Poet-translators Olivia McCannon and Susan Wicks are en garde to fight a Modern Poetry Translation duel at Ledbury Festival 2017. Olivia and Susan will be discussing their different translations of a single poem: ‘Rien n’empêche d’autres oiseaux’ by contemporary French poet Ariane Dreyfus. Open this booklet to compare and contrast the two translators’ approaches to a single poem. You’ll find a sensual and striking poem by one of France’s most singular poets reflected and refracted in the English of two great poet-translators. Join us on Sunday 9 July at 12.45pm at the Ledbury Festival to watch Olivia and Susan cross swords and join in the conversation: what makes a translation ‘work’ as English-language poetry? Book tickets at poetry-festival.cloudvenue.co.uk Comment on the translations @mptmagazine with the hashtag #translationduel
Modern Poetry in Translation thanks Ledbury Festival and The Stephen Spender Trust for their support for the Translation Duel.
TRANSLATION DUEL
BIOGRAPHIES
RIEN N’EMPÊCHE D’AUTRES OISEAUX ARIANE DREYFUS
ARIANE DREYFUS (b.1958) has published thirteen collections of poetry, including La durée des plantes (Tarabuste, 1998), L’in-
habitable (Flammarion, 2006, awarded the Prix des Découvreurs in 2007), and Iris, c’est votre bleu (Le Castor Astral, 2008). The poem translated here is from her latest collection Le dernier livre
des enfants (Flammarion, 2016).
OLIVIA MCCANNON’S poetry collection Exactly My Own
Length (Carcanet/OxfordPoets, 2011) was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Centre Prize and won the 2012 Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize. She lived for nine years in France and her translations include Balzac’s Old Man Goriot (Penguin Classics, 2011), medieval to contemporary poetry, and drama.
Elle s’arrête quand l’eau lui arrive à la taille Regarde, avance à nouveau, et la mer infinie La suit, traîne qu’elle sent à peine, la robe elle l’imagine S’effacent ses omoplates de petite fille À chaque fois qu’elle lève les coudes et se hausse Car il fait froid Mais l’eau est calme, pas embêtante Frileux les autres sont restés derrière C’est donc un instant de princesse Elle baisse les yeux, mais pas la tête À cause de sa couronne qui pourrait tomber Regarde comment ses pieds glissent Sur le sable Parce qu’il est très loin les jambes ont grandi Elles se tordent à plein de reflets Le soleil y va, en profondeur Et plus en profondeur la pointe des pieds Pour aller jusqu’au sol intouché
SUSAN WICKS is a poet and fiction writer. Her translations of Valérie Rouzeau, Cold Spring in Winter and Talking Vrouz (Arc), have won the Scott Moncrieff and Oxford-Weidenfeld Prizes
L’eau presqu’à la poitrine, elle étire ses bras Ainsi flottent les mains
and been shortlisted for the Popescu Prize and the International Griffin Prize for Poetry. Her own seventh collection, The Months (Bloodaxe, 2016) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation.
Puis s’allonger, sinon comment voir que le ciel Donne un si grand vertige, et les nuages en forme de personne ?
NOTES ON THE TRANSLATIONS by Olivia McCannon
by Susan Wicks
A girl, alone, nameless, walks out into the sea. ‘The others’ stay behind on the beach.
This poem is taken from Ariane Dreyfus’s most recent collection, Le dernier livre
Who are they? Male, or male and female, lurking in the masculine plural restés. The
des enfants (The Children’s Last Book), where it finds itself in the company of other
water is cold, but not embêtante, a childish word which here suggests relief: the sea
poems seamlessly leaping between childhood and sexual intimacy, sea voyages and
gives her no unwanted attention.
stationary objects, dancers and acrobats, dream and death. Like most of the poems in the book, it presents a narrative – though here the narrative isn’t attributed to a
Her princesse is not that dolled-up fairy-tale cipher for female submission, with its
film, book or choreography, as it often is elsewhere.
corsets and whalebone hoops. This girl – heading out of her depth, drawing a wake of glittering water – channels the grandeur of the deep feminine mysteries of the sea,
At first glance, the language looks simple. In general, Dreyfus’s language is a spoken,
and the sun, source of creation: Le soleil y va, en profondeur.
idiomatic one, sometimes apparently caught on the run and left unfinished, in mid-thought. Line- and stanza-breaks occasionally fragment or delay meaning.
