OVER-INTERPRETATION IN THE TRANSLATION OF CRYPTIC POETRY

Thesis submitted to the Institute of Social Sciences in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts in Translation

by Yasemin Tuksal

Bo azii University 2003

The Thesis of Yasemin Tuksal is approved by

Prof. Dr. Suat Karantay (Committee Chairperson and Advisor) ____________________

Prof. Dr. Sheyla Artemel

____________________

Dr. Blent Aksoy

____________________

April 2003

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My special thanks go to my thesis advisor Professor Suat Karantay, who kept me focused on the task at hand throughout what proved to be a turbulent time in my life. He has been a source of inspiration and a guiding light. I am sincerely grateful to Mrs. Jean Efe for discussing with me extensively her translation process of Ahmet Gntans poems and her meticulous editing. Furthermore, I shall be forever indebted to my dear husband Emre Tuksal, who showed confidence even through times when I had little faith in myself. Without his help I could never have balanced my life, faced with studies, work and motherhood all at once. To all my friends who contributed as babysitters and domestic help I wish to extend my heartfelt thanks as well, especially to Dr. Almula Kksal who spent hours in front of the computer with me. Thank you all for just being there. Then, last but not least, let me thank my little Eren Tuksal for sleeping through the night and letting Mummy study.

April 2003

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ABSTRACT

Translating poetry, especially that which is cryptic, or difficult, is a challenge not lightly taken on by any translator, even those who are poets in their own right. The objective of this thesis is to show how easily the difficulty in interpreting cryptic poetry leads to over-interpretation and explication in the translation. This study attempts to disclose a most unfortunate tendency in our attitude towards translation that has taken most of its impetus from current approaches to interpretation, to show that over-interpretation of a poem will result only in a meta-poem written in the target language, based on the translators own interpretation of the original. Examples of cryptic poetry are provided, together with instances of over-interpretation. Probable reasons for the latter are analyzed in detail, with the conclusion that the over-interpretation present in poetry translation does not work and therefore needs attention.

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KISA ZET

>iir evirisi, zellikle de kapal?/zor Aiirlerin evirisi, evirmenler taraf?ndan hatta Aair-evirmenler taraf?ndan dahi -- hafife al?nmayacak bir giriAim olarak nitelendirilir. Bu tezin amac?, kapal?/zor Aiirlerin evirisindeki bu gl n nas?l aA?r?-yorumlamaya, hatta bir sonraki aAamada, a?mlamaya neden olabilece ini gstermektir. Bu al?Amada, aA?r?-yorumlamaya temellenen bir sre

sergilenmiA ve ortaya ?kan evirinin hedef dilde yaz?lm?A bir st-Aiire dnAebilece i ne srlmAtr. Kapal?/zor baz? Aiir rneklerinin ayr?nt?l? biimde incelendi i bu al?Amada, aA?r?-yorumun Aiir evirisinde neden iyi sonu veremeyece i kan?tlanmaya al?A?lm?At?r.

TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION Interpretation or Explication................................................... 2 Limiting Interpretation.................................................................... 4 CHAPTER I 1.1 Approaches to the process of interpretation............................. 7 1.2 The dominant approach to the process of interpretation today................................................................... 11 1.3 A Challenging approach from Umberto Eco............................. 12 1.3.1 The obsession with interpretation and the limitlesness of interpretation.................................... 13 1.3.2 The model reader............................................................ 17 1.3.3 Fidelity and inventive freedom......................................... 26 1.4 1.4 Other approaches supporting the idea of limited interpretation 1.4.1 Equivalence of response................................................. 29 1.4.2 Skopos and Interpretation................................................ 30 CHAPTER II 2.1 Interpretation in poetry translation............................................ 2.2 The case of difficult poetry........................................................ 2.2.1 A difficult poem: Ryoanji by Gnter Eich....................... 2.2.2 Y?ld?z by Lale Mldr..................................................... CHAPTER III 3.1 Dylan Thomas........................................................................... 3.2 The Poetry of Dylan Thomas.................................................... 3.2.1 Freud and the Bible: Sexual and Religious Themes....... 3.2.2 Wales............................................................................... 3.2.3 Language......................................................................... 3.3 The Interpretation of And Death Shall Have No Dominion................................................................................. CHAPTER IV 4.1 Ahmet Gntan........................................................................... 82 4.2 The Interpretation of Uyanma Saati....................................... 82 4.3 The Interpretation of Dk L. Visconti...................................... 91 CONCLUSION.104 BIBLIOGRAPHY.109 51 52 55 57 58 61 31 36 38 43

