by Robert Bly
“Nightlong the murmur deep in summer’s gorge.”
“Summer’s gorge” is literary and “poetic,” and the sentence order is simply miles from spoken English. “The spruce tree at point” means nothing. The only thing a reader can see is the spruce tree stretched out like an English hunting dog, about to flush a partridge.
The ant aglow—“aglow” is not 19th century but 17th century. You’ll have to make it clear to her that you write in 20th century Swedish, and ask her to work on them, making the English more contemporary and spoken.
I think Merwin would be fairly easy to translate, but I’m not sure you’d receive anything from his poetry. He radiates psychic cold, like an extremely literate lieutenant. I’d try Gary Snyder (poems from Riprap) or William Stafford. I think they’re both in Naked Poetry. Must go! Do write!
Love, Robert
Västerås 18 april 71
Dear Robert,
Thank you for the book! I always liked the typed letters of the previous 60s books and I am happy that I got the same. Even the abdominable pig-head looked sweet. But no man is perfect and the printer was probably drunk when he typed “Out in the Open” (or perhaps he is a hawk and did not like My Message) so he transformed a building into a wood-stack. When the last copies have been torn from the hands of the booksellers in Omaha and Tulsa by voracious readers and you have to print a new edition you might correct the lines in this poem a little...Such accidents also happened to Shakespeare, so I don’t want to be finicky. The translations in general make me happy. I did not see before that the translations of my “Solitude” and “Slow Music” were so wonderful. I have one reservation: the end of “Out in the Open”—you put “Force” instead of “Violence.” For me “Force” is not negative, it is a neutral, even positive word. Or what are the associations in the U.S.? Have you been debating about “Violence” so much that the word has been worn out?
Can you ask the editors of the Seneca Review and Doones to send me the issues where I am published? I’d love to see those small magazines—I have never heard about them before.
Your action on the exclusive rights battle was effective. You must have frightened them! I sent Hertzel a long, extremely pedagogic letter about the question before I knew of your telephone speech to Hazo. “There are 2 sound ways of looking at a verse translation. You may regard the translation as a proposal, one of many equivalent aspects of the original text. Another way of looking at a translated poem is to see it as a poem in its own right, in this case a poem in English (this is especially valid if you have an excellent poet-translator like May Swenson). But none of these 2 approaches is compatible with the idea of exclusive rights to translate a certain poem...” etc. I also tried to convince him that as many (good) translations as possible would stimulate the selling of the Pittsburgh book. Forgive me for putting in the line about May as excellent. It is bad that her translations have this 19th century touch. My earlier poems often are old-fashioned in respect to meter but the language is simple 20th century language always. Now May is very un-academic about meter—if she felt the need to follow the original meter I could understand that the language could be forced into some awkward archaisms. But as it is now...well, I can’t see these archaisms myself, I don’t know enough English. Perhaps you are too harsh. I will give you another example of her translation.
Sailor’s Yarn
There are bare winter days when the sea resembles
ranges of mountains, humped in gray feathers,
a moment blue, then long hours of waves that, pallid
as lynx, seek and fall their grip on the shore’s gravel.
On such days wrecked ships leave the sea to seek
their masters, seated in the city’s noise, and drowned
crews drift ashore, more transparent than pipesmoke.
(In the north flits the real lynx, with shining claws
and dream-blue eyes. In the north where day
lives in a mine both day and night.
There a single survivor is permitted to sit
by the northern lights’ oven and listen
to the music of the freezers-to-death.)
Anyhow I have accepted her and I am not going to have Eric included in the Pitt book even if he has been mistreated. But at the reading in Pittsburgh I will read some of his translations and give him credit.
[------]
Would you cast a glance at another May Swenson poem of mine:
Evening-Morning
The moon’s mast has rotted and the sail shrivelled.
A gull soars drinkenly over the sea.
The jetty’s thick quadrangle is charred. Brushwood
bends low in the dusk.
Out on the doorstep. Daybreak slams and slams in
the sea’s gray stone gateway, and the sun flashes
close to the world. Half-choked summer gods
fumble in sea-mist.
“Drinkenly” is not in my dictionary. Is it a 16th century word for intoxicated olympic gods or something?
---
Monica is studying. She has been a nurse-pupil since January and is at school (hospital) all day and doing lessons at home all night. The other day she made her first post-mortem dissection. No one fainted. The girls are tough nowadays. In Sweden nurses are more thoroughly educated than in most countries—they often have to do a doctor’s job in the country—we are short of doctors. When she is examined (2 years from now) we hope that she can have a job as a school nurse, half-time. Paula broke her arm on Easter Eve, when trying to fly a kite, I have just recovered from a suppuration in the upper jaw. The economy is bordering on bankruptcy. The weather is bad. We send our most hearty greetings.
