Reflections on Moonlight Alloy (1): Translation takes ten years, and annotations are more expensive (preface 3)
The author started reading and translating gleeck's poems in early 2006, and it has been ten years in a blink of an eye. During this period, most of my free time was spent on gleeck's poems. After the initial desire to gossip, all the necessary information about her life, her comments and her two husbands were found. After the desire to gossip was satisfied, the pressure of translation increased instead of decreased. One stands tall, wandering in ten days. I remember the song Castilla. When I first read it, I liked it very much. Come back. Translation. Another song "Castilla" is about spring, love and dreams ... The flowers of oranges are floating and intoxicating! When I first read it, I was surprised that gleeck, who has always been mean in writing poems, actually wrote such beautiful poems! "I mentioned this poem once. The translation is very fast, but it took more than a month to revise it repeatedly, and I am still not practical. Later, I was surprised to hear a friend recite this poem at a reading party, and the effect was good. After that, it was revised many times, including two things that I forgot to remind my second brother, and several subsequent revisions.
As early as 2007, the translator contacted Glick, hoping to publish her Selected Poems in Chinese, but she didn't want to publish her Selected Poems, but wanted to translate and publish her poems, such as Frenau and Seven Periods, one by one-her 1 1 poems had not been published at that time. Even in the United States, gleeck has never published a collection of poems for decades! Poetry anthology 1962-20 12, 20 12 was published, without using the name of Complete Poems, and it was also published as a bound volume of poetry anthology 1 1. She finally avoided the fate of being selected poems! What is presented to the readers now covers her 1 1 poems, of which the first five are selected translations and the last six are fully translated. Translators translate single articles and proofread whole poems later. Almost all translated poems are transferred to her through copyright agents; Her good friend, Ms. Wai Chee Dimock, a professor at Yale University, helps to read the translated poems. In fact, even the introduction to the poet was provided by her. If there is any doubt, the translator asks her for advice, and then translates some of her replies into translation notes, marked with "Author's Note".
In the process of reading and translating, the translator refers to Daniel Morris's Louise? Gleeck's Poetry: A Thematic Study, and a Collection of Comments Edited by Joanne Fett Deere, About Louise? Gleeck: Change what you see. These are the only two special books at present. I read more books and materials about gleeck's poems through Google Books and Google Search. The translator extracts part of the content and indicates the source, which can be used as a reference for related poems. At the same time, in view of gleeck's dependence on cultural classics and allusions, the translator consulted the materials and made some notes. There are many poems about Aeneas in the collection of poems such as New Life, and there are many translators' notes, each with its own emphasis and mutual reference. The purpose of annotation is to provide a cultural background or an understanding idea of poetry, not an answer, especially to avoid possible ambiguity in poetry. Annotation is time-consuming and laborious, so more consideration should be given to avoid crossing the boundary of "translator"; To this end, the translator deleted many comments in the final stage. I hope readers can learn from each other.
Liu Xiangyang
20 12.8.3 1
I started translating gleeck in 2006, and it's almost the tenth year now ... gleeck's "12 Poems" was published three months ago, which I didn't expect. In fact, in addition to her collection of poems, she has at least one poem and prose to publish.
20 14. 12.2 1
Reflection on Moonlight Alloy (II): Louise? Gleeck's Poems of Pain (preface 1)
I was shocked when I first saw gleeck! Just two lines shocked me-shocked by her pain:
I want to tell you one thing: every day
People are dying. And this is just the beginning.