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INTRODUCTION

In April 2001 when asked to write a paper for our Graduate Seminar TR 579, I decided to tackle the issue of over-interpretation in poetry translation. Reader response theories and the celebration of the all-powerful reader/receiver -- often at the expense of both the author and the text -- were looming over my shoulder, overshadowing my feeble attempts at translating poetry from Turkish into English. Is poetry, especially wholesome, difficult poetry that does not easily yield to interpretation, truly a source of infinite readings? Does the number of readings depend on the number of readers? Is it true that there cannot be any such thing as what the poet means? Instead, is it really all about what the reader sees? If the answer to all these questions is yes, then does this mean there can be no such thing as poetry translation? Is the translator merely serving the reader his/her interpretation (what he/she sees) as he/she is the preliminary reader? And finally, does this mean that all readings are idiosyncratic and translations are the idiosyncratic readings of the translator? Does this actually suggest that poetry is untranslatable; better left alone? Then I remembered the German photographer I recently read about. Memet Fuat mentions a photographer who set out to compile a book on her favourite poet Naz?m Hikmet. She does not speak any Turkish; she has read Naz?m from his translations. Yet, Memet Fuat is impressed with her selection of poems. She is obviously in tune with the poets aura to such an extent that she can obviously pick out the best of his poems. If this German photographer feels the way she does

about Naz?m, she does so thanks to the successful translations of the poet into German. Turkish culture harbors many literary geniuses who deserve to be read and understood by a wider readership. The Turkish reader, likewise, is not going to give up reading foreign authors. There are even publishers in Turkey who print nothing but translations. Luckily there exists translators who are able to carry poets from one language to another without asking them to give up one or all of their vital organs. They can do it simply because they are able to relate not what they see in a particular literary text but the thing itself --enabling each target system reader to venture his/her own interpretation as would the source reader. What enables them to do so is their conviction that the poet is indeed trying to say something and that he is challenging the readers wit/senses/intellect by laying the necessary clues down, sending the reader down a path of discovery. What happens when the explorer travels too far and strays from the path?

Interpretation or Explication
What Ian Watt terms explication, i.e. a progressive unfolding of a series of literary implications which he says partakes of our modern preference for multiplicity in method and meaning. (Watt, p. ) and what Vinay and Darbelnet (1958) refer to as explicitation in their Glossary of Translation Techniques i.e. the process of introducing information into the target language which is present only implicitly in the source language, but which can be derived from the context or the situation

(quoted in Klaudy, p.8) is one of the major pitfalls the translator generally finds hard to avoid during the process of translation. Hence the translators well-intended efforts to make things clear for the target reader. The difficulty of translating a poem lies in the retention of what French poet/translator Yves Bonnefoy calls the spiritual statement, or poet Robert Bly describes as the interior, or what poet Stanley Kunitz defines as the poems secret life. (Older, p.29) It is only natural that the translator should be preoccupied with what the poet is saying. This is often the main concern of every reader of poetry. However, this does not necessarily mean that the translator should discover what the poet is trying to say so that he can indulge in an explication for the target reader, no more than he should refuse to translate poetry based on the claim that the number of possible interpretations is infinite. It is sufficient that he, as translator, also lays down certain clues (albeit perhaps not exactly the same ones laid down by the author but clues nonetheless) which will enable the target reader to formulate/construct his/her interpretation. Because, yes, more often than not, there is more than one possible interpretation. However, there certainly is a limit to the number of possible interpretations of a poem. Each particular version stems from the poets inspiration, from the words he spells out onto the page. If we assume that the reader of a poem automatically sets out on a journey in his mind, then we should also accept that the poem is his ticket and on his ticket the stops that particular train will make are already marked. Where he will disembark depends entirely on the reader but it is the poem itself that sets the reader on that very path.

When the translator tries to serve his/her own interpretation to the reader the poem stops being a Pound, Hughes or apan poem. It becomes a meta-poem written by the translator and based on the original poets work. Clearly poetry translation begins with that same spark of recognition you or I have experienced while reading a good poem. The main point is the mood of the poem. If the target reader can catch the mood of a poem in the same way that the source reader does, then he is able to reach the poet. For moods are universal, just like feelings. And this is what makes poetry universal.

