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  #1  
Unread 03-17-2002, 09:57 AM
Tim Murphy Tim Murphy is offline
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Mike Juster will join me as Guest Lariat on March 28, and as usual, I’ll welcome our distinguished guest by starting a thread on Mastery. Michael has just published Longing for Laura, an elegant little book of his immaculate translations from Petrarch. Here are three of my favorites:


1
To you who hear within these bits of rhyme
the sound of sighs that satisfied my heart
throughout my youthful follies, when in part
I was somebody from some other time:

Except when hollow hopes and sorrows climb,
my various appeals and pleadings start;
I seek, from others tested by love's art,
both pity and their pardon for my crime.

But now I understand how I became
the target of such gossip, for guilt fills
my shameful, brooding thoughts without relief;

and from my vented rage, the fruit is shame,
remorse and lucid knowledge that what thrills
us in the world is but a dream that's brief.

22
For any creature who inhabits Earth,
except the handful who despise the sun,
the time for laboring is during day;
but when the sky illuminates its stars,
some come back home while others nest in woods
so they may rest at least until the dawn.

And I, when glimpsing hints a gorgeous dawn
has scattered shadows all around the earth
and stirred the animals in all the woods,
still sigh and don't surrender to the sun;
then while I watch the incandescent stars,
I wander crying and desiring day.

When evening chases out the brilliant day,
and our gloom has produced another's dawn,
I stare intently at the heartless stars
that once had fashioned me from conscious earth,
and curse the day on which I saw the sun,
which makes me seem like one raised in the woods.

I do not think there grazed in any woods
so cruel a creature in the night or day
as she for whom I cry in gloom and sun,
and I don't weaken with first sleep or dawn,
for though I am the mortal flesh of earth,
my firm desire comes down from the stars.

Before I turn to you, radiant stars,
or stumble into the romantic woods
to leave my body pulverized to earth,
I long to sense her pity, since one day
might still restore the years, and before dawn
enrich me through the setitng of the sun.

I yearn to join her in the ebbing sun,
and let no one observe us but the stars
for just one night, and let there be no dawn
and no transforming her into green woods
as she escapes into my arms, just like the day
Apollo followed her down here to Earth!

But I will lie beneath earth in dry woods,
and the day will be filled with tiny stars
before the sun arrives at that sweet dawn.


365
I keep on weeping for a past I spent
on earthbound passion for a mortal thing
although I know I could have taken wing
and tried to set a better precedent.

You who view my unworthy, decadent
despair: invisible, immortal King
of Heaven, save my frail, lost soul, and bring
it grace as your redeeming supplement,

for though I lived through war and storms, I may
yet die in peace at port, and if in vain
I journeyed, I must part the righteous way.

For what remaining life I still sustain
and for my death, allow your hand to stay:
you know no other lets my hopes remain.


This book simply must be had, especially by all of us who’ve benefitted from Mike’s loving critiques of our work.
Order from Birchbrook Press at: www.birchbrookpress.com

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  #2  
Unread 03-20-2002, 04:12 AM
Caleb Murdock Caleb Murdock is offline
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These are lovely poems, but I wonder if their beauty isn't just Michael's talent coming across. I generally agree with Frost that what gets lost in a translation is the poetry.

In the 1300's, English was a very different language. But what about Italian -- was that very different in the 1300's, or had it pretty much reached its present form?
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  #3  
Unread 03-20-2002, 04:25 AM
Tim Murphy Tim Murphy is offline
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Caleb, What you're seeing is Petrarch shining through in all his glory. That's where Mike's genius for translation comes in. Amazingly, he has exactly duplicated the Petrarchan rhyme scheme in all these sonnets, a form so difficult in English that you can count the great ones on your fingers and toes. How very much more difficult to wield the form while staying true to another's sense. I believe Italian has changed far less than English since 1300.
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Unread 03-21-2002, 11:06 AM
Harry Potter Harry Potter is offline
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Tim, I enjoyed these quite a bit. I think that a translation captures the feeling of the original poem, but the author who tanslates is bringing his or her own words to the table. I'm not really a fan of translations though, and one example I can give is that in all the extraordinary work Dante has produced, he was an Italian fellow, and I can't speak a word of Italian! I would love to be able to read his original poetry in the language that it was meant to be read in, but this, as of right now anyway, just isn't happening.

