[lit-ideas] Re: American poetic scene at the beginning of 72
- From: "Steve Chilson" <stevechilson@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2006 18:24:24 +0100
It's always fascinated me that a great deal of poetry which is
translated is ultimately translated by poets who don't understand the
original language the poem came from. And then there's the act of
writing poems in languages you know but which aren't your native tongue.
Some languages lend themselves to other more readily poetry, those
between say Spanish and French or between German and Dutch, for example.
But even then there is a layer of cultural relevance which is lost
forever, even if the poem deals with universal themes, much in the same
way regular conversation used to differ from poetry. Perhaps that's why
people talk about the weather at bus stops. The point about Mallarmé
was unfortunately lost in my own inability to remember clearly the
precise terminology he used to describe his poetic theory when in truth,
the first thing that came to mind from the original post I'd commented
on was the expression "eyeball kicks" which is the term Ginsberg coined
to describe words juxtaposed against one another that seemingly make no
sense when paired in the every day context yet when reaching for that
nonsensical/reality sense, did. "Hydrogen jukebox" comes to mind, for
example. If I remember correctly, the idea of stealing the meaning of
particular words by putting them beside other words that seemingly
didn't go together was to lend new meanings to both and not be shackled
by the everyday meanings of such words. Not to make them
incomprehensible but to shave a new layer of meaning using the same auld
whiskers.
I don't imagine this happens very often in classical music but it
certainly does in jazz. Maybe that's why I appreciate the one better
than the other...
On Fri, 13 Oct 2006 09:52:43 -0400, "Andy Amago" <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
said:
> Most poetry loses in the translation. I remember when I watched the
> Simpsons in Russian. It was not the Simpsons. The words were
> translated,
> but it was no longer the Simpsons. I've never read any Shakespeare in
> Russian. I can't imagine what that's like. I should dig some up and see
> how it sounds in Russian. Maybe just the "to be or not to be" soliloquy.
> Stories and prose are doable. Poetry is virtually impossible.
>
>
>
> > [Original Message]
> > From: Eric Yost <eyost1132@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > Date: 10/12/2006 11:11:22 PM
> > Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: American poetic scene at the beginning of 72
> >
> > >>wasn't Mallarm? on about using poetry to demonstrate the
> > beauty of language? Not in the sense of the sensical but
> > beyond the reality of the sensical, finding meaning within
> > the nonsense/reality?
> >
> >
> > That could be why Mallarm? is considered untranslatable.
> >
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--
Steve Chilson
stevechilson@xxxxxxxxxxx
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