Limiting Interpretation
Recent critical theory has placed undue emphasis on the limitlessness of interpretation. It is argued that, since all reading is misreading, no one reading is better than any other, and hence all readings, potentially infinite in number, are in the final analysis equally misinterpretations. (Edward Said, p.39) Throughout history, there have been different approaches regarding the process of interpretation in text analysis. The point we seem to have come to right now leaves us with nothing but the most elastic and vague understanding of interpretation. This study will try to follow a somewhat more down to earth approach that may serve to hearten the translator in his/her quest to find a foothold by showing how one can follow the traces left by the author with the aim of specifically limiting the number of possible interpretations. My point of focus in doing this will be the type of poetry that is generally considered as hard to decipher. I will start out by problematizing why we feel the need to decipher poetry in the first place.

The study will begin with a brief look at the prevailing approaches to the process of text analysis and interpretation: positivism, practical criticism, structuralism, post-structuralism and post-modernism. I will then delineate the prevailing approach currently in practice. The dominant mode of our day is polysystemic, target oriented, diachronic, functional and descriptive, says IA?n Bengi ner. (p. 19) The choices have never been so varied, the variations never so ample; for we are now living in the age of post-modernism and the name of the game is diffrance. Since this study is based on the counter-approaches to the dominant mode of today, Umberto Ecos challenging approach will form the backbone of my work. Ecos endeavors to prove the limits of interpretation will be discussed thoroughly in this chapter. Justification of his attempts to curtail

interpretation will be presented in full force with the help of his eye opening comments on over-interpretation. The chapter will end with a brief mention of other approaches that limit the possibility of interpretation. Chapter II will attempt at a definition of poetry with an emphasis on the degree of obscurity. This chapter will also cover the issue of interpretation in poetry translation. The study will finally try to identify possible loopholes in todays dominant mode of thinking with the help of two examples -- the study of four different translations of Dylan Thomas And Death Shall Have No Dominion by Talt Sait Halman, Blent Ecevit, lk Tamer and >ehnaz Tahir, and the interpretation process employed in the translation of Ahmet Gntans poems Uyanma Saati and Dk L. Visconti by Jean Efe; and respectively.

If there are an infinite number of interpretations, as translators are we simply going to pick our own and make sure it comes through our work? To secure our acquittal, should we try to clarify our motives by talking about our interpretation in a preface? It is all very well, the post-modernist notion of equal weight to everything and everything is possible and the notion of an infinite number of interpretations, translation or meeting a deadline affect our choices as translators. Not to mention our skopos and our commission. So what do we do? The

concluding section of my research will hopefully prepare us for the quest of answering, at least, some of these questions.

CHAPTER I

1.1

Approaches to the Process of Interpretation

There have always been different attempts at interpretation undertaken on the basis of a certain concept of what the world should be like (ideology) as well as a certain concept of what literature should be like (poetics), and these attempts, neoclassical, romantic, existential, psychoanalytic have always been temporary, transient. They have accepted or rejected works of literature on the basis of the ideology and the poetics they happened to be serving but, much more often, they have adapted works of literature, rewritten them until they happened to fit their own poetics, their own ideology. ( Lefevere, p. 217 )

The most prevalent approaches to the process of interpretation stem from the most prominent ideologies and poetics of the times: positivism, practical criticism, structuralism, post-structuralism and post-modernism. Interpretation, i.e. text dissection, is always present in the translation process, whether in the form of a conscious, scholarly effort or a haphazard patchwork of guessing. It is the nature of the interpretationor upon occasion, the dosage of interpretation applied in the process of translationthat most often varies with the norms of the time. There was the era of rationalistic 19th-century positivism in text analysis, calling for systematic attention to the author, the historical setting of the text, and the formal properties of the language itself. The era of practical criticism, on the other hand, excluded linguistic and historical considerations in an empirical attempt to derive the literary value of a work solely from the words written on the page. Developed by I.A. Richards of Cambridge University in the 1920s as a method for teaching and examining students, this approach has been criticized as being 7

