Original Post One Week Five

This is an improv off of James Wright's “Saying Dante Aloud”
 
Rappelling off a Waterfall

You can taste the sweat and iron coursing through in warming and deepening puddles like a penny melting under your tongue. You stiffen for a minute, waiting for the man to charade directions about legs out like sitting in a chair while keeping butts down, you look at a lizard on the side of the canyon, blended in with the rock and rising water.

What I really liked from the piece was the whole first line...basically the only line. But specifically "under your tongue." I think the fact that the whole poem was based off something you couldn't see, surprised me. I wanted to use that location for something that you can see and feel and figure out how those two could play off of each other. 

Translation Response Week Five

This is a response to Gabby's post about Ciardi's preface found here.

"Gabby: I find it very interesting how Ciardi stays true to the ear and places importance on the sound and rhyme rather than the meaning. I kind of agree with his idea of transposition: there is no way to be exactly the same when two languages are so different, but I’m curious about the difference between transposition and translation, since the two are the same idea of bringing some work from one group to another. In my mind, transposition is more jarring than a translation because in a sense, translation has been mended for the ear. So, what does one lose by sticking with a transposition, all the while meshing in a rhyme and standard conventions for English? I admire the use of rhyme and I think Ciardi does it in a way that doesn’t butcher the language so bad, but I’m curious as to why sound and rhyme matters more to him than the meaning. Maybe it’s the stretch it creates for English, the work it puts on himself as a translator and the language as a whole."

Response to Blog Week Five

This is a response to Trevor's blog post found here.

Trev,
This is a really interesting piece because of the line "calling for people to trust the man rather than the artist." It calls into question the idea of the frescoes and the marble, especially in that church, which was fake. I find that interesting, and something that might want to become more central: the idea of fakeness in terms of churches. You could think about the church in Assisi the same way, as gorgeous as it is, it seems etched in fakeness. I think the title must be "only the dead live painted" because it's probably the most interesting line of the whole piece. I do enjoy "I watch Jesus Christ disappear." It's the most unexpected line. I want more of these people though. Especially the man with his eyes closed. Who is he to you? What else is he doing, saying? What does he do later? These might be things to think about for branching out. Maybe he's a painter, or someone from his family did these walls...maybe he's on a pilgrimage to see all the major St. Francis churches. Stuff to think about.

Reportage Post One Week Five

I'm sitting in the middle of a stream, yanking at the leg of a wetsuit, praying it fits. We hiked up and around a mountain, trying to get to the top of the waterfall, only to rappel down. As the two guides tighten the harnesses of everyone around me, I squeeze the teeth of the zipper as one of my friends guides it up to my neck. The guide with two earrings in his right ear tugs at one of my harness bands, and we are off, trekking down stream, stepping only where the water rushes. Traction is better where nothing grows. As the kid with the GoPro strapped to his helmet tells me to be careful, I slip smack on my butt, bruising my fall, and he catches it on film.

An hour later, I'm staring over a 90 foot water fall, watching a girl dangle, clutching the knotted rope at the end of her carabiner. The guide hardly watches her, lowering out of habit, and the man next to me lowers himself into the water while waiting, sings a song in Italian and splashes himself with water from his shoe. I think about how I'm going to trash these shoes after this.

Translation Problem Week Five

Morte del cinghiale

Era un cinghiale, la macchia nera sui sassi,
brulicante, cinghiale
prima di giungere qui, sul sentiero di roccia
e castagne, forse appunto attirato
dalle dolci castagne, dal sole
che filtra e s'incendia, e trafitto
dal sole, dal tempo, e ben altro: difficile
dire palottola, meglio la peste
suina, o uno squarcio segreto, subdolo
che lavora sotto la corsa e il grugnito, sotto l'ansia
di corsa e grugnito, da fame
e di piaceere che lo spinge la notte per foreste
e dirupi, e intanto un sordo
tradimento cresce piano,
in silenzio, nel frusciare
di rovi e cespugli divelti,
di muschi sconvolti
come da frana
o vita che si spezza, magro bosco
perduto ed ora esausto, il punto estremo
dove un nervo s'inalbera, un muscolo
arresta e s'impenna, e anche il sangue si gela: qui, dunque,
la fine, il caro verbo deponente
di vespe e castagne autunnali, funghetti e ruscelli
che appena piu oltre gorgheggiano, merlo e ghiandaie.
Neppure carogna, ormai, ma un teatrino di pelle
smangiata che s'incrosta nel terriccio, una tradotta
allegra di vermi bianchi e di formiche,
un banchetto concluso. La pelle,
le setole scure, le zanne, e poi niente.

