Page 783

The grim history of the twentieth century – something Brahms or Franck could never have foreseen, to say nothing of Matthew Arnold or Charles O’Connell – played its part as well both in discrediting the idea of redemptive culture and in undermining the authority of its adherents. The literary critic George Steiner, one such adherent, after a lifetime devoted (in his words) to “the worship – the word is hardly exaggerated – of the classic,” and to the propagation of the faith, found himself baffled by the example of the culture-loving Germans of the mid-twentieth century, “who sang Schubert in the evening and tortured in the morning.” “I’m going to the end of my life,” he confessed unhappily, “haunted more and more by the question, ‘Why did the humanities not humanize?’ I don’t have an answer.” But that is because the question – being the product of Arnoldian art religion – turned out to be wrong. It is all too obvious by now that teaching people that their love of Schubert makes them better people teaches them little more than self-regard. There are better reasons to cherish art.

Music in the nineteenth century, Richard Taruskin.

Archilochus: The Idea of Iambos

This post was inspired by the recent publication of Andrea Rotstein’s The Idea of Iambos, a new and exceedingly well-researched work on Greek Iambic poetry. Rotstein’s work, published in February of 2010, was reviewed in the Bryn Mawr Classical Review. This post is not part of the Found in the Folio series.

I’ve debated adding Archilochus (ca. 680 – 645 BC) to the Folio list. The reasons against are strong – his work only exists in mangled, scattered fragments and he is not well-studied (The Folio methodologically consists of the most written about poets). Readers often assumed that Guy Davenport, his main translator into English, invented the poet [So it’s clear: He didn’t]. When the entire corpus was assembled and translated in the early 1960s, it amounted to less than 25 pages. Short enough that I, and every other Archilochus fan I know, first devoured the collection in one sitting. If you have the time, you might well read all of it – the Carmina Archilochi [behind a JSTOR paywall]. A small enough collection that a 30-line erotic papyrus discovered in the 1970s transformed the direction of Archilochus criticism.

So why Archilochus?  We could easily begin with “the firsts”: he is the first extant poet to write lyric work in the first person. He invented poetry’s I. In addition, he is the first extant poet to write in Iambic meter. [Not pentameter, but rather trimeter. Chaucer likely invented iambic pentameter, superseding the rhyming octosyllabic couplet of Medieval French poetry that his friend John Gower employed in Middle English as well as the Anglo-Saxon accentual tetrameter of Beowulf.] Between  those two ideas, Archilochus is perhaps the most innovative poet of western literature. Not bad for 25 pages.

But innovative still isn’t enough. Was Archilochus any good?  For an answer, I’ll let Roberto Bolaño speak.  From the semi-autobiographical “Meeting with Enrique Lihn“:

I’m talking about 1981 or 1982, when I was living like a recluse in a house outside Gerona, with no money and no prospect of ever having any, and literature was a vast minefield occupied by enemies, except for a few classic authors (just a few), and every day I had to walk through that minefield, where any false move could be fatal, with only the poems of Archilochus to guide me. It’s like that for all young writers. There comes a time when you have no support, not even from friends, forget about mentors, and there’s no one to give you a hand; publication, prizes, and grants are reserved for the others, the ones who said “Yes, sir,” over and over, or those who praised the literary mandarins, a never-ending horde distinguished only by their aptitude for discipline and punishment—nothing escapes them and they forgive nothing. Anyway, as I was saying, all young writers feel this way at some point or other in their lives. But at the time I was twenty-eight years old and under no circumstances could I consider myself a young writer. I was adrift. I wasn’t the typical Latin-American writer living in Europe thanks to some government sinecure. I was a nobody and not inclined to beg for mercy or to show it.

If for no other reason, we can thank Archilochus for sustaining Bolaño long enough to write The Savage Detectives, 2666, and The Romantic Dogs. But Folio Found is about poetry and not in the business of reviewing fiction, so I have to suspend that policy to say read those books if you haven’t already.

Biographical details are scarce: He was born on the island of Paros but moved to a colony founded by his father at Thasos, supposedly at the command of the Delphic Oracle. Archilochus lived his days as a mercenary, rootless. Those facts are about all we know with any certainty.  He has a handful of great legends swirling about him though.  A persistent one has it that the poet was promised the daughter of Lycambes’ hand in marriage. Subsequently refused, Archilochus sang mocking lyrics so vicious that Lycambes and his daughters hanged themselves as a family [JSTOR paywall again].

Which brings us to the poetry. It’s written in a fairly archaic Greek and is quite fragmentary, so even those who have studied Ancient Greek are likely to have trouble with the language. Your best bet is to get a copy of the side-by-side Loeb Greek Iambic Poetry: From the Seventh to the Fifth Centuries B.C. collection if you want to examine the original. The most famous piece, the last fragment included in this sample, inspired Isaiah Berlin’s popular The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy’s View of History [Although some argue, a bit pedantically, that Berlin misrepresented Archilochus]. The first poem is from a translation by Lattimore, and the remainder are from Davenport.  Davenport’s translations of Archilochus, along with those of other early lyrics poets, can be found in the great book 7 Greeks.

