Syntactic mismatches in machine translation Igor Mel‘čuk, Leo Wanner
James Merrill.lost in Translation
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Transcript of James Merrill.lost in Translation
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James Merrill
1926-1995
"Lost in Translation"
for Richard Howard
A card table in the library stands ready
To receive the puzzle which keeps never coming.Daylight shines in or lamplight down
Upon the tense oasis of green felt.Full of unfulfillment, life goes on,
irage arisen from time!s trickling sands"r fallen piecemeal into place#
$erman lesson, picnic, see%saw, walk &ith the collie who 'did everything but talk' (
)our windfalls of the orchard back of us.A summer without parents is the puzzle,
"r should be. *ut the boy, day after day,&rites in his +ine%a%Day No puzzle.
e!s in love, at least. is French ademoiselle,-n real life a widow since erdun,
-s stout, plain, carrot%haired, devout.)he prays for him, as does a cur/ in Alsace,
)ews costumes for his marionettes,elps him to keep behind the scene
&hose sidelit goosegirl, speaking with his voice,0lays $uinevere as well as $unmoll 1ean.
"r else at bedtime in his tight embraceTells him her own French hopes, her $erman fears,
er ( but what more is there to tell2aving known grief and hardship, ademoiselle
Diese Tage, die leer dir scheinenund wertlos f3r das All,haben &urzeln zwischen den )teinenund trinken dort 3berall.
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4nows little more. er languages. er place. 5oon coffee. ail. The watch that also waited
0inned to her heart, poor gold, throws up its hands ( 5o puzzle6 )teaming bitterness
er sugars draw pops back into his mouth, translated#'0atience, ch/ri. $eduld, mein )chatz.'
7Thus, reading al/ry the other eveningAnd seeming to recall a 8ilke version of '0alme,'
That sunlit paradigm whereby the treeTaps a sweet wellspring of authority,
The hour came back. 0atience dans l!azur.$eduld im. . . immelblau2 ademoiselle.9
"ut of the blue, as promised, of a 5ew :ork 0uzzle%rental shop the puzzle comes (
A superior one, containing a thousand hand%sawn,)andal%scented pieces. any take
)hapes known already ( the craftsman!s repertoire 5ice in its limitation ( from other puzzles#
&itch on broomstick, ostrich, hourglass,;ven 7surely not <ust in retrospect9
An inchling, innocently branching palm.These can be put aside, made stories of
&hile ademoiselle spreads out the rest face%up,erself e=cited as a child> or ?uestioned
+ike incoherent faces in a crowd,;ach with its scrap of highly colored
;vidence the +aw must piece together.)ky%blue ostrich2 +ikely story.
auve of the witch!s cloak white, severed fingers0luck2 Detain her. The plot thickensAs all at once two pieces interlock.
ademoiselle does borders ( 75ot so fast.
A +ondon dusk, December last.@hatter silenced in the library
This grown man reenters, wearing grey.A medium. All e=cept him have seen
0anel slid back, recess e=plored,An ob<ect at once uni?ue and commonDisplayed, planted in a plain tole
@asket the sub<ect now considers
Through shut eyes, saying in effect#';ven as voices reach me vaguely
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A dry saw%shriek drowns them out,)ome loud machinery ( a lumber mill2
Far uphill in the fir forestTrees tower, tense with shock,
$roaning and cracking as they crash groundward.*ut hidden here is a freak fragment
"f a pattern comple= in appearance only.&hat it seems to show is superficial
5e=t to that long%term lamination"f hazard and craft, the karma that has
ade it matter in the first place.0lywood. 0iece of a puzzle.' Applause
Acknowledged by an opening of lids
Upon the thing itself. A sudden dread ( *ut to go back. All this lay years ahead.9
ademoiselle does borders. )traight%edge pieces
Align themselves with earth or sky-n twos and threes, naive cosmogonists
&hose views clash. 5omad inlanders meanwhile*egin to cluster where the totem
"f a certain vibrant egg%yolk yellow"r pelt of what emerging animal
Acts on the straggler like a trumpet callTo form a more sophisticated unit.
*y suppertime two ragged wooden cloudsave formed. -n one, a )heik with beard
And flashing sword hilt 7he is all but finished9)teps forward on a tiger skin. A piece
)naps shut, and fangs gnash out at us6-n the second cloud ( they gaze from cloud to cloud&ith marked if undecipherable feeling (
ost of a dark%eyed woman veiled in mauve-s being helped down from her camel 7kneeling9
*y a small backward%looking slave or page%boy7er son, thinks ademoiselle mistakenly9
&hose feet have not been found. *ut lucky finds-n the last minutes before bed
Anchor both factions to the scene!s limitsAnd, by so doing, orient
Them eye to eye across the green abyss.The yellow promises, oh bliss,
To be in time a sumptuous tent.
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Puzzle begun - write in the day!s space,Then, while she bathes, peek at ademoiselle!s
0age to the cur/# '. . . cette innocente mre,@e pauvre enfant, ?ue deviendront%ils2'
er azure script is curlicued like pieces"f the puzzle she will be telling him about.
7Fearful incuriosity of childhood6'Tu as l!accent allemande,' said Domini?ue.
-ndeed. ademoiselle was only French by marriage.@hild of an ;nglish mother, a remote
Descendant of the great e=plorer )peke,And 0russian father. 5o one knew. - heard it
+ong afterwards from her nephew, a U5
-nterpreter. is matter%of%fact accountTouched old strings. y poor ademoiselle,&ith BCC about to shake
This world where 'each was the enemy, each the friend'To its foundations, kept, though signed in blood,
er peace a shameful secret to the end.9')chlaf wohl, ch/ri.' er kiss. er thumb@rossing my brow against the dreams to come.
This &orld that shifts like sand, its unforeseen
@onsolidations and elate routine,&hose 0otentate had lacked a retinue2
+o6 it assembles on the shrinking $reen.
$unmetal%skinned or pale, all plumes and scars,
"f assalage the noblest avatars ( The very coffee%bearer in his vair
est is a swart ighness, ne=t to ours.
4ef easing *oredom, and iced syrups, thirst,
-n guessed%at glooms old wives who know the worst"utsweat that virile fiction of the 5ew#
'-nsh!Allah, he will tire (' '( or kill her first6'
7ardly a proper sub<ect for the ome,
&ork of ( dear 8ichard, - shall let you combArchives and learned <ournals for his name (
A minor lion attending on $/rEme.9
&hile, thick as Thebes whose presently complete$ates close behind them, ouri and Afreet
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*oth claim the 0age. e wonders whom to serve,And what his duties are, and where his feet,
And if we!ll find, as some before us did,That piece of Distance deep in which lies hid
:our tiny ape= sugary with sun,;ternal Triangle, $reat 0yramid6
Then )ky alone is left, a hundred blueFragments in revolution, with no clue
To where a 5iche will open. uite a task,0utting together eaven, yet we do.
-t!s done. ere under the table all along&ere those missing feet. -t!s done.
The dog!s tail thumping. ademoiselle sketching
@ostumes for a coming harem dramaTo star the goosegirl. All too soon the swift
Dismantling. +ifted by two corners,The puzzle hung together ( and did not.-rresistibly a populace
Unstitched of its attachments, rattled down.
0ower went to pieces as the witch)lithered easily from irtue!s gown.The blue held out for time, but crumbled, too.
The city had long fallen, and the tent,A separating sauce mousseline,
*een swept away. 8emained the green"n which the grown%ups gambled. A green dusk.