Tomas
Västerås 21-5-71
Dear Robert,
the day after tomorrow I leave Västerås for Northern Sweden. The military authorities want to refresh my memory about warfare during some weeks. I will send you a message from the bush later—I don’t know if I am supposed to be crawling with camouflage-painted face through barbed wire or if they will let me sit calmly day after day in a forgotten bunker. But if I disappear you have at least the included 2 documents: 1: My statement about the spiritual situation in Sweden (“Den skingrade församlingen”) and 2: the first two parts of my attempt to write The Long Poem, called “Baltics.” The poem will have 4 or 5 parts. It started when I found my grandfather’s almanacs from the 1880s, where he had noted down the ships he was piloting. The 3 ships/captains/draughts etc. quoted are from the almanac. Then I found out that much of my life had some connection with the Baltics so I started to give a jumbly sketch of many things—even my visit to Riga is there, fragmentarily, in part 2.
I don’t know if I am strong enough to stand Carol’s condemnation of the Mormon Lady’s translations, when it comes. There must—for Heaven’s sake—be something good in them. May is doing the complete Tranströmer, without hesitation, and from that GESAMMTWERK I am supposed to make a final selection. Leif Sjöberg is impatient because my comments arrive much slower than her translations—“you must be in love with your own poems” he wrote reproachingly. Oh no. I am not in love with them, I just have a gloomy paternal sense of responsibility for them. Beside, the last months have been taxing, with Monica running to her hospital work at 0615 in the morning.
We send our best, summer warm wishes! If you drop me a note to my Västerås address Monica will send it forward to my military address.
Din gamle vän
Tomas
30 May, ’71
Dear Tomas,
I just found an old letter of yours, which I propose to answer! I hesitated myself between “force” and “violence” in “Out in the Open,” and I’ll think it over again when the time comes to reprint. In that same poem, I cannot find the building that got turned into a woodstack! Give me more on that. Actually I took the only copy of your book I had
up to Carol in the hospital yesterday, so she’d have something good to read. She gave birth to a little (of course he was little) baby boy yesterday morning at 6:30! It all went very fast, and two days ahead of time, and she is very happy about the boy! Just before we went to the hospital, when we were still not sure it was time to go, I closed my eyes for a bit, and saw this sign over and over again, in various colors, and I felt it was the sign of the new boy. It looked like this:
It was a pair of wings, spread, with two crescent moons underneath. I don’t know what it means, but I think it’s a magic baby. I’ve always thought so. After all, two mediums in 1968 predicted his birth (or another child at least). We’d like you and Monica to be the new baby’s godparents, by the way! Yes, we do! We would baptize him, if you agree, while you’re here in October, and Monica can be a godparent in absentia. Your physical duties would be light, and, spiritually, all you’d have to do is bless him every once in a while. We’d love it if you’d both agree.
He is strong, and kicked a lot in the womb, weighed over eight pounds, and looks very calm indeed. We haven’t decided on a name for him yet, and plan to wait a bit for that.
About May Swenson: Obviously some poems are going to slip into English for her better than others. Sometimes she goes two whole lines without 16th century English coming in. Since she is doing the entire Gesammelte Werke, I think this is a time to depend on your friends a little. Let the whole group come in, get them all gathered together, then in consultation with your American-speaking friends, choose the ones to be finished. Carol and I would be happy to vote in this matter, and maybe Eric or someone would help too. Once that choice is made, then you can also depend on us to make suggestions on which lines need to be modernized a bit. I’d rather let it go, and let her just do the whole thing, and know nothing about it all until it was printed—but I do hate to see your—particularly your—poems mangled.
Perhaps you can sort of gather alternate versions of clogged lines over the summer, and then talk them over with May when you come in the fall, maybe on your way home. We could go over the poems chosen, one by one, while you’re staying with us in Minnesota.
I will write you soon about the tour, since we need to settle dates soon. Would you like to come for 2 weeks or for 3? Would you like it to be in early October or later October? How many readings would you like to give? Suppose you stayed two weeks...Would you think 6 readings would be about right? The truth is you’ve had so many acceptances you can give as many as you want to. At the moment, I’m discouraging Scandinavian departments, and, following your sensible suggestion, encouraging colleges interested in a simple poetry reading. I have to go through the papers soon, and settle on an itinerary.
In your letter, you sent along a copy of May’s translation of “Sailor’s Yarn.” I can see two things here she is doing that she hasn’t thought through. In the attempt to gain music, she is working with sound in rather obvious ways. For example, the last line of the first stanza of “Sailor’s Yarn” goes:
as lynx, seek and fall their grip in the shore’s gravel.
That line really doesn’t make any sense in English, and evidently she did it that way in order to get the two “g’s” in “grip” and “gravel,” following what she imagines to be your three planned “F’s.” (Her “k” in “seek” is probably intended to suggest a third “g.”) But I don’t think these consonant repetitions can be constructed as easily as all that in translations. Here she has had to lose the grip on the meaning, and the reader’s assumption then is that the meaning is not important to you either.
Her second mistake I mentioned earlier: the tendency to translate without care for contemporary usage. “In the north flits the real lynx.” She is just translating word for word, but it happens that in English now the verb in such a sentence never comes before the noun. No one says: “In Washington run the demonstrators.” You should remind her to adopt English sentence order, forgetting what the sentence order is in Swedish.
