Archives for January 2003

Raphael Carter is looking for poems about hummingbirds. He has found three, one by Lawrence and two by Dickinson, which he reproduces and comments on with enthusiasm, whether he approves (“I would take the stanza beginning ‘He never stops,’ and the line ‘reels in remoter atmospheres,’ over just about anything else in American poetry. This is what astonishes me about Dickinson. She wrote close to two thousand poems, and nearly every one of them is forceful, original, and beautiful.”) or disapproves (“[Lawrence] knows that hummingbirds are small and very fast and often very bright, and yet he writes this ponderous, ungainly poem whose rhythms would be more suitable for describing an elephant”). He says “There must be others—surely Frost wrote about hummingbirds somewhere…”; Elizabeth Bishop leapt to my mind, and she did mention “The tiniest green hummingbird in the world” in “Questions of Travel”, but she doesn’t seem to have written a poem specifically about the bird. I have found online a translation with commentary of a Zinacantán (Maya) hummingbird poem, but that may be a little far afield; anybody know others? [Via Plep.]
Update. Avva and his readers have found further examples, in both English and Russian.

Michael Drout, an assistant professor of English at Wheaton College, has discovered the manuscript of a complete translation of Beowulf, with commentary, by J.R.R. Tolkien. It will be published this summer and will presumably sell quite a few copies. [Via Pat.]

Addendum. Having now discovered Drout’s blog (via Mind-Numbing), I must retract the last statement; apparently the translation won’t be published this year, as can be seen from this entry (from an increasingly exasperated series):

First, though the Sunday Times calls it a “discovery,” I’m a little uncomfortable with the term, since the material was right there in the Bodleian the whole time. The Bodleian’s librarians and Christopher Tolkien certainly knew what it was. Second, there is almost no way I can see the Beowulf translations being published in 2003. While I’ve already done a lot of work on the translations (and they are pretty “clean” manuscripts, anyway), I really have to finish the volume of commentaries before I can publish the translations, since the commentaries explain the translations and I need to be clear in my own mind about Tolkien’s intent before I make major editing decisions. I think I unintentionally confused the reporter when I said that I would probably be done with the translations at the end of the summer. That’s true as far as it goes, but being done won’t be enough, unfortunately.

All that said, the Beowulf translation is great and lovers of Tolkien will love it.

Update (July 2014). The translation has been published, and unfortunately, it sounds terrible. Dave Wilton reports:

I’ve finally obtained and read a copy, and I must, sadly, state that this is a book that no one should buy. The translation is stilted and unidiomatic at its best—and at its worst it is incomprehensible. The formatting and editorial choices make it difficult to use as an academic resource. And Tolkien’s commentary on the poem, which is perhaps the most valuable portion, is old, incomplete, and undated—this last a significant problem given that it is taken from lectures he gave across the length of his forty-year career.

The casual reader, a person who would be most attracted by the cachet of Tolkien’s name, who simply wants to read a version of the Beowulf story without learning Old English, will find little of value in this translation.

Read the details at the link.

I was given a DVD of one of my favorite movies, Godard’s Contempt, for Christmas, and I watched it this evening. Among the many striking features of the movie (such as the opening credits being given in voiceover, in Godard’s inimitable rasp, rather than printed on the screen) is its multilingual nature; much of it consists of discussions between an American producer, a German director, and a French screenwriter, with occasional interactions with the Italian crew, and these discussions are made possible by the translator, Francesca, who is constantly rendering what we have just heard in English into French or vice versa (and on at least one occasion translating a remark before it has been made, a neat trick for which translators should get extra pay). It may be annoying to the average moviegoer, but it’s catnip to the polyglot. (And it’s worth the price of admission just to see Fritz Lang play European Culture Besieged By American Vulgarity—which reminds me, there is one glaring error in the newly done subtitles: when the producer says “Whenever I hear the word ‘culture’ I reach for my checkbook,” Lang responds “Les Hitlériens disaient: ‘mon révolver’,” which the subtitles render “The Italians used to say ‘my revolver'”!)

Addendum. I suppose I should explain the context of the “culture” reference for those who don’t know it. There is a famous quote, usually given as “When I hear the word ‘culture’ I reach for my gun” and attributed to either Goering or (less often) Goebbels. Whether or not Goering ever said it (he may have been fond of quoting it, or it may have been attracted to the more famous, and thus memorable, source), it originally comes from Act I, Scene I of Hanns Johst’s play Schlageter (first performed for Hitler’s birthday in 1933): “Wenn ich Kultur höre … entsichere ich meinen Browning!” (‘When I hear “culture,” I release the safety catch on my Browning [revolver pistol — thanks, Anton]!’).