Someone said that poetry is 'what gets lost in translation'. I get no pleasure from reading translated poems, except Oriental or Classical ones. Thus most world poetry is lost to me, alas! and I risk being thought (or just being) a typical xenophobic Anglophone. I do greatly value parallel texts of poetry in the languages I know a little of.
A translation, I venture, is always a lesser thing, either properly servile to, or parasitic upon, its original. The following effort of mine is definitely a parasite: a 'version', some considerable distance 'after' (as we say) Mallarmé's original, jokingly updating it. I started it precisely out of irritation at what seemed to me the dullness of other translations of this poem, and as a way of making myself really read the original.
I dedicated it to Cahal because several of his own poems consider characters who fantasise about running out on their lives, or actually do it; and I hoped he would like or recognise some kinship with his work too in the use of the vernacular and the reference to popular song.
I'm knackered, and there's nothing on the telly.
"Out. I'm just going out." Drunk on the very
foam on the glass, and wall to wall smoke.
To hell with everything! with the allotment
(that did my back in) – I'm taking an early bath –
and with the grind towards qualifications,
night after night in the shadeless spare room
(the wife's off sex, anyhow, since the baby).
I'll leave. Plane, perched on your little wheels,
go for it Boeing! take me somewhere exotic.
Although I've had it to here with disappointment
I still get off on the idea of flight.
Knowing my luck, of course, we'd be hijacked
or the whole damn thing would just explode in flames
scattering wreckage across miles of tundra …
But I can't stop humming Leaving on a jet plane
Elizabeth James (For Cahal Dallat)
La chair est triste, hélas! et j'ai lu tous les livres.
Fuir! là-bas fuir! Je sens que des oiseaux sont ivres
D'être parmi l'écume inconnue et les cieux!
Rien, ni les vieux jardins reflétés par les yeux
Ne retiendra ce coeur qui dans la mer se trempe
O nuits! ni la clarté déserte de ma lampe
Sur le vide papier que la blancheur défend
Et ni la jeune femme allaitant son enfant.
Je partirai! Steamer, balançant ta mâture,
Lève l'ancre pour une exotique nature!
Un Ennui, désolé par les cruels espoirs,
Croit encore à l'adieu suprême Des mouchoirs!
Et, peut-être, les mâts, invitant les orages
Sont-ils de ceux qu'un vent penche sur les naufrages
Perdus, sans mâts, sans mâts, ni fertiles îlots …
Main, ô mon coeur, entends les chants Des matelots!
Stéphane Mallarmé
(1842-1898)