National poetry day

[liv]

It's National Poetry Day, apparently. And this one is actually based in my own nation, rather than just one of those vague nation-of-internet special days.

As it happens, yesterday the internet was full of people being cross about a project to produce contemporary English translations of Shakespeare. Now my opinion is that contemporary English translations are just one part of the myriad ways that modern audiences respond to literary classics. Certainly it's possible for them to be awful, but the idea of reworking Shakespeare's words isn't inherently awful.

papersky wrote a sonnet expressing the general sentiment that changing Shakespeare is horrible. I commented that I really shouldn't try to write a response sonnet to express my alternative view, and certain people talked me into it instead of out of it. I'm rather charmed with the idea of an internet argument about Shakespeare in sonnet form, I must say.

So anyway, have a rather bad, dashed off hypertext sonnet about why I'm in favour of translating and reinterpreting Shakespeare:

True poetry is what survives translation,
An exiled Magyar poet told me once.
We're all time's exiles. Each one longs
To touch the past through each imagination,

But time excludes us from each treasured word –
No verse, no rhyme, no play remains pristine,
We'll never watch unchanged a perfect scene,
Nor ever hear what past play-goers heard.

Limelight's electric now and women act,
Some plays are filmed instead of staged,
The words, the sounds, the very rhymes have changed.
No fossil, this, to be preserved intact,

But living art in loving minds reborn,
Poetic truth translation can transform.

I do rather like writing poetry that responds to existing works. Pastiches and filks and metrical translations of poetry in other languages, too, but especially when someone writes a poem and I reply to it in similar style and metre.

Comments

[sfred]

I like yours :-)

[liv]

'nkyou! I am trying to post my poetry anyway instead of being anxious that it's not good enough, so I really appreciate the positive comment.

[davidgillon]

Oh, I like that, as poem and argument both.

I'm not entirely swung by your argument, more I think there s a case both ways. Somewhere on the net there's a father and son team of linguist and actor who've reconstructed how Shakespeare would have originally sounded, and found rhymes and puns we've completely forgotten about.

[liv]

The Crystals doing the original pronunciation are linked from my line even the rhymes have changed, so yes, I do know about them :-) But thank you for liking my poem, I really appreciate that.

I'm not quite as convinced as I sound in this sonnet, partly because I don't entirely buy Gömöri's argument that it's only real poetry if it remains poetry when translated. To me, at least part of poetry is the use of specific words, with their sounds and connotations and so on in the original language, I think a good translation can be a good poem too but it's a different good poem. But I do think that the cultural canon is to be played with and reinterpreted in every possible way, not to be preserved "authentically". Because if you have a preserved historical artefact, you're also not experiencing the same thing as the original audiences, for whom it was new and exciting, not a revered classic, and anyway their understanding of the world was different from ours in many respects. Which is not to say all possible change is good, but all change is permissible, IMO.

[lethargic_man]

Oh, I'm glad you posted that link; I was thinking of that video when I heard "From hour to hour we ripe // And from hour to hour we rot" when curious_reader and I went to see "As You Like It" at the Globe, but I'd have never been able to find it again based on my distant memory of it.

I posted a while ago saying I'd like to hear a text being read with both the words and pronunciation gradually shifting from Old English to today's English, but couldn't find anything like that online. I said at the time that I didn't have the skills to make such a thing myself, but it now occurs to me that actually the Bible has been translated frequently enough into English that I could use Bible translations to do it. But it would be a substantial project, and it's quite low down my to-do list. (Preparing for the High Holydays, and entertaining people in my succah has taken precedence recently.)

[liv]

Yeah, part of my motivation in putting the link in the poem was that I wanted to preserve the Crystal video so I can find it again. It's really very cool, and not far off what you're describing, he does a speech from R&J in traditional modern stage style followed immediately by original accent. But it's not quite a gradual morphing.

I think your idea of using Bible translations from different eras to do a gradually shifting text could work really well. Though pre Tyndale English Bibles tend to be patchy, I think; IIRC there is fairly complete coverage of the Gospels but not of most of Tanach.

And yes, festivals have been eating up all my spare time and then some until this week. I hope your succah entertaining went well, it sounded very logistical from what I saw on FB.

[lethargic_man]

I think your idea of using Bible translations from different eras to do a gradually shifting text could work really well.

It occurs to me on further reflection that I could probably do the same thing with Hebrew (moving from shortly pre-Biblical to modern Israeli via Biblical then (two paths) Ashkenazi or Sephardi pronunciation) now, i.e. without vast amounts of research. And maybe I shall, if I get a bit more time.