Related to that error is her habit of using “seek” instead of “look for,” “pallid” instead of the simple “pale.” It’s the same habit turning up in nouns. (By the way, in the last stanza of this poem: are those “de ihjalfrusnas” the ones who have been already frozen to death, or are they the ones who are freezing others to death? May has it the second way.) (In her English, the music seems to be coming from extremely ominous types, sort of living refrigerators walking about the far north.)
“Evening-Morning”: this one is better. “Drinkenly” doesn’t exist—she means drunkenly. Several problems: “charred” means the bruggan has been burned. It doesn’t look like coal, but is ruined. If you want that, it’s OK. “Brushwood” implies dead twigs and branches, such as would be gathered for a fire. As I understand it, you really mean just the living bushes etc near the water.
“Slams” doesn’t have as much movement back and forth as “slar.” Instead of movement that is seen, we basically hear the sound of a door slamming, as when one person is mad at another. “Flashes” is not quite “sprakar”: flashes is rather mechanical, and implies a light that flashes on and off every few seconds.
But I think this one is not bad, and with a little work, will be OK.
I think I’d better stop. Write when you can escape from your war duties, and preparations for Ragnarok. Newsweek reported this week that the Swedish army has issued hairnets to its soldiers, so I figure the last days are approaching.
Love to you all from all of us, especially our new Gemini baby!
Robert
4-6-71
Dear Robert, I am writing this hiding behind the army equipment. Up to now I have only fired 4 bullets in this war, but it is a constant hurry and confusion. In the night I lie in my sleeping bag like a frozen sausage in its plastic cover, in the day I am grilled. That will last 8 more days, then I am free again, eating at tables, playing the piano, reading books, translating mad poems about Hawaiian crabs, patting my children etc. Most unreal. It is difficult to say something intelligent. But writing to you like this is helping me to hold on to my identity.—I got a long letter from George Young (in Hanover, N.H.). He is going to Finland this summer (these frequent voyages from the U.S.A. to Finland are a mystery, somebody should make an investigation). He is working for the idea to make a president of Ralph Nader. What a strange American idea! Ralph Nader is too good, and has too little stomach-mentality to be a president. And if he was elected he would be assassinated very soon. A wonderful target for solitary madmen or big oil company conspirators. Let him live. I want everyone to live and be happy. And go fishing. And listen to Scriabin. And visit Byelo-Russia. And fill his pipe with sunrise. Goodnight mankind. Goodnight arriving new family member in the Bly house. Goodnight Robert and Carol and the girls and Noah. Goodnight.
Tomas
[June 71]
Love to little
from his godparents.
Monica dreamt the other night that she (as nurse) was called to a woman to help her deliver a child. When she looked into the womb of that woman she found a deep, wide tunnel where a little boy was sitting, serious, waiting. He seemed to be between 6 months and 1 year old. Monica lifted him out but it was impossible to do the usual things you do with newborn babies with him—he seemed too grown-up. He had a very clever look. When she woke up her first association was with your new baby. Congratulations from all parts of us: ego, superego and id.
The other evening I was presented with a SCROLL and a MEDAL in Stockholm. Monica and I borrowed money from friends to get to Stockholm, dressed in clothes from my old well-paid Roxtuna days and mixed with the rich in a restaurant. Representatives from Pittsburgh are doing a visit in Europe this summer to study cultural policy and they wanted to make a big celebration of the Pitt prize. I had forbidden the presence of official people (from the U.S. Embassy and the Swedish Foreign department) so it was a completely private thing, only some people from the Swedish Institute, the rich, Monica and I. Many
speeches. Mr Hazo looked extremely exotic and magnificent. The rich were nice and got a sudden affection for Monica so she was invited too to Pittsburgh! The agreement details I shall discuss with Mr Hazo on Sunday—it is now very favorable.
In these days the Writer’s Foundation is determining if I get the autumn voyage or not. I will probably have a “yes” from them. I have asked for a ticket from Stockholm to Los Angeles and back plus some financial support for the family during my 3 weeks’ stay in the U.S. I will let you know at once when I get the definite answer from them. I want to go in the middle of October. You will hear from me very soon.
Love
Tomas
P.S. From now on my address is Gatan 13038 Runmarö.
22 July, ’71
Dear Tomas,
Forgive me for being so slow to answer.
My brother was killed in a car accident not far from his farm about three weeks ago. I have lost most of my energy, and can’t seem to get anything done. All I want to do is to be with my children, and I waste day after day.
His two older girls were in high school and out of it, but he left a boy 14 and a girl about 8. The boy did nothing but sob for three days straight—in farming, a man and his son tend to be very close. I don’t know what I can do now, if I can be of any use at all. We were never close intellectually at all, and I suspect his widow considers me as his “opposite,” and will always be suspicious of me.
Our new little boy, Micah, is fine. Carol sends her love.
I like your National Guard Camp poem. I’ve translated the first two stanzas today with Mary—and she has already memorized them.
A porgy is a saltwater fish, which we often found in fish markets in England—Pagrus pagrus, sometimes called “scup” in English too. Several varieties are loosely called “porgy.” It’s a small, affectionate, non-threatening fish.