First lightning bugs. +ast glow of west$reen in the false eyes of 7coincidence9
Our mangy tiger safe on his bared hearth.
*efore the puzzle was bo=ed and readdressed
To the puzzle shop in the mid%)i=ties,)omething tells me that one piece contrived
To stay in the boy!s pocket. ow do - know2- know because so many later puzzles
ad missing pieces ( aggie Teyte!s high notes$one at the war!s end, end of the vogue for collies,
A house torn down> and hadn!t ademoiselle
4ept back her pitiful bit of truth as well2-!ve spent the last days, furthermore,
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8ansacking Athens for that translation of '0alme.' 5either the $oethehaus nor the 5ational +ibrary
)eems able to unearth it. :et - can!t1ust be imagining. -!ve seen it. 4now
ow much of the sun%ripe originalFelicity 8ilke made himself forego
7&ho loved French words ( verger, mGr, parfumer9-n order to render its underlying sense.
4now already in that tongue of his&hat 0ains, what monolithic Truths
)hadow stanza to stanza!s symmetrical8hyme%rutted pavement. 4now that ground plan left
)ublime and barren, where the warm 8omance
)tone by stone faded, cooled> the fluted nounsade taller, lonelier than life*y leaf%carved capitals in the afterglow.
The owlet umlaut peeps and hootsAbove the open vowel. And after rain
A deep reverberation fills with stars.
+ost, is it, buried2 "ne more missing piece2
*ut nothing!s lost. "r else# all is translation
And every bit of us is lost in it7"r found ( - wander through the ruin of )
5ow and then, wondering at the peacefulness9
And in that loss a self%effacing tree,@olor of conte=t, imperceptibly
8ustling with its angel, turns the wasteTo shade and fiber, milk and memory.
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Lost in Translation (poem)From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
James Merrill's childhood home was a 50-room mansion called "The Orchard," located
ino!thampton, ew #ork
"Lost in Translation" is a narrati$e poem %y James Merrill &()*+((5, one of the mostst!died and cele%rated of his shorter works .t was ori/inally p!%lished in The NewYorker ma/aine on 1pril 2, (34, and p!%lished in %ook form in (3* in Divine Comedies
The poem opens with a description of a s!mmer Merrill spent as a child in a /reat ho!sein The amptons, with his /o$erness, waitin/ patiently for a rented wooden 6i/sawp!le to arri$e in the mail from an 7pper 8ast ide Manhattan p!le rental shop
"9ost in Translation" is Merrill's most antholo/ied poem, and has %een widely praised %yliterary critics incl!din/ arold :loom
Contents
;hide<
• :ack/ro!nd to the poem
• ) Technical description
• = 1 mysterio!s epi/raph in >erman
• 4 Mademoiselle
• 5 1 p!le within a p!le
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• * ol$ed?
• 3 8@ternal links
Background to the poem;edit<
Merrill wrote in his lifetime mainly for a select /ro!p of friends, fans, and critics, ande@pected readers of "9ost in Translation" to ha$e some knowled/e of his %io/raphy :orn inew #ork Aity, Merrill was the son of the fo!nder of the world's lar/est %rokera/e firm een6oyed a pri$ile/ed !p%rin/in/ in economic and c!lt!ral terms, altho!/h his intelli/enceand e@ceptional financial circ!mstances often made him feel lonely as a child Merrill wasthe only son of Aharles 8 Merrill and ellen .n/ram &Merrill had two older half si%lin/sfrom his father's first marria/e
>i$en that his parents were often preocc!pied, his father with %!siness, his motherwith social o%li/ations, Merrill de$eloped a n!m%er of close relationships with ho!seholdstaff "9ost in Translation" descri%es a profo!nd childhood %ond with the woman who ta!/hthim French and >erman Merrill's parents wo!ld di$orce in (=(, when Merrill was thirteen
years old, in a scandal that was front pa/e news on the ew #ork Times
Technical description;edit<
ot only is "9ost in Translation" a poem a%o!t a child p!ttin/ to/ether a 6i/saw p!le, it isan interpreti$e p!le, desi/ned to en/a/e a reader's interest in sol$in/ mysteries at$ario!s narrati$e le$els
The poem is dedicated to Merrill's friend, the distin/!ished poet, critic, andtranslator Bichard oward .t consists of )5 lines with an additional fo!r line epi/raph Thepoem is mainly in !nrhymed pentameter %!t incl!des a sectionin B!%aiyat C!atrain stanas "9ost in Translation" may %e classified asan a!to%io/raphical narrati$e or narrati$e poem, %!t is %etter !nderstood as a series
of em%edded narrati$es &stories within a story
A mysterious epigraph in German;edit<
7n!s!al for Merrill, the poem %ears a mysterio!s fo!r-line epi/raph in >erman, which isprinted witho!t translation or attri%!tionD
Diese Tage, die leer dir scheinen
und wertlos für das All,
haben Wurzeln zwischen den teinen
und trinken dort überall!
.n James Merrill's own 8n/lish $ersion of this epi/raph &p!%lished in (25
in "ate ettings, these fo!r lines are translated into 8n/lish as followsD
These da#s which, like #ourself,
eem em$t# and effaced
%ave avid roots that delve
To work dee$ in the waste!
Mademoiselle;edit<
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"Mademoiselle does borders...." Merrill's childhood
/o$erness was from 1lsace, on the %order %etween France
and >ermany
.n "9ost in Translation", the narrator's p!le-makin/companion is his French /o$erness, whom he repeatedlyrefers to as &ademoiselle! Eart mother, part teacher,part nanny, part ser$ant, she is descri%ed %y Merrill as"sto!t, plain, carrot-haired, de$o!t"
1t one point in the poem, Mademoiselle speaks the samephrase in French and in >erman .n addition to playin/with the %oy's marionettes and doin/ 6i/saw p!les withhim, Mademoiselle is teachin/ the yo!n/ James Merrilllan/!a/es which wo!ld %e critical to makin/ him thesophisticated and !r%ane lyric poet of later life :y /i$in/name, in se$eral lan/!a/es, to o%6ects and tasks aro!ndthe home, Mademoiselle helps the yo!n/ James Merrill
come to !nderstand a do!%leness a%o!t lan/!a/e itself,that o%6ects and acti$ities can ha$e different names andconnotations across lan/!a/es
From the child's point of $iew, the "p!le" /oes well%eyond what is takin/ place on the card ta%le Merrill isp!lin/ thro!/h the mystery of his e@istence, p!lin/thro!/h the mystery of what the world is, what o%6ects are,what people do in life 1n !nspoken p!le is sol$ed whenthe yo!n/ Merrill determines what his relationship toMademoiselle is, /i$en the freC!ent a%sence of his ownmother Mademoiselle knows "her place", he writes,indicatin/ his first conscio!sness of his own class
pri$ile/e, as well as &perhaps the limits placed onMademoiselle's maternal role
#et other p!les are not sol$ed !ntil later in life 1t onepoint the narrator's $oice mod!lates into that of an ad!ltWe find o!t that Mademoiselle hid her tr!e ori/ins fromthe %oy &and from his family %eca!se of the politicaltensions leadin/ !p to (=( and to the o!t%reak of WorldWar .. Mademoiselle claimed to %e French and hid her>erman or 1lsatian %irth he pres!ma%ly /ained aFrench family name thro!/h marria/e to a soldier whodied in the :attle of erd!n in World War . &(4+(2Mademoiselle co!ld let no one know she was >erman for
fear of losin/ her 6o% and her employers' tr!st Thise@plains the fact that Merrill's own French, learned in
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imitation of his /o$erness, was always spoken with asli/ht >erman accent The %oy finds o!t the f!ll tr!th onlyas an ad!lt, after a chance con$ersation withMademoiselle's /rown nephew, a 7nitedations interpreter , who tells him the story of the/o$erness's tr!e ori/ins
The poem incl!des se$eral other secondary narrati$es,incl!din/ a section in which the p!le itself is p!tto/ether .nspired %y Omar GhayyHm's'ubai#at C!atrains,Merrill descri%es an ima/inary harem-like (thcent!ry Orientalist paintin/, %y an alle/ed followerof Jean-9Ion >Irme, that %e/ins to appear as the p!lepieces are p!t to/ether When the p!le is nearly done,the piece that was missin/ the whole time is fo!nd !nderthe ta%le at the %oy's feet The missin/ piece is, in fact, anima/e of the %oy's feet When it is p!t in place, the portraitof the little %oy in the p!le is finally complete
A puzzle within a puzzle...;edit<
"This grown man reenters, wearing grey..."
