gender in translation

Thu Jul 29 17:59:56 UTC 2010

Tolerance for rhyme in contemporary English poetry is not the same as tolerance for rhyme in translations into English, especially of non-contemporary works, "classics," etc. Of the thousand or so unsolicited poetry submissions The Iowa Review gets each year, few employ regular rhyme, though I can't agree with Alex that versification skills have declined -- that depends on who's teaching and who's learning and who's publishing, same as ever.

That break in sensibility and artistic aims was probably just a little earlier than the 1980s and likely had something to do with the wave of experiment and innovation in 60s and 70s poetry circles (Beat, language poets, etc.). Which reminds me: does anyone on the list know of homophonic translations into Russian or any other Slavic languages? I'm thinking of the sort that Louis Zukovsky or Charles Bernstein have done into English.

Russell Valentino

-----Original Message-----
From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list [mailto:SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu] On Behalf Of Ivan S. Eubanks
Sent: Thursday, July 29, 2010 12:18 PM
To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] gender in translation

  The debate is pretty old, dating at least back to the 17th century, as 
far as English verse is concerned.

For example, John Milton, in his "Introduction" to /Paradise Lost/, 
condemns rhyme in English poetry:

"Rhime being no necessary Adjunct or true Ornament of Poem or good 
Verse, in longer Works especially, but the Invention of a barbarous Age, 
to set off wretched matter and lame Meeter; grac't indeed since by the 
use of some famous modern Poets, carried away by Custom, but much to 
thir own vexation, hindrance, and constraint to express many things 
otherwise, and for the most part worse then else they would have exprest 
them."

I'm not saying I agree with Milton, just that the pendulum has been 
swinging for centuries.

Ivan S. Eubanks
/Pushkin Review / ?????????? ???????/ <http://www.pushkiniana.org>

On 7/29/2010 1:01 PM, Shafarenko, Alex wrote:
> I wonder when the "nowadays" in John's message below started. It certainly was not difficult for Betjeman and Larkin to write serious rhymed poetry, and they are
> not 19th century light verse practitioners, to say nothing of Frost and Auden, so perhaps  there was a precipitous death of rhymed verse in English around the 1980s --
> after centuries of achievement. As Tim Steele aptly said somewhere,  Departments of English turned towards free verse and critics followed. As a result versification skills
> waned. At the same time, the deluge of idiotic rhymed incantations in TV adverts created the impression in peoples' minds that the only place for rhyme (as well as metre,
> which followed suit) is among that gibberish. "Serious" poets had to be writing verse libre. Well, to blame the instrument for the decadence of its users is as productive
> as it is to accuse the violin of the inability to articulate jazz. It is able and innocent. It's them who are neither.
>
> By contrast, Russian poetry stayed the course (while not eschewing free verse where it is potent and called for artistically). It is especially sad that "modern" translators of
> Russian poetry take it as given that such translation must be into English free verse...
>
> Inventiveness with the language is a lot more required in poetry than it is in prose. Gender modification is only one interesting example.
>
> Alex Shafarenko
> ________________________________________
> From: John Dunn [j.dunn at SLAVONIC.ARTS.GLA.AC.UK]
> Sent: 29 July 2010 15:50
> Subject: Re: gender in translation
>
> There is, I would imagine, a thesis to be written comparing the humorous use of linguistic and paralinguistic devices in English and Russian.   It strikes me that in English word-play tends to be an end in itself, and I am not sure whether that is true to the same extent in Russian.
>
> As for rhyme, I tend to think that the English-language light verse tradition, including such 19th-century practitioners as Thomas Hood (with his fondness for punning rhymes) and W.S. Gilbert, has a lot to answer for.  It is difficult nowadays to use rhyme in English for anything other than humorous effect, which is why I have serious reservations about rhymed translations of Russian poetry.
>
> John Dunn.
>
>
>
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