O.K. who wants to do some sonnet push-ups?

This is a great way to build po-muscle and help with the writing of your own sonnets, I have found: to try and make a viable sonnet from a given passage of poetic prose.

Here is a passage from Proust's In Search of Lost Time. There are 172 words here, which will not, of course, all fit into a sonnet (av. 110), so some elements here must be excluded. The idea is to attempt to get as much of the content and argument of the passage as possible into a coherent, satisfying sonnet.

Any sonnet form is fine.

I know that Mary has been bitten by this bug - any one else?

In his smell-filled room
Moral, pious, still as bread
A whole secret life

"Why don't you talk like a normal man Marcel?"
they said as I waited for my bread and jam.
"You're prolix and self-absorbed, and a drone as well
and your attitude seems effete and a thorough sham."

"All that nostalgic crap won't pay the rent,
get up and go. Your cupboard will be bare
after the time you've wasted. The years you spent
watching yourself. It's time to work your share."

People so simple have no other role
than to create a world where I may be
central to all their industry. My soul
suffers from any harsh cacophony.

Every part of myself has been explored;
how could a man so fortunate be bored?

An interesting low-cal response to a very fat passage, Michael, but hardly a sonnet.

It is an amazing passage, too, isn't it - a single sentence, but not at all unusual in the novel.

This is one of the reasons I feel drawn to these exercises, to highlight great passages of poetic prose.

Cross-posted with Janet.

That's good, Janet.

The first voice reminds me of my entire family.

Are you going to have a shot at the exercise?

Mark,
French structure allows for such sentences--or so the French think. Italian likewise uses parentheses inside parentheses inside parentheses for pages and pages.

In English, to put it mildly, it doesn't translate.

Elizabeth David said it better and left recipes ;)

Too many words for a sonnet.
Janet

[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited August 25, 2006).]

Actually, Janet, Proust's long sentences were considered most "un-French" by many critics on its appearance.

So, are you saying that you can't make any sense of the passage - is that what you mean by "doesn't translate?"

Yes, the passage is bigger than could ever fit into a sonnet, as I said above:

"There are 172 words here, which will not, of course, all fit into a sonnet (av. 110), so some elements here must be excluded. The idea is to attempt to get as much of the content and argument of the passage as possible into a coherent, satisfying sonnet."

This gives the "translator" a bit of freedom to choose among the elements.

Mark,
I translated an Italian book (as an exercise) by the Italian translator of Proust. I nearly went mad converting the prose into acceptable English. It left its scar.

I can make sense of the passage. Seriously--do a bit of cooking from an Elizabeth David book. Produces the same rapture.
Janet

Another thing which fascinates me about this sort of "translation" exercise is that it provides all writers with the same inspirational experience.

The inspiring experience is the starting point for all poems, and rather than asking participants to come up with their own, as with bake-offs, etc, the experience is provided here in common for all.

Writing any poem is always a matter of translation - translating the experiences we have into an expression and form which can be conveyed to other minds.

So, here is the shared, inspiring experience - what sort of a sonnet can you turn it into, while trying to stay as close to the original experience as possible?

Also, I meant to add, such exercises may lead to publishable "found" poems.

Two poems of the 15 selected by the editors of my recent chappie (out of 50 sent) were intra-linguistic translations of prose passages.

Mark, apologies for my cynicism. This is not a found poem but it tries to obey your injunctions.

The potency of simple scent recalls
the way I was before I wasn’t, yet
the touch and taste I somehow can’t forget,
no matter where time’s longer shadow falls.
I see behind those other houses’ walls
with freshly laundered linen neatly set
on breakfast tables where good people met
for fruits preserved against the wintry squalls.
Newly baked bread like ocean spray can bring
a rush of other memories that flood
in chaos and profusion like a spring.
Despite the peacefulness there is a sting--
anxiety, a dullness in the blood
that tells me that these words will never sing.

Janet!

An Italian and all!

The version I am working on is demanding to be an English sonnet.

And what you have done here is fine in itself - to use the passage as a springboard to your own meditations, incorporating elements from the passage.

As far as metrical issues are concerned, your poem is (as ever) impeccable.

But as far as an intra-linguistic translation of the prose to verse goes, it does stray. There is no "I" in the passage, for instance.

And the element of the simile of the smells in the rooms to the "myriad protozoa" by whose presence "entire tracts of air or ocean are illuminated or perfumed" needs some representation in the "translation", I feel.

One way to try and ensure the maximum coverage of all the important elements of the original, is to see if the passage can be broken up into three sections, which will be (as far as possible) represented in the three quatrains. And save a little bit to make the final couplet.

It's much more fun than crosswords, and, as I say, viable poems can result.

