall by James Russell Lowell
13. The Frost by Hannah Flagg Gould

Leopardi on Boring Poets

"There is continuity of this or that pleasure, and this continuity is uniformity, and therefore it is boredom also, although its subject is pleasure. Those foolish poets who, seeing that descriptions are pleasing in poetry, have reduced poetry to continual descriptions, have taken away the pleasure, and substituted boredom for it."

Leopardi trans Nichols (Oneworld), p290

Or as Shakespeare's Hal once mused:

I know you all, and will awhile uphold
The unyoked humour of your idleness:
Yet herein will I imitate the sun,
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds
To smother up his beauty from the world,
That, when he please again to be himself,
Being wanted, he may be more wonder'd at,
By breaking through the foul and ugly mists
Of vapours that did seem to strangle him.
If all the year were playing holidays,
To sport would be as tedious as to work;
But when they seldom come, they wish'd for come,
And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents.
So, when this loose behavior I throw off
And pay the debt I never promised,
By how much better than my word I am,
By so much shall I falsify men's hopes;
And like bright metal on a sullen ground,
My reformation, glittering o'er my fault,
Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes
Than that which hath no foil to set it off.
I'll so offend, to make offence a skill;
Redeeming time when men think least I will.

"We are truly moved by the dead. We naturally, and without reasoning about it, before we reason, and in spite of reason, think them unhappy, regard them as pitiable, consider their lot a wretched one, and death a disaster." Leopardi, Oneworld Classics (trans. Nichols), p 293

"Traduttore, traditore" (translator, traitor) is an Italian saying which bemoans the uncertainty of translations. In the last two posts, I've presented criticisms of translations by Roberts Lowell and Bly. To be sure, the ideal is to read works in their original languages. Reading poetry through a translator is a perilous thing, like when King Mark sent his nephew Tristan to bring back Iseult (or Farquaad sending Shrek to bring back Fiona).

The cases of Bly and Lowell are a bit different. Bly is criticized for his inadequate poetic form, while Lowell is criticized for "improving" Leopardi's poetry with concrete details. What do I want in a translation of poetry? Well, a translation should be done by a poet who is a native speaker of the destination language and is highly fluent in the original language. The translation should not be merely literal but be sensitive to the relations of words and ideas in the destination language. I'm not a fan of prose translations, but am interested in seeing something of the poetic form of the original reproduced in translation.

Why do I read poetry in translation? I do so in order to encounter the geniuses of other cultures. I read Leopardi to get his perspective on life, living in Italy at a particular time. What I want is the human: this man who lived and died and struggled, who got some things right and other things wrong.

Do I want the translator to be invisible, transparent? No, I don't think so. Some translations I like: Marianne Moore's Fables of La Fontaine, John Ciardi's Divine Comedy, and J.G. Nichols translations of Italian poets. Each of these translators has a certain style and personality and negotiates the perils of translation with care.

Poetry in Translation: Wrestling with Another -or- an Exercise in Egotism?

The previous post highlighted translator J.G. Nichols' criticisms of fellow translator of Leopardi, Robert Lowell. Thinking about what Nichols wrote reminded me of Dana Gioia's essay on Robert Bly: "The Successful Career of Robert Bly." Here's what Gioia says about the task of translation in that essay (from Can Poetry Matter?):

"The main problem a translator of poetry faces is not in bringing across the surface sense. That task, at least in modern languages, is relatively easy. The difficulty comes in re-creating the complex design of sound and connotation that charges the original with energy. [Robert] Bly usually solved this problem by ignoring its existence. He merely provided prose translations, often curiously awkward ones, lineated as verse" (170).

And here's how Gioia describes the results of that translation:

"Concentrating almost entirely on syntax and imagery, Bly reduced the complex originals into abstract visual blueprints. In his hands, dramatically different poets like Lorca and Rilke, Montale and Machado, not only all sounded alike, they all sounded like Robert Bly, and even then not like Bly at his best" (172).

Translation could be a great opportunity for cultural exchange, for a man of one country and heritage to stretch himself by attempting the impossible task of expressing the dynamic tensions of another person's formed thought into his own native tongue. To do so, one would have to submit himself to the other person's expressed language and limit himself to recreating it as faithfully and devoutly as possible. Such a task would entail respect, that is working as if the original author could see one's translations and evaluate them. But how many translators exhibit this respect for difference, for otherness, to such a degree that they can pour all of their creativity into the task and yet also restrain the temptation to meddle.

Translation could involve the commitment to dialogue, the encounter between two parties who are different. Instead, all too often, translation is a superficial tourism. There's a place for tourism and dialogue both, I suppose, but one shouldn't confuse a border run to Taco Bell with a National Geographic expedition...

Why Prefer Translations by JG Nichols?

From the translator's note for Leopardi's Canti (republished 2008 by Oneworld Classics!):

Robert Lowell's versions are symptomatic of a general tendency. He calls them "imitations," and says that he has been "reckless with literal meaning, and labored to get the tone." Why not? This is one method, a time honored one in fact, of transferring a foreign poem into English, and Lowell's candor is welcome. What I am particularly concerned with here is the precise way in which he is "reckless" when it comes to Leopardi. Here are a few lines of 'The Villlage Saturday' in the original and in my translation:

I fanciulli gridando
su la piazzuola in frotta,
e qua e là saltando,
fanno un lieto romore...
[24-7]

The small boys crowd and shout
Throughout the tiny square,
They crowd and leap about,
They leap about and cheer...

I now quote Lowell's version to show the greater specificity, the concrete details, the sheer elaboration he introduces out of the blue into the simple original.

Children place their pickets
And sentinels,
And splash round and round
The village fountain.
They jump like crickets,
And make a happy sound.
["Saturday Night in the Village,' Imitations]

A Question About a Poem

In my poem "Requiem" (see Birth of a Poet) would it change the tone of the poem if it were read as a response to the end of a romance?