3/18 Reading Responses -- Lachlan Bowden

 Clare Cavanagh, "The Art of Losing"

Cavanagh’s essay was a great read, and one that I appreciated many of the points and how she ordered them. The recurring notion of loss, that it is intrinsic within the translation process, was fascinating. I find that reframing this sense of loss within the translation process, as Cavanagh says is something “intertwined” with its gains, fosters a sense of liberation and compassion to a practice that has the potential to be quite restrictive and demanding. When thinking about Baranczak’s translation of Bishop, it's clear that in order to maintain, or gain, a distinctive quality—something that makes the poem what it is—then something else must be spent, or lost, in order to achieve this. This was the case with losing the master/disaster rhyme, but maintaining the form.

I’m not entirely sure that I believe in Cavanagh’s statement that novels can “pretend comprehension”. While I understand the sentiment, it feels like a bit of a nothing point. I don’t know many good novels that claim to be entirely comprehensive — what does that even mean / look like? It feels slightly reductive. But I do appreciate the point of limitations, of things being slightly out of reach, and there within meaning can reside. 

I also really loved the ending analogy about her son. That was special and beautiful. 

Wislawa Szymborska's Translators Talk about the Poet

It was really interesting to read about how Szymborkska was received in France. I wasn’t entirely sure how to interpret this. The line in this piece I did really love, though, was the image of a translator plugging the holes that a poem can seep out of. Great stuff.

Pilar Godayol, "Metaphors, Women, and Translation"

This was a fascinating read. Godayol’s connection and commentary between the archaic imagery, the metaphors of the original text (the masculine) alongside that of the translation (the feminine) begets a lot of interesting discussion. It seems like a lot of what Derrida said was problematic.

There were a lot of great and compelling points raised in this essay. For example, it was interesting to see that in the 17th century d’Ablancourt was criticised for taking too many liberties with translations/ re-writes of classics. The reference to Bhadha and the statement that the original text does not exist independently of its different readings, that “the translation can never be definitive because a meaning will always lead to another”, was really impactful in emphasising the transitory and allusive nature of this process.