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poetry!
I'm doodling around with fic tonight, but it's sort of hung up on technicalities (the technicalities being "I would much rather have a pretty picture in my brain than be arsed to write about it") at the moment, so I thought I would post this.
I've seen that meme going around for posting your favorite poem. Well, my favorite poem is 3,182 lines long, which I think is over LJ's per-post character limit, and most people look at me with incomprehension when I tell them Beowulf is my favorite poem. Instead, I went to my totally awesome Moleskine commonplace book and pulled out some of my favorite excerpts from poems I like a lot. These poems are poems I turn to when I need inspiration for writerly stuff, especially for description. I always reach for those minute details that bring a place, a moment, a body, to life, but even more, when reading (and trying to write) prose I love slightly poetic, idiosyncratic turns of phrase that, once you think about it, work.
Of all the pleasures of the upper world,
what I miss most is sunlight,
after that the stars, a full moon, summer's
late season harvest of fruits,
cucumber, apple, pomegranate, pear.
-Praxilla,translated by Sherod Santos
The star has wept rose-colour in the heart of your ears,
The infinite rolled white from your nape to the small of your back.
The sea has broken russet at your vermilion nipples,
And man bled black at your noble side.
-Rimbaud, "L'étoile a pleuré rose"
I don't know if you're alive or dead--
All is for you: the daily prayer,
The sleepless heat at night,
And of my verses, the white
Flock, and of my eyes, the blue fire
-Anna Akhmatova
And immediately
Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:
The sun-comprehending glass,
And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.
-Philip Larkin, from "High Windows"
Where we go is a loved side of the temple,
a place for repose, a concrete path.
There's no mystic moment involved... love is
when, how and
because we do.
-JH Prynne, from "The Holy City"
I thank You God for this most amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any - lifted from the no
of all nothing - human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
-e.e. cummings, "65"
It is as if someone offers my people battle;
they will destroy him, if he comes among them.
It is different for us.
Wulf is on one island, myself, on another,
and that island is secure, embraced by swampland.
Fierce men dwell on that island;
they will destroy him, if he comes among them.
It is different for us.
With hope I tracked my Wulf's wide-wandering ways;
when it rained and I sat, sorrowful,
when the warlike one enclosed me with arms,
it was a joy to me, yet I hated it, too.
Wulf, my Wulf, hope of you has
sickened me, your rare homecomings;
not hunger, but a grieving mind.
Do you hear, Watchman? The wolf carries
our weak pup away to the wood.
And so one easily rends what was never united:
the song of us two together.
Anonymous, "Wulf and Eadwacer," translated by me!
Note: If the poem is utterly mysterious and nonsensical... Well, no one's figured it out yet. Many of the words have double meanings: lac (1) can mean "battle," but also "game" or "sacrifice">; aþecgan (2) can mean "to destroy" or "to consume, devour"; Wulf (13) and Eadwacer (16) can both be proper names, but they are also common nouns. End result: the poem has been studied for the past 150 years or so, and there's not much agreement on translation or overall meaning. The only thing 99% of scholars do agree on is that the poem is spoken by a woman: the adjective reotugu (10) carries the -u ending, which indicates it's modifying a feminine noun.
I've seen that meme going around for posting your favorite poem. Well, my favorite poem is 3,182 lines long, which I think is over LJ's per-post character limit, and most people look at me with incomprehension when I tell them Beowulf is my favorite poem. Instead, I went to my totally awesome Moleskine commonplace book and pulled out some of my favorite excerpts from poems I like a lot. These poems are poems I turn to when I need inspiration for writerly stuff, especially for description. I always reach for those minute details that bring a place, a moment, a body, to life, but even more, when reading (and trying to write) prose I love slightly poetic, idiosyncratic turns of phrase that, once you think about it, work.
As we leaned to kiss, my landlocked spirit sprouted wings
And hovered there in the fan feather of his breathing.
Poor airborne, half-celestial thing, it almost seemed
she'd wanted to abandon me and fly away with him.
-Plato, "As we leaned to kiss," translated by Sherod Santos, Greek Lyric Poetry (2005)
Of all the pleasures of the upper world,
what I miss most is sunlight,
after that the stars, a full moon, summer's
late season harvest of fruits,
cucumber, apple, pomegranate, pear.
-Praxilla,translated by Sherod Santos
The star has wept rose-colour in the heart of your ears,
The infinite rolled white from your nape to the small of your back.
The sea has broken russet at your vermilion nipples,
And man bled black at your noble side.
-Rimbaud, "L'étoile a pleuré rose"
I don't know if you're alive or dead--
All is for you: the daily prayer,
The sleepless heat at night,
And of my verses, the white
Flock, and of my eyes, the blue fire
-Anna Akhmatova
And immediately
Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:
The sun-comprehending glass,
And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.
-Philip Larkin, from "High Windows"
Where we go is a loved side of the temple,
a place for repose, a concrete path.
There's no mystic moment involved... love is
when, how and
because we do.
-JH Prynne, from "The Holy City"
I thank You God for this most amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any - lifted from the no
of all nothing - human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
-e.e. cummings, "65"
It is as if someone offers my people battle;
they will destroy him, if he comes among them.
It is different for us.
Wulf is on one island, myself, on another,
and that island is secure, embraced by swampland.
Fierce men dwell on that island;
they will destroy him, if he comes among them.
It is different for us.
With hope I tracked my Wulf's wide-wandering ways;
when it rained and I sat, sorrowful,
when the warlike one enclosed me with arms,
it was a joy to me, yet I hated it, too.
Wulf, my Wulf, hope of you has
sickened me, your rare homecomings;
not hunger, but a grieving mind.
Do you hear, Watchman? The wolf carries
our weak pup away to the wood.
And so one easily rends what was never united:
the song of us two together.
Anonymous, "Wulf and Eadwacer," translated by me!
Note: If the poem is utterly mysterious and nonsensical... Well, no one's figured it out yet. Many of the words have double meanings: lac (1) can mean "battle," but also "game" or "sacrifice">; aþecgan (2) can mean "to destroy" or "to consume, devour"; Wulf (13) and Eadwacer (16) can both be proper names, but they are also common nouns. End result: the poem has been studied for the past 150 years or so, and there's not much agreement on translation or overall meaning. The only thing 99% of scholars do agree on is that the poem is spoken by a woman: the adjective reotugu (10) carries the -u ending, which indicates it's modifying a feminine noun.
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Though, translations make me sad. They are awesome in themselves (when done well, of course!), but they miss the nuances of particular word choices that are "untranslatable like a symphony". Actually, that phrase is a translation (from a prose piece by Borges). But! I feel it properly encompasses the sadness of translating things. I do love translations, because they give me access to words I otherwise would not have the pleasure of encountering, but it is a second-hand encounter, through the eyes of the translator.
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For myself, I try to compromise and find parallel-text translation/original editions, preferably with notes. I've been able to do that with my Spanish, French, and Japanese poetry, less so with some of the Greek and Russian. Like you said, it isn't the original, but it's getting closer :)
no subject