SAPPHO TO VALERY (Paperback)

~ JOHN FREDERICK NIMS (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

Epitaph For A Poet by Homero Aridjis
The Rain Is Falling by Homero Aridjis
Smoke by Ruben Bonifaz Nuno
Autumn Garden by Dino Campana
The Window by Dino Campana
Hecuba's Testament by Rosario Castellanos
Black Mood by Rosalia De Castro
I Was Born At Birth Of Blossoms. by Rosalia De Castro
Now All That Sound Of Laughter, Sound Of Singing. by Rosalia De Castro
Attis by Gaius (caius) Valerius Catullus
Her That I Love, I Hate! 'how's That, Do You Know?' by Gaius (caius) Valerius Catullus
Jewel Of The Almost Islands And The Isles. by Gaius (caius) Valerius Catullus
My Girl Says She'll Take No One Else As A Lover. by Gaius (caius) Valerius Catullus
Now My Mind's Been Brought To Such A State... by Gaius (caius) Valerius Catullus
O Poor Catullus, Stupid Long Enough! by Gaius (caius) Valerius Catullus
So Let's Live - Really Live! - For Love And Loving. by Gaius (caius) Valerius Catullus
The Resolute Desire That Enters. by Arnaut Daniel
Canto 1 by Dante Alighieri
To Waning Day, To The Wide Round Of Shadow. by Dante Alighieri
Christmas Ballad by San Juan De La Cruz
The Dark Night by San Juan De La Cruz
Spiritual Canticle by San Juan De La Cruz
Ballad Of Black Grief by Federico Garcia Lorca
Preciosa And The Wind by Federico Garcia Lorca
Sleepwalker's Ballad by Federico Garcia Lorca
The Unfaithful Wife by Federico Garcia Lorca
Anacreon's Grave by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Death Of A Fly by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
The Diary by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Ecstatic Longing by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Elegy by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Erl-king by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
The Fisherman by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Found by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
The Hunter's Song At Nightfall by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Ill Humor by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
The King In Thule by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
May Song by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
The Meeting, The Departure by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Mignon by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Nature And Art by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Permanence In Change by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Reconciliation by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Rosebud In The Heather by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Song Of The Traveler At Evening by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
The Sonnet by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
To Belinda by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
To Charlotte Von Stein by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
To The Moon by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
To Werther by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
The Violet by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
The Two Of Them by Hugo Von Hofmannsthal
Sonnet Right Off The Bat by Felix Lope De Vega Carpio
On The Banks Of The Duero by Antonio Machado Ruiz
Parables, I by Antonio Machado Ruiz
Portrait by Antonio Machado Ruiz
Proverbs And Songs: 15 by Antonio Machado Ruiz
Proverbs And Songs: 21 by Antonio Machado Ruiz
Proverbs And Songs: 50 by Antonio Machado Ruiz
Proverbs And Songs: 54 by Antonio Machado Ruiz
The Day's In Dread Of Losing Her Bright Features. by Ausias March
Know What I'm Like? Some Captain Moors His Ship. by Ausias March
Let Others Hail The Holidays With Laughter. by Ausias March
Lxxxiii by Ausias March
Much As A Man Who Takes Delight In Dreaming. by Ausias March
Not So With Me As With The Little Page. by Ausias March
Out Scouting For Sound Counsels? How To Prosper? by Ausias March
The Eel by Eugenio Montale
Boundaries by Jose Emilio Pacheco
On The Fragile Labyrinth by Jose Emilio Pacheco
Song To Be Written On A Wave by Jose Emilio Pacheco
Girl by Octavio Paz
Here by Octavio Paz
Pause by Octavio Paz
Solo For Two Voices [solo A Dos Voces] by Octavio Paz
Lady On Streetcar by Sandro Penna
The Kiss by Plato Comicus
I'm The Way I Am. by Jacques Prevert
Inventory by Jacques Prevert
Don't Ask - Knowing's Taboo - What's In The Cards... by Quintus Horatius Flaccus
If For All The Promises You Regard So Lightly. by Quintus Horatius Flaccus
Ode by Quintus Horatius Flaccus
You See How, White With Snows To The North Of Us. by Quintus Horatius Flaccus
Time To Be Up, Marie, Young Sleepyhead! by Pierre De Ronsard
A Kiss From Her by Rufinus
Winter Noon by Umberto Saba
( On A Lady Indifferent To Poetry) by Sappho
Honestly I'd As Soon Be Dead! by Sappho
Leaving Crete, Come Visit Again Our Temple. by Sappho
On Your Throne, A Marvel Of Art, Immortal. by Sappho
Some Prefer A Glory Of Horsemen; Warships. by Sappho
Stars Around The Luminous Moon - How Soon They by Sappho
There's A Man, I Really Believe, Compares With. by Sappho
You Were Broken by Giuseppe Ungaretti
Lass A-laundering by Anonymous
Girl With Mind Wandering by Paul Valery
The Graveyard By The Sea by Paul Valery
The Good Time Of The Year. by Bernart De Ventadorn
Joy! A Heart So Overflowing. by Bernart De Ventadorn
Men, A Word Of Wisdom. Give. by Bernart De Ventadorn
To See The Lark, Delighted, Dare. by Bernart De Ventadorn
When - Presto - Turf And Trees Are Green. by Bernart De Ventadorn
Ballad by Francois Villon
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

