17/02 Reading Response - Sanjana Thakur

 Bly, "The Eight Stages of Translation" 

I had the really odd experience, as I was reading this, of finding Bly's approach to translation really thoughtful, but really not enjoying his translation of Rilke he provided as an example at all. His step-by-step process was so practical and nitty-gritty that I'm sure I'll come back to that as I work on my semester project, but I was really unconvinced by Bly's final product. It seems unfair to critique Al Poulin's translations for not being joyful enough, when I think in Bly's translation, the exclamation points are doing the heavy lifting for joy. His translation has six exclamation points––five more than the original German. Without them, I'm not sure I'd call his poem joyful either. I think I actually liked his literal translation better than any of its successive versions. 

Other thoughts:

• The issue of pronouns comes up again on page 69! It's interesting how often this seems to come up, like with Jeffrey Angles and now again here. 
• For stage 2, Bly asks, "What does the poem mean?" That's a difficult question to answer even just as a reader. A poem can mean many things to many people. What can/should a translator do with this multiplicity? Or is Bly asking, "What did the poet intend the poem to mean?" Because that seems like a different question. 
• I thought his attention to the difference in cultural attitudes towards creativity and the idea of 'raw talent' was very interesting, as was his belief that if the translator cannot believe in the work/the writer, they should not translate it. It made me think of Schwartz's lecture, and how he had such a hard time translating Jolles because of Jolles' views.
• The Catullus reference on page 79 was a fun throwback to our first translation!
• I was curious about his idea that in the American language only lower language is alive. I wonder how inclusive his conception of an American language is, and how dialects fit into the upper-lower scale in general. 
• His disdain for JB Leishman was very funny to read. 
• I really liked: "We know that we haven't captured the original: the best translation resembles a Persian rug seen from the back––the pattern is apparent, but not much more" (89) and I wonder how that fits into modern discourse about the quality of a translation or how people view translations versus 'originals'. 

Levine, "Translation as (Sub) Version"

• 89 - I was interested in Levine's attention to gender, especially as pertaining to our discussions about Deborah Smith and why she might be judged more harshly than Scott Moncrieff. 
• 90 - The Balzac story sounds fascinating. Mothers and daughters and hunger and consumption are some of my obsessions as a writer so I am very intrigued by the description of that scene. 
• 94 - I'm interested in her conclusion, which is contrary to Robert Bly's belief in not translating something if you can't believe in the work. I wonder if that rule is easier to follow as a man, and as a white man. 
• I did not enjoy her translation at all. If ever someone asks the question, "Can you play with language too much?" I now think the answer might be yes. Surely Infante didn't write "Vegetal filaments that float, vaguely"??

Maurer, "Federico Garcia Lorca"

• I didn't really know anything about Lorca, so it was nice to get an introduction! I was interested in his relationship with Dali and surrealism, and the questioning of the role of metaphor in poetry. 

Weinberger, Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei

• The description of Chinese words as "comprehensible only in the context of the phrase", "always based on relation rather than substance" is interesting, as is the explanation of Chinese prosody and how that doesn't translate to English. 
• I thought this was a really exciting exercise, to look at so many little translations side-by-side. I appreciated Weinberger's note that attempts to "improve" the original poem "are the product of a kind of unspoken contempt for the foreign poet". 
• 20 - "In its way a spiritual exercise, translation is dependent on the dissolution of the translator's ego: an absolute humility toward the text. A bad translation is the insistent voice of the translator––that is, when one sees no poet and hears only the translator speaking."
• I do think my favourite of the translations is Gary Snyder's. I also liked Paz's third translation in the Afterword and Vikram Seth's and David Hinton's 2006 version. I liked Arthur Sze's "Bamboo Grove". 
• The Boodberg translation on page 56 is fascinating! Earminded? Countertones, antistrophic, glowlight... Where is any of this coming from?
• The 2016 postscript is so funny.