Louise. Gleeck's poems sting like awls. Stick it in your heart. Most of her poems are about death, life, love and sex, with death as the core. It is often like a declaration or assertion, which is beyond doubt. In her first book of poetry, she declared: "The unbearable loss is birth, not death." (Country of the Cotton-billed Snake)
From the first book of poetry, death appeared repeatedly, to the fifth book of poetry 1990, Mount Ale is almost a book of death. The sixth collection of poems, Wild Iris, turned to the problem of death in the abstract and existential sense. Since then, the death of poetry has been relatively reduced, but it is still endless. With death comes the fear of death. When people overcome death and get rid of the real threat of death, can they really get rid of the fear of death and get safety and happiness? Gleeck's poems give a negative answer. In the poem "Fear of Death" (poetry collection "New Life"), the poet wrote a childhood nightmare, "When the dream is over/the fear is still there." In the poem of love, although the mother got married again and again, she always took her son and "knitted red scarves of various colors" for him, hoping that his son would have a warm and happy childhood. But what happened? The invisible "I" in the poem said to his grown-up son, "It's not surprising that you are like this. You are afraid of blood, and your woman is like a brick wall. " Perhaps only a poet who understands psychoanalysis can write such a poem.
Gleiter in the dark is another example. In this poem, which is similar to Gretel's monologue, gleeck deeply doubts the happy ending of Grimm's fairy tale Hansel and Gretel: Although they have lived for a long time, all the threats are still with them, and poor Gretel can't get rid of the feeling of abandonment and mental fear-psychological trauma. Even her brother can't understand and comfort her. The repeated mention of hunger in this fairy tale reminds us of gleeck's anorexia when he was young.
Finally, in the series of poems in "Garden", she gave "fear of life", "fear of love" and "fear of burial", which seemed to be one and three, and three and one. Therefore, it is natural to escape from birth and love. For example, in the poem "The Statue of the Virgin Reiko Kobayakawa", gleeck rewrites this traditional theme and guesses that Christ: "He wants to stay in/in her body, away from/the world/and its crying and noise." Another example is "To Mom": "When we are together/in the same body, it is better."
There is little happy love in gleeck's poems, but more often he hesitates and rejects love and sex, such as in summer: "But we are still a little lost, don't you think?" She wrote in Ithaca: "The person you love/doesn't need to live. Beloved person/live in the mind. " However, the early "Declaration on Love-Art Museum" wrote about the appearance of love, but it brought about the disappearance of love: "She can no longer touch his arm purely. /They must give up these ... "gleeck talked about this poem in an interview:" Strong physiological needs denied their whole history. Make them ordinary people. Let them stick to the rules ... In my opinion, this poem is about their helplessness in the face of that compulsive demand, which is a mockery of their entire past. " The focus is "how we are enslaved." This understanding may have some side effects, but it is far from unique in gleeck's poems, which shows that gleeck seems to be gifted.
Until the poem "Victory of Achilles", gleeck gave the relationship between love and death. This poem is about Achilles' grief, and the gods understand: "He is already a dead man, and the sacrifice is/because of the part that will love,/because of the part that will die." In other words, only with love can he die. In "Fear of Death" (poetry collection "New Life"), love and death are interchanged again: "Anyone who fears love is afraid of death." This is actually gleeck's statement about love and death: "love = death", which is similar to the statement "knowledge = death in encounter" in Genesis and "π = f (c), that is, love is a function of death" in Zamyakin's statement.
According to The History of Colombian American Poetry, "gleeck began to write autobiographical materials into her bleak oral lyric poems from the poetry group Falling Images (1980)." The so-called autobiographical materials here are mostly the family life she experienced, such as childhood life, sister relationship, relationship with parents and relatives, and the grief of losing relatives. She once wrote in the poem Autobiography (Seven Periods): "I have a philosophy of love, religious/philosophical, all based on my early experiences at home." Later poems expanded, including youth, * * *, marriage and friendship ... gradually became abstract, fragments, elements, experiences and existed in poems. This feature is very obvious in the poetry collections New Life, Seven Periods and Arfor Nuo. More often, autobiographical content is combined with her life, death, love, sex and other themes, and the poetry collection Mount Ale is one of them. At the same time, lyricism has also been significantly enhanced, and some poems tend to be pure, open and even have some metaphysical meanings. Robert? Hayes once praised gleeck as "one of the purest and most accomplished lyric poets among today's writers", worthy of the name.
