Dawn Chorus (1)

picryl.com: Salvatore Quasimodo (1901-1968)

Morning Song

ΠΟΜΟΣ ΟΡΘΡΙΟΣ

ξουθὰ δὲ λιγύφων᾽ ὄρνεα δι᾽ ἐφετᾶν ἔρημον
δρίος ἄκροις ἐπὶ κλωσὶ πίτυος ἥμεν᾿ ἐμινύριζ ἐτιττύβιζεν
κέλαδον παντομιγῆ, καὶ τὰ μὲν ἄρχετο, τ[ὰ δ᾽ ἔμ] ελλεν, τὰ δ᾽ ἐσίγα,
τὰ δὲ βωστρεύοντ᾽ ἀν᾿ ὄρη λαλεῦσι φωναῖς, φιλέρημος δὲ νάπαις λάλος ἀνταμείβετ᾽ ἀχώ

– Anon. (c 1st-3rd century BCE)

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Canto Mattutino

Dorati uccelli dall'acuta voce, liberi
per il bosco solitario in cima ai rami di pino
confusamente si lamentano; e chi comincia,
chi indugia, chi lancia il suo richiamo verso i monti:
e l'eco che non tace, amica dei deserti,
lo ripete dal fondo delle valli.

– trans. Salvatore Quasimodo (1940)

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Morning Song

Bright birds with their sweet voices freely
through the lonely forest on pine branches
sing their sorrows one starts off
another takes it up some cry to the hills
until the burbling echo friend of emptiness
replays them in the hidden valley

– trans. Jack Ross

(23-25/4/26)

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Dawn Chorus (2)

Farrago: Alcaeus papyrus (c. 620–580 BCE)

Dawn Chorus
(after Quasimodo)


Native birds with raucous voices
cry from our backyard

for foodor love
or just to say they’re there

echoing outward
through the bay

up to the hilltop
rush-hour traffic


(23-24/4/26)

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Dawn Chorus (3)

Salvatore Quasimodo: Lirici greci (1940)

And the hardworking bees ...


The poem this collaboration was based on was discovered among the Tebtunis papyri sometime in the early twentieth century. These papyri fragments were (according to Wikipedia):

… written in either Demotic Egyptian or Koine Greek and were found during a single expedition led by Bernard Pyne Grenfell and Arthur S. Hunt, two British papyrologists in the winter of 1899/1900 at the village of ancient Tebtunis (near modern Umm-el-Baragat), Egypt. The papyri can be divided into three groups based on their provenance: texts from the crocodile mummies, the town and from the temple of Soknebtunis, and the cartonnage of human mummies. A total of 1093 fragments of the Tebtunian papyri are registered ...

Most of them have been dated to sometime between the 3rd and 1st century BCE.

This particular piece was translated into Italian by poet and classicist – and future Nobel Prize winner – Salvatore Quasimodo, and included in his wartime collection Lirici Greci [Greek Lyrics] (1940):

Salvatore Quasimodo. Lirici Greci: Testo Greco a fronte. 1940. Saggio di Luciano Anceschi. 1944. Biblioteca Moderna Mondadori clxxxix. Verona: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1951. pp. 152-53.

It originally formed the final section of a longer poem, which Quasimodo includes in full in his notes (pp.164-65):

E le docili api laboriose
dall’ali gialle, dal viso schiacciato,
le folte operaie dell’estate
che lasciano le pungiglione cupamente ronzando,
le costruttrici dagli amori luttuosi,
indifese succhiano il soave nettare
dal quale si ricava il miele.

And the hardworking bees
yellow wings and pinched faces
busy all summer long
buzz as they plant their stings
in the labyrinths of love
sipping the clear sweet nectar
from which the honey comes

– trans. Jack Ross

(25-27/7/26)

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Theme & Variations (2010)

Douglas Adams: Babel-Fish
[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1981)]


Poetry off the Page

Guest Lecture
(Tuesday, 18 May, 2010)

Opinions on Translation:

Poetry is what gets left out in translation.
– Robert Frost

What is translation? On a platter
A poet’s pale and glaring head,
A parrot’s speech, a monkey’s chatter,
And profanation of the dead.

– Vladimir Nabokov

el original es infiel a la traducción
[the original is unfaithful to the translation]
– Jorge Luis Borges

Translation is so far removed from being the sterile equation of two dead languages that of all literary forms it is the one charged with the special mission of watching over the maturing process of the original language and the birth pangs of its own.

– Walter Benjamin

Walter Benjamin’s view of the translator [is] one who elicits, who conjures up by virtue of unplanned echo a language nearer to the primal unity of speech than is either the original text or the tongue into which he is translating … this is why, says Benjamin, ‘the question of the translatability of certain works would remain open even if they were untranslatable for man’.

– George Steiner

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[Fresco in Herculaneum]

The Masks of Catullus:
Methods of Translation

Odi et amo, quare id faciam, fortasse requiris.
Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.
– Catullus (c.84-54 BC): Elegy LXXXV

word-for-word crib:

Ōdī ět ămō, quārē ĭd făcĭăm, fŏrtăssě rěquīrĭs.
I detest and I love. Why that I may do, perhaps you ask.
Nĕscĭō sěd fĭěrī sěntĭŏ ět ěxcrŭcĭŏr.
I do not know, but to become I sense and I am tortured.

rhyming couplets:

I hate and love; would’st thou the reason know?
I know not, but I burn, and feel it so.

– Richard Lovelace (1618-1657)

I hate and love – ask why – I can’t explain;
I feel ’tis so, and feel it racking pain.

– Charles Lamb (1775-1834)

literal version:

I hate and love. Why? You may ask but
It beats me. I feel it done to me, and ache.

