Shatter the Bell in My Ear: Selected Poems by Christine Lavant (review)
- Shatter the Bell in My Ear: Selected Poems by Christine Lavant
Clichés grow entrenched when they capture some truth; accordingly, the perennial indictment of translators as traitors rightly acknowledges that no translation, however skilled, can replicate all the qualities of the original.Failure or at best shortfall is inherent, a foregone conclusion, so bilingual editions of poems, like this selection from each of Lavant's volumes, are thus "no more than an honest admission of defeat from the outset," to quote Tim Parks. Lavant and Chorlton side by side provide readers with many moments of gratitude and admiration for apt renderings, but that juxtaposition raises demurrers as well.
More than in most other pursuits, no assessment of any translation can be free of confirmation bias. As David Bellos pertinently asks, "How can you have theories and principles about a process that comes up with no determinate results?" Translators who believe, for example, that rhyme need not be replicated will usually judge the rhymes in Dorothy L. Sayers's version of Dante as awkward, clumsy, and forced; those who insist that capturing rhyme is essential will find them graceful, adept, and natural. This reviewer, himself a translator, has never read any rationale for omitt ing rhyme that didn't ring hollow, as here; Chorlton writes (xiv), "I have chosen more of the free verse poems [ … ] and where there is rhyme I find it preferable to hold on to the tone and meaning than attempting to replicate the echoing sounds." How does one aim preclude the other? Look at Anthea Bell's version of "Gingko Biloba" from Goethe's West- Östlicher Divan for an outstanding achievement in all respects. Look at Gunhild Kübler's triumphant edition of Emily Dickinson in German, at Max Knight's Christian Morgenstern, at Norman R. Shapiro's Théophile Gautier. Arguments that rhyme cannot or should not be transmitt ed are invalidated by Sayers, as noted, or, for just one more example, by Babett e Deutsch's rendering of Eugene Onegin, matched in this generation by Antony Wood's forthcoming edition of Pushkin's poetry. (Nabokov's perverse, mean-spirited rejection of rhyme in his rendering of Pushkin is one of the great betrayals in the whole history of translation.) These examplesrender inadmissible to this reviewer/translator that thereis any valid reason for Chorlton to avoid Lavant's rhymes, as if not observing them made the poems more authentic somehow. [End Page 161]
Where Chorlton has distinct success is in so often finding apt renderings of Lavant's diction. Philippe Jaccott et (translated by Tess Lewis) uses a striking image to characterize Lavant's work: "beautiful as the old crucifixes in country churches, like old cloth, coarse and rough." Lavant's technical mastery, subtle and unobtrusive, is complete, notably as to lineation, but the reclusive countrywoman who wrote these poems never shows offor attempts conspicuous virtuosity. Chorlton keeps his translations as close to the earth and objects in nature, as does Lavant in not "improving" a diction almost always purposely reticent, expressing the depths of emotion through an animal, a plant, a household object, a rock, a tree, aspiring to the humility religious grounding offers while remaining in fierce debate with faith and without expecting spiritual assurance or comfort. It gratifies Bellos to say that no two translators would ever produce the same result, but this translator respects "Among withering apple trees / the souls of beggars speak / about bread that never runs out" (21) as an alert response to "Unter verdorrenden Apfelbäumen / reden die Seelen der Bett ler / von Brot, das nie ausgeht," or later in the same poem (Die Bett lerschale), "deaf and dumb children learn / the language of roots and of stones" ("und taubstumme Kinder erlernen / die Sprache von Wurzeln und Steinen"). The English features even more prominently the balance of two elements in each line, whereas the German "taubstumme" combines in one word what stands out better as two.
Chorlton is also alert to Lavant's nuances of rhythm, even if he does not replicate them without modification...
