Hey! I wasn't the One yelling before! Maybe later!
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Hey! I wasn't the One yelling before! Maybe later!
that's true, that's why you deserve the chance to post your doozy.
I don't have to wait until Monday? I'm afraid of The Law(Scheherazade).
Well, that's probably not a bad idea. :eek: plus, maybe there are a few around here that haven't quite finished what they want to say.
So are we discussing the Paz? I'll assume so for the moment (if ktd goes ahead and posts the "doozy" while I'm writing this, then I guess we can go ahead and discuss that). It's really a beautiful little gem of a poem, and I'm interested in the fact that it's the first poem I've seen on this thread that is a translation. This brings up some very interesting questions about what the status of a translation of a poem is. The images of the poet are the same, but the sound of the poetry is obviously altered in its move to another language (is anyone here really good with Spanish and would like to comment on the differences--I can get a sense, but I don't really know the language well). I personally enjoyed the translation of this poem very much, but I wonder how much of my pleasure in the poem is attributable to the ideas the original poet contributed to it, and how much of my reaction to the poem is a result of the way the translator has worded the poem in English. In a way I suppose a translator is a bit of a poet in his own right. I think it would be phenomenally hard to translate poetry well. Here's the poem again in both languages for those who forget easily:
Between Going And Staying
Octavio Paz
Between going and staying the day wavers,
in love with its own transparency.
The circular afternoon is now a bay
where the world in stillness rocks.
All is visible and all elusive,
all is near and can't be touched.
Paper, book, pencil, glass,
rest in the shade of their names.
Time throbbing in my temples repeats
the same unchanging syllable of blood.
The light turns the indifferent wall
into a ghostly theater of reflections.
I find myself in the middle of an eye,
watching myself in its blank stare.
The moment scatters. Motionless,
I stay and go: I am a pause.
Entre irse y quedarse
Entre irse y quedarse duda el día,
enamorado de su transparencia.
La tarde circular es ya bahía:
en su quieto vaivén se mece el mundo.
Todo es visible y todo es elusivo,
todo está cerca y todo es intocable.
Los papeles, el libro, el vaso, el lápiz
reposan a la sombra de sus nombres.
Latir del tiempo que en mi sien repite
la misma terca sílaba de sangre.
La luz hace del muro indiferente
un espectral teatro de reflejos.
En el centro de un ojo me descubro;
no me mira, me miro en su mirada.
Se disipa el instante. Sin moverme,
yo me quedo y me voy: soy una pausa.
One question on translation, Petrarch. Would certain cultural resonances, sort of what we argued over above, be lost in translation? I should say, could. How does a translator handle that?Quote:
Originally Posted by Petrarch's Love
I was actually ready to dive into riesa's selection, but I've had such a hard day at work today, I've just been too tired this evening. Although I can't say I understand it, I have jotted down some thoughts. I don't wish to ignore it or pass it by.
That's an interesting suggestion. It's true that your pulse throbs when you have a headache. It alters the way I had been perceiving the mood of the poem to think of the writer as having a headache. I had been thinking of it as one of those exceedingly still and tranquil moments when everything is so silent that you're intensely aware of the beat of your own pulse, and you feel you can almost hear your heartbeat.Quote:
"Time throbbing in my temples repeats
the same unchanging syllable of blood."
Could this be a headache? When I have a headache I feel the pulse on my temples clearly, like a clock ticking. Am I way off target?
By the way, for the spanish speakers out there, I was wondering if "sien" actually means "temple" or if the translator is taking liberties? Similar words in French, "sein" and Italian "seno" mean chest or breast, so I was wondering if he was actually referring to a heartbeat.
Thats true, Petrach. Translations, for some reason, always brings me back to Rainer Rilke and the poem 'The Panther.' If you read the translations by Stephen Mitchell and Edward Snow--the two translations are comparatively different from each other on word choices and syntax; and that does, to the reader, give each translation a different 'sense.' So I would guess a large part of how we would react to a translated poem is dependent on the translation. How true to the original is this translation--whose to know?Quote:
I personally enjoyed the translation of this poem very much, but I wonder how much of my pleasure in the poem is attributable to the ideas the original poet contributed to it, and how much of my reaction to the poem is a result of the way the translator has worded the poem in English.
