Janet, that's absolutely right.

The text is original experience for every reader, and no two readers will have exactly the same experience of it.

And there is absolutely no one RIGHT translation of such a passage into a single sonnet - there are multitudes of right sonnet-versions.

Which is why I think it's fun to do as a drill.

In fact, I am working on a second version which will be very different from the first. But just as faithful.

Janet, there is no risk that any sonnet will ursurp the place of the original passage. Translation is not desecration.

Look, I must admit that my theory about what I am doing with these things is produced after the fact - I read a passage like the Proust and think: that material, those images, would make a great sonnet. So I do it first, then try to explain why.

The fact is, my Muse insists.

It could be an entirely idiosyncratic perversion in the Muse - I don't know.

But I am stuck with her.

Can anyone else see a sonnet in this material?

Mark, if it works for you that's to be encouraged. There are no limits to good writing. I hope someone else contributes. As you see elsewhere I'm often inspired by the writing of others but I couldn't possibly toe the line as you do.
Can't buy this particular "translation" story.

Please other Eratosphereans, Mark's challenge is worth taking up.

[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited August 27, 2006).]

Thanks, Janet.

After two days of just the two of us, I must assume that this is indeed an idiosyncratic obsession.

What can I say - I love the process of finding poems in blocks of pre-existing words. It is like a type of sculpting, really, to find the shape of the poem in the way a sculptor might see a horse in a marble block.

But as I said, all these explanations of how and why I do this come after the fact of my doing it.

Anyway, given such a rich passage (and the fact that it is a little oversize for a sonnetization) I have found two sonnets.

Both are new, and both could still do with some polishing. I am still not entirely happy with the concluding couplets.

I will re-paste the source passage again to save scrolling back and forth.

Provincial Rooms

I


Like certain tracts of air or ocean fired
and scented by the breaths of minute lives,
the odors in these rooms remain inspired
by an atmosphere of habit which survives.
Wisdom, virtues, plentiful and moral,
held in suspension inter-blend those airs
with smells not merely seasonal and floral:
a limpid jelly of fruit and human cares.
Smells that vary with the moving seasons,
offsetting hoarfrost with the sweet warm bread;
morning smells, or linen, some with reasons,
and some which smell of blind faith instead.
These happy rooms where peace increased unease
store poetry for one who, passing, sees.

========


Provincial Rooms

II

Like certain lands where protozoa light
or scent the air and yet remain unseen,
such rooms convey a similar delight
where smells of secret lives imprint the scene.
Some natural and coloured by the weather,
similar to the neighboring countryside;
some homey, humid, blended all together:
a jelly of cares and fruit the fields provide.
Here piquancy of hoarfrost is corrected
sweetly with the smell of home-baked bread;
where lazy smells are punctually directed
and pious smells compete with smells of bed.
These rooms smell of a prosiness which gives
a visitor the poetry that lives.




[This message has been edited by Mark Allinson (edited August 28, 2006).]

Oh, I'll be over to post a Proust soon. It takes me a while to warm up to these drills & amusements. Meanwhile, good thread - I'm reading it.
Mary

Provincial Rooms

Consider rooms provincial, such as these,
to be like ocean’s vast perfumery,
enchanting secret life that no one sees
of myriad protozoa and algae.
The sheer abundance of a thousand smells,
a thousand virtues, wise morality,
ingenious, exquisite, and limpid gels
of fruits that left the orchard seasonally,
match piquancy with sweetness of warm bread,
join laziness and punctuality,
catch foresight with the heedless-spirited,
combine the roving with the orderly.
But anxiousness with peace has never been
for one who passes through and not lives in.

Bravo Alan S. Evans.
Janet

Yes, that's a great shot, Alan - and a fine effort for a first post!

But isn't that final couplet a hard nut to crack! That's why I need two sonnets to cover it.

This is the greatest part of the challenge - to try and get this bit into 20 syllables:

happy with a peace that brings only an increase of anxiety and with a prosiness that serves as a great reservoir of poetry for one who passes through it without having lived in it.

So even if readers don't want to go the whole hog, try your hand at the couplet. The brain-stretching does you good.

How is yours going, Mary?

Thank you for your encouragement, Janet and Mark, and also for your submissions. I marvel at the variety of expression that develops from the same starting point.

Yes, the final couplet is difficult.

Here's another try:

But staying only brings anxiety,
while passing through inspires poetry.

Alan

Thanks, Alan.

Yes, it is so interesting to see how people "translate" the same passage.

But be careful - this activity may be addictive.

I wish I knew exactly why I find it so appealing, sonnetizing prose passages like this.

Maybe I have simply been swept up in the global need to re-cycle valuable materials.

Who knows. It is certainly not my only mode of writing, but I do enjoy it.

I hope you did too.

[This message has been edited by Mark Allinson (edited August 29, 2006).]

I wonder how many sonnets there are in this passage?


Provincial Rooms III


Some provincial rooms are like the ocean
or like the sky in certain countries, where
tiny lives in protozoic motion
perfume the air, as human lives do here;
enchanted by enriching scents of wisdom,
of virtues, habits, a secret hidden life
we find enwrapped in country smells, and seldom
a single smell unbound in peaceful strife:
here bitter hoarfrost sugars in the sweetness
of the window-fogging, freshly-baked bread;
untidy smells compete with smells of neatness
as pious smells correct the fug of bed.
Prosaic rooms imbued with living smells
may be, for those who pass, poetic wells.




[This message has been edited by Mark Allinson (edited August 30, 2006).]