is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
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Fragments of what gets meant.
I once wrote about the Sappho poem with the imposed title "Sappho 31" in order to make a point about what it means to read lyric poetry without having its music attached, indeed, having no idea at all what the music sounded like that was once attached to said poetry. I offered up my translation, cobbled together from existing translations, my disagreements with them, and the modifications that followed.
Turns out, Anne Carson has, in addition to having written at least two great books (which I have mentioned recently, The Beauty of the Husband and Autobiography of Red), translated all of Sappho's fragments. Her (Sappho's) poems all come to us in fragments found on scraps of papyrus or ceramics or the like, pieced together by scholars over the years, argued over, translated and retranslated, but also left forever incomplete. Anne Carson is particularly gifted at pulling meaning out of the spaces where nothing gets said, and so perhaps she is the best choice for a translator of Sappho. Or perhaps it is her work translating what can only occur in pieces that makes her into a poet who gives us so much of what seems not to be there even when it hangs on us with a weight more heavy than anything tangible.
Anyway, here's her translation of Sappho 31.
He seems to me to be equal to gods that man
whoever he is who opposite you
sits and listens close to your sweet speaking
and lovely laughing--oh it
puts the heart in my chest on wings
for when I look at you, even a moment, no speaking is left in me
no: tongue breaks and thin
fire is racing under skin
and in eyes no sight and drumming fills ears
and cold sweat holds me and shaking
grips me all, greener than grass
I am and dead--or almost I seem to me.
But all is to be dared, because even a person of poverty
I want to resist commenting, so that the thing can speak its own voice. So I'll just say this: one of the things I admire about this translation is the way she leaves it unfinished rather than giving it an ending that rings falsely as if we had an authoritative version from which to work. My own translation seemed fine to me until I read this one, and then I could see or rather feel the weight of the classicist training on me. Disciplines have ways of proceeding, and even those who rebel against them often still work within them. Of course it isn't the fault of the training when it constrains us; it is rather the fault of the person who fails to imagine an outside to what is given. (However, as teachers (for those of us who are teachers, and I would argue that all of us are at times teachers), it pays to look closely at our own ways of teaching or giving training, to see whether they leave room for a view of the outside.) After all, Anne Carson is a classicist, and her book of Sappho's fragments is dedicated to a beloved teacher.
She also succeeded in making me think that a poem that I've written about and spent a fair amount of time thinking about might be about something slightly different--or perhaps not different but simply more--than I had previously imagined. That is an accomplishment for which I am thankful.
11:59 p.m. - June 19, 2007
Michael - 2007-06-20 14:16:31
Oh, wonderful.
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caroline - 2007-06-22 02:09:55
oh, there is that spectre of lattimore haunting phainetai moi--the pressure to make oh-so-much sense. all the sensations conveyed in the poem are reduced when forced to make sense, losing the awesomeness of onomatopoiea and, um, enjambement. there, i said it.
consider his ode to aphrodite: appear and stand at my *shoulder?? there are no shoulders in the ode to aphrodite.
another thing i love about the carson book is the greek on the verso. brilliant, because you can also see how she fills in fragmented words, like poikilophron instead of poikilothron (lattimore's 'enthroned in splendor') in above-mentioned ode.
ok, i'm cut off.
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