Meaning and musicality — striking a balance in poetry translation

A paper by John Woodsworth

Slavic Research Group, University of Ottawa
presented at the 5th Annual Interdisciplinary Conference
of the Graduate Students Association of the University of Ottawa, February 2002
http://jw.kanadacha.ca/academic/feb02.html

The Eye/I in Canadian research and Canadian art. An interesting title the Graduate Stu-
dents Association chose for this conference. There's so much one can do with it! For
someone who likes to play words across languages like myself, it's a veritable goldmine.
For example, the French equivalent is given as "Je Vois" l'art et la recherche au Canada.
That could have been rendered in English more literally as I see Canadian art and research —
"I-C" — the C is for Canada, of course, and since we're in Ottawa, the I must be a capital.
Add another letter and you get I-M-C. "I AM CANADIAN". You know, we must be one
of the few countries in the world that uses a beer commercial to proclaim its national
identity. That's an icy topic indeed, a slippery slope.
Or one could have rendered the English title more literally into French as Le Moi qui
voit. Le Moi — c'est au moins la moitié du titre. Pascal a dit que «le moi consiste dans ma
pensée». Pour les géologues c'est une moye assez dure, une pensée bien couchée. Mais le
moi est le roi — "le roi des instruments", — c'est l'orgue dans l'orgueil, et si vous y pensez,
vous trouverez que la deuxième moitié de l'orgueil — oui, c'est l'œil, l'œil qui voit, the eye
that sees for the capital I. The Russian word for the capital I, le moi, is ya, the seeing eye in
Russian is glas, which with a slightly different spelling can also mean voice, la voix —
which brings us back to Je vois. Perhaps some of you noticed just down the hall an
announcement of a film festival running concurrently with our conference, entitled
"Seeing voices" — on peut dire que ce sont les voix qui voient. By the same token we could
have the 'hearing eye' — l'œil qui oit, and then our oie, our goose, would really be cooked.
(Do I hear the 'ayes'?) — But back to Russian for a moment: ya / glas. Y a d'glace? — Oui,
chez Baskin et Robbin. — Yah, glass, which is what one sees through. And I'm going to ask
your indulgence, now that you're throughly confused by my trilingual word-play (isn't
language fun?), to see me through to the core idea of this paper — meaning and musicality.
Have patience — you'll still get your M&Ms, but a few more 'Smarties' first.
So, we have the capital I, which I shall call for sake of convenience, the thinking I, and
the "e-y-e", which we might refer to as the seeing eye, or the hearing eye, or even the feeling
eye. The two basic halves of the brain, if you like, or the twin modes of human endeavour,
where they play complementary roles, if not always in equal proportion.
To understand the variation in proportion, let's bring in another dichotomy in human
perception: the centre versus the periphery. If you think of how the seeing eye works, you'll
probably remember that an object is in clearest focus when it is in the centre of our vision,
while objects at the periphery appear more blurry. But peripheral vision is a better detector
of movement, and is essential to move us beyond the immediate objects of focus, to place
J. Woodsworth: Meaning & musicality in poetry translation / page 2

them in the proper context — that is, to see how they relate to everything else in the world,
qualitatively as well as quantitatively. So while the disciplines we classify as science put
the objects of study under a microscope or telescope or computerscope at the centre of our
vision, the disciplines we call the arts are what show us the relationship of these objects (or
subjects) to other phenomena of existence — one might say: all the other phenomena of
existence. And sometimes the periphery itself can become the centre, the object of study,
relegating concrete objects and thoughts to a new periphery.
One might say this becomes increasingly true the farther one moves away from pure
science and the closer one approaches pure art — especially the fine arts. This is where the
seeing eye takes precedence over the thinking I, while in pure science the balance is just as
strongly weighted in the other direction. Most fields of human endeavour, of course fall in
between, where the balance is more evenly adjusted.
Now, at last, we shall take a look at how all this plays out in the field of endeavour
known as translation, which is generally thought of as conveying meaning from one form
of expression to another, taking the meaning of a sentence in Russian, for example, and
expressing that meaning en français or in English. Now what we usually call meaning is a
function of human thinking, a function of the thinking I, rather than the seeing or feeling eye.
In most translation activities it is the thinking I that is squarely at the centre of the transla-
tor's attention, while the seeing eye is roundly relegated to the periphery. This is certainly
true of translating scientific documents, and gradually becomes less true as we move into
translating economic, political and even most literary documents. But what happens as
we approach the translation of poetry?
Now poetry is a science that finds itself with more than just one solid footing in art. It is
a step away from prose literature in the direction of song, which is in turn a step on the
way to pure music, where periphery and centre change places, so to speak. In poetry one
sees the balance shifting from the centre to the periphery, from the thinking I to the seeing
eye, from meaning to musicality. It starts to shift first in 'prose poems', a little more in 'free
verse', still more in Shakespearean 'blank verse' where metre (but not always rhyme) comes
into play, and considerably more in what we usually think of as 'classical poetry' with more
or less constant metre and more or less of a rhymescheme (or at least assonance, whidh is
partial rhyme).
In the genre of rhyming poetry the poet is making a conscious decision to let her whole
expression, her choice of words, be governed not by semantic considerations alone, but by
the sounds and number of syllables they happen to contain, and where the stresses hap-
pen to fall within the word. This is la voix, as in Je vois — the voice that sees taking over, to
some extent, from the voice of thought — the feeling eye from the capital I. Now letting
these normally peripheral considerations govern expression may seem to be a severe limi-
tation on what words this type of poet can use — a potential disadvantage. But she—
(All right, a little 'aside' here: Why do I call the poet 'she'? I certainly do not intend to
extend the network of dichotomies to suggest that the thinking I is predominantly the
prerogative of the male of the species and the seeing eye is more present in the female. But
J. Woodsworth: Meaning & musicality in poetry translation / page 3

