Week 15: Pound's Cantos
Pound's most ambititious and ambiguous achievement; a close reading of Canots I & II as an introduction to the architechtonics of the greater whole. Necessary awareness: the descent into the underworld from Homer's Odyssey and the story of Daphne and Apollo from Ovid's Metamorphoses.
After reading the first two cantos without knowing much about the descent / Daphne & Apollo, I was pretty much lost and, to be honest, a little worried about understanding enough about what Pound was trying to get across to be able to comment on them at all. However, after some background reading, more things became clear, particularly the way Pound worked very closely with his translated text, and, I suppose, was working towards another verse translation of the descent.
Notes on the Descent (Book 11):
I was reading the Alexander Pope translation, which is very versified, almost to the point of losing the power of the text; I think it needs something more than a Victorian scrub-up to appeal to me. This is perhaps why I turned to Modernism, why William Carlos William's plans to strip the "dull patina" of language holds so much appeal: it's when writers "show", and don't "tell" that their writing becomes more real and insistent, rather than jarring on the nerves.
"Who is this Pope that I hear so much about?" said George II; "I cannot discover what is his merit. Why will not my subjects write in prose? I hear a great deal, too, of Shakespeare, but I cannot read him, he is such a bombast fellow."
From Alexander Pope's translation (summary): "Ulysses continues his narration. How he arrived at the land of the Cimmerians, and what ceremonies he performed to invoke the dead. The manner of his descent, and the apparition of the shades: his conversation with Elpenor, and with Tiresias, who informs him in a prophetic manner of his fortunes to come. He meets his mother Anticles, from whom he learns the state of his family. He sees the shades of the ancient heroines, afterwards of the heroes, and converses in particular with Agamemnon and Achilles. Ajax keeps at a sullen distance, and disdains to answer him. He then beholds Tityus, Tantalus, Sisyphus, Hercules; till he is deterred from further curiosity by the apparition of horrid spectres, and the cries of the wicked in torments."
The summary is probably about as much of Pope's translation as I can stand. Comparing the two verse translations in a small segment:
Pope:
“There in a lonely land, and gloomy cells,
The dusky nation of Cimmeria dwells;
The sun ne’er views the uncomfortable seats,
When radiant he advances, or retreats:
Unhappy race! whom endless night invades,
Clouds the dull air, and wraps them round in shades."
Pound:
"Sun to his slumber, shadows o'er all the ocean,
Came we then to the bounds of deepest water,
To the Kimmerian lands, and peopled cities
Covered with close-webbed mist, unpierced ever with glitters of sun-rays
Nor with stars stretched, nor looking back from heaven
Swartest night stretched over wretched men there."
I don't have much to say about this, other than the fact that in getting away from the verse form to which Pope so rigidly adheres, Pound has freed the intent of the text itself. I also dislike exclamation points in poetry, for a reason that I haven't quite worked out yet... I think that maybe it comes across too much as an insistent syllable or word, something that's fine in a text like a hymn, a text in reverence of something Absolute, but otherwise? It's enough to make me look for a different translation.
After reading the first two cantos without knowing much about the descent / Daphne & Apollo, I was pretty much lost and, to be honest, a little worried about understanding enough about what Pound was trying to get across to be able to comment on them at all. However, after some background reading, more things became clear, particularly the way Pound worked very closely with his translated text, and, I suppose, was working towards another verse translation of the descent.
Notes on the Descent (Book 11):
I was reading the Alexander Pope translation, which is very versified, almost to the point of losing the power of the text; I think it needs something more than a Victorian scrub-up to appeal to me. This is perhaps why I turned to Modernism, why William Carlos William's plans to strip the "dull patina" of language holds so much appeal: it's when writers "show", and don't "tell" that their writing becomes more real and insistent, rather than jarring on the nerves.
"Who is this Pope that I hear so much about?" said George II; "I cannot discover what is his merit. Why will not my subjects write in prose? I hear a great deal, too, of Shakespeare, but I cannot read him, he is such a bombast fellow."
From Alexander Pope's translation (summary): "Ulysses continues his narration. How he arrived at the land of the Cimmerians, and what ceremonies he performed to invoke the dead. The manner of his descent, and the apparition of the shades: his conversation with Elpenor, and with Tiresias, who informs him in a prophetic manner of his fortunes to come. He meets his mother Anticles, from whom he learns the state of his family. He sees the shades of the ancient heroines, afterwards of the heroes, and converses in particular with Agamemnon and Achilles. Ajax keeps at a sullen distance, and disdains to answer him. He then beholds Tityus, Tantalus, Sisyphus, Hercules; till he is deterred from further curiosity by the apparition of horrid spectres, and the cries of the wicked in torments."
The summary is probably about as much of Pope's translation as I can stand. Comparing the two verse translations in a small segment:
Pope:
“There in a lonely land, and gloomy cells,
The dusky nation of Cimmeria dwells;
The sun ne’er views the uncomfortable seats,
When radiant he advances, or retreats:
Unhappy race! whom endless night invades,
Clouds the dull air, and wraps them round in shades."
Pound:
"Sun to his slumber, shadows o'er all the ocean,
Came we then to the bounds of deepest water,
To the Kimmerian lands, and peopled cities
Covered with close-webbed mist, unpierced ever with glitters of sun-rays
Nor with stars stretched, nor looking back from heaven
Swartest night stretched over wretched men there."
I don't have much to say about this, other than the fact that in getting away from the verse form to which Pope so rigidly adheres, Pound has freed the intent of the text itself. I also dislike exclamation points in poetry, for a reason that I haven't quite worked out yet... I think that maybe it comes across too much as an insistent syllable or word, something that's fine in a text like a hymn, a text in reverence of something Absolute, but otherwise? It's enough to make me look for a different translation.
posted by David | 8:55 PM
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