1t the center of the poem is a mysterio!s seC!ence inwhich the poet, attendin/ a present-day sIance, descri%esa medi!m who is a%le to di$ine that a piece of a wooden 6i/saw p!le has %een concealed inside a %o@
To !nderstand "9ost in Translation", the reader m!st worko!t and sol$e a p!le in the narrati$e te@t, re$ealed %y aconfession Merrill the ad!lt makes at the end of the poemThe little %oy has apparently kept a piece of the 6i/sawp!le, in the shape of a palm tree, thro!/ho!t his lifeThis fact has 6o//ed the memory in Merrill of a poemcalled "Ealme" %y the French ym%olist poet Ea!lalIry &23+(45, and that memory in t!rn hasreminded Merrill of a >erman translation he has onceseen of that same poem %y poet Bainer MariaBilke&235+()*
The poet knows that he has seen and read the Bilketranslation %efore, %eca!se he can pict!re the words onthe pa/e "The owlet !mla!t peeps and hootsK 1%o$e the
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open $owel", Merrill writes, in some of the poem's mostC!oted lines #et despite remem%erin/ the e@perience ofreadin/ the Bilke translation, he cannot locate a copyin 1thens, >reece &where Merrill and his partner La$idJackson were li$in/ si@ months of the year, and %e/ins todo!%t whether it e@ists e@cept in his ima/ination The
poem "9ost in Translation" ass!mes the form of a letter toBichard oward seekin/ an act!al copy of that translation
...Soled!;edit<
"An inchling, innocently branching palm..."
:!t the translation t!rns o!t not to ha$e %een lost, or afi/ment of the poet's ima/ination, for it is !sed to write thepoem "9ost .n Translation" The >erman epi/raph at the%e/innin/ of the poem offers the key cl!e here The fo!rlines come from that "lost" >erman translation %y Bilke ofalIry's "Ealme" &Merrill's own 8n/lish translation of"Ealme" is the so!rce of the translated C!atrain a%o$eee Merrill's "Ea!l alIryD (alme" in "ate ettings, (25
The ori/inal in FrenchD
Ces )ours *ui te semblent vides
+t $erdus $our lunivers-nt des racines avides
.ui travaillent les d/serts!
from Ea!l alIry, Aharmes &()) Ealmeclassical diain 3th tana
The sol!tion to the p!le of the poem ishidden in plain si/ht all alon/ "othin/'slost", Merrill s!//ests, when it comes totranslatin/ e@perience or memory, at leastaccordin/ to the way Merrill !nderstandso!r h!man e@perience The poem's coda
sal!tes the power of the transformati$eima/ination to reco$er meanin/ in theworld from all we see and remem%er .ts
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lan/!a/e and phrasin/ offer a $eiledtri%!te %y Merrill to the poet he mostadmired from his father's/eneration, Wallace te$ens &a!thor of"The Ealm at the 8nd of the Mind"D
:!t nothin/'s lost Or elseD all is translation 1nd e$ery %it of !s is lost in it
1nd in that loss a self-effacin/ tree,
Aolor of conte@t, impercepti%ly
B!stlin/ with its an/el, t!rns the waste
To shade and fi%er, milk and memory
"#ternallinks;edit<
• additional
commentaryon "9ost inTranslation"
• Lenisa
Aomanesc!D"Translationand herBetin!e"
• 9eon adelD
"Beplacin/the Waste9andD JamesMerrill's!est forTranscendent 1!thority"
Aate/oriesD
• 1merican poems
• arrati$e poems
• Eoetry %y James
Merrill• (34 poems
• Works ori/inally
p!%lished in The
ew #orker
• 9an/!a/e and
translation in
fiction
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On 'Lost in Translation"
David 4alstone
H I'+ost in Translation'J begins with the apparently random way things
happen to us and it includes a number of episodes not e=plicitly related. HThe poem weaves connections between the world of the child, vividly recalled
in the present tense, and that of the remembering adult, who only makes hisfull entrance in the past tenses of the long rhapsodic coda. 7;ven a more
recent episode ( a mind%reader in +ondon ( is told as if the child were perceiving it# 'This grown man reenters, wearing grey.'9 An odd massing of
consciousness takes place. At first the poet speaks distantly of 'the child,' 'the boy'# it isnKt until midway through the poem that the childKs e=perience so
recaptures him as to identify it in the first person, his very self# ' Puzzlebegun - write.'
I4alstone enumerates the various 'puzzles' that make up the poem.J H Allthese e=periences are felt, without an=iety, as analogous# ademoiselleKs
secret, the lost 8ilke translation, the al/ry poem, the e=citement of puttingtogether the puzzle, the feel of the summer without parents. The sense of
mysterious relations is crystallized for us when the puzzle, as if by magic 7andin the only regular stanzas of the poem, the 8ubaiyat stanza errill likes so
much9, gathers before our eyes# '+o6 -t assembles on the shrinking $reen.' Afable emerges# grandly confronting one another, a )hiek and a veiled woman,
who appear to be ?uarrelling, like "beron and Titania, over a young boy, a page. The scene is captured in the manner fairy tales use> according to *runo
*ettelheim, the enchantment transfigures the violent and critical passages oflife. "nly below the surface do we feel the stronger implications of the
completed puzzle, ';ternal Triangle, $reat 0yramid6' and its relevance to thechildKs own abandoned and perhaps disputed state.
&hat is interesting about this particular version of 'The *roken ome' is thatit is absorbed into a larger constellation of analogies whose model is
'translation.' The poem returns at the end to translation, to al/ryKs poem and8ilkeKs version, to the sense of what is foregone and what is gained, and to the
conviction that nothing is 'lost' in translation, or that 'All is translation L Andevery bit of us is lost in it.' errill, unable to find the 8ilke version, still feels
he knows 'ow much of the sun%ripened original L Felicity 8ilke madehimself forego H' I4alstone continues to ?uote to the passage that ends 'A
deep reverberation fills with stars.'J -n his own absorption of 8ilkeKs al/ry,errill performs the process acted out so many times in the poem. After the
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'warm 8omance,' after the enchanting childhood, he is left with the adult
conviction or realization of a 'ground plan left L )ublime and barren,' the pattern discovered and echoed in unsuspected corners of life, 'color of
conte=t,' what might have seemed waste transmuted to 'shade and filter, milkand memory.'
from David 4alstone, '1ames errill# Transparent Things' 7@hapter 9in Five Temperaments 75ew :ork# "=ford U 0, BCMM9, BNO%BNP.
