Royal baby...

In the face of this, do I really give a rat's ass about the birth of a royal baby?

Some Rilke translation: its scope and limits

 

"E pero' sappia ciascuno che nulla cosa per legame musaico armonizzata si puo' de la sua loquela in altra transmutare sanza rompere tutta sua dolcezza e armonia" (Dante)


Curtis Faville has got me wondering lately about translation, too. In response to the opening passage from Rilke's "Seventh Elegy" (translated by Edward Snow) that I'd recently posted he'd referred to what he suspects is perhaps the inscrutability of every poem, it's "original grace". Does translation, even the very best, have a chance? To see for myself what had been lost in translation I thought I'd have a go at the first few sections of "The Seventh Elegy" (relying on a very elementary knowledge of German and my old Langenscheidt dictionary). First the German text, then Snow's translation, then mine. I'll end with a few brief comments not just on the quality of Snow's work but, more generally, on the nature of the change I've detected (or perhaps caused) in the transformation of Rilke's poem into a foreign medium.
________________________


Werbung nicht mehr, nicht Werbung, entwachsene Stimme,
sei deines Schreies Natur; zwar schrieest du rein wie der Vogel,
wenn ihn die Jahreszeit aufhebt, die steigende, beinah vergessend,
daß er ein kümmerndes Tier und nicht nur ein einzelnes Herz sei,
das sie ins Heitere wirft, in die innigen Himmel. Wie er, so
würbest du wohl, nicht minder , daß, noch unsichtbar,
dich die Freundin erführ, die stille, in der eine Antwort
langsam erwacht und über dem Hören sich anwärmt,
deinem erkühnten Gefühl die erglühte Gefühlin.

O und der Frühling begriffe , da ist keine Stelle,
die nicht trüge den Ton der Verkündigung. Erst jenen kleinen
fragenden Auflaut, den, mit steigernder Stille,
weithin umschweigt ein reiner bejahender Tag.
Dann die Stufen hinan, Ruf-Stufen hinan, zum geträumten
Tempel der Zukunft ; dann den Triller, Fontäne,
die zu dem drängenden Strahl schon das Fallen zuvornimmt
im versprechlichen Spiel .... Und vor sich, den Sommer.

Nicht nur die Morgen alle des Sommers , nicht nur
wie sie sich wandeln in Tag und strahlen vor Anfang.
Nicht nur die Tage, die zart sind um Blumen, und oben,
um die gestalteten Bäume, stark und gewaltig.
Nicht nur die Andacht dieser entfalteten Kräfte,
nicht nur die Wege, nicht nur die Wiesen im Abend,
nicht nur, nach spätem Gewitter, das atmende Klarsein,
nicht nur der nahende Schlaf und ein Ahnen, abends ...
sondern die Nächte! Sondern die hohen, des Sommers,
Nächte, sondern die Sterne, die Sterne der Erde.
O einst tot sein und sie wissen unendlich,
alle die Sterne: denn wie, wie, wie sie vergessen!
__________________

No longer, voice. No longer let wooing send forth your cry:
you're past that. Even though your cry would be clear as a bird's
when first Spring bears him aloft, almost forgetting
that he's a cautious creature and not an unsheathed heart
being flung into brightness, into passionate skies.
Like him, will all his art, you'd also woo--: invisibly,
so that some silent mate might learn of you, and,
as she listened, a reply would slowly wake and grow warm--
the kindled complement of your own ardent feeling.

O and Spring would understand--, annunciation
would echo everywhere. First those small
questioning notes, which a clear, confident day
would surround with heightening silence.
Then up the calls, up that long flight of steps to the dreamt-of
temple of the future--; then the trill, that fountain,
whose urgent jet is teased by its falling
where promise is foreplay...And on ahead, the summer.

Not only all of summer's dawns--, not only
how they change into day and gleam with genesis.
Not only the days, so tender around flowers, and above,
in the patterned treetops, so forceful and strong.
Not only the calm reverence in these outspread powers,
not only the paths, the meadows as evening deepens,
not only, after late thunderstorms, the pulsing clarity,
not only the onset of sleep and, near dusk, a premonition...
But the nights! Those towering summer
nights! And the stars, the stars of the earth!
O to be dead and to know them endlessly,
all the stars: for how, how, how to forget them!
                                                              (trans. Edward Snow)
_________________________________


Don't let wooing (never again wooing!) be the form of your cry,
nor ever its originating voice;
indeed, you'd cry pure as the bird
when the season carries him up, up, almost forgetting
that he's a grieving creature and not a solitary heart
cast into very serenity, into heaven's depths. Like him,
you would likewise woo--yes, invisible still,
a young girl would take to the silent you, a reply
slowly awakening and warming to your voice--
her bright feelings venturing your own.

