Poetry
in translation, 2023 — Tragedy
15th Century Italian into English
Hush. You there, listen. Once a shepherd was fashioned,
Sonny boy of Apollo, and he was named Aristaeus.
Oh, how he burned with such limitless passion
For Eurydice, the wife of Orpheús...
Ary Scheffer, La Mort d'Eurydice, 1814.
Musée des Beaux-Arts du Château Royal de Blois
German into English
Again, you dare creep here, flickering figures,
Who long ago appeared a murky flash.
Shall I seize this chance, submit to what allures?
My heart let reign, though mad I grip at ash...
Anton Kaulbach, Faust und Mephisto, um 1900.
Location unknown.
Sounds as well as thoughts have relation both between each other and towards that which they represent, and a perception of the order of those relations has always been found connected with a perception of the order of the relations of thoughts. Hence the language of poets has ever affected a certain uniform and harmonious recurrence of sound, without which it were not poetry, and which is scarcely less indispensable to the communication of its influence, than the words themselves, without reference to that peculiar order...
French into English
No small choice to be made in the blink of an eye:
Pass from essence to nothing, to be choose to die.
Just gods, lease me your strength should this fate be your plan.
Would you have me grow old, bowed by enemy hand?...
Sir Thomas Lawrence, John Philip Kemble as Hamlet, 1801.
Photo (c) Tate, not on display. ↗
German into English
Since being there, at his grave standing,
Consumed I’ve been by ember ash.
The quiet hill has left me pining
For faintest glimpse of ancient past...
Kaiserin Elisabeth auf der Yacht „Miramare“, L. Ruckgraber, 1907.
© Schloss Schönbrunn Kultur- und Betriebsges.m.b.H. / Fotograf: Alexander Eugen Koller
Hence the vanity of translation; it were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover the formal principle of its color and odor, as seek to transfuse from one language into another the creations of a poet. The plant must spring again from its seed, or it will bear no flower—and this is the burden of the curse of Babel.
from A Defence of Poetry by Percy Bysshe Shelley
English into German
Kein Stein an jenen Ort platziert
Mir bleibt die Wahrheit noch bewahrt:
Wie du, Geliebter, jung und reif
Begraben schon, ‘ne Leiche steif...
Richard Westall, Lord Byron, 1813.
© National Portrait Gallery, London ↗
English into German
Es war mein Wunsch, daß bei der Veröffentlichung der Nachgelassenen Gedichte von Mr Shelley eine biographische Anmerkung zusammengestellt wird; da es mir vorkam, daß in jener Stunde eine Wiedergabe der Lebensgeschehnisse meines...
Louis Edouard Fournier, The Funeral of Shelley, 1889
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool ↗
A Note
from the translator
Maria Athena, 2023
A threefold thread stitches this motley collection of translated poetry together in a patchwork quilt; its parts: form, metre and the Poetics of Aristotle, of which none of the poets translated here were unaware.
I came to poetry translation from poetry reading of the most profane and vulgar sort—Boccaccio, his Decameronian canzoni and his artistic hangers-on are the culprits. For in order to read (1) rather than read (2) such poetry, one must know how to pronounce the words and what they signify. Most importantly, one must know where to pause.
This the new student of Italian can attempt in one of three ways: practically, by becoming proficiently advanced at Italian; accidentally, by being a bilingual or receptive bilingual with a sensitivity to the natural rhythms of the language; or decisively, by invoking the muse of translation.
My approach has been the third. What’s more, to demonstrate general understanding of the matter of poetic creation, I have also included poetic translations from languages I have come to know both practically and accidentally in this poetry portfolio.
Thank you for choosing to spend your time accompanied by my translations.
1 to understand and give meaning to
2 to say printed words aloud or in one’s head