Crimean Sonnets

Thanks to the magic of Google Books I've finally managed to track down a complete copy of the Barbara Underwood translations of Mickiewicz's Crimean Sonnets - Mickiewicz is famously untranslatable, but I've always been a fan of Underwood's (rather loose) renderings of these poems. This one, which I had not read before, struck me particularly. The eponymous Tchatir Dagh is a tall mountain in the south of Crimea, which is the subject of a number of the sonnets.

TCHATIR DAGH

(The Pilgrim)

Below me half a world I see outspread;
     Above, blue heaven; around, peaks of snow;
And yet the happy pulse of life is slow,
     I dream of distant places, pleasures dead.
The woods of Lithuania I would tread
     Where happy-throated birds sing songs I know;
Above the trembling marshland I would go
     Where chill-winged curlews dip and call o'er head.

A tragic, lonely terror grips my heart,
     A longing for some peaceful, gentle place,
And memories of youthful love I trace.
     Unto my childhood home I long to start,
And yet if all the leaves my name could cry
     She would not pause nor heed as she passed by.

And in the original Polish:

U stóp moich kraina dostatków i krasy,
Nad głową niebo jasne, obok piękne lice;
Dlaczegoż stąd ucieka serce w okolice
Dalekie, i - niestety! jeszcze dalsze czasy?

Litwo! piały mi wdzięczniej twe szumiące lasy
Niż słowiki Bajdaru, Salhiry dziewice;
I weselszy deptałem twoje trzęsawice
Niż rubinowe morwy, złote ananasy.

Tak daleki! tak różna wabi mię ponęta!
Dlaczegoż roztargniony wzdycham bez ustanku
Do tej, którą kochałem w dni moich poranku?

Ona w lubej dziedzinie, która mi odjęta,
Gdzie jej wszystko o wiernym powiada kochanku;
Depcąc świeże me ślady czyż o mnie pamięta?

The comparison with the Polish original is interesting. It's quite different. Mickiewicz's writing is often histrionic and a little shouty - Underwood has a more staid, understated style.

They are both products of their time, I suppose - the Crimean Sonnets were published in around 1830, Underwood's translations are from 1917. Mickiewicz's verse is looser, the lines jerk all over the place - questions and exclamations proliferate. Underwood's verse is taught, almost Victorian - it's remarkable to me that she insisted on an Italian rhyme scheme for her sonnets, rather than a Shakespearean one generally better-suited to English, but this kind of clean, crisp and highly regulated verse is typical of late-19th/early-20th century poets.

I appreciate Underwood's more meditative approach, however - it chimes nicely with the classical Chinese poetry I've been reading lately, which is nearly always quietly ruminative. Might this be the Quaker in me reflected in my taste in poetry? One wonders.

Translational audacity

The other day I received in the mail E.P. Rice's book Kanarese Literature. "Kanarese" is an old word for the south Indian language now called Kannada, spoken in Karnataka state. Kannada is a Dravidian language spoken by around 60 million people as a native language and has one of the oldest and best-respected literatures of any of the Indian languages. When I traveled to India many years ago I stayed in Karnataka and so since then I've harbored an interest in Kannada that lately I decided to do something about - hence the impetus for ordering this book.

The book was published in 1921, and is a mix of history and translated examples of Kannada poetry. I'm reading through the history part, but because poetry excites me, I skipped ahead and read through a lot of the translated passages. This being the 1920s, the poetry has been, hilariously, rendered in strict meter and rhyme in the style of English poetry. It's such an audacious choice that no self-respecting scholar would make today - but it definitely makes the poetry more fun to read. I've included some passages below that particularly struck me, whether for good reasons or bad, with brief little commentaries - I've put them below the cut for convenience sake.

"The Countess Cathleen" by W. B. Yeats

You've gotta love Yeats.

Tell them who walk upon the floor of peace
That I would die and go to her I love;
The years like great black oxen tread the world,
And God the herdsman goads them on behind,
And I am broken by their passing feet.