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poetreePosted on behalf of rainjoy. Anne Carson translation of Fragment 16 can be read here.
===
Forgive my intrusion, as someone who is not a poet, nor a classicist, nor even for more than ten years any official student of literature - I'm a philosopher who doesn't know when not to dabble, but I do soothe my conscience for my constant interfering in art by being an aesthetician by trade; I might in my daily life deal mostly in very abstract concepts, but what they relate to in the end is this poem in front of us, and what it does to us, and what it does to me every single time. So I'll try to keep this fairly brief and on point, and what I'm going to talk about here is mostly context for the poem, because there are a few things to take into account which really do matter and I always want to grab people tight and *make them understand this* because I *want* them to love the poem the way that I do. And I do love it, painfully so.
Always remember the act of translation, and the translator's choices; always remember the conception of beauty in the poem, and the poet's choices; and always remember the sheer state of the poem as it survives, because the 'test of time' is a lie. What survives for two thousand years is a matter of luck as much as taste, a matter of how useful scholars across history thought the Greek in that passage was for teaching Greek grammar, a matter of whim and fire and forgetfulness and creeping damp. The fact that we have what we have of the poem is a gift, an accident, a fluke, a blessing. And as for the missing pieces, when it comes to it, after more than two thousand years, even Sappho's silence sings.
So. There is a reason that when it comes to Sappho I stick my fingers in my ears and make furious noise if anyone besides Anne Carson attempts to translate her. It's not just that Carson is exceptionally fluent in Greek - though Greek is an odd language to translate into English, Greek's neat poetry lurches like the undead across the page in English; one of those language mismatches, where Greek can in a few words say what English needs a mangled-long sentence for. It's the way she goes about it. I can't *say* that she understood Sappho's intentions with her own poetry (getting inside *anyone* else's head is a dubious matter, and more than two thousand years of distance can seriously complicate matters), but I can say that Carson understands how I would *hope* to read Sappho's poetry - that these are intentions Sappho could have been very proud to have fulfilled, if she'd translated her own words into those of essentially another world.
Carson states in her introduction to If Not, Winter that she 'tried to put down all that can be read of each poem in the plainest language I could find, using where possible the same order of words and thoughts as Sappho did. I like to think that, the more I stand out of the way, the more Sappho shows through. This is an amiable fantasy (transparency of self) within which most translators labour.' (2002: x) I should probably confess that I love Carson's own poetry, so I'm undoubtedly biased when it comes to her translations; but I can't deny that her method *suits* the poetry. Grammar in Greek is almost entirely dictated by word form - anyone who's had to learn all its bloody noun and verb forms knows that - so, given that grammar is taken care of, word order can be quite malleable, and tends to be manipulated to dictate emphasis. Where the thought begins, which part of the sentence is chosen to come first, is very important. Allowing for that even when in English the order of the thought then causes pause is a worthwhile way of drawing that out.
The fact that this is an ancient Greek poem matters, because Sappho's conception of beauty is downright subversive to some classical minds. Anyone who's read the Iliad will know that Homer devotes much more loving, luxuriating language to describing the beauty of armour and weaponry than he ever does to describing Helen's beauty, which still must be understood as a fact: you must, in approaching this poem, accept as a fact that Helen is the most beautiful woman who ever lived, because it's simply, within this world, known to be true. Reaching for Helen as a comparative for any living woman is a very known sort of nod. And yet *still* there's something decidedly un-Greek about the ranking of beauty in the poem. To revere 'her lovely step' above grand massed armies - to set up a feminine beauty based on the narrator's love for a beloved woman as the ultimate beauty - well. To say no to the idea that the glories of war outshine Helen in the end, because love is stronger than all armies, taking Helen from her home and to the poet making a mortal woman the most desirable thing in the world to see; well. Note the poet's acceptance of the subjectivity of her statements, because some day Plato will come along and claim that beauty is a Form and that *that* is the most beautiful thing conceivable, but this poem knows better. Some men say this and some men say that. But to her, the most beautiful thing on this black earth is *her*, because love is what reveals beauty to us, because love is what leads us astray.
And at this point I would like to be able to tell you more about how Sappho construes beauty, but, of course, I can't; what we have is a fragment of a poem, and here the parchment crumbles. Here language tips into itself, and the last thoughts we can pick out of the depths of two thousand years hint towards a sense of such *loss* I almost don't think I could bear to read the complete poem; but then, the last line we have shows so well how Sappho catches a thought, completes it in such odd ways, unpredictable and exhilarating. Reading her is an experience in reading across silence, and trying to make the self 'transparent' because it's not *my poem*, and it's Sappho's words I want to hear but history ate those. We strain for the echoes and what we really hear is ourselves, reverberated back from her. I find myself stumped by the last line, *straining* for what came between these thoughts, because I don't know how to make the conceptual leap she made before the end - and the space of her silence is a strange place to be. I don't dislike the missing parts of Sappho. Yes, I would trade a thousand dull Greek history texts for one more word of her poetry, but I don't find reading her silences in any way unpleasant. There's a sense of stopping and waiting, gathering the self into the space left behind, holding the breath as if that will lessen the distance. The gaps are spaces to climb into and feel the breadth of. The gaps, if you listen so very hard, still speak.
And so I love this poem, silence and all. I love the cat's cradle the mind can make in the silence, trying to fix the thoughts together. I love having the poem put in front of me and whipped away again at the last moment, strange thing that might be to love, but I've spent enough time with Sappho now to *enjoy* the silence, to occupy it like a bath, quite comfortable, may stop in a while. The silence is inviting green water, asking us to test it. Her silences are a good place to be.