1ames errill
Foreign languages entered my life early in the person of my governess.
Although we called her ademoiselle she was not a spinster but a widow. 5either was she French, or even, as she led us to believe, *elgian, but part
;nglish and part, to her undying shame, 0russian. H
*y the time - was eight - had learned from her enough French and $erman to
understand that ;nglish was merely one of many ways to e=press things. Asingle everyday ob<ect could be called assiette or Teller as well as plate ( or
were plates themselves subtly different in France and $ermany2ademoiselleKs French and +atin prayers seemed to invoke absolutes beyond
the ken of our )unday school pageants. At the same time, - was discovering
how the everyday sounds of ;nglish could mislead you by having more thanone meaning. "ne afternoon at home - opened a random book and read#'&here is your husband, Alice2' '-n the library, sampling the port.' -f samples
were little s?uares of wallpaper or chintz, and ports were where ships droppedanchor, this hardly clarified the behavior of AliceKs husband. +ong after
ademoiselleKs e=egesis, the phrase haunted me. &ords werenKt what theyseemed. The mother tongue could inspire both fascination and distrust.
From 1ames errill, 'Acoustical @hambers' 7originally published in the Nework Times !ook Review in BCQN9, rep. in 1. D. c@latchy, ;d. Recitative"
Prose by #ames $errill 75orth 0oint# )an Francisco, BCQP9, %R.
)tephen :enser
S:enserKs e=tended survey of '+ost in Translation' focuses on numerous passages and
discusses them in detail. -n this, he is centered on errillKs description of the page in the
<igsaw puzzle.J H ademoiselle perhaps thinks the boy is the veiled womanKs son, and
if so she might be swayed by her own maternal feelings or by her keen awareness of her
employersK domestic plight. &e know that she knows a divorce is in the offing, becausethe boy sneaks a look at her letter to a cur/ in Alsace, where he reads 'cette innocent
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mre, L @e pauvre enfant, ?ue deviendront%ils2' I7French9# that innocent mother, L That
poor child, what will become of them2J The boy assumes that these are the figures in
the puzzle, but errill lets us understand, as we fit together our own pieces, that she is
worried about him and his mother. This is pure errill, this casting of the poemKs one
direct reference to its emotional and dramatic center in French and the misinterpreting
of it. The principle of restraint is honored even as the imminent trauma is specified andauthenticating detail is provided. These lines tell us that ademoiselle, contrary to the
boyKs superior observation about what she 'thinks mistakenly,' would not be all that
wrong to believe that the 'slave or page%boy' is the veiled womanKs son.
from )tephen :enser, '*ackward%+ooking Figures' 7chapter B9 in The %onsuming
$yth" The &ork of #ames $errill 7@ambridge# arvard U 0, BCQM9, NN.
8ichard )ez0erhaps errillKs most revealing metamorphosis of 0romethean fire is into the
linguistic process of '+ost in Translation' 7The New orker , P April BCMR9.ere he remembers piecing together a puzzle with his multilingual governess,
which evokes the more recent memory of a $erman translation by 8ilke ofaleryKs '0alme.' Although he cannot find the translation, he imagines what is
lost and retained in it
:et - canKt
1ust be imagining. -Kve seen it. 4nowow much of the sun%ripe original
Felicity 8ilke made himself forego7&ho loved French wordsverger, mGr, parfumer9
-n order to render its underlying sense.
For a poem in which the piecing together of a puzzle at every <uncture
responds to the fitting of words into a poetic pattern, the progress from ameditation on what is lost in literary translation to the transformation of life
into literature is ?uite natural# '*ut nothingKs lost. "r else# all is translation L
And every bit of us is lost in it.'
'+ost in Translation' is about errillKs poetry in even more telling ways. +ikethe oeuvre itself, the legend of the puzzleseen through the almost
predominant pattern of its designrepresents an ';ternal Triangle'# a page7whom the governess imagines to be a son9 torn between service to his sire or
his sireKs wife. 7-t is no surprise when the pageKs missing feet are found underthe table with the childKs own.9 And the shapes of the individual pieces of the
puzzle havelike the symbolistKs wordstheir own significance
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any take
)hapes known alreadythe craftsmanKs repertoire 5ice in its limitationfrom other puzzles#
&itch on broomstick, ostrich, hourglass,;ven 7surely not <ust in retrospect9
An inchling, innocently branching palm
*ut nowhere does errill speak ?uite so precisely about his own craft the
individual poems and the totality of his workas in the description by amedium of a 'hand%sawn' individual piece of the puzzle
*ut hidden here is a freak fragment"f a pattern comple= in appearance only.
&hat it seems to show is superficial
5e=t to that long%term lamination"f hazard and craft, the karma that hasade it matter in the first place.
0lywood. 0iece of a puzzle.
The puzzle e=ists in errillKs poetry The whole is composed of intricately
related parts, and it rewards e=plication even though once it has been puzzledout there may be little to do but dismantle it like the puzzle in '+ost in
Translation.' -ts emphasis on 'lamination' and 'craft' returns us to adiscussion of the forms of his poetry.
IH.J
From '1ames errillKs "edipal Fire.' -n arold *loom 7ed.9, #ames $errill . 5ew :ork# @helsea ouse 0ublishers, BCQO. "riginally 0ublished
in Parnassus #B 7FallL&inter BCMR9. V BCMR by the 0oetry in 8eviewFoundation.
)tephen :enser
'+ost in Translation' calls into play three autobiographical situations. -n themost recent one, which the poem outlines last, the setting is Athens, where
errill had his second home, on Athinaion ;fivon )treet at the foot of ount+ykabettos, from BCOC until the late BCMWs, and the sub<ect is his rereading of
alery!s magnificent lyric, '0alme,' and his subse?uent search through thecity!s libraries for 8ilke!s translation of that poem into $erman. errill half%
recalls having seen the translation years earlier, but when he cannot turn up a
copy, he wonders whether he hasn!t imagined it. That the translation doese=ist, and that he eventually finds it, his epigraphan e=cerpt from 8ilke!s
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version attests. The memory of the French and the $erman poems, and the
memory in particular of the e=hortation to '0atience,' calls up 'is Frenchademoiselle,' in whose care he spent that summer in the family!s home in
)outhampton and on whom he had a crush, though she must have been a goodthirty years older than he, since '-n real life' she had been 'a widow since
erdun.' That summer is the second situation in the poem. -t occupies sectionsone, three, and four of five unmarked sections. The moment at which this
memory of BCM begins to unfold in the poet!s mind, one of his variations onthe celebrated madeleine passage in ' la Recherche du temps perdu, comes at
the end of his second verse paragraph#
5oon coffee. ail. The watch that also waited
0inned to her heart, poor gold, throws up its hands 5o puzzle6 )teaming bitterness
er sugars draw pops back into his mouth, translated#'0atience, cheri. $eduld, mein )chatz.'