Quite right about "I" Mark. I take the all-embracing "one" to be a universal "I". I didn't even try to write a rendition of the translated (stress translated) original text, but an impression. I'm afraid that I'm simply not interested in doing that and I bet Marcel wouldn't be either. The universal egoist wants to use the time egotistically ;)
Janet

That's fair enough, Janet.

If it doesn't feel right, don't do it. I agree.

I do it because I love the process of translation - re-cycling one body of words into another. That I operate sometimes within my own native language (which I know best of all) is no difference for me than working with Ancient Greek or Latin. I am re-cycling a previously existing body of words into a new form, and a new expression.

And I must say that I don't feel any less aesthetic pleasure in extracting a sonnet from a previously existing passage of English prose than I do in extracting a sonnet from a German poem or Greek hexameter or a previously existing personal experience or concept. They are all equally creative acts for me.

In each case the original experience needs to be sorted, sifted and re-presented in a poetic form. All manner of experience is capable of becoming a poem, so why not the experience of a passage of prose, even if in the same language?

Poetry is always about poetry anyway. Everything we write is already laden with the thousands of poems we have read, and whose echoes and reflections fill even our most “original” works. As Oscar says: “The proper school to learn art is not life but art.”

I am not sure Marcel would have condemned this approach. After all, if it helps re-direct readers back to the original source, why should he complain?

Mark,
You're absolutely right about the chief joy of translation being in an intimate feeling for language and that one is most at ease with one's own language. I do have one problem about that idea though. If a poem is already complete and of its time, one can only degrade it by reassembling it in modern dress. I have yet to be convinced that it's anything other than an escape from the responsibility of pure creation and I have always hated "updated" versions of real poems.
Janet

All I can say in response, Janet, is that if friends, myself and editors pick as two of my (so far) best pieces from my re-cyclers, I am happy to try more of them.

If I can produce something I consider aesthetically pleasing (and which also pleases and entertains connoiseurs of the art), I am content.

In this particular enterprise, I see myself as a type of miner or excavator, unearthing, polishing and setting otherwise hidden gems, presently buried in vast mountains of under-read prose.

This is precisely the procedure which gave us the English literary renaissance in the 16th/17th C. - a product of almost nothing entirely "new". For instance, we today (or some of us, at least) value English poems such this from Abraham Cowley (1618 - 1667), when it is entirely re-cycled from the work of the Greek poet Anacreon (563-478 B.C.)

Drinking

THE thirsty earth soaks up the rain,
And drinks and gapes for drink again;
The plants suck in the earth, and are
With constant drinking fresh and fair;
The sea itself (which one would think
Should have but little need of drink)
Drinks twice ten thousand rivers up,
So fill'd that they o'erflow the cup.
The busy Sun (and one would guess
By 's drunken fiery face no less)
Drinks up the sea, and when he's done,
The Moon and Stars drink up the Sun:
They drink and dance by their own light,
They drink and revel all the night:
Nothing in Nature's sober found,
But an eternal health goes round.
Fill up the bowl, then, fill it high,
Fill all the glasses there - for why
Should every creature drink but I ?
Why, man of morals, tell me why ?

========



[This message has been edited by Mark Allinson (edited August 26, 2006).]

Revision for Mark:

The potency of simple scent recalls
the way I was before I wasn’t, yet
the touch and taste I somehow can’t forget
no matter where time’s longer shadow falls.
I see behind those other houses’ walls
with freshly laundered linen neatly set
on breakfast tables where good people met
for fruits preserved against the wintry squalls.
Newly baked bread like ocean spray can bring
a rush of protozoan lives that flood
in chaos and profusion from a spring.
Despite the peacefulness there is a sting--
anxiety, a dullness in the blood
that tells me that my words will never sing.


[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited August 26, 2006).]

A well-written, engaging sonnet, Janet.

Maybe still in the "After Proust" category, rather than a close re-presentation of the original passage, but well-done, nonetheless.

One of the reasons I was attracted to this passage was the simile of "entire tracts of air or ocean ... illuminated or perfumed by myriad protozoa" , which I didn't want to lose, so I start my sonnet off:


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.


I am still fiddling with the rest of the sonnet, but I think this first quatrain is just about there.

[This message has been edited by Mark Allinson (edited August 26, 2006).]

Mark that's very nice indeed.

I still value original experiences most of all. I disagree that all the poets would start with the same inspiration if they used that text. Their own experiences would totally change the meaning and I know you'll say that it's like that when we read and I'd agree. But I feel protective towards the original creation. So many distortions and so much blurring of something personal.
Janet

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).]

So, Mark, what happened to your detestation of all things French? ;) Pretty tough job making a coherent sonnet out of such a rambling piece, but when the going gets tough...


