Montale

Until you try it yourself, you have no idea what’s involved in translating – perhaps the most challenging is poetry. Of course, you have to know both languages but then you realize what’s involved. Meter, rhyme, and all those other things such as enjambment, whether you’re writing a poem from scratch or translating someone else’s. What you want to capture in the latter case is the sound and the feeling and its underlying meaning.

You think, perhaps seeing what others have done might help. You put in the title on your search machine, and then say you want it in the target language.

It’s not just a matter of finding the equivalent meaning. There’s so much more to it. The web will try its best and comes up with several versions by different translators. (haven’t yet tried A.I.) You look at them and remain unconvinced. You feel that that’s not at all what the author had in mind.

Take the following 8 lines by Eugenio Montale.

Spesso il male di vivere ho incontrato,

era il rivo strozzato che gorgoglia,

era l’incartocciarsi della foglia

riarsa, era il cavallo stramazzato.

Bene non seppi, fuori del prodigio

che schiude la divina Indifferenza:

era la statua nella sonnolenza

del meriggio, e la nuvola, e il falco alto levato.

My first stumbling block was what other others had done with “il male di vivere”.

Several knew that in Italian male often meant evil. Like malocchio, the evil eye. But mal di vivere was something else. But no, I said, the idea here is more like malaise. There’s a negativity to the word. In English don’t we also get homesick, lovesick, seasick? Maybe world-weary would work. Then I find someone said “pain of living” and figure I can try that.

Line one and line four would rhyme (found and ground), if I opted for “Often the pain of living have I found.”  

 The horse fallen to the ground. Stramazzato is much stronger than fallen and I finally find “slumped to the ground.” I can picture that. Like the brook and the leaf, it has given up. I even manage an enjambment.

My version then is:

Often have I encountered the pain of living

The strangled brook still gurgling,

The leaf parched and 

crumpled, the horse slumped to the ground.

So now let me take a stab at the second stanza:

Bene non seppi, fuori del prodigio

che schiude la divina Indifferenza;

era la statua nella sonnolenza

del meriggio, e la nuvola, e il falco alto levato

One translation has it:

I have known no good except the miracle

that reveals the divine Indifference;

it was the statue in the drowsy trance

of noon, the cloud, the cruising falcon.

I do want to make a few minor changes. But that is what translating poetry is about. Or translating, in general.  As Umberto Eco says: translation is “saying almost the same thing,” interpretation.

When Montale in his rather pessimistic approach says he has known no good, (but is that what he means?  might mean “little did I know”), (but that of course seems to be Montale) is rather literary so I opt for:

Little knew I, aside from the miracle

that reveals divine Indifference:

it was the statue in the somnolence

of noon, the cloud, and the falcon soaring high.

Well, I have 2 and 3 rhyming. Trance isn’t a bad choice either. Try as I might, haven’t succeeded in getting 1 and 4 to rhyme. And I did get that enjambment in.

And I still don’t know if I prefer “the hawk, high- wheeling” to the falcon image.

Have I understood just what Montale meant by “Bene non seppi”? Mightn’t it be “The only thing I knew?”

Well so much for my attempt. I could continue but who will tell me what is best?

As Walter Benjamin pointed out, “the ultimate task of the translator (and of the anthologist) is to manage the difficult and paradoxical reconciliation of the diverse,

something that can only be achieved through fragmentations and

wounds.”