For the first of my August posts, I’m sending out again this little essay, which was one of the first pieces I published on the substack, back in June 2023.
Love this. Such a beautiful description of the pleasure of filling in the grammatical spaces left by this kinds of language structures. Have also never heard of the poem, and this makes me want to read the original as well as this lovely translation.
It occurred to me recently that the semicolon plays a role in English that is similar to that of the specific kind of Sanskrit compounds you're talking about here. Of course the semicolon has a narrower range of un-spelled-out relationships between the elements it coordinates, but it's still beautiful, the space it creates for the reader to fill in.
One of the freshest and most enjoyable translations I have read. Not an expert at all in such translations I hasten to add! But I am a lover of poems that manage to build themselves seemingly out of light. For myself this poem does so. Thanks for sharing.
A truly beautiful translation and reflection on a translation, Victoria. And interesting to think about how you’ve made use of the non-verbal features that contemporary English language poetry can offer, notably the line-breaks towards the end.
Thank you Harriet, really glad you liked it. Interesting point about the non-verbal features. I was commissioned to do this translation when my youngest was just a couple of months old and I was on maternity leave. As the deadline neared, I had a couple of hours a week when he was at the halte garderie which I used to work on the Sanskrit text and understand it fully, but almost all the "writing" of the poem happened in my head while I was sitting around or lying down either doing bedtime, waiting for one or other of the children to fall asleep, or feeding the baby. So it was pretty much a purely oral/aural composition. I remember playing around with the line breaks a little bit when I wrote it down in order to best represent how it sounded in my head but I have to admit that I wasn't really thinking about the visual effect at all. I do always do quite a lot of the writing and editing in my head but this was a particularly extreme case because of the circumstances!
Very interesting! So it’s line breaks representing an oral composition process that takes place under specific circumstances (perhaps the breathing of the children, or the baby’s sucking sets a beat beneath the poem?). Is a line break a moment of pause or is it perhaps a small emphasis on the first word of the next line?
I'd say primarily a small pause; secondarily adding a little weight to the first word of the next line. I don't think this poem was much influenced by the circumstances themselves because I do always edit in my head, this was just an instance where because the poem was short, and I had already memorised the structure of the original, almost all the composition happened in my head rather than on paper.
Loved this essay, and particularly the section on the "pleasing oscillation."
That image is so marvelous, not just as you are using it here -- but also as a way of capturing what has always been, for me, the pleasure of the heavily inflected language: the oscillation between structure and freedom, clarity and obscurity. The particularity of the grammar at the level of the word opens up so many options at the level of the sentence.
Love this. Such a beautiful description of the pleasure of filling in the grammatical spaces left by this kinds of language structures. Have also never heard of the poem, and this makes me want to read the original as well as this lovely translation.
It occurred to me recently that the semicolon plays a role in English that is similar to that of the specific kind of Sanskrit compounds you're talking about here. Of course the semicolon has a narrower range of un-spelled-out relationships between the elements it coordinates, but it's still beautiful, the space it creates for the reader to fill in.
Many thanks Maria, you are so generous about taking the time to comment. Lovely thought about the semicolon! Will ponder that.
One of the freshest and most enjoyable translations I have read. Not an expert at all in such translations I hasten to add! But I am a lover of poems that manage to build themselves seemingly out of light. For myself this poem does so. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you so much Mike. It's the 'non-expert' readers that matter the most!
A truly beautiful translation and reflection on a translation, Victoria. And interesting to think about how you’ve made use of the non-verbal features that contemporary English language poetry can offer, notably the line-breaks towards the end.
Thank you Harriet, really glad you liked it. Interesting point about the non-verbal features. I was commissioned to do this translation when my youngest was just a couple of months old and I was on maternity leave. As the deadline neared, I had a couple of hours a week when he was at the halte garderie which I used to work on the Sanskrit text and understand it fully, but almost all the "writing" of the poem happened in my head while I was sitting around or lying down either doing bedtime, waiting for one or other of the children to fall asleep, or feeding the baby. So it was pretty much a purely oral/aural composition. I remember playing around with the line breaks a little bit when I wrote it down in order to best represent how it sounded in my head but I have to admit that I wasn't really thinking about the visual effect at all. I do always do quite a lot of the writing and editing in my head but this was a particularly extreme case because of the circumstances!
Very interesting! So it’s line breaks representing an oral composition process that takes place under specific circumstances (perhaps the breathing of the children, or the baby’s sucking sets a beat beneath the poem?). Is a line break a moment of pause or is it perhaps a small emphasis on the first word of the next line?
I'd say primarily a small pause; secondarily adding a little weight to the first word of the next line. I don't think this poem was much influenced by the circumstances themselves because I do always edit in my head, this was just an instance where because the poem was short, and I had already memorised the structure of the original, almost all the composition happened in my head rather than on paper.
Loved this essay, and particularly the section on the "pleasing oscillation."
That image is so marvelous, not just as you are using it here -- but also as a way of capturing what has always been, for me, the pleasure of the heavily inflected language: the oscillation between structure and freedom, clarity and obscurity. The particularity of the grammar at the level of the word opens up so many options at the level of the sentence.
Thank you!