About a year or two ago, I purchased a pretty interesting translation of Dante's "La Vita Nuova" which, if anyone would like to know, was Dante giving the reader his own thoughts on a number of sonnets he was writing. This I found enjoyable because no matter what the language was originally, it was still Dante's thoughts that were being presented to the reader.

However, when the sonnets would arrive between the commentary, I felt that Dante's true poetry was not being heard, and this was a disappointment to one whose main language is English.

I guess the only way I'll ever really be satisfied is if I learn Italian, which I have heard is not that hard of a language to learn.

Anyway, just wanted to give you my thoughts on the subject.

Harry
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  #5  
Unread 03-23-2002, 05:03 AM
Gail White's Avatar
Gail White Gail White is offline
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Re: language changes -- it's easier for an Italian today to read Dante & Petrarch than it is for an English speaker to read Chaucer and Gower. The reason is that Dante's Tuscan dialect prevailed over its rivals to become more or less Standard Italian.
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Unread 03-23-2002, 07:57 PM
Harry Potter Harry Potter is offline
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No doubt, Gail, that the language has changed, and as far as Italian goes I can't really speak on that. But the english of Chaucer's day I found somewhat accessible on a first read, and for the most part could get the gist of what he was saying, despite a number of words that only people in his day would use. The understanding of the piece was crucial. And yet, whether I understood certain words or not, before I did understand I saw how Chaucer used certain words to create a line of verse, and what particulars made up his style.

Dante's poetical influence was setting the standard and going beyond the normalcies of poetry, and that's my biggest gripe as far as knowing exactly what he said. I'd love to know the little differences that made Dante the poet that he was, and just knowing what he said isn't doing it for me. In other words, what was his style and how did he put words together? That's what I want to know and see. And though translation may help in my understanding him, it won't, for the most part, give me Dante's poetry, and the true beauty of it.

I'm probably asking too much of a translation though, and with that in mind, my understanding of the piece is probably all that really matters.

Harry



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  #7  
Unread 03-24-2002, 01:12 AM
A. E. Stallings A. E. Stallings is offline
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Harry,

I think you are asking too much of a translation, though your questions and demands are good ones. But if a translation intrigues you enough to guide you to the original, then it is certainly successful on some level.

A verse translation, of course, has certain burdens that a prose translation does not. It must be an English poem in its own right, as these are. Indeed, Juster has raised the bar here by not merely producing a riming Petrarch, but by keeping the original rime schemes. English is as devilishly difficult to rime as Italian is effortlessly easy.

Why not take up Italian? In Dante's case, in fact, it could be argued he almost invented Italian (his work being a significant factor that his dialect won out). Few things are as good for a poet as taking up another language and its literature.

Alicia

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  #8  
Unread 03-24-2002, 04:45 AM
Tim Murphy Tim Murphy is offline
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Harry, One of the most treasured volumes in our library is Sappho to Valery, by the late John Frederick Nims (U Arkansas Press). John translated from Greek, Latin, Spanish, Italian, Provencal, Gallician, Catalan, French, and German, all of which he knew! The book begins with a magnificent essay on the art of verse translation, which Ciardi characterized rightly as the best thing ever written on the subject. I became persuaded of the merits of translation by reading Wilbur, whose efforts vie with his great originals in their worthiness. And for the past two years I've been regaling audiences with Beowulf, in both Anglo Saxon and our alliterative tetrameters. Provided that the translator creates a viable poem in modern English, verse translation is a great gift to all who lack the language from which he or she is working. Indeed I'd modify Frost's adage: poetry is what must be recreated in translation. I wrote a tribute to John which tickled him mightily because he'd never seen his name rhymed:

La Langue des Troubadours


“Benvengut,” says a sign
on Diocletian’s wall.
Like the paté and wine
the tongue is Provençal.
Under the sycamores
where a Roman fountain brims,
I read the troubadours—
thanks to John Frederick Nims—
and young Arnaut Daniel
stung by a woman’s scorn
weeps at this limestone well
while Bernard de Ventadorn
laments “Que planh e plor”
in the courtyards of Faience.
Here they are heard no more.
Adieu, adieu Provence.