Version close to the group                 Version I did by myself later

Death of the Wild Boar

Death of the Wild Boar

It was a wild boar, a black spot on stones, swarming, wild boar, before arriving here, on the path of rock and chestnuts, perhaps attracted just  to the note of sweet chestnut, to the sun that sparks and bursts in flames, and pierced by the sun, by time, and much more: difficult to say if it was a bullet, better the porcine plague,  or one secret gash, sly  under the flow and grunt,  under the anxiety of the flow and grunt, the hunger and the pleasure that pushes him toward the night forests and crags, and meanwhile a dull betrayal grows slowly, in silence, in rustling brambles and uprooted bushes, upset moss like a landslide or life that breaks apart, thin forest  lost and now exhausted, the extreme point where a nerve shoots up, a muscle arrests and rises up, and also blood freezes: here, then the end, the dear deponent verb of wasps and autumnal chestnuts, little mushrooms and streams that scarcely warbles over them, blackbird and bluejay. Either carrion, or almost, but a little theater of skin eats away what encrusts in the soil, a military train alive of bright white maggots and ants, a conclusive banquet. The skin, dark bristles, tusks, and then nothing.

It was a wild boar, a black spot on stones, swarming, the wild boar before arriving here, on the path of rock and chestnuts, maybe attracted just to the note of sweet chestnuts, to the sun that sparks and ignites flames, and pierced by the sun, by time, and much more: it’s difficult  to say if it was a bullet, better than the swine fever, or one secret tear, sneakily working under the flow and grunt, under the panic of the flow and grunt, from hunger and pleasure, pushing him through the night’s forests and crags, meanwhile a deaf betrayal grows slowly, in the silence, in the rustling brambles and uprooted bushes, in devastated moss like a landslide or broken life, in the lean forest, lost and now exhausted, the extreme point where a nerve inflames, a muscle seizes and spazzes, and blood freezes: here, then, the end, familiar verbo deponente of wasps and autumnal chestnuts, little mushrooms and streams that slightly warble over them, blackbird and bluejay. Not even carrion, nearly, but a little skin theater gnaws away what corrupts the soil, a military train  alive of bright maggots and ants, an ultimate banquet of skin, dark bristles, tusks, and then nothing.

    The hardest part to translate, for me, was the line “da fame/e di piacere che lo spinge la notte per foreste” which literally translated to: from/the hunger and the pleasure that he/she/it pushes the night into/from/toward/through forest. The reason this was so difficult was one, I had to either decide to gender the wild boar, and two, I had to figure out the structure of the second half of the line. I imagined it to mean that hunger and pleasure pushed the boar through the night’s forest, the darkness, so that’s why I shifted it a little bit.
    The other part of the piece that really confused and challenged me, was with “il punto estremo/ dobe un nerve s’inalbera, un muscolo/ arrests e s’impenna, e anche il sangue si gela” which literally translates to: the point extreme where a nerve shoots up, a muscle arrests and fletches and also the blood freezes. The word “fletches” confused me after the native speaker had to Google Translate it. I figured it to mean something like “rises up,” which is what the dictionary said it to mean. The other problem I ran into was the idea of sounding like a translation. It’s pretty obvious to me that “shoots up,” “arrests and rises up,” and “also blood freezes” sound like a translation. The question I dealt with was figuring out what a better, more English-y way of saying these things would be. I guess one might say that I was trying to bring the reader to the poet, or trying to bring the poem into colloquially, and I am, but because it sounds more normal that way.
    So I ended up thinking about exercise and the way one strains their body to the ultimate point of exhaustion: what would that be called? I couldn’t come up with the word, so I settled for the “extreme point” and moved on. The “nerve shoots up” part would never be said anywhere, so I tried to think about what that actually meant. Coming up with “inflames” was my way of making “shoots up” more direct because shooting up with pain was most likely inflaming.
    Then comes the part about “arrests and rises up” having to do with muscles. Arrests was pretty easy to think about, because when one is arrested, they are stopped or seized, held. From there, rises up was somewhere along the lines of inflamed, but more physical. So when I think about rising up, I think about losing control, and that means a muscle spasm. So “rises up” shifted to “spazzes.” This way there is also a little bit of alliteration with “seizes and spazzes.”
    The final part of that catalog, the part about blood, was only funky sounding because of the “and also.” So, in order to make it smoother to the ear, I took out “also” because “and” inherently means “also.”
    There were a couple of little words that I switched around, like the original “l’ansia” which transliterated into “anxiety,” but I changed it to “panic” because it made a more visceral sound, and I cannot imagine a wild boar being anxious. Panicked, yes. I also cut “vita che si spezza” (life that breaks) to “broken life” in order to allow the piece to move quicker and I didn’t think that from a meaning standpoint or poetry standpoint the piece lost anything by those cuts. I also changed “di muschi sconvolti” (of moss upset) to “of devastated moss” because the “landslide” that comes after makes “upset” seem so much more intense. Which is also why I changed “s’incrosta nel terriccio, una tradotta” (incrusts in the soil, a military train) to “corrupts the soil, a military train.” The corruption kept with the militaristic feel of the rest of that line.
    These were the biggest changes that I made to smooth out the piece. I made some small flip flops in modifiers, since in English modifiers come (mostly) before the noun.

