[Julie Steiner]

Three sections from "Zsivajgó természet" by Dezsö Kosztolányi (Hungary, 1885-1936)


VERSE TRANSLATION:

The Language of Insects


1. The Ant

Zealously ants work the soil.
Their bread, and their adventure, love of toil.
No turmoil
if summer’s mild: they see their winter corn won’t spoil.


2. The Wasp

Black-and-yellow assassin, dagger in hand:
tragic
wasp! Its quarrelsome, winged and nervous buzzing is:
magic!
Its red-hot, stabbed, live-coal wound’s anthropo-
phagic!


3. The Marbled White Butterfly (Melanargia Galathea)

Great musicians they are, birds.
I can’t sing, but I can see what can’t be heard.
When plants shoot bright sky-rockets, I need no word
to perceive the Universe whole, unblurred.
Nestless,
it flits this way onto its blooming prize:
a drunken, restless,
mute artist––offbeat likewise.


ORIGINAL HUNGARIAN, and ENGLISH PROSE CRIB
with details of versification (syllable count, rhyme scheme)

Zsivajgó természet
The Language of Insects


1. Hangya
The Ant

—Földmívelő a hangya. (7,A)
—Earth/soil-worker the ant [is].
—The ant is a farmer.

A szorgalom a kenyere s kalandja. (11,A)
The industriousness the bread-its and adventure-its.
Industry is its bread and its adventure.

Ha langy a (3,A)
If lukewarm/mild the
If the summer

nyár, nézi, hogy nő télre a kalangya. (11,A)
summer, looks-it, how grows winter-for the shock-of-corn-its.
is mild, it looks to see how its ears of corn are growing for the winter.


2. Darázs
The Wasp

—Feketesárga gyilkos, tőr kezében: (11,A)
—Black-yellow murderer, dagger hand-its-in:
—Black and yellow assassin, dagger in its hand:

darázs! (2,B)
wasp!
the wasp!

Izgága, röpte, ideges zúgása: (11,C)
Quarrelsome, winged/flighty, nervous buzzing-its:
Its querulous, winged, nervous buzzing:

varázs! (2,B)
magic!
magic!

A seb, melyet döf, izzó, lángoló-vad: (11,D)
The wound, that stabs-it, incandescent/glowing/burning, flaming-wild:
The wound it stabs, red-hot, wildly flaming:

parázs! (2,B)
ember/live-coal!
Live coal!

3. The Marbled White Butterfly (Melanargia Galathea)

—A madarak zenészek. (7,A)
—The birds [are] musicians.
—The birds are musicians.

Én nem tudok dalolni, ámde nézek. (11,A)
I not can-I sing-to, ah-but look-I.
I don’t know how to sing, but I can look.

Ha színeket rakétáz a tenyészet, (11,A)
If/when colors rockets-it the vegetation,
When the vegetation sets off color-rockets,

úgyis megértem a dicső Egészet. (11,A)
that-way-also [p-i-c]-understand-I the praiseworthy Whole/Universe.
I can also understand the worthy Universe.

Fészek (2,B)
Nest
Nestless

nélkül csapongik így a feslő (9,C)
without flits-it this-way the bursting/blossoming
it flits this way onto the blooming

virágra, részeg, (5,B)
flower-onto, drunk/drunken,
flower: the drunk,

bohém és néma festő. (7,C)
bohemian and mute painter.
bohemian and mute painter.

[Julie Steiner]

COMMENTS ON THE POEM CHOICE AND TRANSLATION:

I find it more convenient to discuss both of these items together on this one.

I admire this entry's faithfulness to the playful spirit--if not always the literal meaning--of the originals. I don't expect everyone to share my appreciation of the large risks that this translator has taken, but this is why we have a popular favorite in addition to the judge's picks. I also commend the translator's (presumed) honesty in providing enough details in the prose crib for us to see what's going on in this non-Indo-European language. (Apparently, Hindi has more in common with most European languages than Hungarian does.) He or she could easily have made the prose crib seem much closer to the verse translation than it actually is, and few, if any, of us would have spotted the deception.

My favorite of the three, "The Wasp," shows the greatest deviation from the original text, with the completely indefensible "anthropo- / phagic!" Translators aren't supposed to just make stuff up. But, as my husband learned long ago, I can forgive just about anything if the offender manages to make me laugh, and I thought "anthropo- / phagic!" was laugh-out-loud hilarious.