7Thus, reading alery the other eveningAnd seeming to recall a 8ilke version of '0alme,'
That sunlit paradigm whereby the treeTaps a sweet wellspring of authority,
The hour came back. 0atience dans l!azur.$eduld im . . . immelblau2 ademoiselle.9
*y setting out first the remembered e=perience and only then, in the
parenthesis, e=posing the cause of the memory, the rereading of alery!s poem, errill!s narrative se?uence reverses 0roust!s. "ne result is that we arereminded of the elusiveness of a 'source.' -s the poem!s real source the
relationship with ademoiselle2 "r is it indeed alery!s lyric2 +ife orliterature2 To whose soft, imperative '0atience' is it finally traceable2 "r is
the source better represented by 8ilke!s translation2 errill foreshadows theanswer formulated at poem!s end in this passage!s little vorte= of
metamorphoses, where the sugar cubes translate the coffee!s taste, the coffee!s bitterness renders the boy!s disappointment, that disappointment is sweetened
by ademoiselle!s counsel, and her words accidentally predict his knowledgeof alery!s lineswhich antedate them. Through it all, the past moment of
bittersweet anticipation and the present moment of nostalgia figure each other.
$iven such density, it is remarkable that the poem!s five parts make up such a
clearly structured, nearly symmetrical arrangement. The first part, about thewait for and the arrival of the puzzle, is in a fle=ible mode that errill devised
for poems in &ater )treet and has been refining ever since# verse paragraphsof occasionally rhymed iambic pentameter lines. This part concludes when,
after the puzzle!s pieces have all been spread out face up on a card table in the
library , 'The plot thickens L As all at once two pieces interlock.' *ecause the'plot' is the poem!s in addition to the puzzle!s, the page!s as well as the
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home!s, the first section interlocks <ust here with the second, where errill
gives up the blank verse for a line that is shorter and more and moreinsistently accentual and alliterative. The situation changes too, to the third
situation mentioned earlier, as the poem records an e=perience that 'lay yearsahead' of the boyin +ondon, where the poet witnesses a demonstration by a
medium. "stensibly an afterthought, this second section fits with the first partly because it too takes place in a library and partly because it involves a
piece of a puzzlethough there are also fundamental congruences. errillshifts back into blank verse for the central section!s two paragraphs, where he
describes the progress made on the puzzle by the boy and his ademoiselleeven as he reveals the latter!s background, which is a good deal more comple=
than he had realized when he was eleven. +ike the second section, the fourthhas its own distinctive prosody, in this case Rubaiyat ?uatrains. This section
describes the completed puzzle, which takes its picture from a painting
allegedly done by a disciple of 1.%+. $erome that has an '"riental' sub<ect. -t breaks off in the middle of a stanza, after not ?uite two lines, and the lastsection, which returns to the verse paragraph, tells of the dismantling of the
puzzle and the poet!s search for the 8ilke translation.
errill!s five%part organization, with its prosodically similar odd%numbered
sections and uni?ue even%numbered sections, might also have been modeledon the musical scheme known as rondo form 7or second rondo form9, which
often follows an A*A@A pattern. And if it were not, perhaps he would notob<ect to the comparison, since he has commented more than once over the
years on the potential usefulness of musical forms to the poet.
I . . . J
As it happens, he began going to the opera in 5ew :orkan e=perience herecalls fondly in 'atinees'when he was eleven years old, which would
have been the year commemorated in '+ost in Translation.'
The opening lines of the poem recall the boy!s wait for the puzzle, seemingly
lost in translation from the puzzle rental shopand at the same time theycon<ure that absence, heavy with imminence, that is the matri= of all poems#
I?uotes ll. B%BWJ
ardly a line here but that tugs in errillian fashion in two directions. -f the'library' implies intellectual workthe study of $erman, under the eye of
ademoiselle, or of '0alme' in 8ilke!s translationthe card table introducesthe element of play, and together they go some way toward defining the
e=perience of assembling a difficult puzzle, or the e=perience of writing a
poem. The more and less insistent o=ymorons in the phrases 'keeps nevercoming,' 'Full of unfulfillment,' and ')our windfalls,' and the latent
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antitheses of 'Daylight' and 'lamplight' and 'arisen' and 'fallen' embody
errill!s special knotty grain of thought. &hile the rhyme near the end of this?uotation, 'talk' and 'walk,' is a little flourish that acknowledges this tour de
force of coupling, the term that sums it all up is 'see%saw'which perhapsalso slyly e=tends the reference to the daily language lesson 7with its
con<ugated verbs9, itself opposed 7as though to iterate the opening line!s balance9 by 'picnic,' whose own rhyming reduplication is echoed by 'see%
saw.'
-f we do hear a punning allusion to a language lesson in that last term, that is
partly because these lines are rich with a sense of time!s own richness. Thenegated continuous construction at the end of errill!s second line vibrates
with possibility. The present tense and the implied passage of time continue tocorrect each other through the second sentence, while in the third the
'trickling sands' suggest both the seeming desolation of the boy!s life and thehourglass that the dragging days keep inverting. Unobtrusive but most pi?uant
of all is the fragment between ?uotation marks, which une=pectedlyintroduces the past tense. -t would be said, years later, by someone
affectionately remembering the collie. The single word '!did!' suddenlyframes the whole scene, a miniature puzzle of activities, in the past. The
following line confirms this point of view on things, for 'back of us' has atemporal dimension too, so that the phrase ')our windfalls' summarizes that
entire little world, full of love and absence, good fortune and disaster.
This scene will not stay past, however. As 'The clock that also waited L 0innedto her heart, poor gold, throws up its hands,' errill again resorts to the pasttense. &aitedthrows, seesaw. 5o wonder the watch, which ought to be
able to tell e=actly what time it is, throws up its hands. As the hands meet atnoon, so past and present keep converging in the poem. Though these early
con<unctions, if noticed at all, are likely to seem merely ?uirky, they indicatethe profound relationship between past and present implicit in the poemKs
wizard initial sentenceas transfi=ing in its way as '+ongtemps, <e me suiscouche de bonne heure.' And make no mistake# 0roust is behind this poem as
much as alery and 8ilke are, as he is behind so much of errill!s work. -farcel solves his long%standing problem and embarks on his 'vocation' in the
$uermantes!s library at the end of ' la Recherche du temps perdu, errillassembles his puzzle in the family library, and then in the +ondon library, and
finally in the unnamed library that presumably yields the 8ilke translation.And it is 0roust who adopts the relevant stereoscopic view of his youthful
e=perience, and who uses 'translation' as a further metaphor for theelucidation of the artwork#
. . . ce livre essentiel, le seul livre vrai, un grand ecrivain n!a pas, dans le sens
courant, a l!inventer, puis?u!il e=iste de<a en chacun de nous, mais a letraduire. +e devoir et la tache d!un ecrivain sont ceu= d!un traducteur .
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. . . the essential, the only true book, though in the ordinary sense of the word
it does not have to be 'invented' by a great writerfor it e=ists already ineach one of ushas to be translated by him, The function and the task of a
writer are those of a translator.
-n such a passage as the opening verse paragraph of '+ost in Translation,' the
smallest pieces fall into place partly because of the poet!s tolerance for perfecting.
I. . .J
"nly a poet of the fiercest concentration would find in the stark translation awhole miniature acropolis, discover the pun on 'capitals,' and not only make
us see in the umlaut the eyes of an owl but also let us hear its hoots in his
assonance 7'owlet,' 'umlaut,' 'vowel'9. &hen the boy!s puzzle arrives, welearn in the third verse paragraph, it turns out to be 'A superior one,containing a thousand hand%sawn, L )andal%scented pieces.' These last words,with their lovely run of sounds 7'thousand,' 'hand%sawn,' 'sandal'9, are the
e=act analogy to those pieces .
