A very thoughtful essay taking me along inner trails new and old, looking under leaf cover and scouting wonder. Thank you for putting this out for us. We need treasures like this to carry us.
This piece had that calm but all the way awake presence about it, Abbey. It made a good place to be for a few. I only know Wiman from his Mandelstam versions he did (with Kaminsky I think) that were excellent. Elizabeth Oldfield also mentioned him this week. Will be on the look out for his work.
I LOVE those translations of Mandelstam, Andrew. "And I was Alive" was a revelation. It also pushed me to wrestle with the original Russian (which I haven't studied but I thought it was worth my time to parse out) and rendered the poem myself just for fun. Maybe I'll share it next week here. I also saw that Elizabeth Oldfield brought him up! Must be in the air.
Yeah, that one is really quite fine. Mandelstam has yet to meet his translator in English like Celan found Felstiner though. Wiman is among my favorites but Osip is a tough nut for our language. Celan did a book of German translations of O. Some say into Celan-ian but I hae often played with the idea of Englishing those versions. Russian is way out of my reach. Good on you for that. Let's see it.
So, I mean this question in a completely straightforward, non-snippy way. You said that Russian is out of reach for you, so are you getting your idea that Mandelstam has yet to meet his English translator counterpart from your experience with the German ones? I'm really curious!
Most of my experience with the Russians (Akhmatova, Mandelstam, etc.) are from an anthology translated into French that I bought at a Russian bookstore in Paris. (Haha! How convoluted is that?) But with the "And I was Alive" one I really did get out the Russian dictionary. Woof. It was slowgoing.
And yes, I'll get my version of that one up by next week!
After really thinking this over last night. Abbey, I think this idea of *the* translator of someone is just type of thinking left over from a former life that just snuck in in the cargo section. The more I look at it, the more foreign it seems to me. Thanks for making me look at that.
Maybe not THE translator in a Platonic ideal sense but there's probably some special affinities between particular minds though, right? And if there's a partnership like that across languages, what a boon to the rest of us!
I've always been with Walter Benjamin of the impossibility of translation. That doesn't mean we don't try. : )
Ha! Fair question indeed. Even if there had been snip.
So I speak there from the long venerated place of unsubstantiated crazy. But let me try to light up that crazy.
Any group of Mandelstam poems by one translator has really strong points but also dull edges and rough sections. Also when you hear the rare bits of him recorded in the old archives, even through the crap sound quality there is a sonic richness and magic that many translations lack. He composed completely in air, usually walking and never wrote the poems down himself. Later, Nadia would do that for him. I just suspect him of a greatness that seems a bit untouchable through many of the translations but that isn't to say there isn't crazy good stuff out there. Maybe it is just greed from more I speak from. Some of the trouble maybe he wrote in rhyme and rhythm that is hard to match in our language they say. But really, what do I know, as a English only guy is a more than fair question. Really.
Plus for all I know amazing work has been done and I just haven't seen it yet.
Have you read his prose stuff? Fascinating cat. I try to read Nadia's memoirs every couple years.
A very thoughtful essay taking me along inner trails new and old, looking under leaf cover and scouting wonder. Thank you for putting this out for us. We need treasures like this to carry us.
Lovely!! Thank you!
Thank you, Denise! I always enjoy your framings of the world so that means a lot to me!
This piece had that calm but all the way awake presence about it, Abbey. It made a good place to be for a few. I only know Wiman from his Mandelstam versions he did (with Kaminsky I think) that were excellent. Elizabeth Oldfield also mentioned him this week. Will be on the look out for his work.
I LOVE those translations of Mandelstam, Andrew. "And I was Alive" was a revelation. It also pushed me to wrestle with the original Russian (which I haven't studied but I thought it was worth my time to parse out) and rendered the poem myself just for fun. Maybe I'll share it next week here. I also saw that Elizabeth Oldfield brought him up! Must be in the air.
Yeah, that one is really quite fine. Mandelstam has yet to meet his translator in English like Celan found Felstiner though. Wiman is among my favorites but Osip is a tough nut for our language. Celan did a book of German translations of O. Some say into Celan-ian but I hae often played with the idea of Englishing those versions. Russian is way out of my reach. Good on you for that. Let's see it.
So, I mean this question in a completely straightforward, non-snippy way. You said that Russian is out of reach for you, so are you getting your idea that Mandelstam has yet to meet his English translator counterpart from your experience with the German ones? I'm really curious!
Most of my experience with the Russians (Akhmatova, Mandelstam, etc.) are from an anthology translated into French that I bought at a Russian bookstore in Paris. (Haha! How convoluted is that?) But with the "And I was Alive" one I really did get out the Russian dictionary. Woof. It was slowgoing.
And yes, I'll get my version of that one up by next week!
After really thinking this over last night. Abbey, I think this idea of *the* translator of someone is just type of thinking left over from a former life that just snuck in in the cargo section. The more I look at it, the more foreign it seems to me. Thanks for making me look at that.
Maybe not THE translator in a Platonic ideal sense but there's probably some special affinities between particular minds though, right? And if there's a partnership like that across languages, what a boon to the rest of us!
I've always been with Walter Benjamin of the impossibility of translation. That doesn't mean we don't try. : )
Ha! Fair question indeed. Even if there had been snip.
So I speak there from the long venerated place of unsubstantiated crazy. But let me try to light up that crazy.
Any group of Mandelstam poems by one translator has really strong points but also dull edges and rough sections. Also when you hear the rare bits of him recorded in the old archives, even through the crap sound quality there is a sonic richness and magic that many translations lack. He composed completely in air, usually walking and never wrote the poems down himself. Later, Nadia would do that for him. I just suspect him of a greatness that seems a bit untouchable through many of the translations but that isn't to say there isn't crazy good stuff out there. Maybe it is just greed from more I speak from. Some of the trouble maybe he wrote in rhyme and rhythm that is hard to match in our language they say. But really, what do I know, as a English only guy is a more than fair question. Really.
Plus for all I know amazing work has been done and I just haven't seen it yet.
Have you read his prose stuff? Fascinating cat. I try to read Nadia's memoirs every couple years.
I have never read Nadia's memoirs or Mandelstam's prose! What would you suggest of the latter?