– Ezra Pound (1885-1972)

aural transcription:

O th’hate I move love. Quarry it fact I am, for that’s so re queries.
Nescience, say th’ fiery scent I owe whets crookeder.

– Louis Zukofsky (1904-1978)

•

[Reading in the Ruins]

There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity. Certain numbers were the same way and certain dates and these with the names of the places were all you could say and have them mean anything. Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates.

- Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (1929)

The Exercise:

• You will be given a copy of a poem in a foreign language.
• The text will be accompanied by a literal translation.
• I want you to write me your own poem using these two components.
• It can be a translation (as free, or literal, as you like) of the text you were given.
• Or it can be more obviously your own poem (though it should incorporate some ideas, words, lines or concepts from the original you were given).
• Type the text of your poem into an email and post it to me to be put up on this blog.

•

Authors:

• Paul Celan


• René Char


• Octavio Paz


• Salvatore Quasimodo


• Rainer Maria Rilke


• César Vallejo

[Marten Van Valckenborch I (1534-1612):
The Building of the Tower of Babel]

Old Winter

[Sicily (1943)]


Italian:

Antico inverno


Desiderio delle tue mani chiari
nella penombra della fiamma:
sapevano di rovere e di rose;
di morte. Antico inverno.

Cercavano il miglio gli uccelli
ed erano sùbito di neve;
così le parole:
un po’ di sole, una raggiera d’angelo,
e poi la nebbia; e gli alberi,
e noi fatti d’aria al mattino.

- Salvatore Quasimodo (1901-1968)

Literal translation:

Antico inverno
Old winter


Desiderio delle tue mani chiari
Desire for your clear hands
nella penombra della fiamma:
in the half-light of the flame:
sapevano di rovere e di rose;
They smelt of oak and of roses;
di morte. Antico inverno.
Of death. Old winter.

Cercavano il miglio gli uccelli
The birds looked for millet
ed erano sùbito di neve;
and were suddenly of snow;
così le parole:
the same with words:
un po’ di sole, una raggiera d’angelo,
a little sun, an angelic halo,
e poi la nebbia; e gli alberi,
and then the fog; and the trees,
e noi fatti d’aria al mattino.
and us made of air in the morning.

[Salvatore Quasimodo]

•

Versions:

Ancient Winter

desire of your hands of clarity
in the penumbra of the flame:
they knew revere also of roses;
dead women. Ancient winter.
Birds tried mile
and they were rapid snow;
by such means of the word:
few of the sun, the halo of angel,
and after this fog; and shafts,
and we made from air of morning.

Old Winter

will clear your hands
in the shadow of the flame:
knew oak and roses;
death. Ancient winter.

The birds tried
and suddenly the snow;
if the words:
one a little sunshine, my angel,
then the fog and trees,
and we did the morning air.

Old Winter

Clear mission
shadow with fire
I know, and we have to yo;
death. Old cold.

Wamenjaribu birds
and suddenly everything was in the snow;
If any of these words:
when Sunshine, Angel
fog, trees
and we took a morning off

- Anna & Ben D.

•

Savatore Quasimodo (1962)

Old Winter
(after Salvatore Quasimodo)


Desire for your clear hands
in the half-light of the flame:
They smelt of oak and of roses;
Of death. Old winter.

The birds looked for millet
and were suddenly of snow;
the same with words:
a little sun, an angelic halo,
and then the fog; and the trees,
and us made of air in the morning.


trans. JR (5/2010-26/4/26)

Case Studies (7):

Memento

1949:

The more days move off into distance
scattering themselves, the more they return
to hearts of the poets. …

Memini: I remember; memento: “Object serving as reminder or warning, or kept as memorial of person or event” (Concise Oxford Dictionary); meminens: mindful. I’ve never been especially anxious to fry my brain with booze or drugs. Not because I think it’s naughty, let alone unreasonable – just because memory is what I am.

Buchenwald is there
that mild-mannered beech wood
with its accursed ovens: Stalingrad
and Minsk with its marshes and rotten snow. …

“Kids lose everything unless there’s someone there to look out for them,” says River Phoenix in Stand by Me. Part of our job is just that: not to forget, to insist on being the skeleton at the feast, stalking alone through the Masque of the Red Death.

Poets do not forget. Oh hordes of the lowly,
the conquered, those forgiven out of pity!
All things may pass, but the dead do not
sell themselves. …

Dignity is not the same thing as pomposity. “Shame on you … Shame,” says Howard towards the end of Raymond Carver’s story “A Small, Good Thing.” I cried when I first read that. It was his second try at it. The first, “The Bath,” ended in a far more deadpan way. It took him a long time to achieve that intensity.[1]

I sing
the people, also their grief
muffled by sound of the sea, the mothers’
crystal-clear mourning: I sing the life of my country.

– Salvatore Quasimodo, “Il mio paese è l’Italia”
trans. Kendrick Smithyman

Well, it’s worth a try, isn’t it? Even if no-one seems to be listening most of the time. Even if they are, but in a really crass way. Just the chance of it makes the game worth the candle. Doesn’t it?

---

1. Interestingly, since I first wrote this in 2001, I've discovered that this isn't the case. "The Bath" is in fact a drastically reduced version of "A Small, Good Thing" constructed by Gordon Lish, Raymond Carver's long-time friend and editor, during the production process of his second collection What We talk About When We Talk About Love (1981). The information now available in the Library of America edition of Carver's Collected Stories, edited by William L. Stull & Maureen P. Carroll (New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 2009), makes it apparent just how much Carver resented and resisted this curtailment of his original story.

[Raymond Carver: Collected Stories (2009)]