subjective, anti-historicist and partial. At that time, sophistication was the foremost criterion for evaluating poetry. Great poetry is not a plain account of a familiar or ordinary life, it is an original creation which can only be understood once subjected to a detailed textual analysis. Therefore, practical criticism analyzes mostly the complexity of a poem, unfolding the layers of meaning and studying double or multiple meanings. (Taylan, p. 36) A Cambridge scholar who was first schooled in practical criticism and who then went on to teach it, Ian Watt, suggests verse as the most suitable medium of application: Practical Criticism tends to find the most merit in the kind of writing which has virtues that are in some way separable from their larger context; it favours kinds of writing that are richly concrete in themselves, stylistically brilliant, or composed in relatively small units. (p.529) Structuralism, an affiliated but more recent trend, took this view one step further and applied it to the systems theory. Post-structuralism, developed as an antithesis to structuralism (which argued for an underlying universal scheme and favored x-raying texts to examine the relation and function of items within a systemdisregarding their history or their relation to the outside world), represented a call for fragmentation. A synthesis of deconstruction combined with other theories derived from Marxism, feminism and psychoanalysis, post-structuralism views a work of art not as an object in itself, but rather as a lens between an object and the viewer. An extension of post-structuralism, post-modernism also accepts pluralism in cultural manifestations and philosophy. Post-modernists and post-structuralists reject anything that is universal or homogenizing. Critics, viewers, readers, or translators are free to approach a work of art in any way that pleases them. A text 8

may thus be approached from any direction. One may favor anti-elitism and antiauthoritarianism to accept open and indeterminate discourse. Deconstruction, another extension of post-structuralism developed by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida in the early 70s, without claiming to establish an alternative theory simply deconstructs the writings of Saussure, Hegel, Heidegger, Husserl and Rousseau. Texts become a network of references. For a deconstructionist there can be no quest for a single meaning. Neither meaning itself is stable, nor is language a reliable conveyor of meaning. There are an infinite number of readings for each text. There is no center, no finite meaning in interpretation; thus there is no need of recourse to an authoritynot even the writerin order to define the meaning of the signs in a text. Language and meaning depend on diffrance. With the use of this term Derrida denotes both difference and deferral. The meaning of a sign lies in its distinction from other signs, but this meaning is always endlessly deferred. A fixed and present meaning is sought in vain. Meaning can never be mastered. Deconstruction certainly gives the creator no control over the interpretation of a work. Derrida attacks the notion that texts can be owned, controlled, limited in the name of a single author. Readers are no longer only consumers of meaning, but producers as well. Roland Barthes, carrying this stance even one step further, actually celebrated the death of the author. (Barthes, p.161) Rosemary Arrojo supports the post-structuralist outlook in the following dramatic statement: The most important consequence post-structuralism could bring to translation studies is precisely a thorough revision of the relationships that

have generally been established

between originals and translations, between

authors and translators and between translators and their readers. (Arrojo, p.30) Deconstruction accepts both fragmentation and pluralism. It can be viewed as an extension of post-structuralism because of its distance from universal values. In a sense Deconstruction defies interpretation. A text remains in constant flux, and interpretation becomes impossible because a work is seen to have continuous development. This would seem to be the dominant way of thinking at present. IA?n Bengi-ner offers a concise summary of the post-modernist view of translation (incorporating certain views by Derrida, Venuti and Arrojo) as she explains how translation is studied in a much larger framework today. Within this new approach the universal becomes local, the objective becomes subjective, and differences unite. Both the translator and the translation scholar are aware of the fact that they are on slippery ground. (1999a, p.8)

1.2

The Dominant Approach to the Process of

Interpretation Today
From the perspective of certain trends in contemporary thought and, particularly, of deconstruction, which Jacques Derrida explicitly associates with translation, the typical notions of originality, authorship, and interpretation are radically revised (...) the underlying authorial goals of interpretation begin to be recognized as that which is essentially human. (...) The recognition of the far-ranging implications of this paradigmatic role of translation, or of interpretation as translation, which has become a key concept in contemporary theories of language, culture and the subject, is also one of the inaugural premises of what has been generally known as post-modernism and which has been closely linked to Nietzches and Freuds intellectual heritages. (Arrojo, p. 22) 10

