Wislawa Szymborska

Over at Paper Cuts, Barry Gewen's post 'A Poem for the Pentagon' reminded me of one of my favorite poets, Wislawa Szymborska.

He mentions comparing notes with a friend, and finding they both loved Szymborska's work. I'm not going to go into his comment about contemporary poetry in general, because entire books could be written defending or criticizing his statement, and I want to focus on Szymborska.

It was interesting to me that she was the poet that came up with the conversation, because the same thing has happened to me several times. I am an inveterate bookshelf examiner, when I go somewhere with a bookshelf, I will look to see what is on it. One or another of Szymborska's books appeared surprisingly frequently on my friends shelves. This is hardly scientific evidence of her popularity, but I think among the group of people likely to read poetry, her popularity is pretty real. I've had great conversations with a number of my friends about our fondness for Szymborska's work. Even more surprising to me was the number of people I know who all independently acquired a love not only of her poetry, but also of her truly marvelous collection of short essays Nonrequired Reading. At the same time, I was speaking to a Polish woman who's mother taught Polish Literature in Poland, and she was quite surprised at my fondness for Szymborska. Not because she didn't like her, but because she didn't expect Americans to like her. This was partly from having seen the typical American lack of interest in writing from other countries.

Somehow or other, I have ended up with a bookshelf full of Polish poets, at present the collections outnumber the American poetry books on my shelf. This is partly because I have so many books by Zbigniew Herbert. Still, it's a lot. Polish poets were one of my earliest claims to reading things that weren't originally written in English. While Herbert is my hands down favorite, I think that if I were to recommend any one poet as an introduction to the beauty of Polish poetry, it would probably be Szymborska. Further, in Polish poetry we seem to be blessed with some particularly excellent translators. Even the much criticized Alissa Valles translation of Herbert's poems still allows the beauty of his poetry to really shine. I quite like the fact too that with these poets, from collection to collection they've been translated by one or the other of this small group of excellent translators. Reading the different translators work gives a great opportunity for those of us who don't read Polish, to try to observe where the difference between the poets and the different translators are.

Translation Revisited

I mentioned Daniel Hahn's translation blog in an earlier post. I sent him some questions about translation, and he has thoughtfully answered my, and some other readers', questions in his most recent post.

Translation

Today, I spotted this blog post by Lindesay Irvine over at the Guardian, on translation. He asks the excellent question "Can you even remember the name of the translator of the last foreign language book you read?" Now, I couldn't do so, but I knew where to check, and it wasn't by finding the book and looking it up. I keep a list. So I looked it up, and felt silly because I should have remembered it. It was Robert Haas, who worked with Czeslaw Milosz to translate Milosz' Treatise on Poetry which is an excellent poem in itself. I may not remember the name of every translator I read, but I do try to keep track of them, and I particularly try to remember when I find a translator who's taste seems to run with mine. For example, I have read a number of works translated from Italian by William Weaver. Now, if I see that he has translated something, it becomes a point in that works favor. I don't actively seek out his translations, but if I'm trying to decide on a book, and it has been translated by him, that's a point in its favor.

I mentioned in my last post my desire to read more works from different countries, and originally written in different languages. This necessitates reading works in translation, something which seems to be a difficult subject for many people.

I suppose there is a sense that there is something dishonest about reading work in translation, because it's not quite the original. Certainly it's not quite the original, but that doesn't mean it's not worth reading. I am fluent in English, and can muddle my way through a newspaper in French, usually pulling enough detail to follow what's being said, I also studied Latin and Ancient Greek in college, and could at the time read them well enough to explore works in the original, albeit slowly, with a dictionary, a grammar book, and a good commentary. However, I have to accept that there are many other languages out there, in which important writing appears, that I will not be able to learn. I studied just enough Sanskrit to get a sense of the unbelievable elegance of that language,and I've seen Beowulf performed in the original language (with superscript translations so that I could follow the story).