From one angle, then, '+ost in Translation' is itself an intricate puzzle. -t is aconfirmation of this intricacy that there are several other dimensions to the
relationship between puzzle and poem. For e=ample, the puzzle!s scene, whenit finally takes shape, implicitly stages the situation in the boy!s family. Again,
the puzzle!s composition reflects the poet!s material. -f much of errill!s lifehas been devoted to writing and reading, so that the new poem will avail itself
of forms tested before by him and by others, the cutter of the puzzle!s pieceshas his tradition#
any take)hapes known alreadythe craftsman!s repertoire
5ice in its limitationfrom other puzzles#&itch on broomstick, ostrich, hourglass,
;ven 7surely not <ust in retrospect9
An inchling, innocently branching palm.These can be put aside, made stories of &hile ademoiselle spreads out the rest face up. . . .
These specific shapes have their own immediate relevance> errill invites usto put them aside and make stories of them that will suit '+ost in Translation.'
Thus we might say that the ostrich figures the boy!s state of mind and the poem!s manner. +eft to his own devices, fearful of what he might see, the
young errill has hidden his head in the puzzle!s diverting desertrepeated
here in the hourglass!s recovery of the first verse paragraph!s 'trickling sands'and 'tense oasis.' "f course the oasis has also given the 'inchling, innocently
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I. . .J
And then beneath each writer!s e=perience is his mother tongue, with itsincalculable depths. This heritage is one sub<ect of the poem!s second section,
the parenthetical digression in which errill recalls the medium!s performance. This last consists of solving another kind of puzzle, of
identifying without seeing it an ob<ect that has been shown to an audience,then 'planted in a plain tole L @asket.' errill!s translation of the man!s
musings aloud 'Through shut eyes' moves back in time, as the medium hearsin his mind!s ear '!a dry saw%shriek, L )ome loud machinerya lumber mill2 L
Far uphill in the fir forest L Trees tower, tense with shock, L $roaning andcracking as they crash groundward.' As the medium tunes in that episode
earlier in the ob<ect!s history, the reader begins to hear the poet!s ownmachinery. 8ather like 0ound in his first @anto!s palimpsest, errill turns to a
?uasi Anglo )a=on verse to remind us again how the present translates the past. The transformations in a poem like this one, errill implies as the
medium identifies the hidden ob<ect, are nothing compared to those of theforces that have produced its materials#
I?uotes ll. M%QNJ
The real marvel is the ogygian linguistic and historical process, which, like the
poem, and indeed like the life, involves plan and accident. )uch are the unitiesof world and page.
&hile that thought has its reassuring side, it also holds a certain 'dread.' To
have one!s eyes opened to this karmic process is not only to see how one!s present uses one!s past days, however 'vides L ;t perdus' they might haveseemed, but also to see that one is but an ephemeral form of this always
economizing flu=. The 'opening of lids' on 'the thing itself' causesa frisson because in addition to the medium!s eyelids, the 'lids' include the
one on the 'tole L @asket.' &hen the poet tells us that 'All this lay yearsahead,' we hear not only a reason for breaking off this divagation on the
medium but also relief at the thought that he can avoid for some time yetenry 1ames!s 'distinguished thing.' -n other words, 'this' lies in the future
from the point of view of the boy and in either the past or the future,depending on the referent, from the point of view of the man writing the
poem. e has characteristically gone ahead and back at once. )omewhere the poor gold watch will be throwing up its hands againwhile 0roust will be
clapping his.
'*ut to go back. All this lay years ahead'# errill!s use of the past tense in
connection with the future event has much to do with the line!s allure. &e
return to it because it rises above time so, and as we return, it takes still otherforms. &hile 'All this' is the evening in the +ondon library, as well as the
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we know partly because the veiled woman looks 'across the green abyss' at
another figure# 'a )heik with beard L And flashing sword hilt 7he is all butfinished9 L )teps forward on a tiger skin. A piece L )naps shut, and fangs gnash
out at us6' And we associate the )heik with the fatherwhat a delicate houseof cards this is6not only because of the pun on 'finished' but also because,
as we learn in the poem!s last section, the boy!s home has its own 'mangy tiger safe on his bared hearth.' These last words might stand for much of this
poem!s parado=ical ?uality, for errill!s 'hearth' hides his 'heart' and theheart of the family!s crisis, even as the ad<ective 'bared' discloses their
presence.
'"ne should be as clear as one!s natural reticence allows one to be'# arianne
oore!s dictum might have been the guiding light in this as in many another poem by errill.
ademoiselle has her own family matters to conceal. :ears later, speakingFrench to a French friend, the poet discovers that he has a $erman accent.
Thus he finds out that ademoiselle!s first language was $erman. French bymarriage, she finds it practical, in the prewar atmosphere, to pass. The poem!s
ubi?uitous dichotomizing takes the form in her of 'French hopes' set against'$erman fears.' *ut her heritage is <igsaw%complicated itself, since she is the
'@hild of an ;nglish mother . . . And 0russian father' and was evidently raisedin Alsace. 5o wonder she likes to do the borders of puzzles. 5o wonder either
that her nephew turns out to be a 'U5 L -nterpreter. ' That last detail is one of
several that indicate the relationship between her and the poet, who, in hiscapacity as translator of alery and 8ilke and the others, has an analogousoccupation. e after all learned French and $erman from hernot to mention
much else that would help make him the kind of poet he is. 7ight not that bewhy errill tells us that she is a 'remote L Descendant of the great e=plorer
)peke'2 Though in fact she seems to have descended from the Americane=plorer ;dmund Fanning, 1ohn anning )peke fits into the puzzle better. 1ust
as )peke discovered the source of the ictoria 5ile, so we might find in him,with his convenient name, an emblem of errill!s own fluent e=plorations.9
A partner in the boy!s creative enterprises, ademoiselle is muse as well assubstitute mother. &hen we hear that the U5 interpreter!s account of her
background has 'Touched old strings,' those strings are not only those thatsound a metaphorical chord. *esides helping him with puzzles, she ')ews
costumes for his marionettes, L elps him to keep behind the scene L &hosesidelit goosegirl, speaking with his voice, L 0lays $uinevere as well as
$unmoll 1ean.' -ndeed there e=ists a program, dated August BB, BCM, whichadvertises 'The $agic Fishbone, by @harles Dickens, as interpreted by the
1immy errill arionettes. $iven for the )outhampton Fresh Air ome for
@rippled @hildren.' According to the program, 'The action takes place in !The+and of ake *elieve,! and 1immy errill himself will play 4ing &atkins, -,
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the ueen, and 1erry, the Announcer.' 1ust as 1erry, the Announcer, looks
forward to that other aster of @eremonies, ;phraim, so the goosegirl willone day emerge as 0syche in 'From the @upola' and 1ean in 'Days of BCO.'
7As for the 4ing and ueen# one cannot but think of $od *iology and other 5ature in )andover .9
I. . .J
The boy and ademoiselle are so close as to shade off into each other. -f she
is 'erself e=cited is a child' when they get the puzzle, her 'world where!each was the enemy, each the friend! ' has its e?uivalent too in his family life.
*y the beginning of the fourth section, everything seems to fit#
This &orld that shifts like sand, its unforeseen
@onsolidations and elate routine,&hose 0otentate had lacked a retinue2+o6 it assembles on the shrinking $reen.
