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Topic: Tchernobyl (Read 2139 times)
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madox g.m.
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Estil Pollock's presentation of Syrota's poem is remarkable. The poem, of course, is beautiful, and I should like to hear the music of it in the original slavic language. (I do not believe in translations... particularly of poetry  ). Perhaps it will seem a bit strange that, so few years after the tragedy, a poem about it should need such a precise and complete factual explanation. But indeed the public does forget. So many wars have been waged in that time, of which no one remembers - or even knew - the causes, alleged or real.
Thanks anyway, EP, for bringing up this text.
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Estill Pollock
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Thank you for your comments re "Resurrection Suite".
Although the verse sections read as movements of a single, longer poem, they are in fact individual pieces. I have treated each poem individually, and out of sequence to their original order. The individual poem titles, too, have been set aside to create a more flowing, personal experience on both intellectual and emotive levels.
It may be worth noting that the opening few verses of Part I are not part of Sirota's work, but my own by way of establishing a mood link to the remaining poetry.
The casebook method of reiterating the known facts surrounding events of 26 April 1986 introduces a courser element, threatening and remote, that seeks to undermine the personal response of the verses. However, the juxtaposition of the two styles in fact raises the events to a supra level of experience.
When I first began corresponding with Lyubov Sirota in the autumn of 2005, she was quite protective of the existing English translations of the individual poems. Over a period of time, having discussed "RS"at some length, and having listened to my reasons for reinventing the work, she agreed to allow this new version.
It could be argued that this hybrid form is a product of both her craft and mine, while introducing a random element not previously present in the work of either of us. Several years ago, in Poetry, I used a (broadly) similar form to present letters home from a Union soldier at war in the southern states, interpersing a narrative element that established a parallel time frame, yet somehow out-of-synch with the drive of correspondence. In both cases, the adversity of styles creates the tension and focus of the work.
"Resurrection Suite" is the third and final part of my sixth collection, Available Light, published in February 2007 by Cinnamon Press (Wales).
In any case, thanks for your comments.
Estill Pollock
www.estillpollock-poetry.com
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Confuzed
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I'm confused. So Pollock didn't write the poems? These are some kind of adaptation? But he did write the opening stanzas? He wrote the prose and some of the poetry. Did Pollock translate the poems even? And I think I got the historical context of Chernobyl. Wasn't that a big thing in poetry - prose mixed with poetry? Why didn't he write his own poems based on the tragedy? Sorry, just confused by this whole thing.
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re
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Sirota wrote a number of poems in Russian about her experiences at Chernobyl.
I have adapted a number of these into English, but they are not Russian-English translations in the strict sense. In fact, to read one poem in a basic Russian-to-English version and compare it to lines adapted by me, you would note a similarity in tone, but the language is notably skewed towards English poetry in the Modernist tradition.
I wanted to say something about the development of the piece, hence the 'Notes', but perhaps it's better simply to read the poem(s) without the baggage of critical apparatus, as a true story about real people.
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Estill Pollock
Full Member
Posts: 6
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Apologies, Gregor: I noted the last thread 'on the fly' and popped in a quick response. Behaving better now...
Estill Pollock
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Gregor Milne
Administrator
Poster Monkey
Posts: 72
The best friend I ever had
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haha
Oh dear--I sounded like a bit of a dick there
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madox g.m.
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This has been a highly informative dialogue, and it seems to have led us close to the "ekphrastic" theme of Gregor's posting. We are, indeed, talking about a work of art (Estill Pollock's) developed on the base and from elements of another work of art (Lioubov Syrota's).
Perhaps I should stop here, but there are a few points I'd like to develop, about translating poetry, and about re-constructing or re-organizing a work of art.
All translation should be a work of art per se, and an endeavour to produce, in the recipient of the new text, aesthetic and psychic emotions comparable - if impossibly identical - to those produced by the original. I do not think that just mastering a language is enough to translate any piece of literature written in that language: the translator has to identify, in some way, with the author, and unless he/she is a sort of chameleon person, he/she must stick to translating the sort of thing he would have liked to write himself in his own language. It takes a poet to translate poetry, and of course the new poem is his own work, written within the rules he applies to his own poetry in his own language.
Let me take a couple of examples:
- the Lusiads, Camões' enormous epic poem, has been the object of several translations into, say, French. The latest is Professor Bismuth's. So professoral as to be unreadable, it is a remarkable work, but one that cannot be used for anything but academic study. An early XIXth century translation was made by the "Morgado de Mateus", somewhat of a romantic dandy, not an accurate linguist, not a major poet either (!) but it is infinitely preferable to Bismuth's if the average reader wants to be initiated to Camões' mythology and vision of the world.
-Edgar Allan Poe's Tales were translated in French by Baudelaire, but it was Mallarmé who translated the"Raven" poem. Each of the translators chose the text that appealed most to his own technique and preoccupations.
This is to say that I applaud Estill Pollock's choice to "skew", in his own words, the translation towards English poetry in the modernist tradition.
Now, dear Estill Pollock, you say, if I read you right, that you changed the sequence of the original poems. This will, at least, give work to subsequent scholars and students. I wonder, however, if this will not alter the perception of one very important element: the working of Lioubov Syrota's mind and memory.
Organizing the Suite in chronological and factual order might (I am not saying it does, as I have not read, either the Russian original, or any basic translation of it) weaken the impact of Syrota's spontaneity and sincerity.
Take, for instance, a painting like "Guernica". I don't think it would have such a tremendous impact if each scene or detail was cut and pasted in any sort of logical or explanatory order.
Or take Proust... the time element is so important in his own reconstruction that drawing a straight line from beginning to end of "La Recherche" would be rather maddening, would it not?
We are back to that old interrogation: does a work of art need to be explained and its "obscurity" clarified? One French poet with a reputation for being obscure, (I think it was Valéry) is said to have entered a University Hall where a famous professor was explaining out very carefully one of his poems. Suddenly the poet raised a timid hand: "... et si je vous dis merde? " (pardon my French...)
However... I liked this Suite, as I have said before, and thank you for writing it.
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Estill Pollock
Full Member
Posts: 6
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It's perhaps useful not to read too much into my comment re sequencing Sirota's poems, as there is no chronological imperative in the Russian-English translations I've read. Selections are available on the Internet, should anyone wish to inspect the hydraulics of earlier attempts with those in "RS".
It is difficult to know how successful the Russian poems are in their own right, and whether or not they are in any way 'improved' for having been taught English. Each of the examples of translation/adaptation mentioned by you generate their own heat of sorts, and it is usually 'the times' that decide the longevity of something hovering between extremes of academic and popular readership (and indeed, of authorship).
When I first proposed the project to Lyubov, her response indicated that she was comfortable with the original translations, and saw no need to do anything further with them. My own response to the translations was that they had a workmanlike quality, but I wondered if there might be something of the first spirit riding just under the cold sheen of the translator's skill.
That said, I had already written the piece before I approached her for her permission to 'sample' her work in this way. Had she objected, "RS" would have remained a technical exercise in the same orbit as many other broken planets.
Thank you for your views.
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