And yes Spring knows it, too--there's no place
where its musical announcement could ever deceive. First
that small inquiring note which, with growing stillness,
a pure affirming day deeply embraces.
Then up ascending steps, the cry-steps, all the way to
the dreamer's temple of tomorrow--: then the trill,
the fountain whose hurrying flash the fall first foresees
in its promised play...And then promised summer.

Not just summer mornings--, not just
how they become day-transformed and emit beginnings.
Not just days sweet on flowers, and overhead,
round patterned tree-blossoms, thick and powerful.
Not only the devotion of these spreading powers,
nor even the paths or evening meadows,
nor the breathing clarity of a late thunderstorm,
nor the nearing dream and its foreboding,  in late evening...
but also nights! The height of summer nights,
and the stars, stars of earth.
Yes, to be dead and know them for ever, the stars:
and how, how would I ever forget them!
                                                     (trans. Conrad DiDiodato)
________________________________

Firstly, in Strophe 1 the translator of the original text (Edward Snow) has fractured a complete opening statement (expressed as a wish), leaving the reader with a succession of competing grammatical constructions where Rilke intended only one: as a result the integrity of "Werbung" (wooing), indicated by position and emphasis through repetition, has been broken. There's nothing in the opening lines to accommodate Snow's "you're past that". The reader is now bound to be distracted by imminent 'bird flight' when it's "Werbung" (speaker's anguished wooing) Rilke gives primacy to. Rilke's masterfully juxtaposed the song-bird's cry to a mate's uncertain reply. It is venturesome at best, a case of the invisible wanting badly to take physical shape in the anticipated other;

secondly, tampering too loosely with Rilke's own syntax--which Snow has done a second time (at "Even though your cry...") by substituting a 'fragment' for what is a complete thought in the original-- results in a perhaps too 'romanticized' view of the lyricist's anguished voice desperately trying for release from the bonds of his earthly misery. Precisely that troubling sense of arrested flight needs to be kept and can't be in translation that doesn't respect the form of the original. The bird of poetry simply rises too freely, too untroubled by the causes of the anguished voice;

thirdly, Snow's translation has left us (for the reasons above-stated) with a Rilke the Romantic rather than the more properly Modernist figure that he really is. Heidegger (in "What Are Poets For?")has aptly called Rilke the poet who's given us poetic song that hovers (like the bird's flight and song) over the world's true "destitute land." And that sense is precisely missing in Snow's translation;

fourthly, in Strophe 2 the promise of reply has properly been transmogrified into a uncertain "inquiring" sort of dream-state, and nothing more. "Fragenden" is Rilke's own term. The dream (more certainly the dreamer in bird-song) is called a "temple of tomorrow" (Tempel der Zukunft). The metaphor is inventive and instructive. The long winding steps to the temple opening is reminiscent of Kafka's The Castle; the poem (to this point) is every bit as subtly phantasmagorical, every bit as interminably expectant. Here Snow seems to be more at home in the fragment sentences and remains pretty faithful to Rilke's own language patterning, perhaps sensing like the poet just how "out of joint" is a solitary heart's springtime; and

fifthly, Strophe 3 almost stutters over any intended Romantic (Shelleyan) notion of unity in song. I believe Rilke has left the reader in the end with the sole consolation of sharp illuminations of star-light, "in late evening". Song seems to tire the ear in its repetitiveness just as starry nights bedazzle the eye. Rilke's "Elegy" passages end in twilight where stars (those unforgettable stars) serve as one more distraction from the state of every "grieving creature" and are literally something to die for. One is also reminded of that other sorrowful lover of stars, van Gogh. Snow fails precisely because he gives the poetic heart the most brilliantly imaginative language possible: because he's really never properly registered the troubled nature of all spring "wooing" and failed to take Rilke's poem to its final resting-place, somewhere over the world's true "destitute land".

Artword Artbar launch of James Deahl's In A Springtime Instant: Selected Poems of Milton Acorn

 

I was exceedingly happy to have been asked to be one of the reader's at yesterday's Artword book launch of James Deahl's Milton Acorn: In A Springtime Instant and Michael Mirolla's The House on 14th Avenue. The Artword Artbar in Hamilton, ON is (and always will be) the favourite venue for poetry happenings like this. James Deahl was a gracious host who introduced speakers, read from his edited Acorn work and provided us with many interesting poetico-biographical details of Canada's great People's Poet. Michael Mirolla, distinguished publisher of Guernica Press in Toronto, chose Hamilton as the first of three places to launch his new collection of verses.