IN COUNTRY ROOMS

As in exotic lands the sea or air
gleams or is musked with swarming life unknown,
such atmospheric country rooms these were
as captivate us with the scents they own,
a thousand odours which exhale a whiff
of field and wood and weather, yet transpire
also with virtues, with an unseen life,
wisdom, habit, a secret store entire;
odours made homey — now a fine preserve
larders the orchard fruits from all the year,
now hoarfrost’s nip and fresh warm bread converse,
all lazy in a peace admixed with fear,
now all this prosiness is charged anew
to stir the poet who but passes through.


(I haven’t attempted particularly “modern dress”.)

Henry

A rip-snorter, Henry.

Now, did you enjoy that?

I really do believe that making sonnets out of prose like this is a great way to "prime the pump", as engineers would say. Not having to invent the ideas, argument or imagery, gives you a freedom to concentrate on the other aspects of the sonnet, such as rhythm, phrasing and rhyme. And when you do them often enough, that experience may be applied to your own material. Or so it seems to me.

And, as I say, it may also lead to an interesting poem in the process.

Re the apparent contradiction of my Francophobia, I make three exceptions: Montaigne, Proust and Flaubert.

You can keep ALL the rest.

Keep Pascal, Voltaire, Hugo, Dumas, Balzac? Keep Pasteur, Curie, Cousteau? Keep Rimbaud, Verlaine, Baudelaire, Rousseau, Molière, Renoir, Monet? Keep Saint-Saëns, Debussy, Fauré? Keep Tati, Grapelli, Piaf, the Moulin Rouge, Gérard Depardieu? (Well, OK, keep HIM!) Keep pissoirs, escargots and 600 types of cheese? ;) Keep Bardot, de Gaulle, and the delightful Henri Leconte?

Seriously, would that Proust passage have appeal to someone without appreciation of the French provincial ambience?

Brilliant thread.
Compliments to the participants.
I aspire to your talent.
David

Dear Proust

My rooms are not your rooms, nor is my air
perfumed, enchanted, secret, sweet, or fresh.
I breathe quite differently from you, mon frere.
It’s super-clear our styles will never mesh.


Sorry, Mark. Not my cuppa.

Mary

Mary--

We all
can scrawl
a bit
of wit
to still
the spill
of words
that girds
this Proust,
seduced
to frame
and tame
his flow,
and sow
his spew
anew.

But you
eschew
his whine
just fine,
and make
his ache,
his drone,
your own.
I say:
Touché!

http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/smile.gif http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/smile.gif LOL, Jan! I like your pencil-thin poem.

Thanks,
Mary

Thank you, David, on behalf of the four Proustian Sonneteers.

And thank you Mary and Jan for your contributions.

Well, it looks like this might be an exercise with limited appeal.

For my part, at present I am trying to work out which of the three attempts I posted works the best. Or whether to cannibalize the three to make one good one.

One advantage of using the English form here, is that I now have 12 interchangeable modules which can be shuffled around to make one optimum sonnet. Because the passage is oversized, there is no chance that any one sonnet will entirely capture all the elements in the passage, so it comes down to which arrangement might make the best attempt.

If anyone else would like to play cut & paste to make a suggestion, please feel free.

Q 1

Like certain tracts of air or ocean fired
and scented by the breaths of minute lives,
the odours in these rooms remain inspired
by an atmosphere of habit which survives.

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 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;


============

Q 2

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.

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.

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:

==========

Q 3


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.

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.

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.


Couplets

These happy rooms where peace increased unease
store poetry for one who, passing, sees.

These rooms smell of a prosiness which gives
a visitor the poetry that lives.

Prosaic rooms imbued with living smells
may be, for those who pass, poetic wells.

This poem's neither yours nor mine--
I hope it's not a Frankenstein http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/smile.gif


Like certain tracts of air or ocean fired
and scented by the breaths of minute lives,
the odours in these rooms remain inspired
by an atmosphere of habit which survives.
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.
Prosaic rooms imbued with living smells
may be, for those who pass, poetic wells.


[This message has been edited by Alan S Evans (edited September 01, 2006).]

Thank you, Alan.

Well, who knows who owns any of these things.

But I must say, I don't really care. Poetry does not "belong" to anyone. And when it comes, in whatever form, why should we reject it solely on the basis of its provenance?

Yes, that seems like a fair blending of the modules to me.

Let that one stand as my poem on the passage.

Thank you again for finding it, Alan.

==================

Edited back to say that with Q1 now matched with Q2 of another version, perhaps "habit" needs now to be "habits" to match the first line of Q2 - "Some ...

[This message has been edited by Mark Allinson (edited September 01, 2006).]