Elaine Feinstein's translation:
Bent with worry
Bent with worry, God
paused, to smile.
And look, there were many
holy angels with bodies of
the radiance he had
given them,
some with enormous wings and
others without any,
which is why I weep
so much
because even more than God
himself I love his fair angels.
Christina Davis's translation [jubilat, seven]:
Differences. I'm engulfed in an ocean of questions.
Why are there different numbers of stanzas? How can the translators get away with that?
Where do the women heaving stunted breasts come from?
How do you heave a stunted breast?
Word choice seems to have a huge impact on meaning. The real poem is therefore completely elusive. Love versus worship, fair angels versus messengers. And the meaning was probably elusive even in the original, multiplying the obscurity into even more intolerable layers of wingshadow.
Did Marina use odd punctuation, truncated grammar, and alliteration like Davis?
The second version seems like a poem. The first is pale and watery in comparison.
Is Davis translating more of Marina?
What about the genesis of competing translations? Does everyone agree the first set is bad and a new set is really needed? But how much work Feinstein did!
Did angels have free will? I forget. Is the poem about angels or human/angels?
Marina reminds me of Emily Dickinson. I'd like to know more about the similarities and differences (he did not put the differences on them...). Emily was privileged and potbound and Marina was tortured and transplanted without mercy.
1992 (Feinstein) and 2003 (Davis). What poetic influences waxed and waned during those 10 years to yield such different translations? Or is it a matter of the individuals involved?
WHYWHYWHYWHYWHYWHYWHYW
I'm exercised about this. Why? It's a mystery.
I was chanting "worry worn god for once paused pleased" last weekend while mowing the lawn. Love that line. I don't memorize poems, but I might want to memorize this one.
I used "nothing feathers" in last night's word/bird sketch. I don't know if I'm plagiarizing Christina or Marina.
lost lost lost my voice lost lone along these rainy highways blown out the window by the raucous crow caw radio
lost I saw a tom turkey brown bronze bearded breast wandering in the office park looking lost lost lost
but not too giddy mostly just serene in his stroll
serene serene as me an egret
with nothing feathers in my gauze
What to tell you about the book? The ultimate stair. My bed turned to a cloud.
Darling, I know everything already--from me to you--but it is still too early for a lot of things. Something in you must still get used to me.
Marina
Letters: Summer 1926, p 161
This passage -
Her facility with metaphor, throwing off a stair and a cloud in one casually sweeping gesture, I could read it a hundred times
Her intuition, that somehow she does know everything about him already, their souls recognize each other and she sees into him
And the suspense - too early for a lot of things? what things? what is to come? how will this unfold?
And the shock - there are foreign parts of her nature, some that he will have to get used to, although she already knows him, he doesn't know her
And the power - she claims an advantage in this game in a way that's charming and hard to dispute/detect, she claims a huge space to grow into, she invites anything unusual in her nature to come forward, without asking his permission but demanding his adjustment
Deathless Aphrodite of the spangled mind,
child of Zeus, who twists lures, I beg you
do not break with hard pains,
O lady, my heart
Sappho, as translated by Anne Carson, in If Not, Winter
I was bothered by that word spangled before I read this because I thought it came to mind too often, it pops up too often in my fancy-pants elitist poetry phrase writing. Then I read about poikilos in Carson's notes:
poikilothron or poikilophron
"The word is a compound adjective, used as an epithet of Aphrodite to identify either her 'chair' (thron-) or her 'mind' (phron-) as poikilos: 'many-colored, spotted, dappled, variegated, intricate, embroidered, inlaid, highly wrought, complicated, changeful, diverse, abstruse, ambiguous, subtle.'"
That's it! That's exactly the general atmosphere of what I think I want to convey in a poem. I think I can't, so I give up before I even start.
I tried to write a poem about this concept years ago when I was practicing poetry regularly. I was able to find it. August 4, 1992 (Sam's birthday):
So care each word sparkles
Precious open a treasure
Palace small generating glow
Tracing with the pen the
lover's outline skin on sheet
Baskets of rings
Boxes of beads
The still spaces of plenty
Stars but small
Connecting the glitter dots
reveals the true love pattern
There's no a-ha,
Just knowing, time and joy
I couldn't convey the "rich texture" feeling of life and love that I was striving for in that poem. I wanted the syntax to be fractured a bit to draw attention to the texture, but the poem fell apart in cliché. I don't think I drew in enough of the physicality. Somehow the contrast between the body and the rich or bright elements of jewels, stars, and metal seem to bring out this idea, the poikilos that I love so much.
************
Other notes.
Comment spam is plaguing this site and I'm procrastinating about having to do something technical to fix it. In frustration, I closed the comment option by default. But that doesn't help with older entries. I will have to put on my technical hat and work on this problem. Upgrade to mt 2.661 would be a start.
Carson's book is beautiful and I want to do a whole entry on it later.
I'm in love with Marina T. and want to sit at her feet. I found two translations of "Homesickness" which are very different, and I want to do a whole entry on that later. Sadly, I don't think I'll ever learn Russian, which I would need to really "get it."
Last night I made an open faced sandwich: Portuguese roll, a thin layer of baby spinach, a thin slice of red onion, a splash of balsamic vinegar, a thin slice of Provolone, under the broiler to melt the cheese. Tasted great! I think there's a good food thread running through my life that I discount. It's easily as worthwhile writing about my meals as about my books. Spangled mind, satisfied stomach.
Over and out,
Pasternak saved these two sheets of light-blue notepaper all his life. After his death, in the summer of 1960, they were found in an envelope marked "Most Precious," which he carried in a leather wallet in his jacket pocket.
Letters: Summer 1926, p 131
I wished to go outside to see what one poet's thinking of another poet had done to the air and the sky.
Pasternak to Tsvetayeva, Letters: Summer 1926, p 80
A wild leap from William Carlos Williams to the Russian poets...I find their temperaments more drastic and romantic, more satisfying, more sky- and cloud-changing for my hurtling spring days.