Language Notes

Text: English --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 415 pages
• Publisher: University of Arkansas Press; 2 Rev Sub edition (May 1, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1557281416
• ISBN-13: 978-1557281418
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,329,523 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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3.0 out of 5 stars Not too bad, October 25, 2009

By	A. Z. F. (Chicago, Il) - See all my reviews

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The book's range marks it as a tour de force of Nims' discursive erudition. By Sappho to Valéry, Nims clearly means Sappho, Valéry and everything in between. The book's contents span 27 centuries (from the seventh century BC to the early 1960s) in ten different languages (French, Spanish, Catalan, Greek, Latin, Italian, Galician, Provençal, German and, of course, English.)

I. The introductory essay

The book's introductory essay on translation is a refreshing read when one compares it to similar essays by such poetry-translators as Walter Arndt, Elizabeth Gray, W.S. Merwin or Mark Musa. Though he spends a little time dallying on the familiar tension in translation between what is being said and how it is being said, Nims does not make the fashionable (yet ultimately misleading) assertion that he is trying to balance the how and the what. Moreover, he actually takes the most unpopular position, stating that" poetry is less a matter of what is said than of how it is said."

This sentiment, though it has become an art-as-form cliché among authors of original poetry, is rarely if ever brought to bear on the issue of translating poetry.

Too often, verse-translators (whether they are poets, poetasters, or scholarly poet-impersonators) seem to think of translation as a brain-teaser. "I've got what the poem literally says" the translator seems to think, "now let's see how I can make this sound like a poem again without changing it too much." It baffles me how few poets realize that this is completely backwards from the way poetry normally comes into being. When writing your own poetry, you often know how you're going to say something before you even know what it is you're saying. Very few translators (Richard Wilbur is one) are skilled enough to reverse the process without making a mess of it.

Nims, on the other hand, is not trying to recapture the sense so much as to write poems that will, to some degree, show what certain poems in another language are like. One cannot translate a poem but one can try to reconstitute by taking the thought, the imagery, the rhythm, the sound, the qualities of diction...and then attempt to rework as many as possible into a poem in English.The essay goes on citing examples of successful instances of this in the work of poet-translators such as Jorge Guillén, Rilke and others.

In addition, Nims touches upon one of the most overlooked (and, in my opinion, most damaging) problems of translation. When poets translate poetry from various periods and authors, they tend to make them all sound a little too similar. In Robert Bly's work for example, poets as distinct from one another as Neruda and Hafiz end up sounding strangely alike (and strangely bad.) Nims aptly points the problem out when he says that "translations in which all the voices of the world's great poets speak with a single voice, in which Rilke and Sappho sound alike, may not satisfy all the possibilities of translation."

Well said, John. Well said.

