[Mark Allinson]

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?

These were the sorts of provincial rooms which, just as in certain countries entire tracts of air or ocean are illuminated or perfumed by myriad protozoa that we cannot see, enchant us with a thousand smells given off by the virtues, by wisdom, by habits, a whole secret life, invisible, superabundant, and moral, which the atmosphere holds in suspension; smells still natural, certainly, and colored by the weather, like those of the neighboring countryside, but already homey, humid, and enclosed, an exquisite ingenious and limpid jelly of all the fruits of the year that have left the orchard for the cupbopard, seasonal but moveable and domestic, correcting the piquancy of the hoarfrost with the sweetness of warm bread, as lazy and punctual as a village clock, roving and orderly, heedless and foresightful, linen smells, morning smells, pious smells, 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.


(from Swann's Way by Marcel Proust, translated by Lydia Davis. New York: Viking, 2003, p. 50)

[Michael Cantor]

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

[Janet Kenny]

"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?

[Mark Allinson]

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.

[Mark Allinson]

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?

[Janet Kenny]

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).]

[Mark Allinson]

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?"

[Mark Allinson]

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.

[Janet Kenny]

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

[Mark Allinson]

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?