Found in Translation (part ii) [by Moira Egan]

Let's just say it's fun to collaborate closely with your translator. Today, for example, Damiano sent me an email asking about the use of the word "finish" in a particular poem: did it lean more toward "the end" or "the surface, the decoration" in the poem? It seemed to me to be more at "the surface" on the literal level, but there's no getting around the echo in English of that other kind of finish (and it is a poem about death). So how do you translate that?

When we were working on John Ashbery's poems, the running joke was that Damiano would point out a sentence to me. "Do you think this means this, or that, or this?" he would ask, and of course, the answer was, invariably, "Yes." Then how do you render that multiplicity into Italian? Oy. Or should I say, "mamma mia." Puns and jokes and double entendres, not to mention cultural references, are such a challenge. Then of course, with poetry, there's also the form.

So today I thought I'd talk about two poems and their translations. One is by me (so I feel reasonably well qualified to talk about it), and the other is that famous villanelle by the late, great Elizabeth Bishop.

"Notes on a Potion" is a poem I wrote years ago (tanti anni fa!) (in fact, if it were a child, I think this poem would be going into 8th grade). Its conceit is the evolution of a fragrance--the three stages you perceive as it warms on your skin and mixes with your own body chemistry--as a metaphor for the stages of falling in love. You know those department store ladies who used to come at you and squirt the latest fragrance on you (not so much anymore though. Do you think it's fear of litigation?) and tell you, "The top note is what you smell immediately. Sniff it again in 10 minutes or so; see if you like the middle note. Then try again in 25-30 minutes; that's the base note, and if you like that, come back and buy the perfume!"

[This was first published in POETRY (May 1997); Damiano's translation in NUOVI ARGOMENTI (Oct-Dec 2006)]

NOTES ON A POTION

Top note: attar of roses

No one ever thought to bring me blush
roses before. How can this color, so luscious,
seem so innocent? Buttered-ivory dipped in primrose,
and they open, slow as a honeycomb.
Or the tentative blossoming of trust.

Middle note: sandalwood

In the dusk I stumble over roots
and shadows. He insists, in a whisper,
that we press on. Then he takes my hand
and teaches me the names of the flowers
in the dark of the deepest heartwood.

Base note: ambergris

The fluke breaks the surface smooth as grace,
or amniotic song. Salt, sweet, water,
there are things I have grown used to
needing, but never grow used to: his arms
warm around me, the long migration home.

* * *

And Damiano's translation:

NOTE SU UNA POZIONE

Nota di testa: essenza di rose

Nessuno aveva mai pensato di portarmi rose
lattescenti. Questo colore, così sensuale,
come fa a sembrare così innocente? Burro-avorio immerso
in primula, e si schiudono, lente come miele dal favo.
O lo sbocciare titubante della fiducia.

Nota di cuore: sandalo

Nel crepuscolo incespico su radici,
su ombre. Lui insiste, sussurra,
e ci schiacciamo l’uno all’altra. Poi mi prende per mano
e mi insegna i nomi dei fiori
nel buio della fonda, più fonda selva del cuore.

Nota di fondo: ambra grigia

La coda del cetaceo fende la superficie liscia come la grazia,
o un canto amniotico. Sale, dolcezza, acqua,
ci sono cose di cui mi sono abituata ad avere
bisogno, senza mai abituarmici: le sue braccia
calde attorno a me, la lunga migrazione verso casa.

* * *

When Damiano set out to translate this one, he realized that those three phrases, top note, middle note, base note, were technical terms and he didn't know what to call them in Italian. He was at a conference in Ancona, and just happened to look across the square from where he was having a coffee, and saw a parfumier. Aha! right to the source, he thought, and walked over. Of course, it was just about lunchtime and the gentleman was closing the shop. But the guy--a very nice parfumier, I wish I knew the name of the shop so I could tell you to buy perfume there next time you're in Ancona--turned around and went right back in, pulled out his big bible of perfume-making, and proceeded to assure Damiano that the terms nota di testa, nota di cuore, and nota di fondo were just what he was looking for.