Junkyard Post Four Week Five

There's a pacifier lying on the dirt in front of a statue of some important man from Gubbio's past. The blue plastic is missing the clear nippled end, the part that matters to most children, and parents. Behind it, in the park, a mother bounces her little girl, crying. I'm half wondering if this was hers, half wondering how long it's been here. Not old enough to be the statues' daughters' of course, but definitely kicked around by a few teenage future soccer stars. The World Cup starts tonight, one of the boys says, and I finally look up, realizing we are walking towards the church.

Translation Question Week Five

"...consider a particular moment in the eighth circle (for your Wednesday reading), when Dante and Virgil encounter Ulysses (Odysseus). You will note that Virgil instructs Dante to remain quiet, that he (Virgil) will speak to Ulysses. The reason he offers is that Ulysses may be "disdainful" (in Mandelbaum's translation) of Dante's Tuscan dialect. Interestingly, however, in the next canto, Dante meets Guido da Montefeltro (still in the circle of the fraudulent counselors). In that episode--which I know you are not reading for class--Virgil says the opposite: "You speak; he is Italian."

I find it fascinating that this is only part of the Inferno in which two cantos are dedicated to the same sin: fraudulent counsel. And here, at this most curious spot of the Inferno, we have an issue, I believe, of translation. Why does Dante-poet construct this sense of decorum and language, translation and comprehension? Why must Virgil play the intermediary, if we look beyond the surface-level reasons Virgil offers to Dante-pilgrim. (Remember: Virgil, too, is but a character in Dante-poet's epic.) And why must Dante carry the discussion in the following canto, which, all the obvious differences aside, treats the same sin?"

Dante-poet constructs a two canto’ed circle because the reader must deal with two different versions of Dante-pilgrim and Virgil. In the canto with Ulysses, we see Dante-pilgrim/listener, who must allow Virgil to talk and be the intermediary for Dante because there is a sense that Dante might not understand the importance of intelligence. Dante-poet, as the writer of the “Christian epic” put Ulysses in Hell because of the stock he put on finding knowledge and having intelligence. Dante-pilgrim is not on this quest for eternal knowledge, but Dante-poet interjects with a conscious censoring of his knowledge. Virgil, and Dante-poet, might be working as an intermediary in order to modulate his intelligence because he doesn’t understand the Greek ways like Virgil does: “I crib and confine my intelligence” (Mary Jo Bang, XXVI:21). In the next canto, however, Dante is familiar with Guido da Montefeltro and might have been in Ravenna while Dante was exiled there. He was a Ghibelline captain but worked against the Ghibellines later in life. This man was not as thirsty for knowledge as Ulysses was and would not have been disdainful of someone lower in status, as the Italians would have been to the Greeks. Virgil allowed Dante to talk because it was safer for him and more would have been accomplished. Dante-poet constructs a sense of decorum and language because language is the easiest way to discuss status. The fact that Virgil was familiar with the Greek tradition and Dante was not, allowed for Virgil to communicate with someone of that stature. This is a commentary on the importance of knowledge, and when one does not gain the same knowledge as the rest of the world, then that puts one behind. Dante must carry into the next canto to differentiate between the levels of fraud, between the differences in these characters.

