[lit-ideas] Re: Milton translated (as prose?)
- From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 2 Dec 2008 14:41:46 -0800 (PST)
However, we read the Iliad and the Odyssey in translation, and the Mahabharata
and the Ramayana (if we do) and Virgil and probably the Beowulf and so on. Some
aspects of poetry are lost in translation but many are preserved. Epical poetry
in general lends itself to translation much more readily than lyrical poetry. I
think though the problem with Milton is not so much his language as that his
themes are a bit difficult for the modern secular reader to identify with.
O.K.
--- On Tue, 12/2/08, Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> From: Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Milton translated (as prose?)
> To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Date: Tuesday, December 2, 2008, 9:47 PM
> An offlist friend, a superb poet, responded to the
> "translation" of Milton, thus:
>
> _____
>
> Hardy said the function of poetry is not to record
> convictions but impressions, and these are all the things
> carried by the implications, tone, and subtleties of
> language, the "best words in the best order." The
> rendering of Paradise Lost would lose those impressions.
>
> This is at the heart of Auden's overly misquoted line
> about poetry making nothing happen, because the whole quote
> is
>
> For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
> In the valley of its saying where executives
> Would never want to tamper; it flows south
> From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
> Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
> A way of happening, a mouth.
>
> _____
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