djasonmccann

I took high-school Latin, as perhaps a couple of my recent reviews have mentioned. The first poem they ever had us translate in our AP Catullus/Horace class was Catullus' half-translation ("inspired by?") of the second-most-complete Sappho lyric I think we have: Sappho 31. It's perfectly preserved as far as it goes, because it's in someone else's book and quoted in full in Greek, except that it very likely cuts off suddenly. As Carson translates the original, it begins "He seems to me equal to gods," (I now paraphrase) that lucky man who is standing in front of you and getting to hear your sweet voice. It's every high school crush rolled into one, double-strength for adults. The awe there of a particular type of love from afar. And having your voice stopped up, just as the poem goes on to say. Really, it's the run into the third stanza, which came through just as overwhelming in my own half-proficient high school translation out of Latin when I was 17, that gives me shivers: for when I look at you, even a moment, no speaking is left in me no: tongue breaks and thin fire is racing under skin and in eyes no sight and drumming fills ears . (Nobody seems to be sure whether this stray last line was a mistaken addition in a later copy or whether the jerk of a grammarian we got it from decided to break off one line into another stanza--and Catullus' copy doesn't help either, because after some very gorgeous poetry, he breaks off somewhere ENTIRELY differently right at this point -- starts grumbling about how all this desire is probably just a sign he's got too lazy a schedule. That's the Roman in him, even though no other Roman appreciated Sappho like Catullus did--all his love poems are to "Lesbia," after Sappho's homeland, which had at the time more sensual and artistic than solely homoerotic connotations.) The Point Anyway, this is a long, nerdy, Goodreadsy introduction, but there's a reason: a poem nearly 2,600 years old, not even in its original language, not even in its entirety, and originally written as a song but with the music lost aeons ago (one wonders whether this is what will happen to Bob Dylan one far-away day)--what I am saying to you is: all these qualifiers, all this in between us and the original impact, and me bored in high school, and it still knocked me flat on my ass. And now you realize there is only one other poem in better shape (from a book of her work as late as the 8th century, which KILLS me that she survived in good shape over 1,000 years but couldn't last more), and every single other one in existence is in pieces--some still getting you most of a through-line, others just one or two or three words. Shattering. And of course, this is exactly what Carson plays up, translating every tiny snowflake of parchment we've ever been able to trace to Sappho, every time some stodgy grammarian or hokey philosopher quotes half a line to keep his audience from falling asleep--and showing you as best she can how much is lost, and how much you can tell through this incredibly hazy lens how fantastic a poet she clearly was. And I'm getting frustrated, because this input form has eaten half my review twice already (starting to feel like our subject, here), but I'm going to lay out what this means if it kills me: The way Carson shows you the gaps are with the power of ASCII art: brackets, brackets everywhere. Left hand page is always the Greek, laid out in the SHAPE of what remains, brackets to show the yawning gaps in the ripped or torn or blotted parchment, and to show the little interpolations that remain. Right hand page is her English--still using brackets, but gesturally, to give you a sense of the "papyrological event," as Carson says in her introduction--and desperately trying to translate only the words that remain, to show you that lack that is also need that is also desire. How else to behold: ]noble ]taking ]sing to us the one with violets in her lap ]mostly ]goes astray and realize even those few words come from two full stanzas we will never see, and not go as silent as the lover in that first poem I mentioned, trying to grapple with the passion for life that still blazes out of this gorgeous, tragic confetti?

2022-11-14 18:08