In his critical works, Samuel Johnson respected tradition if not reputation or even physical appearance. He could be eloquently brutish and write of Jonathan Swift:
“The person of Swift had
not many recommendations. He had a kind of muddy complexion, which, though he
washed himself with Oriental scrupulosity, did not look clear. He had a
countenance sour and severe, which he seldom softened by any appearance of gaiety.
He stubbornly resisted any tendency to laughter.”
Today we would frown on
mocking a writer’s looks. It would be judged “insensitive.” I associate Johnson’s
description of Swift with one of the late John Simon’s more amusing assaults on
Barbra Streisand: “Miss Streisand looks like a cross between an aardvark and an
albino rat surmounted by a platinum-coated horse bun. Though she has good eyes
and a nice complexion, the rest of her is a veritable anthology of disaster
areas. Her speaking voice seems to have graduated with top honors from the
Brooklyn Conservatory of Yentaism.” That Streisand is a mediocre singer/actress
endowed with a surfeit of self-esteem eases potential offense. The
difference between Johson’s judgment and Simon’s being that the former mingles
admiration with distaste:
“It was from the time when
[Swift] first began to patronise the Irish, that they may date their riches and
prosperity. He taught them first to know their own interest, their weight, and
their strength, and gave them spirit to assert that equality with their
fellow-subjects to which they have ever since been making vigorous advances,
and to claim those rights which they have at last established.”
R.L. Barth has translated
Martial’s epigram XI.99. As a satirist, Martial was no respecter of persons:
“Whenever you stand up, I
see your gown
Treat you indecently, flat
let you down.
You pluck it with your
left hand then your right—
You’re positively
groaning!—it’s held tight
In the Cyanean straits of
your huge butt.
What’s my advice? Don’t
sit. Don’t stand. That’s what.”
Bob wrote to me on his approach to translation: “Translation can be a vexing problem if you let it be--or even if you don’t. For me, all that matters is that the translated poem makes a good English poem (or why bother) and that it stays as close to the original as this or that translator is able to keep it. However, I'm willing to vary, add, substitute, if it works for the poem and doesn’t violate the spirit of the original. I may not be as good a poet as Martial, but I’m pretty much his equal as a smart-ass, which helps my translations.”
Speaking of translations, I'm getting to read - for the third time - Constance Garnett's 1904 translation of Tolstoy's "War and Peace." There are several modern translations, of course, but I've read this one twice and have no complaints.
ReplyDeleteBarth obscured the fact that it is addressed to a women, Lesbia. Unless 'gown' is supposed to allude to that. The Loeb version reads:
ReplyDeleteWhenever you get up from your chair (I have noticed it again and again), your unfortunate tunic sodomizes you, Lesbia. You try and try to pluck it with your left hand and your right, till you extract it with tears and groans. So firmly is it constrained by the twin Symplegades of your arse as it enters your oversized, Cyanean buttocks. Do you want to correct this ugly fault? I’ll tell you how. Lesbia, I advise you neither to get up nor sit down.
"