Shakespeare and Company is an institution in Paris. A cozy English-speaking bookshop just south of the Marais, it's the kind of independent bookstore you hope can take the heat from all those online devices. Since its opening in 1951, it's become a haven for English-speaking writers and book lovers. It offers writing workshops, a quiet reading room, a typewriter for traveling authors, and readings most Monday nights.
Last Monday, a few of us made the trek from Fontainebleau to Paris to hear a few poets / songwriters perform. I have always been interested in the fine line that separates the singers from the poets, and especially interested in those who can bridge the gap. Crammed into a corner, a book pressing against the back of my knee, I peered over the tops of books on a shelf to try to catch a glimpse of the performers, who included Kate Stables, Erica Buettner, and Colin Mahar.
I found Colin Mahar’s performance to be particularly appealing, especially as I am struggling to learn French. Mahar frequently works with translations; his method is unique in that he chooses a poem (or poems) that have been translated into French, and then he translates them back into English, and often sets them to music—a sort of poetic mash-up.
I wrote to Colin to find out more about his process of re-translating and writing, and he graciously emailed me back with details about the creative process for his poem (and song) "Morning to Night", complete with references and page numbers. Mahar created this poem by using five different poems from different points of Dickinson's life that he read in the bilingual edition of Emily Dickinson's Quatrains et autres poems brefs[1]. The first poem that Mahar uses is (Dickinson, 30):
A darting year—a pomp—a tear—
a waking on a morn
to find that what one waked for
inhales the different dawn.
Un an éclair—de la pompe—un larme—
L’éveil pour découvrir un matin
Que ce pour quoi l’on s’éveillait
Inhale l’aube différente.
(Lettre à Mary Haven)
From this, Mahar re-translates part of the letter back into English to read “one clear year, from the pump, there falls a tear”, and opens his song with this line. At first, I wondered how pomp, which is also clearly “pompe” in the French edition morphs into pump, but when I inserted the first line into google translate, which I usually find to be pretty accurate, the literal translation becomes: “A flash-year pump—a tear”.
Another of his lines was taken from #56 in the book, which reads (Dicksinson, 88):
It rises—it passes-on our South
Inscribes a simple Noon
Cajoles a Moment with the Spires
And infinite is gone—
The French translation reads:
Il se lève—passe—sur notre Sud—
Inscrit un simple Midi—
Cajole un Instant les Clocers
Et disparaît infini—
This French quatrain is re-translated and condensed to become “It rises and flies to reach high noon.” While the translations are loose, the idea of playing with the words in such a way was new to me. His writing plays upon the flexibility within languages. A line that begins “Look back on Time with kindly Eyes” becomes “Jette sur le Temps en OEil indulgent” (Dickinson, 122) in French, and then morphs into “so look on Time with indulgent Eye”. The translation back into English is fairly accurate, as the French translation of the quatrain takes the liberty of changing Dickinson’s “Eyes” to the singular “eye”. For the most part, Mahar changes the lines just as much as the original translator into French. In both of the translations shown here, subtle word choices change ideas. But unlike the original translator, he's made the poems his own.
Mahar has also experimented with other poets whose works have been translated into French, including Sappho and Nabakov. His performance gave me new ideas about translation, my own work, and living in a new language.
[1] Dickinson, Emily. Quatrains et autres poems brefs (bilingual edition). Trans. Claire Malroux. Paris: Gallimard, 2000.
Nicely done, Ruth. I feel like a "real poet" now !
ReplyDeleteOne thing, the line you quoted should read "one clear year"