Comments on: Translation and its Discontents: Part I

By: John Bloomberg-Rissman

John Bloomberg-Rissman — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 12:42:32 +0000

Wouldn’t all these questions be really easy to answer by actually *reading* the stuff Americans write? And seeing whether they (we) are in dialog with the rest of the world (tho dialog is way to simple-minded a term)? Rather than just wondering? My only point in this whole discussion has been you’d better read pretty widely, because, to paraphrase Henry G, Am lit is hardly one perfectly coherent “thing”. It’s, rather, an “agglomeration”, “a heap or cluster of disparate elements”.

By: Boyd Nielson

Boyd Nielson — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 14:03:03 +0000

I should also add that although I understand that Martin rejects Horace Engdahl’s claim that the U.S. doesn’t participate in what Engdahl calls the “big dialogue of literature,” I don’t understand how a question on the way that “this wealth of translated material actually affects American readers and writers” is really all that different from Engdahl’s interests. Or, to put this another way, Martin might be right to say the following: “The problem is not so much if, or how much, European poetry and fiction are translated into English and made available to readers in the United Sates (by any standards it is a significant amount), but rather the extent to which these translations are read and absorbed into the stream of American letters.” But I don’t understand why we should care about the latter point if we (unlike Engdahl) no longer care about the former.

By: Kent Johnson

Kent Johnson — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 13:09:56 +0000

What interesting comments in the exchange between Martin Earl and Boyd Nielsen!
Excellent.
Kent

By: Boyd Nielson

Boyd Nielson — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 04:07:38 +0000

Martin recognizes that my point above is not to call into question any particular description of what (fair) representative translation of and dialogue with the poetry of x or y country should be; it is rather to call into question the need for such things in the first place. But he gets my point precisely backwards when he suggests that in naming countries I am conflating poets with “nationality (or nationalisms).” In fact, I am suggesting that, while it might not be a mistake to say that a particular poet typifies a certain set of assumptions or ideology, it is a mistake to say that a poet is identical with country. Only if the latter point were true would it make sense to engage in a worry-fest about whether x or y country is being given adequate attention in the U.S. because only then could representative dialogue be fair or, even, possible. When I talk about “[engaging] in a dialogue with what is happening in (crucial) particular regions” I am referring not to national boundaries per se but rather to sites that are both geographical and ideological, both reducible to regional symptoms and irreducible to regional cause. This point should be wholly uncontroversial. No one needs to be reminded, for instance, of the U.S.’s influence in the widespread privatization of markets in Bolivia, Chile and Argentina (maybe we should be reminded of it, though, a few days after Bolivian voters have approved a new constitution). And no one needs to be reminded that Israel could not continue its policies in Gaza if it did not have U.S backing. And etc. I am perfectly willing to concede that lots of people think that poetry should not bother with any such thing. I am also willing to concede that the best poets to engage in these dialogues may not, in some cases, be from the region at all. We should not set aside the (unlikely) possibility that the poet who cuts to the quick of the forces behind and the consequences of la Revolución Bolivariana will come not from South America but from Denmark. But we should set aside the possibility that any variation of a metric that strives for balanced or equitable poetic selection from each country has any value at all.

By: mearl

mearl — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 23:15:54 +0000

I thought that this was a good time to chime in. What I would like to do is a series of postings that look at the practice of various translators. Boyd Nielson actually got closest to what I was trying to put on the table (as a kind of conceptual backdrop), but he takes my point in a direction I myself would have never contemplated. (Maybe it’s an interesting direction.) What he questions is whether or not there is a need for U.S. poets to have a dialogue with x or y country, through translation. Then he proceeds to compare countries; Bolivia is more interesting that Denmark, for example. (It might well be, but Denmark is pretty interesting as well.) Of course I am not talking about countries, per se, but rather poets, of whatever nationality. Mr. Nielson conflates, fatally I think, poets with countries. Poets are not countries. They are more often cosmopolitan individuals, borderless, internal or external exiles speaking in a highly stylized yet sidelined vernacular that takes (in the case of real authenticity) some generations to sort out. Translation is essential not because it informs us about countries, but because it is a way into different poetic sensibilities, and it provides us (through its built-in imperfections) a peek at the way language, not nationality (or nationalisms), are at the base of sensibilities. When we are speaking about great literature, as in the list of authors Don Share draws up in his comment, countries themselves tend to fade into the background as we draw closer to particular poetic voices. I would never read poets, as Mr. Nielson suggests, for news about a particular country.
I was pleased with Don’s comment, though probably not for reasons that he intended. I know most of the books on his list (funny though, how I’ve always preferred Eshleman’s very first Vallejo – subsequent revisions have only deadened those early versions). And, in fact, I read Peter Cole’s The Dream of the Poem, and Richard Zenith’s new version of Camões’ lyrics closely in the various versions as they moved toward finalization. But I wonder if Don is not missing my point, perhaps because it wasn’t adequately articulated to begin with. He starts by stating that he doesn’t know whether or not he agrees with “this”. Is he referring to Kent Johnson’s comment, the first in the thread, which points out the fact European poetry is better represented than Latin American poetry, or to my post? If the latter, I would say that Don and I are, actually, in agreement. As I point out, Horace Engdahl has not done his homework. I visit America most years at least once, and I am always astonished at how much translated poetry, fiction and drama are available, whether we are speaking of younger authors or the classics. Any European country would have to take their hat off to this, not only to the volume of it but also to the excellence of the work that is being produced. Engdahl is simply practicing a kind of high-minded ignorance so typical of European elites. I would suggest that he knows he is completely off base, but considers the rhetorical gesture more important than the truth.
My question is really more about how this wealth of translated material actually affects American readers and writers. I know that thirty years ago, when I first started to read poetry seriously, translation was perhaps too important. In terms of percentages, it might have occupied more of my reading time than poetry written in English did. Once I arrived in Europe and was surrounded by European poetry, I began to correct that imbalance.
Today however, and one of the things that first led me to think about this question of translated literature in the U.S., younger generations (at least what I have been able to glean through a reading their poems and their blogs) do not talk about translation as much, if at all; or they talk about it in ways that are different than I did in the late 1970s and early 80s. (Perhaps in more political or sociological terms.) Engdahl pretends to not know how American publishers remain devoted to foreign literatures. My interest lies more in how this work is actually read in the contemporary American setting.
Martin
PS…there are several other comments that I would like to respond to. I’ll try to get to that tomorrow.