The book is well worth it just for the first sestinas (by Daniel and Dante), to which Francesco Petrarca owed as great a debt as Phillip Sydney would later owe him. And hey, who's going to learn Provencal, let alone Catalan. Particularly fine is the generous sampling from Goethe.
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Unread 03-24-2002, 11:10 AM
Harry Potter Harry Potter is offline
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Thanks, Alicia and Tim, for the insight on this matter. I guess what I left out of my comments is the fact that Michael and other translators do know the language, so they're seeing the side of the original work that I cannot. And with that in mind, the words they use in translation are probably closer to the original than one would think.

Alicia, as you have pointed out, maybe this is a good thing that I want to know more, and learning a new language has been something that I've had on my mind for a while. Italian is one of the languages that I would like to learn, along with French and German, though that one I hear is the hardest of them all.

Tim, the book you've recommended I'm sure is a good one, so I'll have to check it out. Goethe is another guy that I've been dipping into lately, and I've come to find out that the Germans had quite an interesting poetical history as well. Liked your tribute to Nims and the fact that he knew all those languages is astonishing. I guess what it boils down to is the more you know the better off you are, at least in most cases. And in my case, I think a better understanding of what translations are all about would be quite helpul.

Thanks

[This message has been edited by Harry Potter (edited March 24, 2002).]
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Unread 04-13-2002, 08:35 AM
Tim Murphy Tim Murphy is offline
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Sam Maio has just sent me his excellent foreward to Mike's Petrarch:

FOREWORD TO "LONGING FOR LAURA"


One of the earliest and greatest of Renaissance poets, Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374) has proven as well to be one of the most enduring. Aside from Shakespeare, no other Renaissance writer has been translated so widely and repeatedly -- time-honored testimony to his lasting appeal, which has transcended ages and cultures. Petrarch (as he is known to the English speaking world) still speaks to us as powerfully and engagingly as he did nearly seven hundred years ago when his resonant and passionate voice first sounded through his love poetry. Indeed, passion is Petrarch's distinguishing imprint, particularly in his collection of poems in Italian (not Latin) which he entitled Rerum vulgarium fragmenta (Poetic Fragments in the Vernacular), now called Canzoniere (Lyric Poems) and from which 366 pieces -- Petrarch intended them to be read one per day, like the Catholic Breviary, over the course of a year -- the present volume takes its 24 selections to comprise "Longing for Laura."
As its intentional allusion to the Breviary suggests, the Canzoniere is an extended meditation, a hymnal of sorts containing some of the greatest love poems in all literature -- or, more specifically, "hopeless love," the unvanquished yearning for an unattainable, forbidden woman. "Laura," of course, is the object of the Canzoniere's speaker's desire. Scholars have determined that Petrarch's inspirational provenance for these poems was a beautiful woman named Laurette de Noves, whom he first met in the Church of St. Clare in Avignon on April 6, 1327. Madame de Noves already had been married for a few years and was the mother of several children when Petrarch met her. Nevertheless, as the poems reveal, Petrarch was fervently attracted to her physical beauty, her motherly grace, and her spiritual endowment -- a worshipful attraction that lasted more than thirty years. Petrarch was obliged by the strictures of his religious faith to adore her from afar, hopelessly, until her death in 1348 (twenty-one years after their meeting). For ten years after her death he continued to express his devotion to her memory in poetry.
The speaker of the Canzoniere is a poet, the protagonist and central focus of the sequence of poems. Just as Laura is a poetic invention -- albeit one putatively based on Madame de Noves -- so is the poems' speaker a similar invention, a literary alter ego of Petrarch, one tormented by apprehension and guilt over his forbidden love of Laura. Canzoniere 1 and 365 -- that is, the opening and the penultimate poems, both which are included here -- speak of Laura figuratively as any temptation that can lead one astray from the path of eternal salvation. Although not all of the Canzoniere are about Laura (some are odes on friendship, politics, and the church), they all concern the speaker-poet-protagonist, collectively portraying a melancholy and nostalgic man brooding over impossible love. Laura is simultaneously the woman he cannot have and the representation of all of his unrequited desires. She stands for
2.