Junkyard Post Three Week Five

Marmo Finto

In St. Francis' Church in Gubbio, there is no marble.
The town, too broke for nice stone, paid painters to swirl designs
onto the walls and pretend the reds and browns were real.
When we moved to Georgia, my mother, curls sticking to her sweaty skin,
painted age on the front of the oak cabinets, told me it's a faux finish
and makes our house elegant. It looks real, even up close.
Gubbio wanted elegance too, except it only looks real from far away.
Kind of like you, telling me you're fine and that you're happy.
But unlike my mother's painter, your mask doesn't look real up close.
You're a church wall, facaded in the swirls of elegant marble,
but when I stare, squinting hard, there's nothing.

Translation Response Week Five

This is a response to Ashley's blog post found here.

   I find myself questioning the reinsertion of footnotes because as you have said, it seems to make the piece harder to read. I question the fact that it brings the reader closer to the original text, it seems to do just the opposite, because it might be translating more than what was in the original. I believe it was Eco who warned against bringing more to the translation than what was originally in the text. I find that footnotes do exactly what they are supposed to do: fill in the blanks without being intruding to the text but when the footnotes are reinserted as part of the text, it takes away from what the original was trying to convey.
    In can see how this eliminates the necessity for the extra pages of information, but how many of the questions regarding the reinserted references are actually answered? Footnotes, in my opinion (and Mary Jo Bang is sparse with hers), are more helpful in the end than the reinsertion technique seems to be. I’m curious as to how the footnotes in the text works with James’ idea of foreignizing. It seems footnotes in the piece would aid foreignizing because of the convoluted nature of each new line. However, he also talks about how this is making the piece accessible to the reader, but it doesn’t seem that way in reality. It’s like a contradiction.
    Plus, he keeps a rhyme and rhythm, so that must also help to keep the piece a little foreign, but not in the sense that he was aiming; it butchers the English to fit so many different spaces: from the footnotes to the rhyme, the English language is doing more work than the Italian did in the original and that’s where I find the translation most interesting. It seems as though James and Bang (and maybe even Carson) are creating more work for English than Dante created for Italian.

Junkyard Post Two Week Five

Our Landlord has a kitten. The first thing one of the roommates says to me when I walked through the door. This kitten, all white with six black smears on the rump, is about as long my forearm and mews slightly when I picked him up. His claws clench my shirt when he spots my earrings, and I shift him to the right. He claws my boob. Placing him down, he runs to the food bowl under the chair and sneezes while drinking. Looking around the garden, I imagine he has much to play with: from the white dandelions, to the small bricks piled against the wall, but still one of the boys picks him up, cuddles him in the crook of his arm and brings him inside to sleep. It's only in the morning that he regrets it: the cat poops at 7:00 sharp, carrying him outside makes for three plops on the floor and using half a bottle of Listerine for disinfectant.

Memory Post One Week Five

Swirling red wine while a woman asks us what the first scent is,
I see my father, swirling, sipping, smelling his own glass
in Dahlonega with my mother. We're looking for a second home
in the mountains and they're checking off golfing, leisure,
and welcome baskets with cheese. But I'm alone here,
on the mountains in Montefalco, not looking for a home,
but learning of almonds and chocolate and the way the sun hits grapes
in the field, the way I still stare out the window at thousands of vines,
like my fifteen year old self, only this time, I can drink too.

Junkyard Post One Week Five

A woman with short, curly hair buckles under the heat of the open air market
and her daughter clutches her arm, screams help me, but it's in Italian
and I don't know what I can do. Part of me doesn't think she's talking to me,
as I scurry over and the black man from another tent pushes me out of the way,
rescuing us both. Another woman nearby grabs a wicker chair
and begins to make her way through the crowd, but the old woman is flat
on the ground and has no use for the chair. Looking at us, she places the chair down,
says something I can't decipher and for the first time in five weeks,
I feel tears well in the corners of my eyes. I have done nothing with my life.

