Translations

Post date: Apr 19, 2014 8:51:56 PM

I've been working on a project rendering free-verse translations of late Romantic and early modern European poetry, drawn by the shock -- not uncommon -- of finding modern viewpoints embedded in older scenarios and poetic formality. The poems I'm working with offer strong, visceral points of view, where metaphysical and moral concerns converge with intense emotion. So, I'm doing all I can to pare away any extra syllables from the phrasing as I go along, while keeping the content intact, rendering the excellent originals -- for which I have a deep respect -- in the sparest, cleanest, most direct and taut modern English phrasing I can.

"C'était on ne sait quoi de submergé; c'était/Ce qui n'est plus, ce qui s'en va, ce qui se tait" in Victor Hugo's La Fin de Satan becomes, "It was something submerged; it was/the ending, the departure, the hush..."

My conscience bothers me when I avoid replicating the original formal design, substituting internal rhyme and assonance for end-rhyme, for example, and changing the meter. I know I'm losing quite a bit by taking this approach.

But something keeps me stumbling on, and I think it's that the new versions afford me some sense of the poets' powerful insights into life, their passion, their demonstrated range of feeling, their dreams of another world.

I keep looking for analogies to what I'm doing. The works are in the public domain. So, is it like rummaging through a trunk I've inherited and found stored in an attic, pulling out what I choose and dusting it off for use?

I hope it's not like like dismantling a precious old Italian violin and using the bits of wood to make matchboxes.