The post-modern approach claims to release translation from its subordination to the foreign text and recognize it as a fabric woven of connotations, allusions and discourses specific to the target language culture. (Venuti, p. 8) Celebrating the inauguration of the all-powerful reader and the visible translator who is able to interfere in his or her own name merely indicates a shift of power from the author to the translator and from the translator to the reader. Philip Lewis further elaborates this thought and foregrounds the translators choice to tamper with the realities of the source text. He calls this abusive fidelity. (Lewis, p. 41) However, what the translator sees as belonging to the original, what the translator decides to respect or reject, other post-modernists argue, are just reflections of that particular translators reading, his or her interference. Rosemary Arrojo offers a very post-modernist solution to this paradox in the true spirit of poststructuralism and Derridas deconstruction, i.e. a true acceptance of diffrance in translation. There is no capturing of meaning since no meaning is forever present but is always relative. Thus translation is transformation. (Arrojo, p. 26) Perhaps IA?n Bengi-ners brief description of the dominant current mode in Translation Studies as polysystemic, target oriented, diachronic, functional and descriptive (1999b, p.19) is the most accurate one indeed.

1.3

A Challenging Approach from Umberto Eco

Fortunately, the general rule of progress also applies here, in that we do have opinions to challenge the dominant mode. Umberto Eco is one of the brave souls

11

ready with a challenge. He cannot help but find a certain disquieting concept in ancient Hermetism as well as in many contemporary approaches: namely that a text is an open-ended universe, one in which the interpreter can discover infinite interconnections. Eco argues that no language is incapable of expressing the unique original thought: on the contrary, the task of language is to demonstrate that what we speak of is only a coincidence of opposites. Language mirrors the inadequacy of thought; it reminds us that our existence cannot bring us to transcend meaning: Any text, pretending to assert something univocal, is a miscarried universe, that is the work of a muddle-headed demiurge (who tried to say thats that and on the contrary elicited an uninterrupted chain of infinite deferrals where that! is not that). Contemporary textual Gnosticism is very generous, however: everybody, provided one is eager to impose the intention of the reader upon the unattainable intention of the author, can become the bermench who really realizes the truth, namely, that the author did not know what he or she was really saying, because language spoke in his or her place. To salvage the text that is to transform it from an illusion of meaning to the awareness that meaning is infinite- the reader must suspect that every line of it conceals another secret meaning; words, instead of saying, hide the untold: the glory of the reader is to discover that texts can say everything, except what their author wanted them to mean; as soon as a pretended meaning is allegedly discovered, we are sure that it is not the real one; the real one is the further one and so on and so forth; the hylics the losers are those who end the process by saying I understood.(Eco 1992, pp. 38-39) Umberto Ecos mocking portrait of todays all powerful reader is only too close to the truth. Eco boldly caricaturizes the most radical reader-oriented theories of interpretation: If there is something to be interpreted, the interpretation must speak of something which must be found somewhere, and in some way respected. (Eco 1992, p. 43) He adds the following: Hermetic semiosis goes too far precisely in the practices of suspicious interpretation, according to principles of facility which appear in all texts of this 12

tradition. First of all, an excess of wonder leads to overestimating the importance of coincidences which are explainable in other ways. (p. 50)

1.3.1 The

Obsession

with

Interpretation

and

the

Limitlessness

of

Interpretation According to Eco, the limitlessness of interpretation has its roots in the translation of the sacred texts: As soon as a text becomes sacred for a certain culture, it becomes subject to the process of suspicious reading and therefore to what is undoubtedly an excess of interpretation. () This attitude toward sacred texts (in the literal sense of the term) has also been transmitted, in secularized form, to texts which have become metaphorically sacred in the course of their reception. (p. 53) In her article titled Against Interpretation, Susan Sontag argues the same point along similar lines : Interpretation first appears in the culture of late classical antiquity, when the power and credibility of myth had been broken by the realistic view of the world introduced by scientific enlightenment. Once the question that haunts post-mythic consciousness -- that of seemliness of religious symbols--had been asked, the ancient texts were, in their pristine form, no longer acceptable. Then interpretation was summoned, to reconcile the ancient texts to modern demands. (p. 97) Is what we find what the text says by virtue of its textual coherence and original underlying signification, or what we as the addressees find in it by virtue of our own systems of expectations? Ecos example of Dante clarifies this: Many critics have obsessively read and re-read Dantes immense opus in order to find in it a hidden message. Notice that Dante was the first to say that his poetry conveyed a non-literal sense. () But not only did Dante explicitly assert this; he also furnished the keys for finding out non-literal senses. (p. 54)

