Trans(e)lations
I feel like the most wonderful geek, because you know what I stayed up for last night? Collaborative poetry. And you know what's even better? It's not the first time.
Rebecca's in a poetry class this semester and they do a lot of interesting and weird and fascinating experiments with poetry as a medium. One of those has to do with "transelations," a word coined by people who translate poetry with the intent of keeping the emotional sense of the original poem even if the metrical or rhythmic sense, or the exact word-for-word translation, is broken from. Rebecca's teacher handed out a bunch of poems in non-English languages (most of them still used roman characters, at least) and had the class write what they thought the poem was -- think of it as multilingual tag-team telephone, only with poetry. Some of the results were crazy, but I've seen it work out pretty well.
So last night neither of us could really get to sleep but it was too late to start a movie and we didn't feel much like reading (there's a first for you) so Rebecca hit on the idea of doing our own transelations. We picked two poems to start with (one originally in Spanish, the other in English) and went at it, swapping with each other when we'd finished the transelation and continuing the process. We ended up with six variations on each individual poem. To give you an idea, here's a string of transelations.
###
THE YOUNGEST CHILDREN OF AN ANGEL
by Anna Swir
When you kissed me for the first time
we became a couple
of the youngest children of an angel,
which just started
to fledge.
Lapsed into silence in mid-move,
hushed in mid-breath,
astounded
to the very blood,
they listen with their bodies
to the sprouting on their shoulder blades
of the first little plume.
UNTITLED
by Rebecca
When you kissed me for the first time
weeping came -- a few
of the yawning swans of the angels
which -- we swore -- just stared
and fled
Laving into el momento de silencio
Hunted in muted breath
Asymptotically
two varied bloods
ay -- glistening bodies
Trees sprouting, shuddering
of the tinest flute.
###
UNTITLED
by me
When Euclid came the first time,
Weeping to view
The yawning signs of angles
Inching up stairs,
He bled.
Leaving nothing of momentum's violence,
Haunted by aching breaths
Of asymptotes lost,
To variables
And heavenly bodies
Lines sprout and stutter
Onward, mute.
###
So it's a little different when you're working from English into English, but it's still fascinating to see how the poetry shifts from one telling to the next, stealing the sound and sometimes the sentiment of the poem before, but ending up with a radically different meaning. We got from a love poem about angels to a Euclidean appreciation of angles in the space of two transelations.
The best part was that this was the shorter of the two poems we transelated, so one of us always got done before the other. One time this happened and Becca started doodling in the margins, and she drew Mr. Darcy with his famous quote, "She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me." When it was my turn, I not only transelated the poem, but also Mr. Darcy's statement, so that it became "She's intolerable, but naughty hands of eunuchs tempt me."
...yeah, it makes me such an extreme geek that this is the most amusing thing that's happened to me in the past week. But it is! If you're as amused by this transelation thing as I am, post a short quote in one of your comments. Then anyone who wants can transelate it. I'm actually really interested to see what this would look like in a forum setting.
Rebecca's in a poetry class this semester and they do a lot of interesting and weird and fascinating experiments with poetry as a medium. One of those has to do with "transelations," a word coined by people who translate poetry with the intent of keeping the emotional sense of the original poem even if the metrical or rhythmic sense, or the exact word-for-word translation, is broken from. Rebecca's teacher handed out a bunch of poems in non-English languages (most of them still used roman characters, at least) and had the class write what they thought the poem was -- think of it as multilingual tag-team telephone, only with poetry. Some of the results were crazy, but I've seen it work out pretty well.
So last night neither of us could really get to sleep but it was too late to start a movie and we didn't feel much like reading (there's a first for you) so Rebecca hit on the idea of doing our own transelations. We picked two poems to start with (one originally in Spanish, the other in English) and went at it, swapping with each other when we'd finished the transelation and continuing the process. We ended up with six variations on each individual poem. To give you an idea, here's a string of transelations.
###
THE YOUNGEST CHILDREN OF AN ANGEL
by Anna Swir
When you kissed me for the first time
we became a couple
of the youngest children of an angel,
which just started
to fledge.
Lapsed into silence in mid-move,
hushed in mid-breath,
astounded
to the very blood,
they listen with their bodies
to the sprouting on their shoulder blades
of the first little plume.
UNTITLED
by Rebecca
When you kissed me for the first time
weeping came -- a few
of the yawning swans of the angels
which -- we swore -- just stared
and fled
Laving into el momento de silencio
Hunted in muted breath
Asymptotically
two varied bloods
ay -- glistening bodies
Trees sprouting, shuddering
of the tinest flute.
###
UNTITLED
by me
When Euclid came the first time,
Weeping to view
The yawning signs of angles
Inching up stairs,
He bled.
Leaving nothing of momentum's violence,
Haunted by aching breaths
Of asymptotes lost,
To variables
And heavenly bodies
Lines sprout and stutter
Onward, mute.
###
So it's a little different when you're working from English into English, but it's still fascinating to see how the poetry shifts from one telling to the next, stealing the sound and sometimes the sentiment of the poem before, but ending up with a radically different meaning. We got from a love poem about angels to a Euclidean appreciation of angles in the space of two transelations.
The best part was that this was the shorter of the two poems we transelated, so one of us always got done before the other. One time this happened and Becca started doodling in the margins, and she drew Mr. Darcy with his famous quote, "She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me." When it was my turn, I not only transelated the poem, but also Mr. Darcy's statement, so that it became "She's intolerable, but naughty hands of eunuchs tempt me."
...yeah, it makes me such an extreme geek that this is the most amusing thing that's happened to me in the past week. But it is! If you're as amused by this transelation thing as I am, post a short quote in one of your comments. Then anyone who wants can transelate it. I'm actually really interested to see what this would look like in a forum setting.