POETREE

There are many ways to build larger structures out of sonnets -- at least as many as there are of building sonnets. The classic example is, of course, a sonnet sequence, in which individual poems are snapshots from a larger story -- though sometimes, as with Shakespeare, the story may be so diffused or confused as to be impossible to make out. But the units can be bound more tightly, to the point that any given sonnet is not readily detachable as an independent poem. One formal way is in a corona or "crown" of sonnets, in which the last line of one is repeated as the first of the next. The classic form of crown has seven sonnets, but fourteen-sonnet versions can also be found -- and for bonus points, there's the sonnet redoublé of fourteen in which the repeated lines form a fifteenth sonnet (here's an example).

The consensus seems to be that a corona's units are still sonnets even though they're almost never reprinted separately. But you can also in effect use sonnets as stanzas, in which case the issue is even less clear, a classic example being Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind." Here's another:


Hermaphroditus
I
Lift up thy lips, turn round, look back for love,
    Blind love that comes by night and casts out rest;
    Of all things tired thy lips look weariest,
Save the long smile that they are wearied of.
Ah sweet, albeit no love be sweet enough,
    Choose of two loves and cleave unto the best;
    Two loves at either blossom of thy breast
Strive until one be under and one above.
Their breath is fire upon the amorous air,
    Fire in thine eyes and where thy lips suspire:
And whosoever hath seen thee, being so fair,
    Two things turn all his life and blood to fire;
A strong desire begot on great despair,
    A great despair cast out by strong desire.

II
Where between sleep and life some brief space is,
    With love like gold bound round about the head,
    Sex to sweet sex with lips and limbs is wed,
Turning the fruitful feud of hers and his
To the waste wedlock of a sterile kiss;
    Yet from them something like as fire is shed
    That shall not be assuaged till death be dead,
Though neither life nor sleep can find out this.
Love made himself of flesh that perisheth
    A pleasure-house for all the loves his kin;
But on the one side sat a man like death,
    And on the other a woman sat like sin.
So with veiled eyes and sobs between his breath
    Love turned himself and would not enter in.

III
Love, is it love or sleep or shadow or light
    That lies between thine eyelids and thine eyes?
    Like a flower laid upon a flower it lies,
Or like the night's dew laid upon the night.
Love stands upon thy left hand and thy right,
    Yet by no sunset and by no moonrise
    Shall make thee man and ease a woman's sighs,
Or make thee woman for a man's delight.
To what strange end hath some strange god made fair
    The double blossom of two fruitless flowers?
Hid love in all the folds of all thy hair,
    Fed thee on summers, watered thee with showers,
Given all the gold that all the seasons wear
    To thee that art a thing of barren hours?

IV
Yea, love, I see; it is not love but fear.
    Nay, sweet, it is not fear but love, I know;
    Or wherefore should thy body's blossom blow
So sweetly, or thine eyelids leave so clear
Thy gracious eyes that never made a tear—
    Though for their love our tears like blood should flow,
    Though love and life and death should come and go,
So dreadful, so desirable, so dear?
Yea, sweet, I know; I saw in what swift wise
    Beneath the woman's and the water's kiss
    Thy moist limbs melted into Salmacis,
And the large light turned tender in thine eyes,
And all thy boy's breath softened into sighs;
    But Love being blind, how should he know of this?

Au Musée du Louvre, Mars 1863.

When sonnet-formed units are integrated this tightly into a unified work, are they still sonnets? Can you have a poem of poems? or is the set definted to not include itself?

---L.

Sonnets were for a long time strongly identified with the Petrarchan tradition, and even now the form can have connotations of love poetry despite extensive proof that it's useful for a two-part argument of a certain size on any subject. Not to mention, there's quite a few sonnets having nothing whatsoever to do with Laura in Petrarch's Canzone. But to start us off, an actual Petrarchan sonnet, with a more-or-less literal translation (cribbed together from ponies and rusty Spanish) plus a much freer by the poet who introduced the form to English. Note, btw, the classic volta.


Una candida cerva sopra l'erba
verde m'apparve, con duo corna d'oro,
fra due riviere, all'ombra d'un alloro,
levando 'l sole a la stagione acerba.

Era sua vista sí dolce superba,
ch'i' lasciai per seguirla ogni lavoro:
come l'avaro che 'n cercar tesoro
con diletto l'affanno disacerba.

"Nessun mi tocchi" al bel collo d'intorno
scritto avea di diamanti et di topazi
"libera farmi al mio Cesare parve."

Et era 'l sol già vòlto al mezzo giorno,
gli occhi miei stanchi di mirar, non sazi,
quand'io caddi ne l'acqua, et ella sparve.

( Literal rendering )

( Wyatt's rendering )

Leaving aside the all-too-obvious fact that I am not the poet Sir Thomas Wyatt was, this does raise questions of just how valid adaptations and imitations are as translations and of the role of either in the adoption of forms across languages -- but since this is not translation but sonnet week, I'll set those aside (after linking to this discussion of translations of another Petrarch sonnet by the first two poets to use the form in English). Though doing so leaves me with no question for discussion on this one. Oops. Well, maybe you guys can think of something to ask me. Or we can return to the meta question of what defines a sonnet.

---L.

The Kokinwakashu ("Collection of Old and New Japanese Poetry"), or Kokinshu for short, was the first imperially commissioned anthology of poetry in Japanese, compiled around 905 CE by a panel of four leading young poets of the day. This was a cultural watershed -- it firmly cemented the reputation of Japanese as a valid language for poetry, as opposed to the Chinese in vogue for the prior century and a half, and it set what was acceptable in terms of diction, subjects, and images for court poetry (and by omission, what was not acceptable) for the next thousand years minus a couple decades.

( Background notes on the collection, verse form, Japanese grammar, and the collapse of ambiguity (if not civilization itself). )

For what it's worth, my philosophy of translation is to render my best understanding of the original's sense while reproducing as much as possible of the poem's quality and structures -- sonic, linguistic, rhetorical, and so on. This involves not only interpretation, but trade-offs. For example, the normal sentence order of Japanese is almost, but not entirely, the complete reverse of English. This means that in a literal prose paraphrase of a poem that's one long clause, the nouns, verbs, and adjectives are in the opposite order in English from the original. If the sequence of images these substantives call up is not important to the poem's effect -- for example, if the mainspring of the poetry is a witty metaphor -- then this reversal does no real damage. But if the images form a careful progression, such as sweeping from a wide scene down to a small detail, it is probably better to maintain that sequence as best as possible, at the expense of breaking up the smooth swoop of a single clause.

Trade-offs. Just like in any poem, or any other work of art.

For this week, I've chosen three Kokinshu poems that highlight different problems of translation. I'm afraid there's far more prose than verse in these posts -- partly because the poems are so small, but mostly it's that it takes a lot to unpack these lovely puzzle-boxes that are Japanese verse. Starting on the next rock, coming tomorrow.

Until then, for discussion: those of you who translate, what is your philosophy/practice? What do you focus on the most?

( A modest footnote )

---L.