That was not brief. See what silence does to a person, the words you seek to fill it . . .
rainjoy. Anne Carson translation of Fragment 16 can be read here.===
Forgive my intrusion, as someone who is not a poet, nor a classicist, nor even for more than ten years any official student of literature - I'm a philosopher who doesn't know when not to dabble, but I do soothe my conscience for my constant interfering in art by being an aesthetician by trade; I might in my daily life deal mostly in very abstract concepts, but what they relate to in the end is this poem in front of us, and what it does to us, and what it does to me every single time. So I'll try to keep this fairly brief and on point, and what I'm going to talk about here is mostly context for the poem, because there are a few things to take into account which really do matter and I always want to grab people tight and *make them understand this* because I *want* them to love the poem the way that I do. And I do love it, painfully so.
Always remember the act of translation, and the translator's choices; always remember the conception of beauty in the poem, and the poet's choices; and always remember the sheer state of the poem as it survives, because the 'test of time' is a lie. What survives for two thousand years is a matter of luck as much as taste, a matter of how useful scholars across history thought the Greek in that passage was for teaching Greek grammar, a matter of whim and fire and forgetfulness and creeping damp. The fact that we have what we have of the poem is a gift, an accident, a fluke, a blessing. And as for the missing pieces, when it comes to it, after more than two thousand years, even Sappho's silence sings.
So. There is a reason that when it comes to Sappho I stick my fingers in my ears and make furious noise if anyone besides Anne Carson attempts to translate her. It's not just that Carson is exceptionally fluent in Greek - though Greek is an odd language to translate into English, Greek's neat poetry lurches like the undead across the page in English; one of those language mismatches, where Greek can in a few words say what English needs a mangled-long sentence for. It's the way she goes about it. I can't *say* that she understood Sappho's intentions with her own poetry (getting inside *anyone* else's head is a dubious matter, and more than two thousand years of distance can seriously complicate matters), but I can say that Carson understands how I would *hope* to read Sappho's poetry - that these are intentions Sappho could have been very proud to have fulfilled, if she'd translated her own words into those of essentially another world.
Carson states in her introduction to If Not, Winter that she 'tried to put down all that can be read of each poem in the plainest language I could find, using where possible the same order of words and thoughts as Sappho did. I like to think that, the more I stand out of the way, the more Sappho shows through. This is an amiable fantasy (transparency of self) within which most translators labour.' (2002: x) I should probably confess that I love Carson's own poetry, so I'm undoubtedly biased when it comes to her translations; but I can't deny that her method *suits* the poetry. Grammar in Greek is almost entirely dictated by word form - anyone who's had to learn all its bloody noun and verb forms knows that - so, given that grammar is taken care of, word order can be quite malleable, and tends to be manipulated to dictate emphasis. Where the thought begins, which part of the sentence is chosen to come first, is very important. Allowing for that even when in English the order of the thought then causes pause is a worthwhile way of drawing that out.
The fact that this is an ancient Greek poem matters, because Sappho's conception of beauty is downright subversive to some classical minds. Anyone who's read the Iliad will know that Homer devotes much more loving, luxuriating language to describing the beauty of armour and weaponry than he ever does to describing Helen's beauty, which still must be understood as a fact: you must, in approaching this poem, accept as a fact that Helen is the most beautiful woman who ever lived, because it's simply, within this world, known to be true. Reaching for Helen as a comparative for any living woman is a very known sort of nod. And yet *still* there's something decidedly un-Greek about the ranking of beauty in the poem. To revere 'her lovely step' above grand massed armies - to set up a feminine beauty based on the narrator's love for a beloved woman as the ultimate beauty - well. To say no to the idea that the glories of war outshine Helen in the end, because love is stronger than all armies, taking Helen from her home and to the poet making a mortal woman the most desirable thing in the world to see; well. Note the poet's acceptance of the subjectivity of her statements, because some day Plato will come along and claim that beauty is a Form and that *that* is the most beautiful thing conceivable, but this poem knows better. Some men say this and some men say that. But to her, the most beautiful thing on this black earth is *her*, because love is what reveals beauty to us, because love is what leads us astray.
And at this point I would like to be able to tell you more about how Sappho construes beauty, but, of course, I can't; what we have is a fragment of a poem, and here the parchment crumbles. Here language tips into itself, and the last thoughts we can pick out of the depths of two thousand years hint towards a sense of such *loss* I almost don't think I could bear to read the complete poem; but then, the last line we have shows so well how Sappho catches a thought, completes it in such odd ways, unpredictable and exhilarating. Reading her is an experience in reading across silence, and trying to make the self 'transparent' because it's not *my poem*, and it's Sappho's words I want to hear but history ate those. We strain for the echoes and what we really hear is ourselves, reverberated back from her. I find myself stumped by the last line, *straining* for what came between these thoughts, because I don't know how to make the conceptual leap she made before the end - and the space of her silence is a strange place to be. I don't dislike the missing parts of Sappho. Yes, I would trade a thousand dull Greek history texts for one more word of her poetry, but I don't find reading her silences in any way unpleasant. There's a sense of stopping and waiting, gathering the self into the space left behind, holding the breath as if that will lessen the distance. The gaps are spaces to climb into and feel the breadth of. The gaps, if you listen so very hard, still speak.
And so I love this poem, silence and all. I love the cat's cradle the mind can make in the silence, trying to fix the thoughts together. I love having the poem put in front of me and whipped away again at the last moment, strange thing that might be to love, but I've spent enough time with Sappho now to *enjoy* the silence, to occupy it like a bath, quite comfortable, may stop in a while. The silence is inviting green water, asking us to test it. Her silences are a good place to be.
That was not brief. See what silence does to a person, the words you seek to fill it . . .
