Dearest reader:
Of late I've been listening to Caroline Bergvall's "Via." Her poem (and I prefer the audio to the visual text) consists of a ten minute documentary history of 48 English-language translations of the first three lines of Dante's Commedia. Taken together, organized alphabetically rather than according to chronology or a hierarchy, they work through repetition ("erratic seriality," as she puts it) to illustrate, if paradoxically, variation. There is a necessary recurrence of themes from one line to the next, but this sameness is undercut by a wild variety of rhythm and of lexicon that is surprising.
In the tangle of variant translations, "found myself in a dark wood" becomes "I was made aware that I had strayed." This variety multiplies meaning's different shades, and Dante's "mi ritrovai" yields "found myself," "found myself astray," and "found myself again." The "mi ritrovai" is imagined as wandering, and as a waking that recalls the swooning that concludes his meeting with Paolo and Francesca.
Where, as she notes in her remarks on the poem in Fig, concern for accuracy of transcription is central to Bergvall's work here, a parallel concern for accuracy of translation is not. Bergvall's repetition of variation doesn't raise the question of fidelity, and I'm tempted to rethink the notion of accuracy entirely, and to instead recall the etymology of translation, which is often rendered as "bearing across": the act that brings a text near. "Via" suggests we rethink translation in terms of its departure. Dante's text operates here as a point for such departure, from which variety "finds itself," even if that finding might be regarded as — even if it carries with it the implication — "astray."
This figuration of translation as departure isn't unique to Bergvall's treatment of Dante; it is in fact typical of a tradition of poetic (mis)translation. I plan to write a bit more about this in the next few days, so stay tuned!
Of late I've been listening to Caroline Bergvall's "Via." Her poem (and I prefer the audio to the visual text) consists of a ten minute documentary history of 48 English-language translations of the first three lines of Dante's Commedia. Taken together, organized alphabetically rather than according to chronology or a hierarchy, they work through repetition ("erratic seriality," as she puts it) to illustrate, if paradoxically, variation. There is a necessary recurrence of themes from one line to the next, but this sameness is undercut by a wild variety of rhythm and of lexicon that is surprising.
In the tangle of variant translations, "found myself in a dark wood" becomes "I was made aware that I had strayed." This variety multiplies meaning's different shades, and Dante's "mi ritrovai" yields "found myself," "found myself astray," and "found myself again." The "mi ritrovai" is imagined as wandering, and as a waking that recalls the swooning that concludes his meeting with Paolo and Francesca.
Where, as she notes in her remarks on the poem in Fig, concern for accuracy of transcription is central to Bergvall's work here, a parallel concern for accuracy of translation is not. Bergvall's repetition of variation doesn't raise the question of fidelity, and I'm tempted to rethink the notion of accuracy entirely, and to instead recall the etymology of translation, which is often rendered as "bearing across": the act that brings a text near. "Via" suggests we rethink translation in terms of its departure. Dante's text operates here as a point for such departure, from which variety "finds itself," even if that finding might be regarded as — even if it carries with it the implication — "astray."
This figuration of translation as departure isn't unique to Bergvall's treatment of Dante; it is in fact typical of a tradition of poetic (mis)translation. I plan to write a bit more about this in the next few days, so stay tuned!
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