 Readers were each asked to pick two poems of Acorn's and two of their own. Below are the pieces I chose, pairing Acorn's worship and moon poems (the first two below) with my own:

"What I Know of God"

What I know of God is this:
That He has hands, for He touches me.
I can testify to nothing else;
Living among many unseen beings
Like the whippoorwill I'm constantly hearing
But was pointed out to me just once.

Last of our hopes when all hope's past
God, never let me call on Thee
Distracting myself from a last chance
Which goes just as quick as it comes;
And I have doubts of Your omnipotence.
All I ask is... Keep on existing
Keeping Your hands. Continue to touch me.

"Live with Me on Earth under the Invisible Daylight Moon"

Live with me on Earth among red berries and the bluebirds

And leafy young twigs whispering

Within such little spaces, between such floors of green, such

     figures in the clouds

That two of us could fill our lives with delicate wanting:

Where stars past the spruce copse mingle with fireflies

Or the dayscape flings a thousand tones of light back at the

     sun—

Be any one of the colours of an Earth lover;

Walk with me and sometimes cover your shadow with mine.

____________________________

HYMN

 

Lord, rove with me through chancy days

Where’er You go the pampas waist-high rise,

and souls  kick hard as the tree-reft jays

Crocus God! forgive me what I’ve been,

seeming witless, tossed in fields of delice—

where hearts are bad, & the grounds green

But that’s why night’s a Dawn in disguise,

why You are praised, argent-bright,

seized spiraling  in autumn’s glaucous skies

LA LUNA NON È SIMPATICA

A shimmer in eel grass is

all you really are—
  September freak!

                                    See

the toothy eye

look back at me and
  how she snorts and trails
day
after wearying day: see
the long leggy drag
  of hers

She’s eye-bald and all that,

too,
  a dragon tower rising
a good long time over this, that—
  cold magical power

Thanks to the shiny clasps

  loosed on
a full and formless night,
  anyone can see right
   thru her!

She’s a cool moon!

   Notable’s her work

(she’s the sail to my lone ship
  on a two-thirds sea!):

she’s a triple crown worn low,

  a heart-gusher, as well
as a kind of pale sun spun round &
                                          round!

 Like the steam-breathing roes,

  lying numb struck,
without quinoa, without passion,
  

I love her & run myself hard with it,

  from dale to brook
  east and west
 

By the hands I need to feel with,

  I feel my jacinth queen!
 

So lives the heart, at times

  seeing the edges
of a rotund eel-grass moon ,
 & two cruel hooks
 

 for hacking at quinoa & at me 

Picture taken by Wilma Seville

 

 

A true north strong and free poetics: Simon Fraser or UBC?

At my recent Erland Lee poetry readings two poets, James Deahl and Michael Mirolla, each made a passing reference to the University of British Columbia, Creative Writing Program begun in the mid-1960s by poet Earl Birney, the one in reference to poet Michael Bullock, a founding poet-member, and the other in praise of its effect on his own artistic development. Poet and blogger Joseph Hutchison has also related to me the enormous influence of UBC teacher George McWhirter, to whom he's dedicated the "Thread of the Real" poem in his recently published book by the same name. It did strike me as interesting (and I hardly doubt I'm the first) that here was a relatively little-heard writing school, praised enthusiastically by its students still, that had been all but eclipsed by that other West Coast Canadian literary movement associated with the very popular Simon Fraser "Black Mountain" poets & poetics and the well-known 'Tish' magazine  by which the whole movement's mostly remembered.

It struck me, indeed, that the Simon Fraser and UBC presence served as a sort of symbolic representation of the state of Canadian letters in which we still find ourselves today. A 'Modernism' of the Layton, Birney, Souster and P.K.Page variety mindful of national tradition, attuned always to modernist realities and the music of the lyrical heart, still competes against the wildly 'Postmodernist' 'Tish' poetics fostered and nurtured by Black Mountain and its stable of Objectivist authors Creeley, Olson, Duncan, Levertov, et al. Simon Fraser is credited still with being the  putative breeding ground of Canada's own avant-gardist version in the form, among others, of Frank Davey's Open Letter and the once popular Toronto Research Group of bpNichol and Steve McCaffery.   An 80's offshoot of the American L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E school has also taken root in the Kootenay School of Writing in Vancouver Canada. The results of these heady experimentalist days are too numerous to mention (the writings of poets like Christian Bök and derek beaulieu come immediately to mind). To narrow the poetic practice of an entire nation to a field of two may be a unwarranted generalization--since there are bound to be intersections between competing literary credos--but I believe it's generally true. It's so typically Canadian.