some people might see parallels with masculine and feminine qualities, respectively, which
I believe are present in varying combinations in every single human being, regardless of
gender. In this case, however, it is just that I happen to be in the midst of translating a
number of poems by Anna Akhmatova from Russian into English, and so for the moment,
at least, in the absence of an English gender-neutral third-person pronoun, I am quite
happy about identifying my hypothetical poet as she.)
So, by choosing to use rhyme and metre, the poet thereby gains an advantage that she
would not otherwise have — namely the imbuing of her work of art with a musicality, or
resonant musical effect on the reader or listener that helps convey an added dimension — a
spirit or feeling which cannot be conveyed by semantic expression alone. The musicality
(or hearing eye) that comes with metred, rhyming poetry thus constitutes an integral part of
the poem itself, so much so that the poem deprived of this added dimension would ac-
tually be a different work of art and would not convey the same spirit or feeling to the
intended audience. This is true regardless of whether the poem is heard in oral form or is
read silently to one's self. The achievement of this effect through allowing word-selection
to be multi-dimensionally governed is part and parcel of the poet's creativity and insep-
arable from it. It is what distinguishes the poet who has chosen this genre of poetry from
poets of other genres and from prose writers.
What do suprasegmental features (rhyme, metre, alliteration etc.) contribute to a poem?
They might be thought of as permeating the work with a kind of cohesive (or 'fixing')
substance that holds its different elements together in a readily recognisable (or sometimes
more subtly expressed) pattern, much as in a musical composition. They not only produce
an effect pleasing to the ear (audibly or silently), but reinforce the reader/ listener's capa-
city to relate new input from the poem to what has gone before, through arranging the
various lines of the poem into a readily perceivable pattern and thereby facilitating the
perception of the poem as a unified, integral whole, rather than just a linear presentation
of thoughts strung together in words. They form the context which relates the poem to the
listener's musical experience, a periphery which now demands a share of the spotlight.
Of course it can be argued that the mere fact of translating a poetic work into a lan-
guage other than the original constitutes in itself a significant alteration of the effect of the
original. True, but insofar as all the dimensions of the original (semantic meaning, emo-
tive connotation, rhyme, metre, alliteration etc.) exist in the target language as correspon-
ding vehicles of poetic expression, the exploitation of all the dimensions (as opposed to
just one or two) helps furnish the reader/listener with a more complete representation of
the original. Subtracting the dimensions of rhyme and metre, inherent in the original
genre of the work, takes the target-language perceiver further away from the original and
deprives him of the musicality built into the work of art by the poet.
If the poetic translator is to be faithful to the whole range of dimensions of the original,
from the quantitatively thinking I to the qualitatively feeling eye, he must needs apply the
same principles governing word-selection to the translation as the poet applied to the
original work — i.e., he must choose his words with as much respect to their sounds,
J. Woodsworth: Meaning & musicality in poetry translation / page 4

syllabic content and relation to other words in the poem as to their semantic or emotional
signification. Within the framework of that principle, he endeavours to come as close as
possible to the meaning, but, on the understanding that meaning was not the only guiding
principle in the original creative process, so he too cannot observe an overriding fidelity to
semantic meaning at the expense of the other dimensions. If he does so he will be distort-
ing the genre, the spirit and the effect of the original, and the result will fall short of poten-
tial in giving the target-language reader/listener as full as possible a representation of the
original. Hence the translator must consider himself bound by the same form-based
limitations on word selection in the target language as the original poet in the source-
-language. Failure to heed such corresponding caveats in the translation would result, in
effect, in a betrayal (one could even say: a mistranslation) of the original work taken as a
whole, while observing them can result in striking a reasonable balance — in balancing one
I with the other eye.
Yet very few published translations of Akhmatova, indeed of any Russian poet that I
have seen, seem to succeed in achieving a just balance between fidelity to semantics and
fidelity to suprasegmentals, between meaning and musicality, between the thinking I and
the seeing (or hearing) eye. Many translators appear to agree with Vladimir Nabokov that
meaning is the only dimension worth preserving in a poetry translation, and hang musi-
cality. And those that do make the effort to maintain fidelity to rhyme and metre usually
end up sacrificing some aspects of the meaning in doing so.
Take, for example the 16-line poem by Akhmatova called "Tvorchestvo", or "Creativity",
written in 1936. If you don't understand Russian, listen for the musicality in the original
and read my literal English translation on the screen:
[OVERHEAD: Original & literal English translation]