II. The translations themselves

The translations themselves seem to represent Nims' attempt to implement the goals he sets forth in his introductory essay. Nims selection of what poets to translate seems to suggest a preference for poetry that, on the one hand uses colloquial diction and expressions to break with tradition and, on the other, employs traditional formal devices such as rhyme and meter to achieve effects of sound. In the brief introductions to most of the poets, one can consistently see him praising these qualities. Ausiàs March is lauded for the many "proverbial and popular expressions" of his work and for being the "first to write poetry in his native Catalan instead of the more literary language [Provençal] glamorized by tradition." San Juan de la Cruz gets saluted for writing musical verse with "simple, everyday expressions, popular, colloquial words that occur in folk song and might be used by country people. Literary words almost never." Goethe is praised for "language for the most part fresh and simple...that go back to the dawn of human consciousness." Sappho is said to be great because "her simplicity comes through in the word order which is that of common sense (of impassioned common sense.) Her poems are almost without literary artifice... she was perhaps the only Greek poet to use the very words she heard around her."

You get the idea.

These are the qualities Nims' prizes and which he tries to bring out in his translations, and often it works spectacularly, particularly in the versions of Ausiàs March, for example:

Old Tityus with the vulture at his stomach,
Gobble by gobble sees the gashes heal,
and still the feast goes on, the great fowl jabbing.
Grimmer than this, the settled grief I feel.
For there's a worm that gnaws the brain's sweet tissue;
another gnaws the heart remorselessly.
Nothing to interrupt their devastation;
Nothing, except the one thing closed to me.

It is refreshing to see translations of poetry that have the gumption to sound like this. However, his desire for colloquial, unpretentious language seems to override his sense of the subtleties of tone and voice, and so he often fails his own test by making the poets represented in this collection sound inappropriately alike, inappropriately like him, or just plain inappropriate.

Goethe, for example, sometimes has his lines filled with inexcusable, inexplicable onomatopoeia, such as "cru-ungk!" and "whang!" for the sake of music. The songs of the troubadour poet Bernart de Ventadorn turn into unsingable verse laced with jarring words like "presto," "harum-scarum" or "hush-hush." Horace's poetry (which, unlike the rest of the poetry in this volume, has no reputation for being colloquial or simple) has its lovelorn boys turn into ribald Romeos with such streety expressions as "the hell with" or "rubbish!" Too often, Nims seems to forget that, though a poet might display colloquial idioms, they succeed in the original by being elevated to the level of literary production (check out Robert Frost for an example of a poet who does this in English.) Nims, on the other hand, often exaggerates the colloquial nature of the original.

In addition, Nims seems to take "colloquial diction" as a license to riddle his translations with clichés. This is O.K. occasionally in translations of Ausiàs March where the clichés are subverted by being put in new, interesting contexts. However, "clouds of dust" or "heart strong and warm" as translations of Rosario Castellanos' "polvaredas" or "sólida y caliente de entrañas" is simply an unimaginative waste of opportunity.

On the other hand, Nims occasionally gets carried away in the opposite direction and sacrifices simplicity, colloquial usage and even common sense to achieve music. I cannot see how "moroser/ moods that never long unloosen" is at all appropriate, in terms of diction, tone or even intelligibility, as a translation for "nin m'abandonarás nunca," a phrase by Rosalía de Castro meaning "you will never leave me behind." It does not sound at all like Rosalía in English. It sounds not only like Nims, but Nims at his worst.

Occasionally, these tendencies become so extreme as to turn the book into an utter parody of its mission. What is a reader to make, for example, of Catullus' famous lines:

Vivamus mea Lesbia atque amemus
Rumoresque senum severiorum
omnes unius æstimemus assis

when they are presented as this?

So let's live- really live!- for love and loving,
honey! Guff of the grumpy old harrumph-ers
-what's it worth? Is it even worth a penny?

While a sympathetic reader can appreciate the desire to show Catullus' work as something other than the stilted, sophomoric light verse it is usually translated as, passages like this make me wonder if Nims knows the meaning of the word "overkill" in any language.