By: John Bloomberg-Rissman

John Bloomberg-Rissman — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 22:35:04 +0000

Dear Bill–
I have no idea how well Notley’s poems sell. I doubt very much it would bother her if more people read her, tho I don’t know her, and probably shouldn’t even say what I’ve just said. But I have trouble imagining anybody saying “Please don’t buy my book.”
I will guess that if we choose Nobel prize winners by total sales, we’ll have to go by these Nielsen figures: in 08 fiction writer William P. Young had the most sales, followed by John Grisham.
And, I guess Thomas Kinkade mwill have to count as the greatest American painter …
I will rephrase my vote slightly: if the USA was the country I actually want to live in, Alice Notley would be our most famous poet.
As for your finding her “mind numbingly boring”, well, we’re just gonna have to disagree on that, aren’t we? (Maybe we don’t want to live in the same fantasy land, maybe …)

By: Bill Knott

Bill Knott — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 20:35:27 +0000

whoops, i lost my pointypoint there—
which is:
my individual “No to Notley” is not important,
but the “No to Notley” expressed by
the American Poetry Public
(you know: the buyers and readers of poetry books?)
is important—

By: Bill Knott

Bill Knott — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 20:27:33 +0000

“I note that you didn’t say no to Alice Notley!”
. . . can’t let this one go by—
but rather than say, “Knott says no to Notley,”
I’ll simply mention that the volumes of her numbingly
boring poems don’t sell very well,
do they—has a single one of them ever made it into
a second printing?
(though the last time I advanced this kind of observation,
I was trumped by the PR flack from SPD who
made the astonishing claim that he would rather be read
by 500 readers,
than by the thousands and thousands of Sharon Olds’ readers,
which (as well as insulting those many dozen thousands
of people who’ve bought Olds books)
flummoxed me
nonplus:—how can one refute such a masochistic
assertion?—
Really? You want FEWER readers rather than more? Fine,
fine, whatever turns you on . . .)

By: John Bloomberg-Rissman

John Bloomberg-Rissman — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 18:45:21 +0000

Henry–
I think we’re in “something-pretty-close-to-agreement”, here, actually. Nations are indeed constructs, but they don’t come from nowhere, and they do have effects (most mental constructs have effects, but that’s perhaps only part of the story). That’s what I was trying to get at by citing James S’s: notion that though nations are constructs, they are not idle constructs. Idle being a key word here.
And my point about there not being one USA lit is just your “said coherence is certainly imperfect & partial”, perhaps phrased imperfectly. I think someone like Engdahl tends to overlook in a perhaps inevitable ignorance is that what he calls “American Lit” is actually just part of a larger and much more complex picture. I would be that last to claim no Boolean overlap between what I call the American lits, but I would insist that the overlaps are incomplete …
I note that you didn’t say no to Alice Notley!
Cheers,
John

By: Henry Gould

Henry Gould — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 15:08:53 +0000

Dear John,
Hegel & Heidegger & any other philosopher with or without the H can carry around all the mental constructs about nationhood they like; what I’m saying is you can’t simply equate such constructs with the concrete actuality, which does not appear like Athena out of the mind of either Plato or his heirs.
My dictionary defines “agglomeration” as “a heap or cluster of disparate elements”. That sounds like a pretty accurate description of the US today. What I was objecting to was the common assumption that the US has no real coherent unity or continuity as a culture or a nation (granting that said coherence is certainly imperfect & partial). I think this particular assumption is more an example of ideological “position-taking” than a reflection of the historical facts. This is not to say that any nation or culture is everlasting or fixed in its current formation.