All of this has made me very aware of what we miss in translation. English is a wonderful language, but it's not the only one. Each language has its strengths and its weaknesses, and it's almost untranslatable words and concepts. Some, like Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit, have very different types of sentence structure, because the words tell you how they relate to each other. In English we rely largely on the order of the words to structure our sentences. This isn't the case in all other languages. When I first picked up Latin the decreased importance of word order on the direct meaning of a sentence was an incredibly alien concept to me. The ability to use a more flexible word order to create stress and nuance remains one of the most beautiful things about that language. It can make proper translation difficult, especially of poetry. There are levels of symmetry and interconnectedness that are very difficult to replicate in English. But that's not to say one shouldn't try.

Even if you can't read Greek, Homer is still a worthwhile read. The poet Catullus can seem more familiar than many of today's academic poets. Of course, when translated badly, Homer can be one of the most boring and unpleasant experiences available to a reader, and Victorians were so uncomfortable with Catullus, that they basically translated him out of his own work. Heck, if Catullus was reading his poetry aloud on CD, it would have one of those big scary 'M's on it, warning parents that he was only for mature audiences. That would probably boost his sales.

I would love to speak about translation of contemporary works, but I've never tried that, so I can only show the conclusions about translation that my slight familiarity with ancient works has given me.

First, translating is hard work. It's a lot harder than simply being able to read and appreciate the other language. There are many tough questions to ask oneself. I would try to frame them myself, but fortunately, Lindesay Irvine's blog post at the Guardian gives me a little help. He links to Booktrust Translated Fiction, where translator Daniel Hahn is blogging the process of his latest translation. Daniel Hahn has a great statement on the big questions a translator needs to consider.

"And there are more macro-scale linguistic issues too, broad questions of tone, of cadence, of how the sentences read in English, how the whole things will be made to feel like a piece of writing in English – and yet still attached to its former self in Portuguese – and not some odd hybrid… Getting that quite right is always tricky (and particularly hard to define and describe), always a worry and potentially a problem. On the whole I find Agualusa’s sentences sit very well in English, but is that because I’m venturing too far away from the original cadences, and creating a piece of English writing no longer properly moored to its original?"

That gives you a taste, but go read the rest of it.

Second, translations are important, and can be beautiful. I like reading in translation, even as I long to be able to read the original.

Third, translations are alive. What do I mean by this? Well, it's the curse of the Victorians for those who study antiquity. Victorian language, to us, typically seems old-fashioned, and most of these old English translators of the classics translated them into even more archaic speech, so one has Romans and Greeks using 'Thee' and 'Thou' and other bits of silly Arthurian language. Maybe this was okay for them, they liked it, but to modern readers it feels stilted, and unnecessarily so.

The great Classic writers weren't writing in archaic English, they were writing in what was for them, very modern Latin or Greek. Just like Shakespeare did for English, many of them coined fresh new words. As a result, the older the translation, by and large, the less useful it is for a modern audience. Alexander Pope's translations of Homer are of far more use now to those studying Pope than those who wish to be familiar with Homer. What this means, for me, is that there is a constant market for more translators, and for updated translations. Dorothy Sayers wrote great detective stories, and made important contributions to the scholarship of Dante, but I don't think that her translations of his work are the best option for a contemporary audience. Certainly, when I decided to read Dante, and consulted a former professor of mine for a recommendation, I was told to go with Mark Musa. It was a good choice, and I recommend his editions.

Fourth, their are many different ways to translate the same work. From Classics, I've seen what I would call two major schools, literal translation, and poetic translation. This represents the constant struggle between translating every word, and attempting to capture the 'feel' of the original. Ideally, there should be some balance between the two, but it can be a good idea to determine which end of the pendulum you put more priority on, and to look for translators who agree with you.

Now, the problem with these ideas of mine is that they come from probably the only type of literature where many classic works have multiple translations some contemporaneous, and some not. Homer is the king of that hill, because he's so important, but even many lesser known classical authors have two or three translations available. The more recent a work is, the greater the possibility that there will be only one translation available.

What this means though, is that when one finds a work in translation that really resonates, not only might you want to read more by that author, but you should look at the translator. I mentioned William Weaver for me, but he's a really easy one, I would say that a sizable percentage of the works translated from Italian and available in book stores, have been translated by him. I wouldn't say most, but certainly many. Apparently many people agree with me about the quality of his work.

So there's my two cents on the value of translation (HIGH). Any particular favorite works in translation that you want to share with me? or countries from which you like to read translations?