Certainly, as you say, cultural resonances are often lost in translation. Every language has words with a variety of meanings and feelings attached to them that no dictionary can adequately explain, and which have no real correspondence in another language. That is, after all why we use certain foreign expressions even when speaking English, because there's just no other way to express that je ne sais quoi. ;) And as we've just seen, it's sometimes hard enough to reconcile different cultural/individual perceptions of words within one's native language. I think (after dealing with the change in actual musical sound of the language) it must be one of the hardest jobs of the translator to keep all the connotions of those words alive in a foreign tongue, especially when poets have often chosen that word with extreeme care to convey a particular meaning.Quote:
One question on translation, Petrarch. Would certain cultural resonances, sort of what we argued over above, be lost in translation? I should say, could. How does a translator handle that?
I suppose there are different attempts to deal with this. Some end up just giving a literal translation and losing the prior feeling of the word. Some translators try to find the closest colloquial equivilent to the word in their own language. Some end up transplanting the poem into their own culture by ignoring the original cultural context, but trying to find the thing that feels most similar in their culture. Of course there are certain words that people generally just don't even try to translate (my favorite of these is "sprezzatura" from the Italian renaissance--it's impossible to define but it basically means you do everything well seemingly effortlessly and applies to the "Renaissance man"--like Leonardo).
I love that word too. I wish I could find more times to use it. I would love to stick it in a technical report one day and watch some of the reactons. :D You've probably never read technical reports, but it just wouldn't go. :lol:Quote:
Originally Posted by Petrarch's Love
Notes from the translator, Eliot Weinberger: "twenty years ago, my own collaboration with Paz began....that poet, publisher, and translator have continued to work together all these years is the result of a strange calmness-however full of debate-that has marked what are often rancorous relationships." Which leads me to believe that he might actually have Paz' approval on his translations.
Some background on Paz:
He spent time in New York and San Francisco, taught at Cambirge, University of Texas, and Harvard.
He started publishing poetry at seventeen, was friends with Andre Breton, participated in Surrealist activities, published an anthology of Mexican poetry, (the English version was translated by Samuel Beckett) and was the Mexican Ambassador to India, which led him to immerse himself in Indian art and philosophy.
"Poetry makes things more transparent and clearer and teaches us to respect men and nature," Paz says.
more about Paz
First Wallace Stevens turns out to have been not just an insurance man, but the company head, now we find that Paz was the Mexican Ambassador to India. For some reason, I love this. I suppose its the assault on the unworldly romantic poet stereotype.
This seems to be about twilight. The first line repeats the title and makes it clear it refers to dusk - as a sort of undecidable between day and night. The rest of the poem is a description or elucidation of this.Quote:
Originally Posted by Paz
A circle becoming a semi-circle? And if so, why or how?Quote:
Originally Posted by Paz
Apparently paradoxical. Still, stillness could refer to perpetuity. Also to the constantly circling earth on which the poet, seemingly impossibly, is experiencing a moment of stillness.Quote:
Originally Posted by Paz
As an aside, this reminds me a lot of Villon:Quote:
Originally Posted by Paz
'In my own country I am in a far off land...