Pipa by the window
Reflections on Moonlight Alloy (3): Read a poem together
Today, I read two poems by Louise gleeck on the phone with a friend. She liked them very much and made me very happy. Although her understanding ability is not bad (Dr. Fudan), on the whole, poetry often gives people the feeling of being born from a distance, and I instinctively want to refuse (she suggested that I meet and share it, but I had no choice but to read it to her at once). Although gleeck is a teacher at Yale University, he seems to write very simply. People at different levels can see different meanings. Dr. Fudan's first reaction after hearing this turned out to be: This poet grows tomatoes. Otherwise, it is impossible to write so specifically. I smiled: a plant can also be single-minded.
evening prayer
Translated by Louis Gehrig and Liu Xiangyang
During your long absence, you allow me
Use land, expect
The investment pays off. I'm going to report
My failure in carrying out the task is mainly
About tomato planting.
I don't think I should be encouraged.
Grow tomatoes. Or, if I am encouraged, you should
Stop the heavy rain and cold nights, they are so.
I often come here, but it is found in other areas.
Twelve weeks of summer. All these/these
All belong to you: on the other hand,
I sow seeds, and I observe the first bud.
Like wings tearing the soil, my heart
Broken by withering, when the little black spots are so fast
All over the fields I doubt it.
Your sympathy, according to our understanding of the word.
Got it. You haven't changed anything.
The dead and the living, you therefore,
Indifference, you may not know.
How much fear we suffered, the leaves were covered with black spots,
Yellow red leaves, falling
Even in August, in the initial darkness: I want to shoot.
Responsibility for these crops.
[2] Fusarium wilt: a plant disease, which can cause the diseased parts (especially immature and growing tissues) to wither suddenly and obviously and die.
[3] A striking feature of this poem is that the first half of the sentence is basically Mandarin, not poetic, and it has been preserved in translation. The first half of the result is always ugly. This is also the translator's dilemma.
evening prayer
During your long absence, you allow me
Using the earth, predicting
Some return on investment. I must report.
Mainly because of the failure of my mission.
About tomato plants.
I don't think I should be encouraged to grow up
Tomatoes Or, if I am, you should keep it.
Heavy rain, cold night
O often here, while other areas get it.
Five weeks in summer. all this/these
On the other hand,
I planted the seeds and looked at the first buds.
Like wings tearing the soil, that is my heart.
Rapidly tortured by Fusarium wilt and black spot disease
Breeding in rows. I doubt it.
You have a heart, in our understanding.
That term. Which one of you does not discriminate?
Even the dead and the living, as a result,
Immunization foreshadowing, you may not know
How much fear we've suffered, speckled leaves,
Maple leaves fall
Even in August, at dawn: I am responsible.
For these vines.
Note: Both the translation and the original text are from Liu Xiangyang.
Later, Dr. Fudan and I talked about the "quasi-Christian" gleeck under the influence of Christian culture from these words. From the words of farmer Louise (she is not a formal Christian, but her prayer direction is definitely Almighty God), there are endless meanings between the lines.
Apart from the whole, we chose several key words to talk about: "long absence" (God is spirit), "Allow me" (actively choose a created and passive position), "Report" (……), "Encouraged" (……) and so on, all of which are the choice of a position. The next sentence is also like this: "I failed to perform the task" ... "Your sympathy, according to our understanding of the word ..." (human limitations).
She decided that it was a "poem by in my heart forever" (she had studied pre-Qin literature and Buddhism). Talking about the failures of life and belief from this poem, we repeatedly laugh at the phrase "I want to report/my task failed", and we always end up with the phrase "I want to report/my task failed". Originally, they, whether she or I, were angry for a long time and didn't cry.