67.

Heart, my heart, so battered with misfortune far beyond your strength,
up, and face the men who hate us. Bare your chest to the assault
of the enemy, and fight them off. Stand fast among the beamlike spears.
Give no ground; and if you beat them, do not brag in open show,
nor, if they beat you, run home and lie down on your bed and cry.
Keep some measure in the joy you take in luck, and the degree you
give way to sorrow. All our life is up-and-down like this.

11.

Uninspired but sentimental
Over one sadness or another
As a subject for his poems,
The voluble poet whets his stylus.

17.

The oxherd picks tarantulas from his oxen,
The cocksman keeps his prick dainty and clean:
The nature of man is diverse and surprising,
Each finding his pleasure where the heart wills,
And each can say, I alone among mankind
Have what’s best, what’s fine and good
From Zeus, God, Father of men and gods.
Yet Eurymas finds fault with everybody.

24.

Some Saian mountaineer
Struts today with my shield.
I threw it down by a bush and ran
When the fighting got hot.
Life seemed somehow more precious.
It was a beautiful shield.
I know where I can buy another
Exactly like it, just as round.

27.

As one fig tree in a rocky place
Feeds a lot of crows,
Easy going Pasiphile
Receives a lot of strangers.

37.

What a burden off my neck!
What a joy to escape marriage!
Another time, Lykambes,
father-in-law almost.
I can’t bring you to your knees.
Honor presupposes a sense of shame,
And that you haven’t got.

50.

How many times,
How many times,
On the grey sea,
The sea combed
By the wind
Like a wilderness
Of woman’s hair,
Have we longed,
Lost in nostalgia,
For the sweetness
Of homecoming.

52.

And the heart
Is pleased
By one thing
After another.

54.

Night.
The wind
Blows landward.
Branches
Creak.

65.

What breaks me,
Young friend,
Is tasteless desire,
Dead iambics,
Boring dinners.

98.

Old and
At home.

105.

Damp
Crotch.

127:

Fortune is a wily one
Fire in her right hand,
Water in her left.

151.

When you upbraid me
For my poems,
Catch also a cricket
By the wings,
And shout at him
For chirping.

153.

Fox knows many,
Hedgehog one
Solid trick.

Page 99

I once asked Bobby: ‘Have you ever heard about Rimbaud?’ He said: ‘Who?’ I repeated: ‘Rimbaud – R-I-M-B-A-U-D. He’s a French poet. You really ought to read him,’ I said. Bobby king of twitched a little; he seemed to be thinking about it. He just said: ‘Yeah, yeah.’ I raised Rimbaud with him a couple of times after than. Much later, I was up at his place. I always look at people’s books. On his shelf I discovered a book of translations of French symbolist poets that had obviously been thumbed through over a period of years! I think he probably knew Rimbaud backward and forward before I even mentioned him. I didn’t mention Rimbaud to him again until I heard his ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,’ his first symbolist venture. I said to Bob: ‘You know, that song of yours is heavy in symbolism, don’t you?’ He said: ‘Huh?’

No direction home: the life and music of Bob Dylan, Robert Shelton.

PEN World Voices, Andrzej Stasiuk

A few years back, Craig Raine ran into Nicanor Parra and Tomas Tranströmer:

In 1988, I was in Bhopal as part of a poetry festival. There was a poster promising Ashbery, Ginsberg, and other big-hitters of world poetry. None of whom turned up – mostly for medical reasons. The mischievous 74-year-old Chilean poet Nicanor Parra asked me who I was there “instead of.” I didn’t understand the question.

Nicanor explained: “I am ‘ere instead of Neruda.” “But Neruda has been dead for 20 years,” I said. Nicanor smiled ruefully: “No difference. I am ‘ere instead of Neruda.”

At the same festival, the Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer explained to me the mechanism of international poetic celebrity: every country has several good poets at any given time, but only one is chosen for export. Arbitrarily, not necessarily the best. Foreigners can remember only one foreign name from each foreign country. In Czechoslovakia, it is easy to check out the principle: in prose, Kundera but not Skvorecky’; in poetry, Holub not Hanzlik.

On the literary festival circuit, PEN World Voices sits on top of the food chain. Wrapping up today in New York, PEN brings together writers, translators, and publishers for a week-long cross-cultural literary party – a bit more than “one foreign name from each foreign country.”  The list of attending Nobels, Pulitzers, and Bookers is formidable, as are the many poets: Homero Aridjis (Mexico – expect a review of his Solar Poems soon); Ariel Dorfman (Chile); Marlene van Nierkerk (South Africa); Cathy Park Hong (United States); valter hugo mae (Portugal); Ernest Farrés (Catalan) among many others.