Now, I'm sure that just by looking at them, you can see that these technical terms are way better and more poetic in Italian: head note, heart note, and--fondo, something at depth, deep, "profound," what you'd say about the bottom of the sea. Much nicer than base note. So in the Italian it gains that kind of "depth" and an immediate lead-in to the sea imagery, which makes up for the loss of the double use of the word "fluke."

Now on to Miss Bishop. I probably don't even need to copy the poem in here, since you most likely know it by heart, but here goes:

One Art

by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

And in translation:

Elizabeth Bishop

UN’ARTE

Dell’arte di perdere si è facili maestri;
ogni cosa pare così colma dell’intento
d’andar persa che perderla non è un disastro.

Perdi qualcosa ogni giorno. Accetta l’estro
delle chiavi perse, dell’ora senza sentimento.
Dell’arte di perdere si è facili maestri.

Poi allenati a un perdere ulteriore, un perdere più lesto:
luoghi, nomi, e ogni dove che la mente
voleva visitare. Nulla di ciò sarà un disastro.

Ho perso l’orologio della mamma. Impiastro!
E di tre amate case non ho salvato niente.
Dell’arte di perdere si è facili maestri.

Ho perso due città stupende. E in quel contesto,
alcuni regni miei, due fiumi, un continente.
Mi mancano, ma non è stato un disastro.

Perfino nel perderti (il riso nella voce, un gesto
che amo) non avrò mentito. E’ evidente,
dell’arte di perdere non si è difficili maestri
anche se può sembrare (scrivilo!) un disastro.

* * *

Nice job with the form, isn't it?

The other day, I mentioned that Damiano and two other translators collaborated on the poems in the Bishop collection. One of the translators would do most of the legwork on a particular poem, and then they would all discuss the choices and make the compromises that led to the final version that appears in the book. But for One Art, they could not reach a compromise. Each version was so different from the others that they weren't even neighbors. They had completely different titles! Damiano's version is not the one that made it into the book (I think it's a shame they didn't publish all three) but I still like his the best. OK, that doesn't seem so objective; I'm sorry. The other versions, of course, have their merits.

I like what Mark Strand has to say in "Translation" in The Continuous Life when his speaker-guy is sitting in the bathtub and having a conversation with Borges. "Then don't you think...that the translation of poetry is best left to poets who are in possession of an English they have each made their own, and that language teachers, who feel responsibility to a language not in its modifications but in its monolithic entirety, make the worst translators? Wouldn't it be best to think of translation as a transaction between individual idioms, between, say, the Italian of D'Annunzio and the English of Auden? If we did, we could end irrelevant discussions of who has and who hasn't done a correct translation."

Borges! Don't slip on that soap.

Comments

[Heather]

Moira, my dear, you are amazing.

How i wish i could read Italian to truly appreciate the brilliance of the translation.

In terms of the differing translations, had a conversation today with a colleague about using music to discuss “translation” of poetry. The song we spoke of was "Hurt." This song, originally sung by Nine Inch Nails is, now, truly three songs in one: the lyrics by itself; the song sung by NIN; the song sung by Cash. Translation makes all the difference, and is what makes writing/poetry so worthwhile and amazing.

[DL]

Congratulations on the selection of Ashbery's poems you and Damiano have published in Italian. What an accomplishment! If I am not mistaken, the book's title, retranslated into English, is "A World That Could Not Be Better," adapted from a phrase in JA's "Definition of Blue." A perfect choice: the idiomatic meaning of "couldn't be better" is the exact antithesis of the literal meaning of the words.

[Moira]

David, many many thanks for your kind words about the Ashbery book, and yes, you are (no surprise) spot on about the title. Let me take this opportunity to say what a remarkable collaboration it was that led to this book: a careful selection of the poems by JA himself, Damiano, and Joseph Harrison (who also wrote the excellent introduction); Damiano's decade+ of work on the poems; and my own fortunate happenstance of falling/marrying into this labor of love, frustration, and fun.