13

Our obsession to interpret virtually all forms of art has become a habit; and we have become so accustomed to approaching works of art with the intention of interpreting them that what takes precedence over even our enjoyment of art is the pre-requisite of our own self-imposed content. As Susan Sontag has put it, when there is a discrepancy between the clear meaning of the text and the demands of its readers, this results in a process of excavation, one which impels critics not satisfied with the first exploration to dig yet a level deeper to discover the true subtext. (1964, p. 98) Nothing that is said has its truth simply in itself, but refers instead backward and forward to what is unsaid And only when what is not said is understood along with what is said is an assertion understandable. (Gadamer, p. 67) Anna Longoni expresses the same sentiment when she asks: "How far can the interpretation of the reader, who interacts with the text, legitimately go? What is the legitimacy of interpretation?" (p. 211) To produce a decoding based on a verifiable evidentiary conclusion, she suggests that "a hypothesis, in order to become a legitimate interpretation, must be built upon clear proofs given to the reader. (p. 213) "The mark of legitimacy" can be established through context, she adds. "The context must give the reader a guideline that will set the boundaries within which to move in the oscillation of interpretation (which becomes wider the more complex the interpreted text is)." (p. 214) Ultimately, she concludes, this process will ground itself upon an analysis of what are then viewed as justifiable "objective constraints on the interpretation of a text." (p. 214) In "The Limits of Interpretation, Eco suggests the following:

14

An open text is always a text, and a text can elicit infinite readings without allowing any possible reading. It is impossible to say what is the best interpretation of a text, but it is possible to say which ones are wrongTexts frequently say more than their authors intended to say, but less than what many incontinent readers would like them to say. (p. 148) It is the challenging the notion and intention of the author that has brought this issue to such a level. The influence of deconstructionist literary theory on literary studies has tended to fragment the unity of the author and to displace the author as the source and center of the text. The author is no longer a primary authority who dispenses meanings for the reader to decipher. Consequently the text is no longer considered as the site of final, unified meaning authorized by the author. Rather, the meaning floats in a complex interplay of the reader and the text; with the author transformed into a biographical subjectan intersection of ideologies and discourse. The author may still figure in the text, but only as a kind of fiction, myth, or ideological construct. Not surprisingly, the loudest supporter of this approach is the French theoretician Roland Barthes, who was the first to dance in the wake of the deceased author. According to Barthes, the text is irreducibly plural, a complex interlacing of voices and codes that cannot be made to cohere in the single expressive voice of the author: We know now that a text is not a line of words releasing a single "theological" meaning (the "message" of the Author-God) but a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash. (Barthes 1977, p. 146) There can be no closed, internal, single meaning in the text, Barthes argues, because "a text's unity lies not in its origin but in its destination. (p. 146) The

15

meaning of a text is no longer single and unified as intended by the author, but is volatile and variable with each and every reading experience. The reading experience itself is governed by what Barthes and Julia Kristeva have called intertextuality. Their argument is that every text is an intertext in which other texts are present, not just by allusion or quotation, but by the ideological and cultural milieu out of which it has emerged. The all-powerful reader, who now holds the license to do exactly what he or she pleases with the text, is running riotinterpreting and re-interpreting texts, and exposing semantic layers to such an extent that it becomes almost impossible to remember where the text originated.

1.3.2 The Model Reader As a means of curtailing the actual decoders (readers) behavior, Umberto Eco presents the model reader as someone ready to accept guidance. It is, indeed, absolutely necessary to have the reader cooperating in the interpretation. However, Eco's model readeras Susan Petrilli notes, remains elusive. While the term model reader "recurs again and again in Eco's writings (...) it remains indefinite. (p. 413) Furthermore, as Petrilli remarks, the text still fluctuates between being the author's construct, the text's device, a set of felicity conditions and the personified 'competent' judge of interpretations." (p. 413) Petrilli would still place Eco's model reader on the thriving market of readers who recur in various reader-reception theories. Anna Longoni reflects the widespread uneasiness in semiotics toward the decoder by praising Eco for showing "wise caution" in his position regarding this 16