French has more possessive forms than English, expressing different relationships
Here, in the fourth stanza, where the lines seem so transparent and yet have a kind
with body parts. Consider the strangeness (for English) of son bras, sa jambe, (whose
of persistent strangeness, we come to realise we have entered the child’s own head.
limbs?), and elle lève les coudes (‘she lifts the elbows’). I wanted to play with these
The sun doesn’t ‘pierce’ or ‘penetrate’ the deeper water, it actually does just ‘go there’
possibilities in my translation, thinking about the control and lack of control girls
– this strange, twisting, sunlit place is her world.
have over their maturing bodies, and the embodiment/disembodiment found in the ambiguity of personne (‘somebody/nobody’), the last word in the poem.
For me the main difficulty of translating – and indeed of reading – has to do with Dreyfus’ shifting, ‘filmic’ use of point of view, characteristic of her poetry since
The first (French) word on the page is rien (‘nothing’), and so, in one reading, what
her ‘Western’ collection, ‘Une Histoire passera ici’. At first, we are prevented from
frames the vertiginous sweep of the sky, the endless horizon and bottomless sea –
sharing the child’s viewpoint by seeing her jutting shoulder-blades as she enters the
is nothing, and nobody. The normalising constraint felt in the original title, and
water and, arguably, by the ‘princess moment’: at first we are among the ‘shiverers’
perhaps implicit in the presence of the group back on the beach, is barely sensed by
in this scene. But gradually the child’s perceptions take over, until we are with her,
her, here.
looking down through the ripples at our own twisting legs and feet. By the end,
In the sea, transparency is effortless: it offers a new model for existence. Her royal train, her splendour and power, are fluid, and invisible, as her body becomes weightless, porous – pure being. Here, in the portable form of a poem, Dreyfus opens up a
the poem’s question (‘How else…?’) is the child’s question. It is also the mother’s question, as she watches, understanding, inhabiting the child’s thoughts as if they were her own.
vast, free space, where a girl can connect to the infinite, where she discovers escape as
So is it desire we hear in the title? Is it the watcher’s protectiveness for her child?
a form of resistance.
Or can it be both?
RIEN N’EMPÊCHE D’AUTRES OISEAUX BY ARIANE DREYFUS
HOW ELSE TO SEE THE SKY
NO REASON WHY OTHER BIRDS
She stops when the water touches her waist Looks out, sets off again, and the limitless sea Trails her, a train she wears lightly, sensing the dress
She stops when the water reaches to her waist And looks, goes on again, and the endless sea Follows her, a train she hardly feels, the dress in her mind’s eye
Gone, her little-girl shoulder-blades Whenever she lifts her elbows to draw herself up Because it’s freezing But the water is calm, it lets her be
Erased her shoulder-blades a little girl’s Each time she lifts her elbows and stands up on tiptoe For it’s cold Though the water’s not unpleasant, calm
Too hot to get cold, the others have stayed behind This, then, is her moment – princess
The other shiverers have stayed behind So it’s a princess moment
She lowers her eyes, but not her head On account of the crown that might fall off Look at the way her feet go gliding Across the sand Because it’s so far down, legs must grow long They twist away, kicking up glitter The sun reaches there, where it’s deep Deeper still, the tips of toes Searching for the untouched ground
She lowers her eyes, but not her head Because of her crown which might fall off And looks at how her feet are sliding On the sand Because it’s very far away her legs have grown They twist inside the ripples Sun goes there, deep down And deeper still her toes Trying to reach the untouched ground
Water almost to her chest, she holds out arms To make floating hands
The water almost to her chest, she spreads her arms So this is how hands float
Then she’s stretching out – how else to see the sky Spinning round, the clouds the shape of somebody, nobody?
Now to stretch out, or else how can you see the sky Makes you so giddy, and the person shapes of clouds?
translation by Olivia McCannon
translation by Susan Wicks