However, we must see the last sentence: "I am responsible for these crops." -Even in the "initial darkness", even if the leaves were covered with black spots by fear, this sentence made gleeck jump out of "always in my heart" and become a mortician. Let her previous performance become something brilliant. Ah, I don't understand why the local Catholic Church advised gleeck not to write such prayer poems. I think this kind of prayer is sincere and frank. This kind of "in my heart forever", which automatically stands in the position of children and finally assumes the responsibility as a human being, is only a part of "every category" in the cosmic order. It was accepted.
Reflections on Moonlight Alloy (Ⅳ): gleeck's Family, Education and Poetry Creation (Foreword 2)
Gleeck was born in a family that respected intellectual achievements. She talked about her family and early experience in the essay "The Education of Poets". Her grandfather was a Hungarian Jew. After immigrating to the United States, he opened a grocery store to make a living, but his daughters all went to college. The only son, gleeck's father, refused to go to school and wanted to be a writer. But then I gave up my dream of writing and joined the business world, which was quite successful. In her memory, her father was relaxed and funny, and Joan's story was the best, "but the last part of the shares was omitted." The heroic image of Joan of Arc obviously aroused a girl's great dream, and the unfortunate sacrifice of Joan of Arc also cast a shadow of death in her young mind. In her early years, she had a song "Joan of Arc" ("House on the Marsh"). Later, there was a poem "Joan of Arc" ("Seven Issues"), which wrote: "I believe I am going to die. I will die/at the age of ten, of polio. I saw my death:/This is an illusion, an epiphany-/This is what Joan experienced, in order to save France. " Gleeck recalled in The Poet's Education: "Our sisters were brought up to save France, or to reorganize, realize and yearn for brilliant achievements."
Gleeck's mother paid special attention to creative talent, carefully educated her two daughters, encouraged their talents, and praised her writing in time. Gleeck showed his poetic talent very early and was ambitious in his poetic creation. I copied a poem in Poet Education, which was probably written when I was five or six years old. When she was a teenager, she preferred painting and writing, and finally gave up painting and chose literary creation. And ambitious. She said, "I have wanted to be a poet since I was a teenager." Gleeck mentioned that she was familiar with Greek mythology before she was three years old. Throughout gleeck's eleven poems, she returned to Greek mythology again and again, hiding behind the masks of these mythical figures and singing cold songs.
"By the middle of adolescence, I had a symptom, which completely met the needs of my soul." Gleeck recalled her anorexia years later. At first, she thought it was an action that she could control and end perfectly, but it turned out to be a kind of self-destruction. At the age of sixteen, she realized that she was dying, so she began to see a psychoanalyst when she was nearing graduation from high school and left school a few months later. In the next seven years, psychoanalysis became something she spent time and energy on.
Gleeck said, "Psychoanalysis taught me to think. Teach me to use my own ideological tendency to oppose the clearly expressed parts of my thoughts, teach me to check my words with doubt, and look for avoidance and deletion. It gave me an intellectual task to turn paralysis, an extreme form of self-doubt, into insight. " This ability, in gleeck's view, is of great benefit to poetry creation: "I believe that I am also learning how to write poetry: I don't want to have a self projected into an image in my writing, and I don't simply allow the image to be generated-it is not hindered by my mind, but I want to explore the sound of these images with my mind, separate the superficial things from the deep things and choose the deep ones." (Poet's Education) For gleeck, psychoanalysis promoted her poetry creation at the same time, and together they helped her finally overcome the psychological barrier.
/kloc-at the age of 0/8, gleeck studied at Columbia University. Adams signed up for a poetry class and later followed the older generation of poets Stanley? Cunitz (1905-2006) studied it. Cunitz and Robert? Pan? Warren was born the same year. He was the American Poet Laureate from 2000 to 200 1 year. According to gleeck, "follow Stanley? Cunitz's years of study "had a long-term impact on her; Her first collection of poems, The First Son, is dedicated to Cunitz.
Gleeck, 1968