All about Walt Whitman

3.8 Some examples of re-creation: Fitzgerald, Joyce, Dickinson (Part 1)

Naturally, no poet can achieve mastery over form without proper exercise, which means studying versification, past and present poetry, and writing and re-writing his works until finding the best form for the content he wants to convey. To revolutionize an artistic mode of expression, it is necessary to know previous and contemporary expressions of these arts and their artists, for the reason that we can not revolutionize something based on nothing, which would then be invention and not revolution. Whitman is an example of that; he knew the poetry he was re-forming. Except for occasions when we are so inspired that poems begin to form into our minds almost entirely ready to be put to paper and we only have to write them down,  most of the time they need re-working. A translator who intends to re-create poetry the way we have described must follow the same course. He needs training in this field. Before we give examples from Leaves of Grass, we will show some re-creations done by us as a preparation to the Leaves.

The general idea is to convey content, or meaning (the signified), as faithfully as possible, and to re-construct, or re-build the structural elements of the poem (signifiers) in our language. As we stated at the beginning, besides the semantic content, our aim is to re-create, as much as possible, the aesthetic elements of the original, their phonic and visual properties, so that we can integrate form and meaning in a single poetic act. However, we always keep in mind that we can not sacrifice one thing to the detriment of the other. That means a transposition of the original significance of the words, without bending or twisting its meaning, and a re-construction of its aesthetic elements in a likewise fashion, so that the work of art does not lose its beauty.

Based on this conception, we started to practice with some poets in particular. Some results of this poetical exercise are what we are going to show and comment from now on. We began with poets whose works are highly elaborate and place great challenges to a translator.  The first examples will be from the Rubaiyat (word derived from an Arabic word for four; so it means “quatrains”, or stanzas of four lines) of Omar Khayyám (Persian mathematician and astronomer, 1048-1123), a type of poetry that is extremely concentrated (few words to express a lot of meaning), which mixes in a masterful way images and ideas mounted on a melody that flows smoothly, with perfect harmony between signified and signifier. The Rubaiyat was translated into English by Edward Marlborough Fitzgerald (1809-1883), who was an English writer and whose translations of about a hundred of the verses were the first (published in 1859) and best known ones in English.

We shall compare a couple of quatrains re-created by us to the English version and also to Augusto de Campos’s (1986, p.103) and Haddad’s translation (1964). Our standpoint is that Campos’s work and ours have been able to re-issue in Portuguese the beauty of Fitzgerald’s great work, although he may be accused of taking too much liberty with the original and using his creativity to make the translation poetically better than the original. The fact is that his own re-creation rendered a beautiful product in English. This reminds us of Pound’s infidelity to the form of the original but faithfulness to its tone. We shall see now if the difficulties posed by the quatrains were satisfactorily met. Even though the language in which the Rubáiyát was written, Persian, has a greater power of concision than western languages, as typical of oriental languages (HADDAD, 1964, p.17), and English being more concise than Portuguese, we have been able to be faithful to Fitzgerald’s precision. On the other hand, Haddad kept the quatrains, but stretched the verses to twelve metrical syllables, or alexandrines, and changed the rhyme scheme to aabb, thus making the verses more rhetorical and breaking the beautiful density, workmanship and surprise of Fitzgerald’s brilliant work. This rubai is especially beautiful because of its appeal to the enjoyment of life. The first line, with “make the most of”, is a reference to the Latin expression Carpe Diem, which means “Seize the Day”, or catch, gather, pluck or live for the day, enjoying the current moment, for we do not know if tomorrow we will be alive. This idea first appeared in an Ode (I, 11) by roman poet Horace (65 – 8 AC), which reads: “Carpe diem quam minimum credula postero” (“Gather the day, for in the future you can believe the minimum”):

FITZGERALD:

XXIII

“Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,

Before we too into the Dust Descend;

Dust into Dust, and under Dust, to lie,

Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer and—sans End!”

OUR RE-CREATION:

XXIII

“Prove todo o prazer que ainda vem,

Antes que Empurrem-nos ao Pó também:

Pó entre Pó e sob Pó, postados,

Sem Canção, sem Cantor, sem Vinho, e – sem!”

CAMPOS:

XXIII

Ah, vem, vivamos mais que a Vida, vem,

Antes que em Pó nos deponham também;

Pó sobre Pó, e sob o Pó, pousados,

Sem Cor, sem Sol, sem Som, sem Sonho – sem.

HADDAD:

XXV

VAMOS GOZAR o Amor! Provar cada Alegria

Que a vida possa dar! Seremos Poeira um dia:

Poeira a jazer na Poeira e sob a Poeira e assim

Sem Vinho e sem Amor, sem Música e sem fim!

.