'This &orld' is at once the political world of the BCWs and the puzzle!sworld, the )heik!s, with its unanchored sections that combine in surprising
ways. -t is also the world of the poem as poem, its languages and forms anddiverse resourcesthe poem which e=emplifies its 'elate routine' in the
interlacing of 'routine' and 'retinue' and the internal rhyme of '0otentate'and 'elate' and its 'consolidations' in the shift at <ust this point
into Rubaiyat ?uatrains, so that the puzzle!s e=otic form conforms to itsmatter. The puzzle!s sub<ect, the arrival of the new favorite in the )heik!s
harem, is said to be 'ardly a proper sub<ect for the ome,' but it is theinevitable sub<ect for this home. ;ven the progressive clarification of the
puzzle!s scene, which also suggests the boy!s increasing understanding of his
circumstances, parallels the development of the actual domestic situation. Aswe are first allowed to interpret the )heik and the veiled woman, they stand in
for the boy!s father and mother. At this <uncture, however, as though to tracethe change in the father!s affections, the veiled woman has become the
mother!s rival. 5ot for nothing is the woman veiled.
After some further shifting of its pieces, the puzzle represents more clearlythan ever the boy!s world#
I?uotes ll. BRM%BORJ
The 0age transparently corresponds to the boy, on the verge of having
loyalties divided between mother and father and of losing his footingas the precarious shift in mid%sentence across the stanza break from third person to
first person brilliantly confirms. ;ven as the identification is made, however,the poet retains a significant detachment, since the puzzle so wittily translates
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his story. ;ven to be able to see the family in terms of such archetypal patterns
as the "edipal triangle is partly to answer the boy!s silent ?uestion as towhether he will find a 'piece of Distance,' for that is also a peace that comes
with distance on an emotionally trying situation.
As errill moves his units about, they take on the polysemy of allegorical
elements> as one!s mental focus changes, now the sub<ect is the puzzle proper,now the domestic microcosm, now the political alliances of BCQ%BCC, now
the composition of the poem. The poem even makes a gesture or two in thedirection of )andover*s macrocosmic and metaphysical concerns. The
'shrinking $reen' of the card table reminds us of the world!s e=pandingdeserts and the possible death of the planet, while the remark that it is 'uite a
task L 0utting together eaven, yet we do' touches on the theme of thecreation of $od. -t begins to seem that there is no sub<ect '+ost in Translation'
cannot handle as it shifts among home and world, world and page> often byvirtue of the manifold richness of its particulars. At the end of the fourth
section, in a bit of bravura, errill slips the last piece of the puzzle into place,as he recalls finding the 0age!s missing feet where they had fallen#
-t!s done. ere under the table all along&ere those missing feet. -t!s done.
*ut then whose should those feet be, 'under the table,' if not the boy!s2 And if the boy!s, then the poet!s, 'ere under the table' on which the poem is being
written. The poet is the boy is the 0age. "r he is the page on which the poem!swords reconstitute him, 'a backward%looking slave' to his own needs. Thanks
to such 'under the table' transactions, it all comes right, it seems. 'Thecorrection of prose, because it has no fi=ed laws, is endless,' :eats wrote to
Dorothy &ellesley, whereas 'a poem comes right with a click like a closing bo=.' The solution of the last outstanding mystery and the reiteration of '-t!s
done' make <ust such a 'click.'
"r is this case closed so easily2 &e need to notice that this fourth section does
not come out even. These two lines on the feet, which seem to conclude it, area kind of remainder. -t is not even clear that they are part of a ?uatrain> they
stand alone and fit neither with the preceding stanzas nor with the followingverse paragraphs. -n another moment, errill would have had to commit
himself, for had the second line been carried to its end, it would have had torhyme with 'along,' in which event these lines would have been a fragment of
a Rubaiyat stanza, or not, in which event they would have been a short paragraph. -t is a matter of 'missing feet'and of a missing metrical foot or
two. A closure that is an opening, this passage is irrevocably in transition.
As the one form comes apart, so does the puzzleas though this U5interpreter were an uninterpreter#
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I?uotes ll. BPB%BMMJ
*ecause 8ilke looms so large in this poem, one is likely to recall hisadumbration of the poetic process in the eighth +uino (legy# 'Uns uberfullts.
&ir ordnens. ;s zerfallt. L &ir ordnens wieder und zerfallen selbst' 7'-t fillsus. &e arrange it. -t breaks down. L &e rearrange it, then break down
ourselves'9. *ut in errill!s lines, along with the sense of an ineluctable cycle,there is the sense of synchronic events. ;ven as there are certain threads '?ue
la vie brise,' life is ceaselessly making new connections. The very same wordsthat describe the breaking up of the puzzle create in themselves a subtle
pattern. They begin to weave one of the new 'costumes'a mantle or amantilla, saywith 'Dismantling' itself. The 'lace' in 'populace,' the more
evident for 'Unstitched' and 'gown,' takes the form of the attachmentsamong 'Unstitched' and 'witch,' 'down' and 'gown,' 'blue' and 'too,'
'mousseline' and 'green.' The disintegration of the one narrative is part ofanotherto be specific, a little apocalypse. For if we are responsible for
'0utting together eaven,' we are also responsible for destroying it alongwith our cities. These lines trace out in lyric form the story of much
of )andover . The underset of retrogression in this passage, the drift7reminiscent of the medium!s reverse construction of the puzzle piece!s
history9 from its 'populace' and 'city' back through 'tent' to a virtually;denic '$reen' 7'gambled' is also 'gamboled'9# this is a movement found
also at a pivotal moment in )cripts for the Pageant . *efore that, and before'+ost in Translation,' errill ran his poetic film backward at the end of 'BQ
&est BBth )treet,' another poem about a childhood home that was destroyed,which concludes with an '"riginal vacancy' and a 'deepening spring.' As he
puts the adage at the beginning of yet another poem about the partialdestruction and rebuilding of a house, ';verything changes> nothing does. '
5othing does# nothing changes. And nothing will do# no thing or poem ortheory will finally suffice. 5othing will do, partly because something is
always missing#
I?uotes ll. BQW%BQQJ
5ot finding that translation is comparable to 8ilke!s not finding e?uivalencesfor alery!s phrases. aving translated alery!s poemas well as a variety of
other works ranging from ma=ims by @hamfort through poems by ontale tostories by @avafy and assilikos1ames errill knows all too well 'ow
much of the sun%ripe original L Felicity 8ilke made himself forego L 7&holoved French wordsverger, mur, parfumer9 L -n order to render its
underlying sense.' *ut the plight is not <ust that of the literary translator. Thelines <ust ?uoted pertain also to the unrealizable vision that motivates any
poem, not to mention other pro<ects. As elen endler has seen, 8ilke!srendering of alery 'mimics the translationby errill himself, among
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othersof life into art.' 5ot that 'life' here need mean sensuous or concrete
e=perience alone, whatever that might be. 8ilke!s passion for alery!s poems,for the French language, for language%these were part of his 'life.'
To fail to translate e=actly, or rather to have to translate and thus to be ine=act,to create a difference between the putatively original and the necessarily
substitutive# this might be thought of as our very condition. -t is nocoincidence that errill!s felicitous 'Felicity'meaning 'bliss' and 'good
fortune' as well as the very 'stylistic aptness' that the line break highlights and the echo, by way of 'sun%ripe' and the French words, of the 'orchard back
of us' call into play again the concept of ;den. The parenthesis itself, with itsuntranslated and by implication untranslatable words 7'orchard,' 'ripe,' and
'to sweeten' or 'to scent,' respectively9, is almost a tiny, tantalizing paradise,an enclosed orchard or hortus conclusus 7as 'paradise' means in its remote
"ld 0ersian origins9. The orchard and the windfalls are always 'back ofu s.' 5othing will ever ?uite do.
