{"id":1588,"date":"2015-02-06T15:07:58","date_gmt":"2015-02-06T15:07:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/?p=1588"},"modified":"2015-02-06T15:07:58","modified_gmt":"2015-02-06T15:07:58","slug":"many-voices-a-review-of-echos-grove-by-derek-mahon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/?p=1588","title":{"rendered":"Many Voices: a review of Echo’s Grove by Derek Mahon"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t suppose there\u2019s anyone in the world who could have translated all these poems out of direct knowledge of their original languages. In his introduction, Mahon tells us he used cribs and commentaries for ones written in languages he doesn\u2019t know. Where he does know the language, he\u2019s written adaptations, not point for point translations. \u201cI\u2019ve taken many liberties,\u201d he says, \u201cin the hope that the results will read almost<\/em> like original poems in English, while allowing their sources to remain audible\u201d. He succeeds triumphantly in both aims. All his versions are good poems in their own right, many are superb, and however close to or far from their originals they may be in detail, as you read through the volume you have a strong sense of being addressed by different voices and being made to see the world through different eyes.<\/p>\n

Essentially it\u2019s a matter of balancing different kinds of fidelity. I share the view that, as Dryden put it, \u201ca good poet is no more like himself in a dull translation than his carcass would be to his living body\u201d. Another seventeenth century poet-translator, Sir John Denham, tells us \u201cPoesie is of so subtile a spirit, that in pouring out of one Language into another, it will all evaporate; and if a new spirit be not added in the transfusion, there will remain nothing but a Caput mortuum, there being certain Graces and Happinesses peculiar to every Language, which gives life and energy to the words.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sometimes this transfusion may involve major changes. In one of several examples where I\u2019ve made the comparison I think Mahon has actually improved on his original. Umberto Saba\u2019s attractive little \u201cCampionessa di Nuoto\u201d becomes more beautiful, more subtly poised and intelligent<\/em> in its rebirth as \u201cA Siren\u201d. By changing \u201ca te mi lega un filo\u201d (literally \u201ca thread links me to you\u201d) to \u201cI<\/em> tie a thread … to your toe<\/em>\u201d, Mahon both vivifies his version with a stroke of surreal fantasy, and leavens its pathos with wit. I wouldn\u2019t say that he improves<\/em> Baudelaire\u2019s poem beginning \u201cJe n\u2019ai pas oubli\u00e9, voisine de la ville\u201d by bringing it home to his own Belfast childhood, as he does in \u201cAntrim Road\u201d, but for all the changes he makes to its imagery, his version seems to me very close to the original in its feeling. Moreover, the image of \u201cbottled ships\u201d with which it closes resonates with many of Baudelaire\u2019s other poems, as well as with autobiographical glimpses in a number of Mahon\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Resonance with Mahon\u2019s own experiences and preoccupations is very much to the point. It\u2019s what enables him to give his translation poetic life. As Eliot said, \u201cGood translation is not merely translation, for the translator is giving the original through himself, and finding himself through the original.\u201d We see both processes at work again and again. In the lovely \u201cAn Orphan at the Door\u201d, from the Irish of Nuala N\u00ed Dhomhnaill, the speaker peers through her lover\u2019s letterbox and recognises in his home\u2019s Georgian proportions \u201cAn intricate crystal structure \/ that bodies forth and hides a god\u201d. We\u2019re reminded both of Mahon\u2019s much older Nerval translation \u201cPythagorean Lines\u201d (\u201cEven now a god hides among bricks and bones\u201d) and of his own poem \u201cThe Banished Gods\u201d. The whole situation of the mistress at the door reminds us of \u201cA Tolerable Wisdom\u201d, where the speaker is a man shut out of a woman\u2019s house. In these and other ways Mahon finds N\u00ed Dhomhnaill through himself. And yet the whole tone and feeling of \u201cAn Orphan at the Door\u201d seems to me profoundly unlike those of anything else in Mahon\u2019s work. Its special poignancy depends on Mahon\u2019s ability to suppress the dandified ironic wit that\u2019s so much a part of his general style, finding his way to a more single-minded, unselfcritical voice through the voice of another, as he does in radically different ways in several of these poems (the Brecht adaptation \u201cWhite Cloud\u201d is one notable example, \u201cSceilg Bay\u201d after Tom\u00e0s Rua \u00d3 S\u00failleabh\u00e1in is another).<\/p>\n

It\u2019s interesting to compare the Chinese poems of the \u201cRiver of Stars\u201d section with Ezra Pound\u2019s Cathay<\/em>. Both Pound\u2019s and Mahon\u2019s versions proceed by means of a montage-like juxtaposition of brief, clear, self-contained images. However, where Pound\u2019s are in unrhymed free verse and have a kind of airy lightness and fluidity, Mahon\u2019s are rhymed and in a measure that always at least approximates to iambic pentameter. His approach is organised and architectonic, in terms of both poetic and syntactical structures. I don\u2019t want to suggest that either poet\u2019s way is superior<\/em> to the other\u2019s. They complement each other and have opposing strengths. In Cathay<\/em>, individual images and the music of individual lines are exquisitely shaped but whole poems can seem to disintegrate into component details. In such lovely, unforgettable poems as \u201cThe River-Merchant\u2019s Wife: a Letter\u201d, or \u201cExile\u2019s Letter\u201d, although the latter is purportedly written by an old man, the sharp freshness of the images and the piercing pathos of feeling coexist with a kind of childlike simplicity of tone. The culture evoked is materially wealthy and sophisticated but seems essentially young<\/em>, as if its people were somehow impervious to experience. In Mahon\u2019s versions we feel the weight of a civilisation both built up by and already burdened with immense age by the eighth century AD, when the poems of Li Po (Pound\u2019s \u201cRihaku\u201d) were written.<\/p>\n

Admittedly most of these poems are already available in different collections by Mahon. Such a substantial number are in either Raw Material<\/em> or Adaptations<\/em> that the general reader who owned both those volumes might hesitate before buying this one. However, I think there are huge gains to the way they\u2019re brought together here, and amplified by other poems. This really is a book that asks to be taken and read through as a whole, following the historical sequence of poets and their cultures, allowing echoes to accumulate and one\u2019s awareness of difference and contrast to grow.<\/p>\n

I would like to thank the editors of Acumen for permission post this review, published in Acumen 80 last September.<\/p>\n

Echo\u2019s Grove<\/em> by Derek Mahon. The Gallery Press. 208 pp. \u20ac13.90 paperback<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t suppose there\u2019s anyone in the world who could have translated all these poems out of direct knowledge of their original languages. In his introduction, Mahon tells us he used cribs and commentaries for ones written in languages he doesn\u2019t know. Where he does know the language, he\u2019s written adaptations, not point for point […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-derek-mahon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1588"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1588"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1589,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1588\/revisions\/1589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}