Speaking of rhythm, in the English version, the first two lines and the fourth one are written in iamb feet, that is, as explained before, a metrical foot (in accentual syllabic verse) comprising an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one. The third line begins with a trochee (the opposite of an iamb) and continues with iambs. Campos is able to re-construct these iamb feet in the first and last line. However, this is an exception in Portuguese, where verse is syllabic, with accents on specific metrical syllables, and words tend to be mostly longer than in English, making it almost impossible to re-build this versification in our vernacular. In our re-creation, the first and the last lines have accents on the third, sixth and tenth syllables, while the second and third lines have accents on the first, fourth, eighth and tenth syllables. Campos uses this pattern in his third line and another variant, this time with an accent on the seventh syllable, in the second line. We both maintain the rhyme scheme aaba; in both cases the chain of D’s from “dust” was kept with the use of  the P’s of “Pó”; the S sounds of  “sans” remained in the S sounds of “sem”, and the M’s of “make” and “most” were recovered by the P sounds of “prove” and “ prazer”.  We think our re-creation has got more beat to it because of the T’s of “entre”, “postados” and “Cantor”, which sound like shots, added to the already deadly sounds of the plosive P’s. (Plosive refers to a speech sound produced by complete closure of the oral passage and then release accompanied by a burst of air, as in the sound of p: pay, pie, port;  and d: day, done, dim).

The next quatrain is another shining example of Fitzgerald’s genius. Again Campos and we have been able to give it two different but efficient versions. Especially because Campos called our attention to the anagrammatic correlations between the words life/flies, life/lies, and finally the visual blowing of the flower in the last line: “the F-L-O-W-E-R that once has b-L-O-W-n F-O-R e-V-E-R dies” (1986, p.97), which shows the meaning of the words being graphically visible in its signifiers. This kind of poetry is what the Concrete poets called “inventive” poetry, in which there is an intricate connection between all the elements involved in the transmission of the poetic message: the sense is meaningful; it is beautiful, concise, precise, and visually designed on the letters of the word and heard in their sounds. Again as an exception in our language, both Campos and we were able to re-construct the “tu-TUM” of the iambic feet, while Haddad extended the verses to a tiring and crawling beat:

FITZGERALD:

LXV

Of threats of Hell and Hopes of Paradise!

One thing at least is certain – This Life flies;

One thing is certain and the rest is Lies;

The Flower that once has blown for ever dies.

OUR RE-CREATION:

LXV

Inferno ou Paraíso! uma voz soa:

Só há uma coisa certa – A Vida voa;

Uma coisa é certa e todo o resto é Loa;

Na Flor que se abre logo a cor escoa.

CAMPOS:

LXV

Inferno ou Céu, do beco sem saída

Uma só coisa é certa: voa a Vida,

E, sem a Vida, tudo o mais é Nada.

A Flor que for logo se vai, flor ida.

HADDAD:

LXV

O PARAÍSO e o Inferno! A Esperança e a Ameaça!

Só uma coisa é certa – A nossa Vida passa;

Só uma coisa é certa e é Falso tudo o mais:

Flor que desabrochou não abrirá jamais!

.

We will give two other examples from the Rubaiyat, to demonstrate the development of our technique of poetic re-creation through the years. The first, rubai XXVIII: apart from the beautiful beat of the quatrain, the interesting aspect here is the internal or middle rhymes, especially between “Doctor”, “evermore” and “door”, (“DouTOR”, “FORa” and “POR”); and “About” and “out” (“tAL” and “umbrAL”). Haddad tried to do something similar, but he stopped after the second line, splitting the stanza, phonically, into two parts and losing the rhythm:

FITZGERALD:

XXVIII

Myself when young did eagerly frequent

Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument

About it and about: but evermore

Came out by the same door where in I went.

OUR RE-CREATION:

XXVIII

Eu quando jovem freqüentei com gosto

Doutor e Santo e vi o Assunto posto

De tal maneira e tal: mas como sempre

O mesmo Umbral fora por mim transposto.

HADDAD:

XXVIII

EU MESMO freqüentei nos meus tempos de môço

Muito Doutor e Santo e, cheio de alvoroço,

Ouvi suas razões sobre o universo para

Pela porta sair por onde eu, crente, entrara.

.

And now, as a final gift from the Rubaiyat, we offer rubai VI, which refers to the nightingale, the bird that is the symbol of singers. Although we find our re-recreation quite good, we know that it is impossible to insert all the information from the English rubai into Portuguese. It is too compressed to be expressed in decasyllables in our language (wine is repeated four times). We show it here only as homage to the Nightingale:

FITZGERALD:

VI

And David’s Lips are lock’t; but in divine

High piping Pelevi, with “Wine!  Wine!  Wine!

Red Wine!”–the Nightingale cries to the Rose

That yellow Cheek of hers to ‘incarnadine.

OUR RE-CREATION:

VI

Calaram os Lábios de Davi; do ninho,

Piando em divino Pélevi, com “Vinho!

Tinto Vinho!” – o Rouxinol à Rosa

Roga: faça encarnado o seu Rostinho.

***

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