Homework for December 10

Read Gerturde Stein's Paris France (starting p. 242 of the anthology + the correct pages I have sent you by email) and comment on:

1. Reflections on interculturality, intersemiotics and interlinguistics.

2. Which kind of discourse on translation and Modernism can be produced through reading these pages from Gertrude Stein?

Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Creative Reading"

There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. Every sentence is doubly significant, and the sense of our author is as broad as the world. We then see, what is always true, that, as the seer's hour of vision is short and rare among heavy days and months, so is its record, perchance, the least part of his volume. The discerning will read, in his Plato or Shakspeare, only that least part, — only the authentic utterances of the oracle; — all the rest he rejects, were it never so many times Plato's and Shakspeare's.

(Ralph Waldo Emerson, The American Scholar, 1837)

An Exhibition at Our Faculty

Friends! I would very much like you to go and check my photographs. I am sure that most of you will be surprised after watching them, still I want everyone not only to look at them as photos but also to try to translate them as we do with a poem. 

Because our professor told us always to mention our sources, I declare that in ordering my photographs I took the inspiration from this piece of music. And if I was to quote I would say from the beginning until the minute seven ;) 

Here is a clip from his concert in Lisbon in 2012:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_issoKL3PRY

You can listen to more like this at the exhibition. Enjoy :)

"Voyelles" par Arhtur Rimbaud (written 1872 published 1883)

A noir, E blanc, I rouge, U vert, O bleu : voyelles,
Je dirai quelque jour vos naissances latentes :
A, noir corset velu des mouches éclatantes
Qui bombinent autour des puanteurs cruelles,

Golfes d'ombre ; E, candeurs des vapeurs et des tentes,
Lances des glaciers fiers, rois blancs, frissons d'ombelles ;
I, pourpres, sang craché, rire des lèvres belles
Dans la colère ou les ivresses pénitentes ;

U, cycles, vibrement divins des mers virides,
Paix des pâtis semés d'animaux, paix des rides
Que l'alchimie imprime aux grands fronts studieux ;

O, suprême Clairon plein des strideurs étranges,
Silences traversés des Mondes et des Anges :
- O l'Oméga, rayon violet de Ses Yeux !

Homework for December 3

Answer to either of these topics:

1. Read "The World as India" by Susan Sontag. Discuss what she has to say about 3 of the following topics: nature of translation, role of the translator, translator's ethics, metaphors for translation, history of translation.

2. What startling statements or inferences about translation do you find in Jack Spycer's After Lorca. Is there faithfulness at stake here? why (not)?

William Carlos Williams and Rewriting by Ana Vanessa Cruz and Gonçalo Henriques

Biography

Williams Carlos Williams was born on the 17th of September 1883 and died on the 4th of March 1963, an American poet intimately connected with the modernism and imagism movements.

Among the contemporary poets commonly connected to him are Robert Frost who was born in 1874, Wallace Stevens, who was born in 1879; and Hilda "HD" Doolittle, who was born in 1886. Of these four, Williams was the last one to die after Frost.

It should be noted that Williams also had a long career as a doctor, he exercised pediatrics and general medicine. Having become pediatric hospital boss at Passaic General Hospital in Passaic, New Jersey until his death. Hospital that now pays tribute to Williams with a memorial plaque declaring "we walk in the wards that Williams walked".

Imagism

A poetical movement poetry that began in 1912 and was represented by Ezra Pound, Amy Lowell, and others, with the purpose of clarity of expression through the use of accurate visual images. An initial period often arises in written form in French. Imagism was inspired by the critical views of TE Hulme, in his revolt against the sloppy thinking and against the romantic optimism that he saw being used.

   The Imagists wrote succinct verses that sought to project effects based on accurate visual images. Imagism was a successor to the French symbolist movement, but while Symbolism had an affinity for music, Imagism sought connection with the visual arts.

 In 1914 Pound turned to Vorticism, and Amy Lowell, largely took over leadership of the group.

In short, Imagism:

Advocated the use of colloquial language

Creation of new sound rhythms

Freedom of choice of subject

Free verse

Clear poetry

Poetry released from the sobriety of rhetorical devices and the sentimentality of poetic productions. It also emphasized the meaning of the writings.

From an Imagist manifesto:

1.         To use the language of common speech, but to employ the exact word, not the nearly-exact, nor the merely decorative word.

2.         We believe that the individuality of a poet may often be better expressed in free verse than in conventional forms. In poetry, a new cadence means a new idea.

3.         Absolute freedom in the choice of subject.

4.         To present an image. We are not a school of painters, but we believe that poetry should render particulars exactly and not deal in vague generalities, however magnificent and sonorous. It is for this reason that we oppose the cosmic poet, who seems to us to shirk the real difficulties of his art.

