{"id":576,"date":"2011-09-29T09:08:42","date_gmt":"2011-09-29T09:08:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/?p=576"},"modified":"2014-02-11T22:08:11","modified_gmt":"2014-02-11T22:08:11","slug":"tomas-transtromer-robin-fulton-and-robin-robertson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/?p=576","title":{"rendered":"Tomas Transtr\u00f6mer: Robin Fulton and Robin Robertson"},"content":{"rendered":"

Having just read the versions of Tomas Transtr\u00f6mer\u2019s poems in Robert Robertson\u2019s The Deleted World<\/em> I can understand why people love and admire them so much and perhaps in time I\u2019ll come to do so myself.\u00a0 Their language is supple and fluent, rich and delicate in sound and full of expressiveness, and behind it all there is the immense power and humanity of Transtr\u00f6mer\u2019s own vision. At least for now, though, they just don\u2019t feel right to me.<\/p>\n

Perhaps familiarity with Robin Fulton\u2019s versions means that I\u2019m not approaching Robertson\u2019s with an open enough mind. And of course I have no idea what someone bilingual in Swedish and English would think. But I do feel there may be a real matter of personal taste here. One of the things I love about Fulton\u2019s Transtr\u00f6mer is his groundedness. His poems don\u2019t just begin<\/em> in the ordinary prose world, they stay<\/em> in it even as they make us see that world in a startlingly new way. Plainness, angularity, even awkwardness of expression are part of that rootedness in ordinary experience. Robertson\u2019s versions, by contrast, often seem to me overdressed.<\/p>\n

The effect is pervasive even if illustrations can seem trivial. For example, in the two men\u2019s versions of \u201cFace to Face\u201d, where Robertson has<\/p>\n

\u00a0Suddenly, something approaches the window<\/p>\n

\u00a0Fulton has<\/p>\n

One day something came to the window<\/p>\n

The Swedish starts \u201cEn dag\u201d, so Fulton is literally right here, but the real point is to do with overall tone rather than accuracy of detail. \u201cSuddenly\u201d, a word Robertson introduces in a number of poems, seems an injection of gratuitous and drama, especially coupled with the melodramatic tone that his rhythm at this point gives to the word \u201csomething\u201d. For the second line of a poem he calls \u201cSolitude\u201d Robertson has \u201cMy car shivered, and slewed sideways on the ice\u201d. Fulton calls this poem \u201cAlone\u201d and his second line is \u201cThe car skidded sideways on the ice, out …\u201d To my mind the inflated language of Robertson\u2019s version and the introduction of a pathetic fallacy in \u201cshivered\u201d lifts the whole experience out of the world of terrifyingly ordinary risk into an unreal world of what one might call poesy as distinct from true poetry. In the third stanza Robertson writes<\/p>\n

The headlights of the oncoming cars
\nbore down on me as I wrestled the wheel through a slick
\nof terror, clear and slippery as egg-white.
\nThe seconds grew and grew \u2013 making more room for me \u2013
\nstretching huge as hospitals.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Fulton\u2019s version of this stanza goes<\/p>\n

The approaching traffic had huge lights.
\nThey shone at me while I pulled at the wheel
\nin a transparent terror that floated like egg white.
\nThe seconds grew \u2013 there was space in them \u2013
\nthey grew as big as hospital buildings.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Fulton\u2019s is plainer except in the third line. No doubt some people will find Fulton\u2019s style underwritten and feel that Robertson\u2019s brings out the terror and drama of the moment more fully. For myself, I find \u201chuge as hospitals\u201d exaggeratedly poetic. I feel that Fulton\u2019s low key style makes his hauntingly strange third line stand out in a way nothing in Robertson\u2019s versions does, and makes it stand out not by inflated language but by strangeness of idea<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll give just one more example. For the first stanza of the poem he calls \u201cIsland Life, 1860\u201d Robertson has<\/p>\n

One day when she was rinsing clothes at the jetty
\nthe chill of the sea rose up through her arms
\nand into her soul.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Fulton calls this poem \u201cFrom the Island, 1860\u201d and his first stanza goes<\/p>\n

One day as she rinsed clothes from the jetty
\nthe chill of the strait rose through her arms
\ninto her life.<\/p>\n

I have little doubt that the Swedish word \u201clivet\u201d literally corresponds to \u201clife\u201d rather than \u201csoul\u201d, but that isn\u2019t my essential point. \u201cSoul\u201d, coming so plumply at the end of the stanza, seems to me both florid and facile in a way that lets out all the imaginative pressure built up in the brilliant preceding line. In Fulton\u2019s version, the whole force of the stanza builds to the last word. In its ordinariness and colourlessness as a word, \u201clife\u201d seems to understate, but its \u00a0largeness of meaning leaves the reader thinking and feeling for themselves how completely the cold has taken possession of her.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

You can only go so far by comparing isolated bits. Undoubtedly I could find lines and phrases in Robertson\u2019s versions that I would prefer to their equivalents in Fulton. Robertson is a highly accomplished poet. However, what I\u2019ve tried to illustrate is a difference of overall style and approach which I think makes Fulton\u2019s Transtr\u00f6mer a greater poet than Robertson\u2019s, a poet of depths rather than of surfaces, one for whom poetry is something that inheres in ordinary life rather than being ornamentally added to it and one who trusts his readers to feel this poetry without the persuasions of an obviously poetic style.<\/p>\n

Tomas Transtr\u00f6mer, The Deleted World<\/em>, Versions by Robin Robertson, Enitharmon, 2006
\nTomas Transtr\u00f6mer, New Collected Poems<\/em>, translated by Robin Fulton, Bloodaxe, 2002 (I haven’t read the more recent edition of the Collected Poems<\/em> translated by Fulton).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Having just read the versions of Tomas Transtr\u00f6mer\u2019s poems in Robert Robertson\u2019s The Deleted World I can understand why people love and admire them so much and perhaps in time I\u2019ll come to do so myself.\u00a0 Their language is supple and fluent, rich and delicate in sound and full of expressiveness, and behind it all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tomas-transtromer","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576"}],"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=576"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1386,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576\/revisions\/1386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}