...when I lie down I have a great fear of falling'
But it's not the same; there isn't the same existential unease. This is, I think, the beginning of Paz describing the sort of hallucinatory quality that twilight gives the world - hallucinatory not in the sense of distorting or adding anything, but making one intensely aware of the inherent strangeness of observable phenomena. The light is softer, observation is easier and, at the end of the day, we become less active and prepare for rest. Things fill out their identities and we have a chance to contemplate them. They become both more 'visible' and, in being seen as objects of contemplation rather than utility, more 'elusive' to the understanding. 'Can't be touched'? I'm skeptical. I think he doesn't want to touch them because it's more pleasurable just to look at them, these objects he has been using throughout the day:
And theyQuote:
Originally Posted by Paz
A lovely line, but I'm not sure I understand it. Perhaps it's that the names give a stability to matter that would otherwise be unstable. ? Dunno.Quote:
Originally Posted by Paz
Doesn't sound like a headache to me. Again, I think it's about being at rest. Sitting quietly at the end of the day, one notices tiny motions such as one's own pulse in certain parts of the body. 'Syllable of blood' - a beat, something that might almost have a sound, the length of one syllable.Quote:
Originally Posted by Paz
Again, twilight, the low sun milkily reflected on the wall.Quote:
Originally Posted by Paz
Both in the eye and watching oneself from it - he's maybe the reflection of himself in the retina, watching himself in a moment of reflection. Or he looks into an eye and sees finds himself there - reflected. Or the eye is actually the window of his room.Quote:
Originally Posted by Paz
The moment scatters - perhaps night falls, taking away the clarity of twilight, even taking away the names of the things in that they become no longer visible. The poet is 'Motionless', but stays and goes - probably because he also disappears in the dark. He is a pause - he identifies himself with the still moment he's been describing, in which he has had an intense sense of the world and himself in it. It's a poet's moment, a moment of both clarity and strangeness and he is a poet. When the moment is gone, so is he. The moment, the pause, is him.Quote:
Originally Posted by Paz
blp--I agree, I definately picture the poem at that sunset/twilight time. Especially the description of "all visible and elusive" conjures up that sort of lighting. I picture him overlooking the ocean for some reason (maybe the use of the word "bay" in the third line gave me that image, or maybe that's just the place where I've most often had similar moments).Quote:
This seems to be about twilight. The first line repeats the title and makes it clear it refers to dusk - as a sort of undecidable between day and night.
I thought this was another reference to the time of day. Again, I'm picturing the ocean (though it works anywhere, it's just easiest for me to envision clearly on the water). If you picture that you're in the middle of the ocean, or any other flat place where you can see the horizon easily, at noon or early afternoon the sun is going to be shinning all around and the horizon will be bright around you in a circle. Toward sunset and twilight, the sun has descended to one point in the west, and is only really illuminating a portion of the horizon in a semi-circle or bay shape. That's what I think the line refers to anyway. Could be wrong.Quote:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Paz
The circular afternoon is now a bay
A circle becoming a semi-circle? And if so, why or how?
Stillness can also refer to silence, and I think that is the primary meaning here, especially since the Spanish reads "quieto" which I'll assume is akin to the English quiet. Still (hey, yet another way to use this word!), the meaning of "stillness" as something not moving works very nicely in the context of a poem that ends "soy una pausa," as does your gloss of stillness as "perpetuity." I wonder if the Spanish "quieto" has both connotations of non movement and non sound just as the English "still" does?Quote:
Originally Posted by Paz
where the world in stillness rocks.
Apparently paradoxical. Still, stillness could refer to perpetuity. Also to the constantly circling earth on which the poet, seemingly impossibly, is experiencing a moment of stillness.
Riesa--Thanks for the background material. It's interesting that the translator had such a close collaboration with the poet. I think it shows in this being a remarkably good translation (at least in my opinion). I wonder though, why Paz himself wouldn't have done the translations. His English must have been pretty good if he taught at Cambridge, Harvard and U of T. I suppose it takes a real facility in both languages--knowledge of cultural resonances of language etc.--to be an effective translator, and maybe he didn't feel he had that?Quote:
Notes from the translator, Eliot Weinberger: "twenty years ago, my own collaboration with Paz began....that poet, publisher, and translator have continued to work together all these years is the result of a strange calmness-however full of debate-that has marked what are often rancorous relationships." Which leads me to believe that he might actually have Paz' approval on his translations.
Oh, you should just slip it in casually in the middle of one of your reports and then when they ask about it just act suprised that they don't recognize this obvious and simple technical term. :D You could say something like "What, I thought everyone knew about the sprezzatura principle of engineering! It's pretty fundamental isn't it?" and they'll be too embarassed thinking they should know all about it to ask you to elaborate. I'm sure it could be carried off with the right amount of sprezzatura. ;) I had a friend once who used to do this all the time with very impressive sounding words she made up. She was very disappointed to run into me, because I regularly make lists of unfamiliar words I run into and look them up in the OED every day, so I caught her at it early on. :lol:Quote:
I love that word too. I wish I could find more times to use it. I would love to stick it in a technical report one day and watch some of the reactons. You've probably never read technical reports, but it just wouldn't go.
I picture it the same way and I do think it's the 'bay' reference, but it's a funny effect since that seems to be a metaphor.Quote:
Originally Posted by Petrarch's Love