Original Post Two Week Four

This is a piece that involves the Eye-Rhyme idea mixed with some of McCannell.

I remember my mother's knife
and her first apprehension
to pockets and some vast encryption
of the unplanned typology of knights.
All men are composed of similar
element: a heart, bones, the unending desire
to bed a woman half their age, deter
the older, some combination of extracurricular,
struggling to distance, not only themselves,
but their mothers and sheep and dead boars.
My recipe, two sheets of uprooted dignity, tore
from a notebook in mountainous theatrics,
cooking is an essential component
of worldliness: cutting culture into company.

Translation Response Week Four

I actually responded to Jenna's post about her translation's preface because I just love discussing Dante translations.

You can find the original post here.

My response:

Jenna,
Obviously, I'm not going to think the fact that Carson brings Dante to us as a bad thing: Bang does it as well and I'm thoroughly enjoying it. The fact that I don't have to work so hard is quite nice when it comes to such a subject as Dante, and I think the colloquial nature of the piece offers something else in terms of meaning. I find it quite hilarious that Carson tries to terza rima, but I also admire it. I guess we could consider him butchering the English language, but isn't that just an inverse of what our translators are doing to the originals? Especially mine, in a sense. The terza rima attempt differentiates Carson from Hollander or Ciardi, but also offers something to talk about and understand from a translators perspective. He's trying to capture the importance of terza rima, which was immensely important at the time. Granted, he's butchering English, as I mentioned before, but that doesn't matter to him as much as the rhyme does. I can't remember if it was just something we talked about in class or if it was a theorist, but every translator finds something important from the original. Bang chooses to focus on the meaning and the content, Carson, I think, is focusing on the rhyme. I think it's cool that he does that.

Translation Question Week Four

When reading Mary Jo Bang's Inferno, her preface speaks large volumes on what she finds translation to be. On page 10, she writes "Translation is a method of bringing the past back into the present--across geographies, across different time periods, and across cultural difference--and sharing what is common to all. That act is both homage and theft...Translation keeps a work of literature alive by simultaneously dismantling and reclaiming it. For the translator, there is an intense--and paradoxical--intellectual pleasure that comes from making a text that has already been made by someone else. It is a strange collaborative camaraderie." 


While reading this, I immediately thought of the Ortega y Gasset article, where they say: "Translation is not a duplicate of the original text; it is not--it shouldn't try to be--the work itself with a different vocabulary...translation is a literary genre apart, different from the rest, with it's own norms and own ends...translation is not the work, but a path toward the work...no more than an apparatus, a technical device that brings us closer to the work without ever trying to repeat or replace it." (61)

I think this is what Mary Jo Bang is trying to get at when she says translation is both homage and theft. Because a translation cannot be exactly the same, inherently translation is an interpretation of the original text, it will be a refraction of the original. The extent is up to that translator. That is also what she means when she says that translation is about dismantling and reclaiming. She has dismantled the original Alighieri Inferno and in its wake is a reclaimed Bang Inferno. By bringing it over to the reader, she is doing what Schleiermacher calls "moving the reader toward [the writer]"
 (49). She aids the readers by bringing Dante into the present, which she says, in another part of the preface, shows Hell as a never changing place. She shares references that are common to all so as to help the reader understand the original in a way that is relevant to the current age.

This also dates a piece, makes it its own relic, which Bang understands. I think this version of Dante has its own place in the record books of Dante translations because it offers something that the others do not: modernity.

Translation Problem Week Four

This is the transliteration for Sydney's, Anastasia's, and my poem.

