The Drunken Boat/ Le Bateau Ivre/ Հարբած Նավակը
"… I think the world is so complicated that I can't be so presumptuous as to justify pessimism or optimism, so I'll stay agnostic. But I like waking up every day and I think breakfast is a fantastic thing."
Moby, as quoted in Time magazine, 10/24/05
Thinking about the comments I made in yesterday's post, I might argue that nostalgia is nothing more than our woolgathering over simple nefarious flashbacks, corrupt memories, even sanctimonious testimonials, but really! Some days make me cry: "abominations and havoc! over all these memories and frustrations.
Yes, frustrations and memory; a year and a half ago it was not enough for me to try to translate a poem from French into English, but to triple the stress by translating the English then into Eastern Armenian. Or, apparently, to start to; for I seem to have lost the computer file all that work was on and have discovered, horrors, horrors, horrors, all I have left of a month and a half of hard work in 2004 are the multifarious, numerous, jillion rough drafts/ copies of my poor-boy squiggly, longhand on dozens of tiny sheets of paper; none of them dated or marked as to which draft I labored through first, corrected next, one just as bewildering as the next. But I need to stay focused, stay agnostic as Moby puts it and re-type, the best I can, Jean-Nicolas-Arthur Rimbaud's most amazing poem, the beginning of French Modernism, The Drunken Boat.
Of course I can not speak French! I can barely read it; but I can look and compare. I can use my baby-French and labor through other translations and see what is appealing and what sounds harsh to my ear. To that end I went down to MSU's library and checked out every copy, no matter how old, of The Drunken Boat. Marilyn Hacker was right when she said: "we probably don't need another Rilke or Baudelaire translation … there are hundreds of them already …" and add to that Rimbaud. It seems every poetic translator (and many who aren't) has cut his or her teeth on this poem at some time. Keats might have said: "a thing of beauty is a joy forever"1 but he probably wasn't talking about every translation of a thing of beauty. Let me add to that mine. As a way of reference, I used the following texts as background research:
* Rimbaud complete / Arthur Rimbaud; translated, edited, and with an introduction by Wyatt Mason. New York: Modern Library, 2002.
* From Absinthe to Abyssinia: selected miscellaneous, obscure and previously untranslated works of Jean-Nicolas-Arthur Rimbaud / translated by Mark Spitzer. Berkeley, Calif.: Creative Arts Book Co., 2002.
* Poems / Rimbaud; [selected by Peter Washington]. New York: A.A. Knopf: Distributed by Random House, 1994.
* Complete works, selected letters. Translation, introd., and notes by Wallace Fowlie. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1966.
* Rimbaud; [selected verse] with plain prose translations of each poem, introduced and edited by Oliver Bernard. Baltimore, Penguin Books, 1962.
* The drunken boat; thirty-six poems, with English translations and introd. by Brian Hill. London, R. Hart-Davis, 1952.
As I mentioned earlier, I have to go by hand and re-type both the English and also the Armenian before I can let you see it. I am going stanza by stanza, and it will take a while; thus I will post my work as I go along. You see, I used an early version of Armenian National Language Support Version 2.0.1 on my old, pre-Internet laptop so many moons ago. So ancient, in fact, that I can't even get it to work on this Ubuntu Linux 5.04: The Hoary Hedgehog system. Courier AM font, indeed. However, whatever similarities, transgressions or errors you might find in my translations are entirely the fault of the author, moi. Still, I hope the translation is imaginative enough to be a curiosity to most and a fascination to some.
The Drunken Boat
Le Bateau Ivre
Յարբած Նավակը
descending rivers of apathy I no longer felt the pull of the ferrymen caught and nailed naked to painted poles that howling Natives used for target practice.
comme je descendais des fleuves impassibles, je ne me sentis plus guidé par les haleurs des Peaux-Rouges criards les avaient pris pour cibles, les ayant cloués nus aux poteaux de couleurs.
իջնելով գետերն անզգայության ես այլևս չէի զգում ձգումը լաստավարվ՚ բռնվաժ և մերկռրեն մագլվաժ ներկված ձողերին, որ ոռնացող Բնիկներն օգտագործում էին որպես թիրախ վարպետության:
(to be continued)
- Book 1 of Endymion [back]