Leah Smolin - Reading Notes for Feb 18
The Eight Stages of Translation
Bly’s steps are very helpful to me as I work on my final project. I don’t know if poetry always has to sound “spoken”—but I think it does most of the time.
“I had confused Rilke’s mood with certain violent moods I had at the time.” This is funny. I haven’t thought about how mood could infiltrate translation.
Translation as (Sub)Version
“Infante’s Inferno” is not a good title (sounds like an academic essay) and in no way captures the original “Havana for a Dead Infant.”
Up until now, I have never thought someone should be thrown in jail for using alliterative puns.
“...a set from her settee, a repartee a la Satie: “Adulturers”--said Olga. “They’re fiendish fish.” This is awful. That Levine is so delighted with herself makes it worse. “Alliteration…frees the impulsive, rhythmic nature of language as music—which it is to the child and to the poet.” Well we agree it’s childish. I would say alliteration doesn’t free Levine, but rather chains her into a pattern of uninteresting, cutesy phrases.
19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei
Agree that plural “lichens” is ugly.
Surely it’s not a Western conceit that empty = lonely. But I do prefer empty.
Rexroth’s is nice. I like Octavio Paz’s too.
The unhinged Boodberg version is like something I would write for class (my ‘antistrophic’ being ‘alkalize’)
No comments:
Post a Comment