Martin Johnston was a member of a generation of Australian poets who, in the words of John Tranter, “revitalized Australian poetry” in the late 1960s and 1970s. Born in Sydney and brought up on the Greek island of Hydra (where Leonard Cohen was a frequent houseguest), Johnston’s upbringing provided his poetry with a unique reference point: he knew ancient Greek, learned katharevousa Greek (an artificial hybrid conceived in the 18th century) and spoke and wrote demotic Greek, thimotki. As a child he immersed himself in Homer and in his teens began translating the work of modern Greek poets such as George Seferis and CP Cavafy.
As the eldest son of Australian literary royalty, the essayist Charmain Clift and George Johnston, whose novel My Brother Jack won the Miles Franklin Award and is a seminal piece of mid-century Australian literature, Martin seemed predestined to be a writer. Johnson’s poetry is immensely allusive, evocative and erudite. His remarkable knowledge of classical Greek, his lifelong interest in chess, and his innate curiosity which led him to explore esoteric philosophies all find their way into his poetry.
In Nadia Wheatley’s introduction to Johnston’s recently issued selected poems, Beautiful Objects, she notes “Martin Johnston did not speak demotic Australian. But his Greek was the people’s Greek”. It is for this reason, perhaps, that his translations of contemporary Greek poetry come to us with such power and immediacy, and might represent the best entry point into his work.
Here are two of such translations. The first is an anonymous folk song, one of dozens which Johnston had been translating since his days as a schoolboy. The second is by Andhreas Karandonis, for whom, I’m pleased to report, google has no answers.
Pass By My Country
My friends of Roumeli, and you, sons of Moria,
by the bread we have eaten together,
by our brotherhood,
pass by my country and by my people.
Don't enter the village by sunlight
don't enter the village by moonlight
don't shoot your guns
don't sing your songs
for fear my mother might hear you, and my poor sister.
But if they come and ask you, the first time say nothing,
and if they doubly ask you, a second and third time,
don't tell them I've been killed and make them sad hearted.
Just tell them that I've married here, here in these parts,
I have taken the grave for a mother-in-law,
the black earth for a wife,
and these strewn stones for my brothers and cousins.
—Anon
Old Horoscopes
Now don't you fret, Mr Sylvester, nothing wrong with the shop
though I won't say it's the best—pride before a fall and so on,
and besides, you never know what you're in for.
But as I was saying,
I was born around the same time as plenty of others,
each of us due for something different. Some of us
having to work,
others getting learning, or love, or being pious in monasteries,
or summer holidays by the sea or in the hills,
or the highest honours of state.
Anyway, Mr Sylvester, I turned out to be a boy, of course,
which pleased my parents no end. My father celebrated
by taking a couple of potshots at the rooftrees across the road
and the trees (it was winter) kind of shone in the snow.
Everyone was happy and shouting, and he pulled
the blinds back
and peered out at the first star he spotted—
actually it happened that only one was shining
at the time, the evening star as we call it.
He had this idea that he could bargain with the star,
maybe come to some agreement about my future;
who doesn't want his son to be a king? But,
well, Mr S., as you can see, i never did become a king
or anything of the sort.
True enough, I've turned out to be a good tradesman
with one of the best businesses in town. Even so—
if I could only ask that evening star to come down a bit closer
and make an appointment, over there beyond the last trees,
I'd skip the till for a while and ask it:
What was the arrangement? Did you take any notice
of my father's look, of my poor father's pleading gaze?
—Andhreas Karandonis
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