unconsummated love, an ideal beyond attainment and therefore consummately desirable. This is the principal thematic thread binding together the Canzoniere.
A. M. Juster's brief selection presented here concentrates on the major emotional and spiritual ramifications resulting from the speaker's "longing for Laura," a longing intensified by the cultural, religious, and moral fates that have deemed her unreachable. Perhaps this is the reason for our age's attraction to Petrarch, that his deepest torments are shockingly foreign and mysteriously antiquated to us when compared to our culture's insistence on immediate (if not satisfactory) gratification of our every whim and concupiscent impulse. No matter how cynical and callous our current attitudes toward romantic love and unfulfilled desire, however, we seem never to tire of literary manifestations of the heroic pursuit of the ideal and of the noble, despite the impossibility of achievement. One only has to recall the resurgent popularity of Dante -- whose disappointed love for Beatrice in this life served as a contemporary general model for Petrarch -- and favorite modern samples such as Gatsby's fascination with Daisy and Yeats's for Maude Gonne to realize that the theme of despairing, unattainable love strikes a persistent chord "in the deep heart's core," to borrow from Yeats, who reigns as the modern master of nostalgia. The introspective, personal speaker-poet of the Canzoniere is recognizable, too, in the majority of contemporary poetry, where "confessionalism" is standard.
Juster now joins the venerable line of poets who have translated "the Laura poems" into English, each generation refiguring Petrarch's Italian into its own vernacular and idiom. The earliest in this line is Chaucer, whose translations began before Petrarch died. (Chaucer even "translated" the poet's name from Petrarca to Petrarch, by which he has been known in English ever since.) Edmund Spenser, The Earl of Surrey, and Sir Thomas Wyatt -- luminaries of the English Renaissance -- all translated him as well, holding up Petrarch as the ideal Renaissance poet, one who embodied in his work classical structures and romantic themes. While sonnets predominate the Canzoniere -- so popular and influential were these poems that the "Italian sonnet" form has since become synonymously known as the "Petrarchan sonnet" form -- other lyric forms are deftly employed, such as the sestina, which Juster has translated admirably in Canzoniere 22 and 239. Unlike many English renditions, Juster has preserved quite artfully the classic Petrarchan octave in the sonnet, rhyming abbaabba -- difficult to maintain in English, a language not as easily given to rhyme as the Italian, demonstrated by the sometimes forced or otherwise stilted rhymes used by The Earl of Surrey for instance. Erudite speculation has it that Shakespeare could not adequately rhyme within the abbaabba scheme when writing his sonnets so abandoned the Italian form in favor of the English form,

3.

which calls for rhyme pairs instead of quartets. Most English language poets would concur that it is very hard to rhyme an Italian sonnet well, giving rise to the common octave variant of abbacddc one regularly finds in English renderings of Petrarch's Canzoniere. Not so with Juster's translations -- his remain true to the Italian and true to Petrarch's abbaabba rhyme scheme. Even more remarkable, Juster does so in a modern idiom that preserves the integrity and flavor of the Petrarchan original. He achieves this in part by his skillful use of enjambment so that the rhymes never call undue attention to themselves, an example of which can be found in the first stanza of Canzoniera 2:
In order to extract revenge with grace
and punish countless crimes in just one day,
Love took his bow out in a furtive way
like an assassin marking time and place.
Juster translates with a poet's ear for the sonic beauty of language, as these lines show his ear for both Petrarch's metrical rhythm and his vernacular usage.
Integral to an understanding of the complex personality and emotions of the speaker-poet is Canzoniera 23, which Juster makes gracefully accessible to us. In this long, blank verse poem of varying rhymes, the speaker-poet asks himself, upon acute self-examination, "Alas, what am I? Was I?" The simple answer, revealed in the ensuing memorable lines, is that he is a poet, the purity of his art tempered by his all-consuming emotions. Laura, he knows, is his ars poetica; he turns his longing for her, his hopeless love of her, into lyric poetry of lasting wonderment -- the poems presented in the following pages, which record his story of commitment and despair in a language and manner suited for our time. Juster's pitch-perfect translations of the heart of Petrarch remind us of our emotional vulnerability, a trait that defines us as human beings. This is why Petrarch endures.


Samuel Maio
Professor of English and Comparative Literature
California State University, San José


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