Translating Poetic Forms

Abstract

We live in an age that has begun congratulating itself on being a great age for translation. This self-congratulation is premature: we live, actually, in a time when Homer and Virgil are translated into prose. That is something the great Elizabethan translators never did: attend to the words of poems and not the forms. This discussion will be an attempt to inoculate the reader against this destructive and self-defeating practice. We may think we know what 'translating' means, but perhaps 'poetic form' is a bit mysterious to us. My favourite image for poetic form is the competitions of international gymnastics. There are three distinct competitions: the parallel bars, the vaulting-horse, and the free display on a large square of carpet. Now, the athletes who work on the parallel bars simply could not do those amazing and thrilling gyrations without the bars; the bars are like the poetic conventions: not a hindrance, but a necessity for producing that particular kind of athletic magic. The vaulting-horse gives us a different kind of aerial dance, which results from a run, a trajectory, and a landing. Substituting a net for the landing-mat would make the exercise quite different: different dangers, different limits; different limits, different content. We might think that the free display on a large square of carpet is a less formal matter: it might seem to offer as much 'freedom' as 'free verse'; but the carpet with its uncrossable edge is also a condition set by someone other than the gymnast: it forms a frame of a certain size that must be sensibly filled and made use of. Now, if we were to describe a gymnastic competition to somebody who had never seen one, the very first thing that we would have to do would be to explain these rules. We would not start with 'She did two somersaults and a side twist' unless the other person already understood the circumstances; if talking to a Martian on Mars, we would have to go still further and explain the strength of our earthly gravity. I believe, then, that translators are similarly bound to give some account and preferably inside the translation itself, not in a note of the limits and conventions chosen by the maker of the original poem. I shall never forget the shock