Homage to John Burnside
Poetry in Translation at StAnza 98
In homage to the late John Burnside, here is a recording of the seminar on translating poetry which he led at StAnza 98. Participants include Edwin Morgan, Ian Higgins, Anna Crowe, Aonghas MacNeacail, and Brian and Harvey Holton. The discussion focusses firstly on translating Eugenio Montale’s classic poem ‘L’anguilla’ (The eel): you will find here the original text and Higgins’s version. Attention then moves to translating Chinese poetry and translating poetry in general. The event is introduced by the founding director of the StAnza Poetry Festival, Gavin Bowd.
L’anguilla
by Eugenio Montale
(Dalla quinta sezione, “Silvae”, de “La bufera ed altro”)
L’anguilla, la sirena
dei mari freddi che lascia il Baltico
per giungere ai nostri mari,
ai nostri estuari, ai fiumi
che risale in profondo, sotto la piena avversa,
di ramo in ramo e poi
di capello in capello, assottigliati,
sempre più addentro, sempre più nel cuore
del macigno, filtrando
tra gorielli di melma finché un giorno
una luce scoccata dai castagni
ne accende il guizzo in pozze d’acquamorta,
nei fossi che declinano
dai balzi d’Appennino alla Romagna;
l’anguilla, torcia, frusta,
freccia d’Amore in terra
che solo i nostri botri o i disseccati
ruscelli pirenaici riconducono
a paradisi di fecondazione;
l’anima verde che cerca
vita là dove solo
morde l’arsura e la desolazione,
la scintilla che dice
tutto comincia quando tutto pare
incarbonirsi, bronco seppellito;
l’iride breve, gemella
di quella che incastonano i tuoi cigli
e fai brillare intatta in mezzo ai figli
dell’uomo, immersi nel tuo fango, puoi tu
non crederla sorella?
The Eel
Translation by Ian Higgins
The eel, the siren of the cold seas
who swims back out from the Baltic
to our seas
and our estuaries and the rivers
she swims up, deep against the spate, branching and
branching, further up and
further into inland
heartrock, capillary-
slim through trickles of ooze until one day
a sunflash from the chestnuts
ignites a flicker through stagnant pools
and the rills that tumble
out from the Apennines across the plain;
the eel,
torch,
whip,
Love’s arrow come to earth
which only our ditches or dried-up
gullies in the Pyrenees can guide
afresh to paradise and fecundation;
the driving soul and sap that looks for life
in the very teeth of drought and desolation,
the spark that says now
is the beginning just as everything
seems charred to carbon, gnarls of thorn buried;
brief iridescence, twin
to the gem your eyelashes stand brink to
and you keep bright, untouched among the soiled
sons of man sunk in your mud,
can you not
but think her your sister?