Poetry Translating as Expert Action Processes, priorities and networks

 Poetry Translating as Expert Action

Mexican poet Octavio Paz, major literary currents such as Renaissance or Roman-

tic poetry are transnational and translinguistic: “European poets – now those of

the American continent too [...] – write the same poem in different languages”^1.

But for a poetic movement to be transnational and translinguistic, it must become

so, in an interflow back and forth across borders – which is where translation

comes in. Paz showed this interflow in action in Airborn/Hijos del aire, co-written/

co-translated with English poet Charles Tomlinson:

La casa se construye con lo que ahí

encontramos

One builds a house with what is there

(con crin ligaban la argamasa – había

caballos)

(horsehair bonded the plaster when

horses were)

y con lo que traemos (la rima anda

escondida):

and of what one brings (the rhyme

concealed):

para su tiempo, espacio – tiempo para

su espacio.

space into its time, time to its space.

Mas nacemos en casas que no hicimos. Yet we are born in houses we did not

make.

(Vuelve la rima, puente entre líneas.) (The rhyme returns, a bridge between the

lines.)

El sol desenterradas imágenes revuelve The sun revolves its buried images

y me devuelve aquella casa en ruinas, to restore to mind that ruined house once

more

[...] [...]

(Paz and Tomlinson 1981: 12–13)

Here, the first verse was written in English by Tomlinson and translated into Span-

ish by Paz, the second verse was added in Spanish by Paz and translated into Eng-

lish by Tomlinson – and so on throughout the book.

If poetry translation matters inter-culturally, it is worth investigating how

translators enable the flow of poems, and their images, forms and genres between

cultures. But investigating poetry translators’ action can also extend our knowl-

edge of human behaviour. It can give valuable information about the interaction

between poetry translating and poetry creation, for instance. Analysing the cul-

tural and political implications of poetry translating, Tymoczko argues, can give

powerful evidence for how “cultural interfaces” are formed – between Irish and

English literature, for example (1999: 30). It can also show how literature interacts

1. “los poetas europeos – ahora también los del continente americano [...] – escriben el mis-
   mo poema en lenguas diferentes” (1973, cited in Dumitrescu 1995: 240).