Twisted translations
 

I need a little advice. I’ve translated a couple poems by Mikhail Zenkevich and have another coming up this week. There’s one more of his I thought of doing, called “Petersburg Nightmares,” but have almost thought better of it. The N lures a little homeless girl to his apartment with sweets and later dumps her body in the canal. There are no details of what he did to her, but I have a feeling no one is going to thank me for this poem, let alone publish it. It may not be fair to the poet either, since I don’t plan to translate many more of his poems, and this one is unrepresentative, in the most disturbing way, of his work. Should I leave it alone?

Carl, trying to second-guess editors is futile. Worrying about how you represent an author is also futile. If the author wrote a poem and it is good, why not translate it and see what editors think? I have found that my attempts to get obscene poems by Catullus and Martial published in journals have not been successful, but you say that this poem is not specific about the details of the child's death. The poet Ai has become famous for her persona poems in the voice of a child abuser and other unsavory people. To translate a poem is not to endorse its attitudes.

Susan

If it is true poetry: never leave it alone. Do they not have Browning in Russian? An "I" is not us: that is fiction, not autobiography.

Thanks, Susan. I’m glad I posted, because I was confident that the majority opinion would be to give this poem a miss. I’m not terribly concerned about editors, since I’m not in a submission mode, but I could hear the questions from people I show it to: Was this poet a maniac? No, only a few of his poems are this shocking. So why did you choose the deranged ones to translate? The fact that you won’t be asking these questions is encouraging.

Thanks, Cameron. I’m not surprised by your response, since you like to stay on the jagged edge of things. I actually do too in my own more diffident way, hence the interest in this poem. But I also remember that you frowned on my choice of the Stalin Epigram as a first translation of Mandelstam. You felt the epigram’s popularity overshadowed his other achievements, and that’s what I meant about misrepresenting Zenkevich. Still, I’m very tempted by the poem, and I appreciate your encouragement.

There will always be people who think that poets should only focus on uplifting and beautiful topics — readers who don't like to be made uncomfortable. But sometimes poetry's mission is to take people out of their comfort zone and make them uncomfortable.

Sometimes negative responses to that takes poets out of their comfort zone, too.

I guess the best advice is simply, "If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen." If you think that the work has artistic merit, and that something valuable can be learned from examining the troubling point of view it presents, it's up to you to decide whether the possible pushback is worth it.

I've noticed increasing numbers of venues with statements cautioning that they won't give a platform to poems that they feel promote racism, homophobia, misogyny, etc. But there are plenty of other venues that don't have such statements, probably because their editors understand the difference between promotion of a concept and helping people to consider certain aspects of it better.

Thank you, Julie. The advice I’m getting is unanimous—and not what I expected—so I’m surely glad I asked the question. I feel ok now about attempting the translation, so we’ll see what happens.