I came across Schleiermacher's essay on "foreignizing" just a few years ago, but it gave voice to my long-time irritation with translations in the common flattening style that is often meter-free and usually rhyme-free, even when the source has both meter and rhyme. Not that I don't enjoy some of those efforts--poetry has many pleasures--but the irritation remains. Having tried to translate a few of Rilke's French poems into English, I know what a challenge it is.
I've bought your anthology and begun reading it. The translations and extensive notes introductions to periods and writer are first rate.
The evocation of Pyrrha, her sweetness and her tempestuousness rains down quite clearly. Yet, such a bright treasure, though passing strange, is worth the drenching and the rain.
Really enjoyed your revision translation, thank you.
In his introduction to James Michie’s translation of the Odes, Rex Warner tells a story that I think of often: “[A]n Englishman who had been a judge in Malaya…. was captured at Singapore by the Japanese and spent the rest of the war as a prisoner. He told me once that when finally he had been liberated and returned to what seemed to him for some time the strange world of England and freedom, one of his first actions was to hire a horse and ride out on the South Downs. Here, with no one within sight or sound, he would put his horse to a gallop and at the top of his voice shout out to the clouds and sky the words of Horace’s Fifth Ode in the First Book…. [T]he poem could have no very obvious reference to his predicament. Yet my friend’s action seems to be absolutely natural….”
Oy. My poor brain. But I thank you anyway for trusting that your readers are game for a challenge. Childers' rendition made it all clear and in an amiable way.
I came across Schleiermacher's essay on "foreignizing" just a few years ago, but it gave voice to my long-time irritation with translations in the common flattening style that is often meter-free and usually rhyme-free, even when the source has both meter and rhyme. Not that I don't enjoy some of those efforts--poetry has many pleasures--but the irritation remains. Having tried to translate a few of Rilke's French poems into English, I know what a challenge it is.
I've bought your anthology and begun reading it. The translations and extensive notes introductions to periods and writer are first rate.
The evocation of Pyrrha, her sweetness and her tempestuousness rains down quite clearly. Yet, such a bright treasure, though passing strange, is worth the drenching and the rain.
Really enjoyed your revision translation, thank you.
In his introduction to James Michie’s translation of the Odes, Rex Warner tells a story that I think of often: “[A]n Englishman who had been a judge in Malaya…. was captured at Singapore by the Japanese and spent the rest of the war as a prisoner. He told me once that when finally he had been liberated and returned to what seemed to him for some time the strange world of England and freedom, one of his first actions was to hire a horse and ride out on the South Downs. Here, with no one within sight or sound, he would put his horse to a gallop and at the top of his voice shout out to the clouds and sky the words of Horace’s Fifth Ode in the First Book…. [T]he poem could have no very obvious reference to his predicament. Yet my friend’s action seems to be absolutely natural….”
I.5
What slender boy awash in his perfume
Embraces you on piles of roses, deep
Inside some grotto, Pyrrha?
Your hair: who is the one for whom
You tie it up in simple elegance? 5
Oh, he will sob at faithless deities,
Stand thunderstruck at seas
Made rough by black and whipping winds,
The one who holds you now, your golden form,
And thinks you free and loveable forever. 10
He’s never known your storm.
Pity the ones you dazzle, Pyrrha;
They have not tried you yet. But as for me,
The temple's votive tablet says that I
Have hung my clothes to dry 15
Before that god who rules the sea.
Oy. My poor brain. But I thank you anyway for trusting that your readers are game for a challenge. Childers' rendition made it all clear and in an amiable way.