I'm inclined to believe that Canadian poets seem condemned to stand somewhere in between, regarded as either wild-eyed imitators of their American literary masters (as Robin Mathews and Keith Richardson contend) or guardians still of a distinctively Confederation poetics suited to modernist times. UBC may have been intended as a check on the poststructuralist wildfires spreading from the south but in terms of its own influence on literary development and student following it's lagged far behind Simon Fraser. Tish is, for example, a far more recognizable name than Prism though both serve as archives of their best literary efforts. I can't (as I'm often prone to do) tie the popularity of Simon Fraser to any academic advantage either since the poet-professor was to be found in both places. In any event Canada has a pretty long tradition of the student- and academic-poet coupling movements with their own signature publications, such as the McGill group in the 20s of F.R.Scott, A.J.M. Smith and their pro-Modernist The McGill Fortnightly Review.

And so here we are, again: UBC (of high Modernism) or Simon Fraser (of the poststructuralist poesies of American invaders)? There have certainly been more offshoots of the latter than the former: again, Kootenay but also the Toronto New School of Writing. I'm not aware of any UBC-style writing programs springing up anywhere in the country. The idea of a Modernist (or Formalist) revival (pace Timothy Steele) almost seems silly in our day. So where do I belong exactly? Where do any of us in Canada? I can't rightly say since so much with me has been the result  of both happenstance and a case of following my own personal instincts. Yes, Birney's writing school paradigm--and even more so Simon Fraser-- was a novelty in its day and nothing like it came to the very conservative English faculties I attended in the 70s: McMaster University was once a Baptist college! But counteracting the horiible elitism of the Brits who taught me my English (and who always made me feel stupid!) were the wonderful poststructuralist theories of Derrida and Deleuze. The Net later provided both a technology and market share I could never have enjoyed in the old 'paper' regime.

So I trace my own poetical development to an early Modernist education (largely frustrating), growing allegiances to Continental language theory and an Internet forum for both discussion and publication. I guess it's regrettable that I can't seem to favour any one literary influence. I rather envy those (like Michael Mirolla and Joseph Hutchison) who can.

Mrs. Smith: as a runner reminisces

" Ed è bel modo rettorico, quando di fuori pare la cosa disabbellirsi, e dentro veramente s'abbellisce." (Dante)

________


Well, without the name how stunningly serene and sweet both Smiths can be
(such as I've met them, drawn to their bells and heat)  

Now there's Smith I see  grown to an infinitesimally cute orchard lot, hips and boots
tramped into mud & her quietly retracting vines,

who's dove-sweet in just that way: as I'd imagined it in one corner of eye. But lovely, too,
 is Smith the portrait and any of her poetical breeds, drawn from brow

to her elegant chin. Again, a lumbering sort of road ahead and she were mated, to me,
as the portrait of any sweetly doughty matron can certainly be--

I'd say, in fact, the Smith I see and that other's sweet doughty pic really can be the same
to the runner who dreams such disparities as these,

but primarily that between a Lady and some imagined mud on the road ahead
_____________________


*Poem inspired by a portrait of Mrs. E.D.Smith which hangs in the Red Carriage House at the Erland Lee estate but dedicated  to the elderly-elegant Mrs.Smith who still resides in her clapboard house beside an abandoned orchard. 

If only she knew..

A Spring verse by Rilke...devastatingly beautiful (to me)

(from "The Seventh Elegy")

No longer, voice. No longer let wooing send forth your cry:
you're past that. Even though your cry would be clear as a bird's
when first Spring bears him aloft, almost forgetting
that he's a cautious creature and not an unsheathed heart
being flung into brightness, in passionate skies.
Like him, with all his art, you'd also woo--: invisibly,
so that some silent mate might learn of you, and,
as she listened, a reply would slowly wake and grow warm--
the kindled complement of your own ardent feeling

Post-Erland Lee poetry (for Jeff Seffinga)

Poetry in the Carriage House

It's been another successful Erland Lee poetry reading. After a two-year change of venue it was good to meet old friends and read poetry again in the red Carriage House. I was particularly moved by the poetry of Jeff Seffinga, editor of Tower Poetry magazine: moved enough to write the following poem (for him)


"On Hearing Jeff say"

that the deer among wolves, quietly sore, a sweet
  Tempe in a savage place can be
   deadly

   But how exactly?

Well (I'd say) like a dirty crushing street-poet deadly
                                                        (poet of letters only!)

  but he'd say, no, like a hand's gentle absence, at dusk;
                                the cat's light wisdom ( dill on its lip):--
                                cat-heart getting lift from itself,
                                                   alone

           Of the poem in a savage place, Jeff'd say

       

Picture taken by Maria DiDiodato