Бывает так: какая-то истома;

В ушах не умолкает бой часов;
Вдали раскат стихающего грома.
Неузнанных и пленных голосов
Мне чудятся и жалобы и стоны,
Сужается какой-то тайный круг,
Но в этой бездне шопотов и звонов
Встаёт один, всё победивший звук.
Так вкруг него непоправимо тихо,
Что слышно как в лесу растёт трава,
Как по земле идёт с котомкой лихо…
Но вот уже послышались слова
И лёгких рифм сигнальные звоночки,-
Тогда я начинаю понимать,
И просто продиктованные строчки
Ложатся в белоснежную тетрадь.
J. Woodsworth: Meaning & musicality in poetry translation / page 5

[OVERHEAD: McKane & Hemschemeyer translations]

Of the five published translations of this poem that I have managed to locate, Richard
McKane's makes little attempt at conveying anything but the meaning, and even here he
lets one or two inaccuracies slip by — for example he uses the word tranquillity instead of
languour for istoma. The translation by Judith Hemschemeyer, who is certainly the most
prolific Akhmatova translator, makes at least a partial attempt to follow the metre of the
original and inadvertently includes a few assonances, but no real effort at rhyme. Let me
read you hers as an example of a good meaning-oriented translation:
It happens like this: a kind of languor;
A ceaseless striking of a clock is heard;
Far off, a dying peal of thunder.
I somehow sense the groaning and the sorrows
Of unrecognized, imprisoned voices,
A kind of secret circle narrows;
But in the abyss of whispers and ringing
Rises one triumphant sound.
Such an absolute silence surrounds it
That one can hear the grass growing in the woods,
How misfortune with a knapsack plods the earth...
But now words are beginning to be heard
And the signalling chimes of light rhymes —
Then I begin to comprehend,
And the simply dictated lines
Lie down in place on the snow-white page.
Now I shouldn't dismiss this simply as a prose translation. It still has some elements of
poetry, and is probably best classified as free verse. But Akhmatova did not write in free
verse, and to translate the poem this way changes the whole genre of her work of art.
[OVERHEAD: Davies, Arndt & Roy translations]

The other three translations] all make some attempt to preserve fidelity to both metre
and rhyme, but it appears that all three find themselves compelled to sacrifice certain
elements of meaning to achieve this musicality. The line literally translated by Hemsche-
meyer as misfortune with a knapsack plods the earth is transformed by Walter Arndt into You
hear the tread of satchel-toting evil, by Jessie Davies into Jaunty, along the road with knapsack
crawling, and by Sergei Roy into grief on cloven feet slinking around. Roy's Some secret circle is
slowly growing small is fairly accurate, but not expressive of the tightening effect of a noose,
while Arndt's A secret circle growing less remote is even more remote from the original,
apparently in an attempt to get a rhyme for note two lines farther on. Davies' rendering
Then all around me is so silent falling misses the semantic power of Such an absolute silence
surrounds it. Arndt, to my mind, makes a complete jingle-jumble of the last five lines of the
poem, leaving out one of them altogether (though perhaps this is the publisher's fault):
J. Woodsworth: Meaning & musicality in poetry translation / page 6

By now, however, words have come to drone,

Like signal bells the airy rhyming jingles,
And lines, as if dictated, pairs and singles,
Bed in my snowy pages on their own.
"Pairs and singles", eh? You don't suppose he was watching Olympic figure-skating at
the time he was doing the translation?
So, perhaps it is not really possible to come closer to the semantic meaning while pre-
serving fidelity to a poem's musicality? Perhaps we are asking for the impossible?
Perhaps Nabokov's concerns were justified after all?
All I can say is, in my own years of experience as a poetry translator, with few excep-
tions, to paraphrase Will Rogers, I've never met a poem I couldn't translate without
achieving a suitable balance between meaning and musicality. Yes, a few tradeoffs are
inevitable: assonance in place of exact rhyme, slight adjustments in the metre where neces-
sary to avoid additional departure from the meaning. On the other side: a few minor adjust-
ments to the text where necessary to maintain rhyme or metre, but not so great as to add
semantic elements that are not at least implied in the original. I could expand into consid-
erable detail on these points through a multitude of examples, but that would require an
additional few hours — or days — which we don't have at the moment. So I shall close by
sharing with you the result of my own attempt to do justice to both meaning and musi-
cality in the translation of this poem, and let you judge for yourselves whether my 'eyes'
are indeed balanced:
I sometimes feel a kind of weary languor:
The clock chime never ceasing in my ears,
And far away the dying thunder's clangour.
I seem to hear the plaintive moans and fears
Of captive and unrecognisable voices...
Some kind of secret circle closes in,
But through the endless void of whispered noises
One all-pervading sound transcends the din.
Around it reigns inexorable quiet,
As grass is heard to grow in woodland earth,
Or knapsacked grief to tread the globe and ply it...
But listen, wait… already I hear words
And little telltale sounds of rhymes a-skipping, —
Now, all at once I start to understand,
And, simply, lines dictated come a-tripping
Onto the snow-white pages from my hand.