And given the difficulty of maneuvering in such a tight space, rhyme-wise, what's the alternative--not translating the poem at all? Bah! Granted, not many kids are going to know the word "anthropophagic", but not many kids who read Ogden Nash's "The Centipede" know the word "objurgate," either.

I would definitely prefer "flighty" to "winged" in L3, but that's a small quibble.

My second favorite is "The Ant," although "No turmoil" seemed a little rhyme-driven to me; on my initial reading, I couldn't quite see the point of it. I think that this problem might be rectified if "see" in L3 were changed to "know." Also, I'd suggest using "grain" instead of "corn" in L4, because I'm American, and my first instinct on seeing "corn" is to assume that it only means "maize."

I think that to truly appreciate "The Marbled White Butterfly" (for which the prose crib didn't provide the original Hungarian title, unless it's the Latin), I need just a bit more guidance figuring out what's going on at a literal level. As in the first poem, I found myself asking, "What is the point of the poet's inclusion of these details?", but I couldn't come up with satisfactory answers. Currently, the first line seems an irrelevant truism, and in the second line I'm distracted by the appearance of a first-person narrator who can't sing.

This may simply be a flaw in the original poem, but I think more should be done to contrast the birds' music with the flower's muteness, and/or to otherwise explain the narrator's affinity for drunken, restless artists like the flower, rather than to birds.

I could be wildly misinterpreting this, of course. I'm only guessing that the narrator must be the butterfly, because otherwise the butterfly is only mentioned in the title; I think that the "mute painter" must be a reference to the blooming flower, tossing its head in the breeze...but the verse translation seems to suggest that the painter is the butterfly, landing on flowers. Hmmm. Clearly I'm not understanding this perfectly.

I'm thinking that, except in the really short lines, maintaining the syllable count is less important than clarity.

"Bohemian" has much more positive connotations than "offbeat," so I would prefer that word.

But overall, these were delightful.

[Rose Kelleher]

Wow, what a challenging task, you can see from the prose crib how different the syntax is from English, and yet the translator preserved the form, which is not an easy one. It reads like a clever poem written in English by someone with a fondness for rhyme and assonance - esp. 2 and 3. ("Black-and-yellow assassin, dagger in hand" - love that line!)

The point of 1, I gather from the original, is that even in the middle of a mild summer, the ants are so industrious they can't relax, but start planning for winter. That isn't coming through in 1, I'm not sure what's being said, and 2 and 3 also sound better. "Great musicians they are, birds" - nicely done.

I'm with you on "anthropo- / phagic", Julie. You could argue that it's as important, or at least as valid, to translate the playfulness of a poem as any other aspect of it.

[Adam Elgar]

Yes I'm laughing, and full of admiration for this as a piece of linguistically rich fun. Of course translators are allowed, nay obliged, to make deviations from the literal sense if they are capturing something else that's equally essential to the life of the original text. No quibbles from me about that.

And moving outside the IE tradition sharpens the obligation of the translator to be inventive and surprising. I loved the whole experience of this.

[Mary McLean]

Lots of fun. I hear them as rap songs, with relentless emphasis on those improbable rhymes. I agree with Julie about preferring 'flighty', but no other nits to pick.

[Seree Zohar]

Yeah, even though the end of 'The Wasp' ought to be faulted, I'm also in the kudos camp for sheer... audacity! and LOL fun. The Ant seems to need a bit of tweaking in that last line, perhaps better punctuation. The Birds is, like the other two pieces, well rendered though the original poem per se doesn't do it for me. But yes, greatly enjoyed the translation prowess [and inventiveness] shown here nonetheless.

[Ann Drysdale]

There's a sort of Ogden-nashery about the ant and wasp but less smirky. I like them for their happy truth.

The butterfly, though, is in a league above them, for me. It put me in mind of Chesterton's donkey "But fools! I also had my hour..." and I think there's more going on here than just butterflies. It's a challenge to my definition of "song". I hear you, butterfly.

[Catherine Chandler]

I agree with Ann that the Butterfly is the best of the three, although the s on birds in L1 sort of spoils it (there's a way to get around this). Not sure why the original changes POV in the latter half of the poem.

[Skip Dewahl]

The first two poems are great fun, but the third needs reworking to elucidate the exact meaning. If that last one were as well-worked as the first two, this translation might pose a threat to others. Much talent went into this effort, nonetheless.

[Janice D. Soderling]

I appreciate the difficulties in rendering these monorhymes into another language. But I'm sorry to finally say that these solutions aren't satisfactory to my ear. A valiant but strained attempt, not quite successful. I'd suggest the translator to have another go at it.