presumably troublesome component of sign activity. (p. 214) Lubomir Dolezel is another who fears that decoders may run amuck if given a sign entirely under their own jurisdiction. "One of the potential dangers that the introduction of the reader (and any other pragmatic concept into literary theory) brings, is a radical relativization of the literary work's meaning and of the procedures of interpretation," Dolezel contends. "Indeed, if the reader co-products the literary work's meaning, then there is no limit to the co-productions." Once the decoder has been sanctioned to interact freely with the sign, "no criteria of interpretation, [and] no distinction between interpretation and misinterpretation can be postulated." (p. 114) Significantly, Eco configures this "openness" in a decidedly peculiar fashion. The work, in Eco's view, stands as "the end product of an author's effort to arrange a sequence of communicative effects in such a way that each individual addressee can refashion the original composition devised by the author." (1979, p. 49) "The addressee," he continues, "is bound to enter into an interplay of stimulus and response which depends on his unique capacity for sensitive reception of the piece." (p. 49) One should take particular note of the way Eco has phrased these descriptions. The encoder, within this scenario, authorizes this openness (the addressee can refashion the original"). Given this arguably meager liberty, the "addressee" is "bound" to participate only along closely prescribed lines of decoding. The decoder's behavior is further circumscribed as an "interplay" limited to an exclusively "sensitive reception" of the work. This oddly parental freedom is reminiscent of child psychology strategies for duping a child into believing that he or she has some degree of autonomy or empowerment. A form of openness cast in this manner places the decoder in the position of a consumer free to adopt what 17

Roland Barthes has termed the "readerly" text or adapt the work to what Julio Cortzar (in an unfortunate choice of words) has called the "female-reader." The decoder is allowed only the freedom sanctioned by the encoder/texta decidedly mediated form of freedom indeed. Eco continues in this vein: In this sense the author presents a finished product with the intention that this particular composition should be appreciated and received in the same form as he devised it. As he reacts to the play of stimuli and his own response to their patterning, the individual addressee is bound to supply his own existential credentials, the sense conditioning which is peculiarly his own, a defined culture, a set of tastes, personal inclinations, and prejudices. Thus his comprehension of the original artifact is always modified by his particular and individual perspective. In fact, the form of the work of art gains its aesthetic validity precisely in proportion to the number of different perspectives from which it can be viewed and understood. These give it a wealth of different resonances and echoes without impairing its original essence. (p. 49) We should note, again, that here Eco acknowledges the authority of the encoder to control "valid" acts of semiosis. As the source of a message's closure, the encoder's presence hovers over the text, overseeing and invisibly directing the decoder's respectful, appreciative reading practices. The decoder is "bound" once more, through the agency of the encoder and a host of protective buttresses that could be accurately grouped under the rubric of "competence," not to "impair" the message's "original essence." While Eco constantly reiterates "openness" as a reduction of encoder/text control, he is in fact questioning the possibility of such control to begin with. For instance, he claims that the encoder of the open work constructs it in such a way "so as to expose it to the maximum possible 'opening'." (p. 50) The clear implication is that the encoder can actually wield substantial enforcement over the decoder's interaction with the message. For example, in the Sophist Eco discusses 18

Plato's commentary on painting and the extent to which perspective was used "in order to ensure that [the observer] looked at the figure in the only possible right way." (pp. 50-51) He adds: "That is the way the author of the work had devised various visual devices to oblige the observer's attention to converge on." (p. 51) The open work might not impose that much constraint on the decoder, but it would still be imposing restraint (it to a far lesser, but still not entirely permissive, extent). Eco cites allegorical readings of the Scriptures during the Middle Ages that presuppose a text "undoubtedly endowed with a measure of 'openness'" (p. 51). "The reader of the text knows that every sentence and every trope is 'open' to a multiplicity of meanings which he must hunt for and find," Eco asserts. "Indeed, according to how he feels at one particular moment, the reader might choose a possible interpretative key which strikes him as exemplary of [a given] spiritual state." Significantly, Eco positions the decoder's interaction with this "open" form of semiosis as always regimented by twin control exercised by the encoder/text. Thus, the decoder is essentially restrained, authorized only to "find" something that is there in the text (placed there intentionally). This allows the decoder to make a "choice," in Eco's words, which is limited to the choices offered (by the encoder/text). Like the restrictions of the "code," textual "openness" is simply a wider array of pre-determined, pre-determinable options. Decoders, accordingly, cannot do whatever they want with a text; they can choose only from among the items dictated to them. "In this type of operation," Eco contends, "'openness' is far removed from meaning 'indefiniteness' of communication, 'infinite' possibilities of form, or complete freedom of reception." He adds, "What in fact is made available is a range of rigidly pre-established and ordained interpretative solutions, and 19

