Nicola D'Ugo
On April 1, 1977 appeared on The Times Literary Supplement , in English translation, an article by Gianfranco Contini on Ezra Pound, who stated:
The sticking point is this: a writer who was a translator prince, not only by almost all East Asian languages \u200b\u200bunverifiable, but family territories, as it was his understanding the letter (just to cite as an example paraphrase of the minimum final Inferno XXVIII in Near Perigod ), it is not poetic usable in Italian translations. Not sure which versions are missing, just enough to mention by way of praise, than those of his daughter exegetically capital, the most faithful and committed Alfredo Rizzardi, John Smith. But too many, even signatures of celebrated, have grappled with in a piecemeal and homage to Pound as a sort of board games. . . . Do not hesitate to say that [these temptations approximate] or distort a letter or leave evaporate poetry. ("Ezra Pound and Italy," in literary articles and exercises Last , Einaudi, Torino 1989, pp. 267-268).
Risk is certainly remarkable if you consider the exceptional musical abilities of Pound that accompanied throughout his life that his tough and stubborn character that looked behind the mirage of an intuition, which leaned on the page to refine the one hand (it took two years to compose the two verses of "In a Station of the Metro," which reflect the impressions of the first glimpses of his arrival in Paris), who adapted the meaning and sound of a word that a hundred other poets were left unchanged. In an interview recorded in New York on November 22, 1968 by Fernanda Pivano, Allen Ginsberg said that William Carlos Williams had told him that Pound was equipped with a "mystic ear ', ie, had a unique ability in capturing the prosodic length of the vowels, the anniversary of accentual phrases apparently metrically irregular
Pound's ear was sensitive 'mystical' qualities of music and the length of the vowels. . . . That ear led to poets who pay more attention to the contents of what was said, because they had to be aware of how pronounced the sentences, the way in which the direction was given and what emphasis should be placed on this or that vowel . ("Conversation on prosody: Fernanda Pivano interview with Allen Ginsberg," in Allen Ginsberg, Mantra of the King of May, Mondadori, Milan 1976, pp. 12-13).
Told by William Carlos Williams, whose capacity of hearing and speech tone reproduction has given us examples of extraordinary poetic charm (just think of the whiteness of the poem "This Is Just to Say" and " Turkey in the Straw, "in Collected Poems , Paladin, London 1986, vol. I, p. 372 and Paladin, London 1991, vol. II, p. 231), the '' ear mystical" sounds like a great tribute in the context of American literature to an author whose training was especially attentive, as well as the latest contemporary instances, the events BCE, exporting, consequently, the achievements Europeans of that era in American literary world.
What transpires now with instant clarity in the poems that make up the sensuality Cathay is made from refined sensibility audio of Pound and the substance of his language, which eschews the abstract terms, facendoseli go for the lips in small doses only when feel an imperative need. So abound, as a hobby, but never to the nearest amateur pictures without design, as done by brush, reminiscent of impressionistic great suggestion:
Five clouds hang aloft, on the bright purple sky, The
imperial guards as forth from the house with golden Their a-gleaming armor.
Five hovering clouds in the sky radiating purple
The guards advance from home gold in bright armor.
("The River-Song" / "Singing River")
smoke
The flowers are blurred over the river. His lone sail
bolts to the sky.
smoke dotting the river in flames.
His sailing, alone, a distant sky line.
("Separation on the River Kiang" / "Separation on the River Kiang")
The Kingfishers flash red and green clover and Between the orchid, One bird casts
ITS gleam On Another.
The red blue kingfishers swoop between orchids and clover
exchanging glares.
("Sennin Poem by Kakuhaku" / "Poetry of the Sennin Kakuhaku)
These are the echoes of an enchanted time and discovered how he had lost in disarray in the West tormented by other references, which reappears as if by magic from a world that precedes the Stilnovo, from a medieval legend, war and raids of businesses not captured in the crowd of representation, but in the torpor of loneliness and uncertain expectations, at times of comfort, you may envy the Fisher King his desert. In this sense it may read the report of Ford Madox Ford:
These poems show us [Chinese] like us. ("From China to Peru," in Outlook, June 19, 1915, ed. Ital. in Cathay , Scheiwiller, Milano 1988, p. 9).
Why the aura of ancient China Pound evokes in us the exotic experience of its past at a distance, but without the accent of a nostalgia that relying completely and unconditionally. The tribute, again with Madox Ford, is the 'beauty', and feeling. The discovery of
Contini, who sounded like a warning, that is for all those who auditioned in translating the work of a great poet who, despite numerous publications in life and posthumously, the ease in finding a vast amount of his work and the multitude of suggestions which he offered to writers of his era and those to come (in addition to the inevitable don'ts who tried, even abruptly, to impose) remains largely unrecognized . Just the difficulty in translating Pound requires the effort of translators who audition to 'interpret', exploration, even with the choice of texts that would otherwise abused, and the evocative possibilities of interpretation.
Constantine Belmonte ventured, with a natural love, to translate a part of Cathay (one of the first edition, then enlarged, was published in London in 1915), by failing to follow doggedly track ordinale, richiamandosi piuttosto a un senso non scolastico d'interpretare la poesia, sacrificando la lettera al sentimento e alla sensualità del testo poundiano. È il tributo amabilmente pagato a un autore i cui versi anticipano di circa quindici anni le movenze monosillabiche e fortemente accentuative degli Ariel Poems di T. S. Eliot, e di quasi trenta quelle più variegate dell'edizione integrale dei Four Quartets .
Spero che, in premio alla non facile atmosfera suggerita da Belmonte nell'offrirsi apertamente al gusto della poesia più che alla stretta esegesi letteraria, non si debba dire di questo encomiabile sforzo di avvicinarci un po' più a Pound ciò che il poeta e critico Matthew Arnold wrote in 1865 on the version of ' Iliad Wright:
Mr. Wright's version of the Iliad , repeating in the main the Merits and defects of Cowper's version, as Mr. Sotheby's repeated Those of Pope's version, HAD, if I might be pardoned for Saying I know, no proper reason for existing.
version of the 'Iliad Wright, repeating much of the merits and drawbacks of the Cowper as the Sotheby's repeated those of the version of the Pope, had, if you forgive me to say, an appropriate reason to exist.( Essays in Criticism, Tauchnitz, Leipzig 1887, vol. I, pp. 6-7)
[ published in: Praz! - Notebook of poetry foreign No 4-5, August 1996, pp. 94-95.]
Bibliography:
- Arnold, Matthew , Essays in Criticism. Vol , Tauchnitz, Leipzig 1887, pp. 6-7.
- Contini, Gianfranco, "Ezra Pound and Italy," in Id., Last Elzevir and exercises , Einaudi, Torino 1989, pp. 267-268.
- Eliot, Thomas Stearns , Ezra Pound: His Metric and Poetry , Alfred A. Knopf, New York 1917 .
- Ford, Ford Madox , "From China to Peru," Outlook, 19 June 1915, pp. 800-801.
- Pivana, Fernanda , "Conversation on prosody. Interview by Fernanda Pivano Allen Ginsberg, "in Ginsberg, Allen , Mantra of the King of May, Mondadori, Milano 1976 pp. 12-13 .
- Pound, Ezra , " A Few Don'ts by an Imagist " Poetry, Vol 1, No. 6, March 1913, p. 200.
- -, Cathay , Scheiwiller, Milan 1988 .
- -, selected works, Mondadori, Milano 1970.
- Williams, William Carlos , Collected Poems, 2 vols., Paladin, London 1986 and 1991 .
On the Internet:
- Home Edition Cathay of 1915.
- Wikipedia: Ezra Pound .
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