Andrzej Stasiuk was in town this week before heading to New York for PEN World Voices (at the festival, he was speaking about Utopia and Dystopia with Jonathan Lethem and a handful of other writers).  He doesn’t speak English terribly well, maybe even at all – able enough to muster a “thank you” when I handed him a napkin at the food table – and although jetlagged, Stasiuk impressed me a great deal. Bill Johnston, his primary literary translator in the US, did most of the speaking while the two read excerpts from his career. Stasiuk and Johnston covered a fair amount, but I was particularly excited by what I heard from Dukla. The book is forthcoming from Dalkey Archive Press – for now, the work is only available in an excerpt published in Words Without Borders. Four of Stasiuk’s titles have been translated into English.  I’ve only read Fado, a book of travel essays through the Carpathians, but recommend it.

Johnston spoke of a translation workshop he taught in Poland.  He had picked a few examples from Polish literature as well as an unpublished piece he was working on. The crowd of students tried to guess who wrote each.  For the most part, they struggled at the guessing game until Johnston reached the unpublished story.  All of the students agreed – it had to be Andrzej Stasiuk. This speaks to his distinctive style, but it also had me wondering how many living authors an average group could recognize from an unpublished page or two. David Sedaris or Philip Roth have voices like that. Poets are a bit harder, I think – it would have to be a stylist like Seidel. Tranströmer’s “mechanism of international poetic celebrity” is an extension of that: Where a poet’s voice (or in some cases, the press agent’s voice) is so distinctive that it overpowers any discussion around a place or genre.

Catullus Translation: pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo

(followup to the previous Catullus mention)

When Kurt Vonnegut tried to buy a dictionary, he first looked at the entries for “ain’t” and “like” – so he could get an immediate sense for how the book was written. The idea was to see whether the dictionary was descriptive or prescriptive:

Prescriptive, as nearly as I could tell, was like an honest cop, and descriptive was like a boozed-up war buddy from Mobile, Ala.

Taking a pointer from Vonnegut, I have a quick system to appraise a translation of Catullus. Turn first to poem 16, and see how the translator approximates irrumabo.  The closer translators approach the word skullfuck in meaning, the more likely their books will be faithful to Catullus’ original words and sentiments. And that’s the point of translation.  Irrumabo, in Catullus 16, is best translated as “I will skullfuck you.”  The word isn’t in any published translations, but it is as accurate a rendering as you will find (facefuck takes a close second place). The purpose isn’t to appear shocking or childish, but to read Catullus as the poet intended.

As noted previously, the poem has received its fair share of notoriety over the years. The full line in question is “pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo” (try here for a fairly faithful rendition of the poem in English). Catullus repeats it at the start and end of the poem – reflecting how central the words are to Carmen 16’s interpretation. The offending line was often left untranslated in books until the second half of the 20th C. Even in 1961, C.J. Fordyce left the poem out of his commentary: “A few poems which do not lend themselves to comment in English have been omitted.” Most translations left a blank or just reprinted the Latin in place of the English.

Other translators tried to deal with the line through humor, as in Jack Lindsay’s work: “Aurelius down, you’ll knuckle under!/ Furius up! Admit your blunder!” Or Swanson: “I’ll snag you and gag you.”  Others yet have seemed confused by irrumabo’s definition (mentulam in os inserere).  Sisson, for example, is tripped up by the whole notion: “All right, I’ll bugger you and suck your pricks.” One thing is clear – Catullus isn’t offering to fellate anyone.

Martin disregards the exact phrasing, but renders the spirit of the words: “I’ll fuck the pair of you as you prefer it,/ oral Aurelius, anal Furius.” But his literalism as a translator is uneven. Later in the book, he makes a bizarre decision in choosing not to translate Mentula, and only gloss the word as “penis” in an appendix. Romans would have read Mentula clearly, so why muddle the meaning for modern readers?

The remainder of the poem lives up to the same tone. Catullus claims that his verses “arouse with their ticklings/ [and] I don’t mean boys, but those hairy old ‘uns/ unable to stir their arthritic loins.”  Catullus 16 is not my favorite of the poet’s works (an earlier post here covered those), but it is memorable for its directness and humor.  It is easy to skip over the invectives, or diminish their importance in contrast to Catullus’ love lyrics and elegies. But seeing as almost half of his collection consists of libels and attacks, it would be a mistake.

Page 101

What does it mean to be a great poet? It means that you wrote one or two great poems. Or great parts of poems. That’s all it means. Don’t try to picture the waste or it will alarm you. Even in a big life like Louise Bogan’s or Theodore Roethke’s. The two of them had an affair, as I said. They had a busy weekend with many cries of pleasure, and it helped their writing a lot. Or Howard Moss’ life, or Swinburne’s life, or Tennyson’s life – any poet’s life. Out of hundreds of poems two or three are really good. Maybe four or five. Six tops. All the middling poems they write are necessary to form a raised mulch bed or nest for the great poems and to prove to the world that they labored diligently and in good faith for some years at their calling. In other words, they can’t just dash off one or two great poems and then stop. That won’t work. Nobody will give them the “great poet” label if they write just two great poems and nothing else. Even if they’re the greatest poets ever. But it’s perfectly okay, in fact typical, if ninety-percent of the poems they write aren’t great. Because they never are.

The Anthologist, Nicholson Baker.