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Dear Sir, or Madame or Miss whatever name you go under you are obviously an imposuter as well being an incompetent booby. It appeARS TO us you know of the beauties of the Gallic tongue translated mostly eleganlyt and charmingly by the altered ego later Monsieur Ashberry who resideded in La France for a decade!
Admit the errors of your ways come to your senses stake some horses and learn the langage of the greatest Rumbuad Volatire and VOlaire and others and then learn your howwn anglish of Jakespere!
Yours mostly decidely, delicately lovely and hopefully
Vive la France,
Matilde Voyant
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_____________ Ashbery's trans has some interesting things that it does and like most translations it gives us a 'take' on a poem in another language which is virtually impossible. One thing I was surprised to see was Asbery's changing Rimbaud's prose poem format into more of a verse arrangment. Perhaps he did so he could see it better? I am not sure..
In any event
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In any event
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No sooner had the notion of the Flood regained its composure,
(Asbery abtracts the idea of the 'Flood/ and turns into an idea or a notion as he fancies it)
(this opening sentence translation slows down the Rimbaud poem and makes the poem 'drier' than it wld.be otherwise also connoting a 18th c. flavor to it?is that what I sense? Ashbery confronted by Rimbaud's indomitable 18 year old self and his poem's genius and vitality feels compelled to 'tame' into a recognizable form that takes on the taste of a dryness rather like Beckett's earlier trans. of Le Bateau Ivre.
Than a hare paused amid the gorse and trembling bellflowers and said its prayer to the rainbow through the spider’s web. (none of this is special)
Oh the precious stones that were hiding,—the flowers that were already peeking out. (hiding and peeking would make me yawn were it not I know it was 18 yr Rimbaud who wrote those words but in French ! not English!)
Stalls were erected?? in the dirty main street, boats and were towed toward the sea, which rose in layers above as in old engravings.
Blood flowed?in Bluebeard’s house,—in the slaughterhouses,—in the amphitheaters, where God’s seal turned the windows livid. Blood and milk flowed.
The beavers built. Tumblers of coffee steamed in the public houses.
In the vast, still-streaming house of windows, children in mourning looked at marvelous pictures.
A door slammed, and on the village square, the child waved his arms, understood by vanes and weathercocks everywhere, in the dazzling shower.
Madame xxx established a piano in the Alps. Mass and first communions were celebrated at the cathedral’s hundred thousand altars.
The caravans left. And the Splendide Hotel was built amid the tangled heap of ice floes and the polar night.
Since then the Moon has heard jackals cheeping in thyme deserts,—and eclogues in wooden shoes grumbling in the orchard. Then, in the budding purple forest, Eucharis told me that spring had come.
—Well up, pond,—Foam, roll on the bridge and above the woods;—black cloths and organs,—lightning and thunder,—rise and roll;—Waters and sorrows, rise and revive the Floods.
For since they subsided,—oh the precious stones shoveled under, and the full-blown flowers!—so boring! and the Queen, the Witch who lights her coals in the clay pot, will never want to tell us what she knows, and which we do not know.
_______________________________________ the remainder of it is nothing special and really reflects Asbery's concerns more than Rimbaud's it hardly matters because no more than perhaps a handful at most have read it._________
this was translated by an American poet John Ashbery
this was translated by an American poet John Ashbery
Rimbaud’s Illuminations
Ive more comments to make about this amazing process especially in the light of some work I am purpottedly doing on Homer and one other classic: work which hearkens back to school exercises:
I recently also becamse involved in a little Victor Hugo project,
BUt i much prefer translating CInemA Calendaer of the Abstract heart.
None of which are original!
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Ive more comments to make about this amazing process especially in the light of some work I am purpottedly doing on Homer and one other classic: work which hearkens back to school exercises:
I recently also becamse involved in a little Victor Hugo project,
BUt i much prefer translating CInemA Calendaer of the Abstract heart.
None of which are original!
_________________