Death of the Wild Boar

Age the wild boar, the spot black on the stones,
swarming, wild boar
first to arrive here, path of rock
and chestnut, maybe note attracted
to the sweet chestnut, to the sun
that filters and bursts in flames, and pierced
by the sun, by time, and much more: difficult
to say if it was bullet, better the plague
porcine, or one secret gash, sly
that works under the flow and grunt, under the anxiety
of the flow and grunt, the hunger
and the pleasure that he pushes the night toward forests
and crags, and meanwhile a dull
betrayal grows slowly,
in silence, in the rustling
of brambles and bushes uprooted,
of moss upset
like a mudslide
or life that breaks apart, thin forest
lost and now exhausted, the point extreme
where a nerve shoots up, a muscle
arrests and rises up, and also the blood freezes: here, then
the end, the dear deponent verb
of the wasp and autumnal chestnuts, little mushrooms and streams
what scarcely over they rumble, blackbird and bluejay.
Either carrion, or almost, but a little theatre of skin
eats away what encrusts in the loam, a military train
alive of white maggots and of ants,
a banquet conclusive. The skin,
the bristles dark, the tusks, and then nothing.

Reportage Post One Week Four

To the woman praying in a church in Perugia, Italy

As our tour guide talks about the importance of the architecture, 

I watch you with a blue cross body bag, making the sign of the cross 

and kneeling in front of a small shrine for Mary. 

The man next to you dangles a camera from his wrist as he adjusts

his Hard Rock Cafe: Amsterdam shirt and scratches his stomach. He almost hits you.

As you glance up to the candles to Mary's portrait, I almost hear your prayer 

and whisper one of my own. Entering into your world, I disrupt the solitude, 

apologizing for this man, for me. I'm sitting in a foldable lawn chair in the back. 

Memory Post One Week Four

Walking down the street to Ostello Dante in Ravenna, four men on bikes lurked outside a barred grocery store at 8:30 pm. Four other men, across the street, talk to a woman who reminds me of the mother from Precious. Fifteen Americans, separated at a crossway, wandered through the "hood" of Dante's exile. I'm next to a wall of lilac bushes and I'm five again, in my backyard, chasing the neighbor's beagle against the chain link fence. My mother echoes through the yard, calling for grilled cheese, for nap time, but I don't listen.

Junkyard Post Four Week Four

Our first apprehension as travelers, being touristy. Offsetting the pull to magnets and keychains plastered with the Pope's face or the bags with little coliseums and fountains, are we offsetting ourselves? Rome first appears to everyone as it did to me the first time last year: loud, magnificent, smack in the middle of a contemporary city. As I stare up again, Rome imposes on this piece of history and a pigeon shits on my hand. 

Junkyard Post Three Week Four

While listening to one of the students read from Ciardi’s Inferno, I turn towards the aqueduct, watching two men jog past us. The one closest to us wears a bright yellow jogging vest and tight blue shorts. I wonder if they enjoy living here, running over ruins. It’s like the people of Spoleto turn the lights on for us, museum curators for a town that manicures the walls of another Spoleto: one from thousands of years ago, fighting the Byzantines and Alexander, one that spilled oil from the top of a building and blocks out the weeds. We want to see something spectacular, something Rome is not: controlled. Tamed. 

Junkyard Post Two Week Four

The couple in front of me interlaces their fingers and smile sidelong at each other while walking down Via Mercato. I smell the man in the pork food truck slicing sandwiches for the passerby's and I wish I had three euro. Stopping for gelato, the couple sits down and eats the wafer from the top out of each other’s cups and I imagine Paolo and Francesca reading about love and Lancelot, while burning in the eternal fire of nothingness. Spoleto isn’t there yet.

Junkyard Post One Week Four

Sitting at the bar by the aqueduct, I watch the bartender throw a stick to a sheepdog while listening to my professor discuss abstractions in poetry. While the dog runs down the street, I hear a car honk and the students beside me laugh at something said. I’ve missed it, so I turn back to them, just in time to listen to the girl across the table, with ombre hair, read her piece about her father. The baby a couple of tables away cries against her mother, purple dress bunching at the stomach and I wish my mother could still hold me.

Original Post One Week Four

This is an imitation off of James Wright's "Ravenna (2)" translation.

Spoleto (2)

The children of Spoleto,
With their wide eyes and clinging hands,
Carry a backpack from school,
Filled with a history of hundreds of years.

The children of Spoleto
Laugh like they have a secret all their own:
Lost, dark. And when they cry, a murmuring
Coo sinks through the cracks of cobblestones.

The children of Spoleto play
Like animals: wild, yet content.
They whisper future's song without knowing
Words or tune.

The children of Spoleto age,
Slowly and quickly, they age into the shadows
And all they know is they're here
And won't ever leave.