[New-Poetry] Eshleman on the travails of translating Vallejo

[Anny Ballardini]

"This word was not in any dictionary."

that is how I feel when I try to translate. As if my hands were tied, that is the impression, my mind sort of reduced, and then you have to compromise: "better than nothing" and you go on.

But sometimes the words just come out perfect, you had to cut down the previous alliteration and here it comes, unexpected, while you are typing it. You are not respecting the rhythm but you do have an alliteration a couple of lines down, and the meaning, the sense of the words is safe. 

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: JforJames at aol.com 
  To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu 
  Sent: Tuesday, August 07, 2007 11:07 PM
  Subject: [New-Poetry] Eshleman on the travails of translating Vallejo


  http://www.raintaxi.com/online/2007summer/vallejo.shtml

  AN EGO STRONG ENOUGH TO LIVE:
  TRANSLATING CÉSAR VALLEJO
  by Clayton Eshleman

  Editor's Note: In January 2007, César Vallejo's The Complete Poetry: A Bilingual Edition, edited and translated by Clayton Eshleman, was released by University of California Press (reviewed in our Spring 2007 Print Issue). In the following talk, originally given at Michael Heim’s translation seminar at UCLA in February 2007, he discusses the psychic struggle and lasting impact of translating Vallejo's uniquely challenging work.

  By the time I completed a third draft of César Vallejo’s “Human Poems,” in Kyoto, Japan, in 1963, I felt that I was hardly any further ahead with the project than I had been at the beginning. By insisting on trying to get everything right, I kept running up against dead end after dead end. This word was not in any dictionary. 






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