Something's lost in the translation -- is that the poetry? And something's gained: the illusion that homo sapiens actually communicate -- is that the illusion which results in God? Well, those are the queries our man Federman tweaks in the following Tiny Essay, in which the enemy of poetry is grammar, and by breaking the rules we emerge into the Bliss O'Po (could it be -- Cloud Cuckoo Land?).
Following the essay is M. Federman's brilliant translation of the Allen Ginsberg classic, “America,” into French. He felt compelled to do this when he saw that the official translation made the last line, “America, I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel” into “unusual” shoulder instead of “homosexual” shoulder.
Bob Holman
Reflections Concerning the Translation of Poetry
Thinking about various modes of translating poetry it occurs to me that a translation that respects the rules of grammar must [inevitably] be a false translation of the original [the matter of originality will be discussed below] because a poem -- a true poem -- is a poem [the repetitiousness is deliberate here] that reflects on poetry as all true poems do while pretending to say something important about life, love, nature, mankind, death, religion, reality or whatever it pretends to be saying -- a true poem -- regardless of whether it is ancient, classical, romantic, symbolic, modern, contemporary, postmodern or whatever it is or has been made to be -- a true poem cannot, must not, will not respect the rules of grammar --
grammar is the police of poetry
grammar is the IRS of poetry
grammar is the CIA of poetry
grammar is the Gestapo of poetry
grammar is worse than a concentration camp
grammar dictates and to dictate is to be dictatorial
grammar is the Hitler of poetry
grammar exterminates true poetry
grammar forces the one who translates into submission to the rules of grammar
grammar destroys true poetry
the day grammar was invented poetry was enslaved
only those poets who revolted against this enslavement wrote true poems --
[the readers of these reflections concerning the translation of poetry can make their own list of poets who have revolted -- mine is already made]
and so to render the grammarlessness [thank you sam] of a true poem one must not -- one cannot be faithful to the original because faithfulness would by necessity [and by obligation] introduce grammar into the new version in whatever language it has been translated --
but there lies the ambiguity, the inescapable ambiguity and the paradox of translating a true poem because a translated poem that rejects the rules of grammar can only be a falsification of the original poem -- it has to be a false translation just as a translation that respects the rules of grammar is a false translation --
only the original can be a true poem but since poems always borrow or steal from other poems then the act of poetry is always an act of plagiarization and as such a true poem is in fact a false poem --
this is why the act of translating poetry is a futile act just as the act of writing poetry is a futile act since one can never write a true poem -- only the first poem was true but it quickly got lost, erased, forgotten into subsequent poems --
and so to write poetry is to lose ground [I stole this from my Roumanian friend Emile Cioran] --
[when Cioran told me that I replied] then why kill oneself to write poetry since one always kills oneself too late -- why write to say exactly what one wanted to say in the first place or what others have tried to say in vain --
[those who disagree with the above reflections can reflect on the subject by themselves -- I merely wanted to share these reflections with those who may not have reflected on the question of translating poetry -- or cannot do so] -- these reflections apply also to the translation of fiction -- I thank you for your attention]
Raymond Federman
Next page > Federman's French translation of “America” > page 1, 2
