tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20433842.post2084129711807340368..comments2024-03-07T12:57:35.296-05:00Comments on Varieties of Unreligious Experience: Two Plays in One FittsConrad H. Rothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01916542057749474124noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20433842.post-47011634023456386482009-01-11T12:31:00.000-05:002009-01-11T12:31:00.000-05:00Being an Italian native speaker, I find the transl...Being an Italian native speaker, I find the translation from Dante a bit far from the original. But I guess it happens with most translations.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20433842.post-79149210874917555882009-01-02T10:35:00.000-05:002009-01-02T10:35:00.000-05:00The lovely John Ciardi used to broadcast on NPR's ...The lovely John Ciardi used to broadcast on NPR's Morning Edition in the 1980s.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20433842.post-21088856893535315092008-12-22T07:14:00.000-05:002008-12-22T07:14:00.000-05:00LH, I have been debating how to answer this questi...LH, I have been debating how to answer this question. To some extent I can adduce <A HREF="http://vunex.blogspot.com/2007/03/innocent-stratagem.html" REL="nofollow">this old post</A>, where I summarised the theology of the Pseudo-Dionysius in relation to the aesthetics of Schleiermacher, and wrote:<BR/><BR/>"It is better to represent the 'Deific Principles' by such lowly images as the worm or the corner-stone, than by lofty images like 'Light shining forth unclouded and intelligibly' (John 1:5)—because the latter are more likely to be mistaken for the truth than the former. It is essential for the religious man to understand that the textual and pictorial symbols of the divine are merely symbolic, just as it is important for any reader to remember that a translation is a translation."<BR/><BR/>It would be fair to say that I had a rather theological, that is, absolutist, aesthetics myself. I don't, ultimately, believe in the possibility of poetic translation, and so while I can appreciate the re-imaginative efforts of a Fitts <EM>for their own sake</EM> (and indeed, have <A HREF="http://vunex.blogspot.com/2006/03/basia-7.html" REL="nofollow">had a go myself</A>), I have little interest in them as translations. I prefer a version, <EM>qua</EM> version, that explains while holding at a distance, like a microscope.<BR/><BR/>I think the key phrase for Fitts, therefore, is "comparable experience"--and I would deny such a thing possible. (To be fair, he is sceptical himself.) Nor do I believe in the "metaphysical Poetic Substrate", to use Greg's phrase, any more than I accept the existence of the soul, or chi. If a rainbow, explained, is the more beautiful, <A HREF="http://vunex.blogspot.com/2007/06/infinitas.html?showComment=1181990520000#c8363440751730545060" REL="nofollow">so should a poem be</A>:<BR/><BR/>"Adding semantic content to an object--Newton explaining the physics of the rainbow, or a rabbi interpreting a line in the Torah--is always, I think, to add beauty to it."<BR/><BR/>But, of course, I am only telling you about me, not about poetry.Conrad H. Rothhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01916542057749474124noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20433842.post-21602733939157497442008-12-20T15:06:00.000-05:002008-12-20T15:06:00.000-05:00Cowan is here, absolutely disclaims any expertise ...Cowan is here, absolutely disclaims any expertise whatsoever in French, and says that every time he opens his <I>gueule</I> another gender error flies out of it, this being traditional for anglophones (<I>Le Mort Darthur</I> and all that).<BR/><BR/>Cowan deftly refers to Hofstadter, fellow detester of Nabokov's <I>Onegin</I>, on the subject of translation and "transculturation": translation is good, but we do not want a history of France written in French and translated into German, to become a history of Germany! Translation, says Cowan, is a delicate balancing act between translating too little and too much; furthermore, he says, humor being a binary property (things are either funny or not), the first duty of a translator of Aristophanes is to be funny. To Cowan's taste, Fitts is indeed funny, but Arrowsmith and Parker are overall funnier: the latter says "Athens must suggest America, but it must not <I>be</I> America", thus prospectively referring to the as yet unwritten Hofstadter work with the French title, which while reading it I was constantly addressed in French by random strangers, thus having to explain repeatedly that only the <I>title</I> is French, thus looping back a la the Worm Ouroboros to the opening claim.John Cowanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11452247999156925669noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20433842.post-8205274412642199012008-12-20T14:02:00.000-05:002008-12-20T14:02:00.000-05:00Actually, I wrote Fet, but he's not really all tha...Actually, I wrote Fet, but he's not really all that great of an example. Velimir Khlebnikov is the best one I can think of.Greg Afinogenovhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13529073439919307693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20433842.post-825750902601599802008-12-20T13:57:00.000-05:002008-12-20T13:57:00.000-05:00I do think that the translator's goal is to preser...I do think that the translator's goal is to preserve and convey whatever metaphysical Poetic Substrate is present in the original work--even if my own translations aren't particularly up to the task. So in that sense, I agree with Fitts.<BR/><BR/>But at the same time, I think I see what Conrad is getting at. It can often be worthwhile and aesthetically justified to transmit the text in its otherness, as it were. We can never resolve the gap between a native speaker's reading of a poem in the original and a foreign reader's experience of it in translation; the question is, what do we do with the gap? Do we try to paper it over with ersatz (like poorly translated puns)? That's one way of doing it, certainly. But another is to heighten the foreign reader's awareness of the distance that separates her from the work--to make the translation beautiful but simultaneously alien and inaccessible. <BR/><BR/>Doubtless there are some poets whose work is better suited to the former method (Tsvetaeva, Prévert), and others who I think can only be understood through the latter (Afanasiy Fet, Bonnefoy). That's a matter of opinion, of course, and I've never managed to translate Fet with any degree of success.Greg Afinogenovhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13529073439919307693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20433842.post-62022738710423822002008-12-20T09:25:00.000-05:002008-12-20T09:25:00.000-05:00Fitts’s attitude towards poetic translation may be...<I>Fitts’s attitude towards poetic translation may be ‘conventional’ ‘modern dogma’ and ‘a romantic absolutism’, but it’s quite right, isn’t it? </I><BR/><BR/>Just what I dropped by to say. Could you expand on the danger of over-familiarisation of the text? Because it seems to me that the danger of reducing poetry (or art in general) to plain prose "sense" is far greater than whatever you're thinking of.Languagehathttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13285708503881129380noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20433842.post-73086543914752867032008-12-19T20:21:00.000-05:002008-12-19T20:21:00.000-05:00Whoops, corrected (in two places); I was over-hast...Whoops, corrected (in two places); I was over-hasty in quotation. Thanks. On Fitts's attitude, I am not unsympathetic, but remain in doubt. Its danger is one of over-familiarisation of the text.Conrad H. Rothhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01916542057749474124noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20433842.post-73580545011532318012008-12-19T20:12:00.000-05:002008-12-19T20:12:00.000-05:00The lines you quote from the Frogs translation are...The lines you quote from the <I>Frogs</I> translation are magnificent. They read like Gerard Manley Hopkins…on acid! (Sorry.)<BR/><BR/>Fitts’s attitude towards poetic translation may be ‘conventional’ ‘modern dogma’ and ‘a romantic absolutism’, but it’s quite <I>right</I>, isn’t it? <BR/><BR/>Before Cowan gets here, let me point out that there’s something wrong with the French in your quotation of the Proust.<BR/><BR/>Excellent post, thanks.Raminagrobishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12008850757226541475noreply@blogger.com