Eenoog
Eenoog sloop voorzichtig door het huis. Waar was de vijand? Waar was de verschrikking? Waar was het kwaad? Eenoog werd bekropen door een naarstig gevoel. Het kwaad miste ook een oog.
Eenoog sloop voorzichtig door het huis. Waar was de vijand? Waar was de verschrikking? Waar was het kwaad? Eenoog werd bekropen door een naarstig gevoel. Het kwaad miste ook een oog.
Although the one-word sonnets are defended of being worthy of the name sonnet in the introduction I have some lingering doubts: sonnets have a great many rules, and here there’s only the rule of 14 words, one per line. Perhaps I’m the purist, who thinks that “le terme quatorzain, qui désigne de façon générale tout poème de quatorze vers, conviendrait mieux.” But no matter what you call these haiku-like intensely precise little poems, they’re quite good. The French translation is also outstanding. My favorites are “Sleep” (p. 58), “Substance Abuse” (p. 98) and “Anti-Semitism” (p. 112).
Seymour Mayne, Sabine Huynh (Translator) (2011). Ricochet : word sonnets = sonnets d’un mot. Freely available from http://www.oapen.org/search?identifier=515358.
★★★★
Permalink Comments (1)Tags: poetry, review
As something of a cultural edifice in Belgium and a highly regarded poet in the Netherlands, Guido Gezelle should need little introduction. Yet perhaps Gezelle’s dynamic, melodic lyrical poetry from the 1850s deserves more international recognition for being ahead of its time. Some people even go so far as to disparage literature in Dutch, by saying that “Dutch poetry, whether from Flanders or the Netherlands, has a stronger claim to international appreciation than Dutch-language prose” (source, including a nice selection of some translated poems by a variety of authors). For the relevant time period of the the late nineteenth, early twentieth century they are probably not wrong. I can barely stand many a prose classic written in the period of roughly the 1880s to the 1910s myself, although when you compare it to the tedium of a George Eliot or a Thomas Hardy I’d be hard-pressed to say it’s any worse. The real question is, I suppose, whether Dutch literature of the time has anything as wonderful as Henry James.
The Gezelle vertaald anthology brings together some of Gezelle’s pearls, presented in the original Dutch as well as various translations in the neighboring languages of English, German, French… and Latin. An unfortunate shortcoming of this anthology, certainly for an international audience, is that the rights to the English translations by Christine D’haen and Paul Claes could not be secured, but a sampling of those can be found here. Incidentally, a fairly exhaustive list of translations in other languages can be found here, although unfortunately Flash is required.
Following is a list of some of my favorite translations included in this work. Keep in mind that this is not the same thing as a list of my favorite poems in Dutch.
Tallying up, I would definitely recommend the translation by Liliane Wouters for speakers of French. I also quite enjoyed the selection of German translations by Jérôme Decroos, even though a few years ago I wasn’t particularly enchanted by his German translations of some of Hadewijch’s work in Niederländische Gedichte aus neun Jahrhunderten (1960, p. 43, 44 [Selections from songs 19 and 22]). In the following bibliography I’ll mark the translations I recommend based on my sampling in bold. All in all I thoroughly enjoyed this book.
Johan Van Iseghem (ed.) (2003), Gezelle vertaald: een meertalige bloemlezing.
★★★★
Permalink Comments (1)Tags: language, poetry, review
soms wil je de kast opklimmen met je grote paardenstaart soms wil de de muur oplopen maar dat gaat niet met zo'n vaart nog niet kleine soms trek je jezelf op aan de oven want het aanrecht is aantrechtelijk pardon, aanlokkelijk, aantrekke lijk een ware utopie nog niet kleine wat is dat? je kan er al op springen? voorzichtig val er niet af ik zal wat voor je zingen zolang ik het nog mag waar is je visje waar is je muis onder het dressoir? ach, je kunt er niet meer bij groei dan toch niet zo snel spelen is voor iedereen het leven is geen spel of eigenlijk juist wel