8.17.2004

Jonathan's comments on translation & Milosz are interesting. But to say you have a unique aversion to translation's effects seems a little like special pleading. Obviously the reader has to make allowances. But a diet consisting solely of poetry in the original would exclude a lot of readers, for one thing, and impoverish poetry in general on the other. Poetry thrives on translation and mongrelization.

Jonathan's aversion (should this be a name for a symptom?) is connected also with what seems to me to be a rather narrow focus on surface elements of style. Some of the awkwardnesses of Milosz might even be seen as virtues, if the telos or overall motive of his poems is viewed from a different angle (say, in Poundian jargon, through the lens of logopeia rather than solely through melopeia).

He's probably right, though, that much of the clumsiness is due to the translating.

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