5.      To produce poetry that is hard and clear, never blurred nor indefinite.

6.         Finally, most of us believe that concentration is of the very essence of poetry.

Williams Carlos Williams Poetic Style:

According to the poet and critic Randall Jarrell, "William Carlos Williams is so magically alert and mimetic as a good novelist He plays the details of what he sees with startling freshness, clarity and economy - refers to short verses. Sometimes he just notices the land forms, the spirit that moves behind the letters. His transparent lines have a nervous system and a strenght that moves sharply and intently like a bird. "

Williams's major collections are Spring and All (1923), The Desert Music and Other Poems (1954), Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems (1962), and Paterson (1963, repr. 1992). His most anthologized poem is "The Red Wheelbarrow."

Williams is strongly associated with the American modernist movement in literature and saw his poetic project as a distinctly American one; he sought to renew language through the fresh, raw idiom that grew out of America's cultural and social heterogeneity, at the same time freeing it from what he saw as the worn-out language of British and European culture. In 1920, this project took shape in Contact, a periodical launched by Williams and fellow writer Robert McAlmon:

Williams sought to invent an entirely fresh and uniquely American poetry style that would be centered on everyday circumstances of life and the lives of common people. He came up with the concept of the "variable foot", a metrical device to resolve the conflict between form and freedom in verse. With this, he sought American (in opposition to the European) rhythm that he claimed was present in everyday American language. Stylistically, Williams also worked with variations on a line-break pattern that he labeled "triadic-line poetry" in which he broke a long line into three free-verse segments. A well-known example of the "triadic line [break]" can be found in Williams's love-poem "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower."

Rewriting

“Asphodel, That Greeny Flower”

William Carlos Williams' long, late poem "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower" is the fullest example of his work in the variable foot and in the triadic (or three-foot, stepped-down) line, a breakthrough form. It is also one of the most beautiful affirmations of the power of love in--and against--the nuclear age, and one of the few memorable love poems in English written not for a mistress but for a wife: his spouse of 40 years, Florence Herman Williams, or Flossie.

First published in Journey to Love (1955), "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower" came into existence during a time of nearly overwhelming crisis in Williams' life.

The original poem

For our wedding, too,

                the light was wakened

                                    and shone. The light!

the light stood before us

                waiting!

                                    I thought the world

stood still.

                At the altar

                                    so intent was I

before my vows,

                so moved by your presence

                                    a girl so pale

and ready to faint

                that I pitied

                                    and wanted to protect you.

As I think of it now,

                after a lifetime,

                                    it is as if

a sweet-scented flower

                were poised

                                    and for me did open.

Asphodel

                has no odor

                                    save to the imagination

but it too

                celebrates the light.

                                    It is late

but an odor

                as from our wedding

                                    has revived for me

and begun again to penetrate

                into all crevices

                                    of my world.

Our rewriting

Nesta sala de aula,

   as luzes ténues eram

              todavia exibindo …as luzes!

As luzes esperavam-nos

             aguardavam-nos!

                           Cuidava que o mundo

se aquietava

             quando da secretária

                                 me aproximava,

os livros eu tirava

               face à tua figura imponente

                                   tão pálida eras

que parecias desmaiar

               até me compadecia

                             querendo proteger-te.

Agora que penso nisso,

       no fim de contas

                 tudo leva a crer que

uma certa doce flor

         se havia pousado

               e desabrochado para mim.

A verbena

       possui um odor inodoro

                    salvo no imaginário

mas também ela

            tem a sua luz.

            Está a entardecer

mas o odor

        assemelhado à sala de aula

              se tornou intenso para mim

e principiou a penetrar

      em todos os poros

                       do meu mundo.

The differences between the original poem and our rewriting are that, instead of a marriage, we have a classroom environment (something of our modern-day everyday lives); instead of a bride, we have a school teacher; instead of an altar, we changed it into a classroom desk for students; Williams was accused of borrowing 13^th century poets and we decided to have some inspiration on Portuguese classic writers such as Luis de Camões (“tem um odor inodoro”) and Gil Vincent (“cuidava que o mundo se aquietava”); instead of Asphodel, we found another herb that as also connections with the supernatural which is vervain.

Collective Translation "The Avenue of Poplars"

A Avenida dos Álamos

As folhas abraçam-se

nas árvores

é um mundo

mudo



sem personalidade


eu não



busco um caminho


ainda sereno /permaneço / mantenho-me
 com


lábios ciganos     / lábios ciganos


contra os meus       pressionados (colados) aos meus

é o beijo

das folhas

sem ser

hera venenosa


nem urtiga, o beijo


das folhas do carvalho– / roble 


Aquele que beijou


uma folha


não tem de ir mais longe– 

Ascendo / Elevo-me

através de 

uma copa / um dossel de folhas


e simultaneamente


desço

pois não faço nada                 pois nada faço de
invulgar / extraordinário        extraordinário


Sigo no meu carro / viajo de carro / vou no meu carro


penso sobre



cavernas pré-históricas


nos Pirenéus– 

a caverna de


Les Trois Frères