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Mirror on Mirror: Translation, Imitation, Parody
Brower, Reuben Arthur
224 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1974
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March 6, 2017
Dedicated to my Amherst College Freshman Humanities professor, Rolfe Humphries, "poet and translator." Brower's "Introduction: Translation as Parody" obviously intrigues me, my latest book having parodies in its title and throughout. His introduction begins, "every translator carries a parodist within him..." and continues, "Poets not ordinarily thought of as translators can often be detected in the act of translting, imitating, and parodying other writers: Shakespeare and T.S. Eliot are obvious examples." My Ph.D advisor, Leonard Unger, was an Eliot expert, as well as Shakespeare, and I now serve as the Shakespeare Series editor for a Swiss press.
To Eliot and Shakespeare I would add Robert Herrick, perhaps the best Latin translator ever. Many of his poems have lines from Latin that he has turned into almost everyday English. But he also contrasts English, Christian culture with Roman, pagan culture in such an epigram: "The gods require the thighs/ Of beeves for sacrifice,/ Which roasted, we the steam/ High-towering give to them--/ Who, though they do not eat, / Yet love the smell of meat."
But back to Brower, whose specialty in Greek lends broad underpinning to this book, such as on the New English Bible, which seems written by a committee: instead of the King James version of Joseph, bringing Mary home but "did not know" her, the New English uses "he had no intercourse with her...." Brower notes this phrase "introduces the tone of the doctor's office...Kinsey questionaire in hand."(9) "The awkward lapse from a world where angels descend and ascend to speak with the chill clinical twentieth century" happens.
Later in this book Brower analyzes translations of Shakespeare, finding Gide's Hamlet problematic in Gertrude's reminding her son that the death of fathers is common, "Why seems it so particular with thee?" Gide, "Alors pourquoi si particulière votre apparence?" Hamlet, "Apparence? Eh! Non! Madame. Réalité." For "Seems, madam? Nay, it is. I know not 'seems.'"
Bonnefoy's translation of Julius Caesar is quite successful in tone, rhythm, and even in details. "Bonnefoy has remarked that Julius Caesar is the 'most French' of Shakespeare's plays; he might have said, the most 'Corneillian.' In adopting the Roman oratorical tone, in the balance of phrasing ('to buryCaesar, not to praise him') and of apostrophes and rhetorical quesitons, Shakespeare like Corneille is writing in a Latin tradition...It need hardly be said that highly sensuous metaphors and strains of echoing images are less frequent in the plays of Racine and Corneille than in Shakespeare's"(155).
He also enlightens on my favorite bad translations, Nabokov's Evgenii Onegin, "By pushing the doctrine of perfect accuracy to its logical conclusion, N has produced one of the curiosities of literature, a deadly serious version of Pale Fire." This also relates to my new book of parodies, based on Onegin, my central character called "Onagain," based on my genius undergraduate friend who later became Harold Bloom's still-lamented young colleague at Yale.
To Eliot and Shakespeare I would add Robert Herrick, perhaps the best Latin translator ever. Many of his poems have lines from Latin that he has turned into almost everyday English. But he also contrasts English, Christian culture with Roman, pagan culture in such an epigram: "The gods require the thighs/ Of beeves for sacrifice,/ Which roasted, we the steam/ High-towering give to them--/ Who, though they do not eat, / Yet love the smell of meat."
But back to Brower, whose specialty in Greek lends broad underpinning to this book, such as on the New English Bible, which seems written by a committee: instead of the King James version of Joseph, bringing Mary home but "did not know" her, the New English uses "he had no intercourse with her...." Brower notes this phrase "introduces the tone of the doctor's office...Kinsey questionaire in hand."(9) "The awkward lapse from a world where angels descend and ascend to speak with the chill clinical twentieth century" happens.
Later in this book Brower analyzes translations of Shakespeare, finding Gide's Hamlet problematic in Gertrude's reminding her son that the death of fathers is common, "Why seems it so particular with thee?" Gide, "Alors pourquoi si particulière votre apparence?" Hamlet, "Apparence? Eh! Non! Madame. Réalité." For "Seems, madam? Nay, it is. I know not 'seems.'"
Bonnefoy's translation of Julius Caesar is quite successful in tone, rhythm, and even in details. "Bonnefoy has remarked that Julius Caesar is the 'most French' of Shakespeare's plays; he might have said, the most 'Corneillian.' In adopting the Roman oratorical tone, in the balance of phrasing ('to buryCaesar, not to praise him') and of apostrophes and rhetorical quesitons, Shakespeare like Corneille is writing in a Latin tradition...It need hardly be said that highly sensuous metaphors and strains of echoing images are less frequent in the plays of Racine and Corneille than in Shakespeare's"(155).
He also enlightens on my favorite bad translations, Nabokov's Evgenii Onegin, "By pushing the doctrine of perfect accuracy to its logical conclusion, N has produced one of the curiosities of literature, a deadly serious version of Pale Fire." This also relates to my new book of parodies, based on Onegin, my central character called "Onagain," based on my genius undergraduate friend who later became Harold Bloom's still-lamented young colleague at Yale.
Displaying 1 of 1 review