I’ve been unselfconsciously reading terribly depressing poems all evening, but am curiously reminded how much I enjoy them, and not at all in an I-shall-wear-only-black-isn’t-life-dreadful sort of way. Specifically rediscovered East Coker and read for the first time Corniche by Les Murray, there accompanied by an Italian translation which I find unsympathetic to Murray for a number of reasons. Look at the first stanza:
I work all day and hardly drink at all.
I can reach down and feel if I’m depressed.
I adore the Creator because I made myself
and a few times a week a wire jags in my chest.Tutto il giorno lavoro e non bevo mai
se tocco terra so che sono depresso.
Il Creatore adoro perché ho fatto me stesso
e alcune volte la settimana un filo elettrico mi corre nel petto.
The Italian rendering backtranslates (roughly) as
All day I work and never drink
If I touch earth I know that I’m depressed
The Creator I adore because I made myself
And a few times a week an electric wire runs in my chest
The rhyme-scheme is swapped, which I’ll survive, because I don’t know enough about the formal qualities of Italian poetry to say whether it’s a good idea or a bad one; but I dislike the second line. In Murray’s words, he is, first, able to reach down and feel; then he plays on “if” as a synonym for “whether”, giving at least two readings: “If I am depressed, I am able to reach down and feel”, “I am able to reach down and [thereby] feel whether I am depressed [or not]“. In the Italian, unless I’m just making this up, which I suppose is possible, the first clause is subordinated to the second which becomes the principle effect of the line (“I know that I’m depressed, if I touch earth”).
And (this evening, I shall be parataxis boy) “e tu non puoi fare niente” in the tenth stanza would be to my mind better rendered by “e niente che puoi fare”, not only because it preserves the grammatical ambiguity in the English (“It is life roaring and racing and nothing you can do” rather than “It is life that roars and that races and you can’t do anything”) but also because, at least to my foreigner’s ear, it scans better. In my attempt, the meaning also builds along the line in the same way: you reach that point when you’ve read “It is life roaring and racing and nothing”, which, given the poem (has he read it?) sounds like a fair enough assessment. Choosing “you” rather than “nothing” seems negligent by virtue of its own non-nihilism. (Retires from high horse, admits he’s beyond his depth.)
All of this of course is an excuse for my hideous, embarrassing, dare-I-say “rather A-Level” failing to notice the deviant quotation from East Coker in, er, well, um, Mop Mop Georgette, the Denise Riley Slim Vol containing the poem for which this blog is named. ( “The poetry does not matter” says Eliot; Riley replies: “Who anyone is or I am is nothing to the work.” “the mind is conscious, but conscious of nothing” under ether, Eliot notes, and Riley responds that “no that’s not me, it’s just | my motor running”. Eliot writes East Coker, Riley cried for shame: “O great classic cadences of English poetry | We blush to hear thee lie | Above thy dark and dreamless.”)
I’m beginning to think I should have stayed in bed this morning.