[lethargic_man]

I think your idea of using Bible translations from different eras to do a gradually shifting text could work really well.

I've been working on this the last few days; I thought if I'm ever going to do it, it's going to have to be now, when I have time on my hands. It's turning out to be considerably more effort than I thought! But I think the end result, which will involve both sound, orthography and (if I can be bothered) letter shape evolution, will be really cool. (Though no doubt full of mistakes, being produced by a rank amateur such as myself.)

Though pre Tyndale English Bibles tend to be patchy, I think; IIRC there is fairly complete coverage of the Gospels but not of most of Tanach.

I'm not even sure about the Gospels. I've a nasty suspicion I'm going to have to fill in the gap between Ælfric (ca. 990) and Wycliffe myself, trying to work back from both ends and what my books and the Net of a Million Lies tell me about the state of Middle English to reconstruct what something halfway in between would have looked like.

[davidgillon]

I posted a while ago saying I'd like to hear a text being read with both the words and pronunciation gradually shifting from Old English to today's English, but couldn't find anything like that online.

There's a scene in the 13th Warrior (Michael Crichton does Beowulf*) where the language in a scene shifts from Norse to English to represent the Arab** protagonist slowly getting to grips with the language.

*Not exactly faithful to the source material, and a box office disaster, but watchable if you're into action stuff (or Antonio Banderas).

** Like I said, not exactly faithful to the source material.

[ewx]

I'd encountered ibn Fadlan before seeing the film and was hugely tickled by the idea of him blundering into the Beowulf legend on his travels. I don't remember how close a fit the first half of the film was to his source material but it was at certainly recognizable.

[davidgillon]

I'm not sure I knew he was a historical figure, but I've just looked him up and oh, wow, that sounds like an interesting travelogue!

[siderea]

Funny you should mention "The 13th Warrior". I think it's one of the greatest cases-in-point for what our estimable host contends in her poem.

I am prepared[*] to argue that "The 13th Warrior" is actually brilliant from a Historically Informed Performance perspective. It's not merely a watchable action flick; it's actually making a really interesting argument about the interpretation of the source text – in short, that we've largely misunderstood "Beowulf" because we've taken it to be a heroic narrative, when really it's a ghost story/horror narrative, or rather it is at least as plausible that is the narrative work it was doing for its original audience – and it's a very compellingly presented argument. In putting forth that argument, it raises larger meta question about the concept of literary genre and how we do or don't apply those ideas to historical works: if the Beowulf-as-horror contention holds up, why is it that we projected onto Beowulf a heroic narrative for so long? Are we not allowing historical texts the full breadth of narrative expression – such as genres – that we expect to find in our own cultures? (Siderea's answer: Yes, actually; that is exactly the problem we've been having in interpreting other medieval text, q.v. troubadour and trouvere lyrics.)

Well, the first half or so of the flick. Second half just seemed like an action flick to me; it might bear a re-watch. But the first half rocked my little world and filled me with daring thinky-thoughts about my own HIP work.

[* Actually it may become one of my Patreon-funded posts.]

[davidgillon]

I'd agree with most of this, though, like you, I felt the second half didn't entirely hold up to the promise of the first. WRT Beowulf as ghost/horror story, rather than hero tale, can't it be both? We need to read it as an English take on the Sagas, IMO, and they're definitely rooted in the heroic tradition.

[seekingferret]

An audiobook of Ulysses would work, I suppose. The Oxen of the Sun chapter slowly moves forward from Old English to some sort of projected future English.

[lethargic_man]

Oh, interesting. <looks it up> I didn't know about that. I only managed to get about a third of the way through Ulysses; it's too dense for me—or vice versa. I wouldn't call the start of that section genuine Old English, though.

[seekingferret]

In my experience the secret of reading Ulysses is that you're not supposed to read it alone. It's a social book, a book best read while sharing theories and explanations with friends over a pint. Also, Guinness makes it seem less dense.

Alternatively, skip to the last chapter and just read it and call yourself done. The last chapter really is worth it and if you're a grown-up nobody really cares if you've actually read the whole thing. :P

[davidgillon]

Whoops, not sure I even noticed the link, certainly didn't follow it.

I agree with your take on Gömöri, the language contributes a huge amount, especially via contexts that may not translate at all. You can translate the words, but unless you can translate the langauge as well, you aren't going to get the same poem out at the other end.

I do think that the cultural canon is to be played with and reinterpreted in every possible way, not to be preserved "authentically".

Now I think about it, retellings of fairy tales are a recognised sub-genre of fantasy. They're not a particular favourite of mine, but they can be very well done.