Then one begins to see that for errill nothing will not do either. The 8ilketranslation is found. ademoiselle, although she 'kept back' her bit of truth,
was not able to bury it. From one point of view, the piece of puzzle that the boy pocketed was lost, but from another it has been found, by the medium
'This grown man' who is also a translator of sorts, an agent ofcommunication with an e=trasensory world, a variation on the 1 of
the )andover books. The 'house torn down' rises again in the form of
)andover. ;verything changes. To lose is to create an emptiness that must beoperated in, a vacancy that will be filled. 'erger,' 'mur,' 'parfumer'# thesewords are rendered ine=actly in $erman and ;nglish, but the appro=imation is
a matri= of possibility. Underlying the phrase 'underlying sense,' because itcomes on the heels of the French words, for e=ample, are the 'scents'
connoted by them. -n that marvelous ruin that 8ilke!s translation is, 'thatground plan left L )ublime and barren, where the warm 8omance L )tone by
stone faded, cooled,' after a rain, 'A deep reverberation fills with stars'andwhat is such a 'reverberation' if not at once an emptiness and a plenishing2
'8everberation'# the word means a redounding of sound or repeated reflectingof light 7or heat9, a re%echoing, as of errill!s echoing of 8ilke!s echoing of
alery 7echoing his own sources9. '8everberation' might almost be atranslation of 'translation,' and even though verberare is unrelated to verbum,
errill wants us to catch a @ratylean glimpse of 'rewording' behind the term,much as )tevens, for instance, means us to see 'luminous' shining through his
phrase 'oluminous master folded in his fire.'
To translate, then, is as much to discover in transference as to lose. ere is
errillKs concluding verse paragraph#
I?uotes ll. NWQ%NBOJ
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Two orders of proposition appear here. -n the first place, as in 'A Fever,'
errill is aspiring, like enry 1ames, to be one on whom nothing is lost. *utwhen nothing is lost at this level, that is largely because of an original
openness to e=perience and a later strenuousness of memory. 5othing is lost,not because it cannot be lost, for indeed it might be that everything is lost in
some sense, but because the possibility always e=ists that one might recall it insome formas 0roust is said in (phraim 'Through superhuman counterpoint
to work L The body!s resurrection, sense by sense.' 5othing is lost in 0roust because 0roust lost himself in his life!s work, or in his work!s life, in his own
'translation'his 'consuming myth,' to adapt a phrase from errill!s 'Fromthe @upola.' -n the concluding lines in '+ost in Translation,' the 0roustian
presence is the 'self%effacing tree,' the palm that appears and disappears as a blue puzzle piece in the blue sky and that conceals the poet!s effort> or that
gracefully translates his wrestling with his angel into a '8ustling' of fronds
and wings, <ust as the patient palm invisibly 'turns the waste' 78ilke!s')teinen,' alery!s 'deserts'9 into the sheltering fronds and the nourishingcoconut. As errill!s poem resurrects his childhood, so its last line recovers,
by way of '0alme,' its opening lines. As though to prove that nothing is lost,his 'milk' translates alery!s 'lait plat,' which appears at the beginning of
'0alme,' along with 'le pain tendre' that 'Un ange met sur ma table.' Thetable is there in the first line of errill!s poem, where it has become the card
table, while the milk and angel have been kept back until the end. *ut not lost.
-n the second place, this passage concerns the nature of things. All is
metamorphosis, it suggests> the world is all 'conte=t,' its elements are all afugacity whose interactive events may be either continuations of earlier phases
of themselves or ever%new processes. errill will make a harder and deepersense of the idea in (phraim. This poem does not have to decide whether it
intends a neo%egelian faith in evolution or a neo%eraclitean hypothesis offlu=. -t is content to approve, in addition to memory, metamorphosisrather
in the vein of errill!s recent sonnet '0rocessional,' which sets forth theadventures of a 'demotic raindrop' that is first 'Translated by a polar wand to
keen L )i=%pointed andarin' and dreams of being further promoted into 'a
hitherto untold L Flakiness, gemlike, nevermore to melt'#
*ut melt it would, andlookbecome 5ow birdglance, now the gingko leafs fanlight,
To that same tune whereby immensely old)labs of dogma and opprobrium,
;=changing ions under pressure, bredA spar of burnt%black anchorite,
"r in three tidy strokes of word golf +;AD
"nce again turns 7+"AD, $"AD9 to $"+D.
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-f that 'tune' had a title, it could be '0lus ca change.' As early as errill!s
first play, The !ait 7BCO9, he had set similar words to it# 'our cold virtues,once thought durable, L *ut now abstract and frail as snowflakes L Alter to lazy
water in the sun. L Fluidity is proof against ma<or disasters. L The marbles meltand wink at me.' 7And errill winks at us, since his prose has crystallized to
verse within this one speech.9
"ne remarkable thing about '0rocessional,' really less hymn than scherzando,
is its blithe overriding of categories, as in the conversion to 'anchorite' of'anthracite. ' -n the translation envisioned here, alchemical, rhetorical, and
natural metamorphic processes themselves change into one another. owcould we not be somewhat lost in it2
from The %onsuming $yth" The &ork of #ames $errill 7@ambridge# arvard U 0,
BCQM9. @opyright V BCQM by the 0resident and Fellows of arvard @ollege
+ynn 4eller
To the e=tent that errill is willing to point to a truth, it is the same one that
preoccupies the other contemporary poets whose work we have e=amined# process. 0erhaps in errillKs case, the proper term for his sense of continuous
transformation would be the literary one, 'translation,' that figures so
importantly in his great poem, '+ost in Translation.' -n that lyric errill isless concerned with translation as product, an achieved version in anotherlanguage 78ilkeKs version of aleryKs te=t9, than with translation as action, as
the transformational process described in both poetsK versions of that poemabout a palm. ;ven when considering the translated poem, errill focuses on
the action of its translator, who is imagined making himself forgo 'much ofthe sun%ripe original L Felicity . . . L -n order to render its underlying sense'
7ellipsis added9. errillKs interest is in the changes made in turning the poemfrom the 'warm 8omance' language French into the cool starkness of
$erman. And while most of the poem concerns memories of the distant past
primarily of the summer when his parents divorced these past events are notfi=ed, beyond translation. To remember the past is to make it active in the
present and to find it changing, <ust as the speakerKs recent e=perience with a
medium and a puzzle piece changes his sense of his boyhoodKs many puzzles.Thus, as is appropriate for a poem about translation, the poemKs conclusion
takes the insistently ongoing present tense#
I?uotes ll. NWQ%NBOJ
For errill, all art acts as the coconut palm does, translating loss, absence,waste into something substantial and nourishing.
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"ne meaning of the verb 'to translate' is 'to e=press one thing in terms of
another.' That is also a standard definition of the action of metaphor. -nerrillKs oeuvre the te=t most obviously concerned with the process of
translation, and with the action of metaphor, is his trilogy, The %hanging ,ight at )andover .
From '- knew L L That life was fiction in disguiseK'# errillKs Divergence fromAuden and odernism.' -n $uy 8otella 7ed.9 %ritical (ssays on #ames
$errill . 5ew :ork# $. 4. all X @o., BCCP. 8eprinted from 4eller, +ynn. Re- $aking .t New" %ontemporary 'merican Poetry and the $odernist Tradition.
8eprinted by permission of +ynn 4eller and @ambridge U0.