[liv]

I agree with your take on Gömöri, the language contributes a huge amount
I think he was probably being provocative, but also his first language is Hungarian, and he's a professional translator; if he held with the common view that poetry can never be translated he'd be kind of stuck!

retellings of fairy tales are a recognised sub-genre of fantasy
Basically everybody agrees that some remixing and interpreting should happen, but people draw the line in different ways. Retelling fairy stories is one of the easier cases, they're generally seen as just part of common culture, even though actually quite a few were written by individuals like Hans Christian Andersen. And reinterpreting Shakespeare with things like modern settings is again, generally accepted, as is giving the director freedom to decide staging and so on. I don't think it's entirely rational to hold that the words are untouchable when everything else can change, so I wanted to unpick that a bit.

[ceb]

Oh what a delightful sonnety argument! :-)

[ceb]

PS, are there really accents where 'good' and 'blood' don't rhyme?

[liv]

They don't in mine, and my accent is fairly close to RP. I mean, close enough that I wouldn't be thrown by verse in which they are rhymed, but I say blood with /ʌ/ but good with /ʊ/. And I think a lot of traditional stage actors have an accent which is close to an exaggerated version of mine, which is why the OP people make a big deal out of rhyming blood and good.

[ceb]

I shall get you to pronounce for me some time, I'm awful at IPA...

[liv]

I'm happy to pronounce stuff for you, but I fear this discussion risks turning into a rerun of this interaction...

[ceb]

That's ... kinda dysfunctional.

ETA: the thing in that post, I mean, not you, in case that wasn't clear ;-)

[liv]

Possibly; I read the description of the interaction as basically good-humoured rather than problematic, but you never know with DW glimpses of acquaintances' relationships.

[cjwatson]

They very clearly don't in mine.

ETA: aha, and I found Wikipedia's ridiculously detailed examination of this too. (I tend to rely on WP for accent stuff because my own accent is far enough away from nearly everyone else around me that I don't really trust my instincts ...)

[ceb]

I'm going to have to get you to say them both for me some time, I temporarily can't imagine your voice :-)

[rmc28]

They're different in mine too (my accent is close to liv's, I think).

[davidgillon]

I'm from the North East, so that entire explanation made no sense to me, foot and strut are clearly pronounced identically.

[redbird]

My reaction, on the other side of the Atlantic, is closer to "are there really [contemporary]* accents where they do?" In my accent (New York American), "blood" has a schwa and rhymes with "thud," and neither rhymes with "good."

*I tend to assume that things that are spelled as if they rhyme, rhymed in the prestige dialect of the time when spelling was becoming fixed.

[davidgillon]

Blood, good, thud, all identical in my accent (as blud, gud, thud, think 'uh').

[liv]

According to Wikipedia, that rhyme in contemporary English is really characteristic of the accents of the north and Midlands of England. So it's not surprising you wouldn't have come across it, for me it's the accent of roughly half the people I talk to, but you probably know a lot fewer people than I do with accents from regions of England. I think you're right that a visual rhyme is likely to be a trace of what would have been a rhyme in the prestige dialect of the time a text was written.

[liv]

Aww, thank you! Sonnety arguments are definitely more fun than the usual flame war fare. I was all, Someone Is Wrong On The Internet... in verse, and I'm glad I succumbed to the temptation, after all.

[seekingferret]

Ooh, lovely poem. I too love arguments in verse, and I tend to your side of this argument... Some of the most powerful experiences I've had in Shakespeare have been in some fashion translations. And I'm resistant to interpretations of the Bard that act like he was some infallible deity of the theater whose every word was perfectly placed. It's fine with me, in addition to saying that Shakespeare needs translation because language has evolved, to say that Shakespeare's language needs translation because it is sometimes obtuse and otherwise flawed.

[untonuggan]

i love this! i really really do. the sentiment and the structure and the words.

do you mind if I add this to a follow friday post? if you don't want me to direct extra traffic here because of spoons/whatever, that is totally fine. just wanted to check first :)

[liv]

Wow, thank you, I'm really really touched that you like it so much! And yes, please do add me to Follow Friday; I thrive on attention, and I'm not really limited for spoons. Thank you for checking first though, that's very civil of you.

[siderea]

We're all time's exiles.

This is an excellent sentence and I plan on quoting it extensively.

[naath]

This is a lovely poem. But I think a bit of a silly argument. I mean, you can totally have *both* the original (as near as we can work out what that is) *and* new, exciting, interpretations.

[alexseanchai]

yes this

[alexseanchai]

I like that a lot!