these never allow the reader to move outside the strict control of the author." (pp. 51-63). James Joyce's immensely polysemous novel Finnegan's Wake reveals a great deal about why Eco made his own investment in hobbling the decoder in this vein. Longoni reflects a parallel historicizing assertion by arguing that works of modern writers such as Kafka and Joyce "impose on the reader a plurality of interpretations, because for them there no longer exists a unique interpretation of the world. Reality itself is fragmented, and it is represented in the literary text by fragments that can be endlessly reassembled." (p. 215) Eco similarly argues that because Joyce crafts portmanteau words from numerous languages and creates puns ("slipping beauty," "reamalgamerge," "anagrim," "lavastories," "passencore," etc.), his text must be read according to the semantic voice which we make in the case of one unit [of the novel] and we should go on and interpret all the other units in the text in the same manner. Of course, "this does not mean that the book lacks specific sense," Eco contends (p. 54). "If Joyce does introduce some keys into the text, it is precisely because he wants the work to be read in a certain sense." (pp. 54-55). By this, Eco evidently means that Joyce intended his work to be read in a certain way. Despite his historicizing claims, to Eco, what was true about semiosis in the Middle Ages was still true in the 1930s. "Once the interpretant is equated with any coded intentional property of the content, since these properties cannot be isolated but under the form of the other signs (that is, other representamens), the element of the content becomes something physically testable." (p. 197) "Testability" has the status of a confirmation apparatus in Eco's configuration of semiosis. A legacy 20

of the scientific method, it can be employedas Eco uses it hereto suggest a form of corroboration that consequently raises hypotheses about the model reader to a level of proof higher than mere conjecture or the recorded experience of one reader (as in Barthes' S/Z) or even as many as five (as in Norman Holland's 5 Readers Reading). As in I.A. Richards' survey of numerous actual readers (recounted in Practical Criticism), Ecos The Role of the Reader is presented as an empirically derived account of systematic decoder practice. Eco posits the establishment of a storehouse of these mutually validating correlations that serves socially to maintain semiotic consensus. "A given culture displays, in any of its activities, accepted correlations between representamens (or expressions), each becoming in turn the interpretant of the other." (p. 197) Using the interpretation of a literary text as an example, Eco proposes corroboratingfor cross-confirmationits "internal structure" with "testable critical statements" that confirm its signifying status. The specific text, then, "is recognized as the interpretant of the statements [about it] by force of concrete and testable correlations, just as we know that a given portrait interprets the content of the word 'Napoleon' because of the label put on the framework by the author, accepted by the museums, and reproduced as a caption in innumerable books on art history." This institutionalized group confirmation "frees" the intepretant "from any psychological misunderstanding." (p. 198) Eco thus attempts to portray interpretants as "the testable and describable correspondents associated by public agreement to another." (ibid.) Accordingly, the potential assignment of a given interpretant is wrested from the decoder. "The analysis of content becomes,"

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instead, "a cultural operation which works only on physically testable cultural products, that is, other signs and their reciprocal correlations. (p. 198) By trying to lead the "reader along a pre-determined path" and "carefully displaying their effects" at calculated moments, writers of "closed" texts inevitably fail, Eco argues. (p. 9) This is because, he suggests, texts that "seem to be structured according to an inflexible project" neglect to account for the one element that cannot be "inflexibly planned": the reader. Such texts are "immoderately 'open' to every possible interpretation." (p. 9) "They can be read in various ways," he adds, "each way being independent from the others." (p. 9) Why this situation should represent a "closed" form of semiosis is never fully explored in The Role of The Reader. What Eco does explain, however, is that this cannot happen to open texts. "They work at their peak revolutions per minute," he asserts, "only when each interpretation is re-echoed by the others, and vice versa." (p. 9) This is acheived, he claims, when "an open text outlines a 'closed' project of its Model Reader as a component of its structural strategy." (p. 9) Accordingly, in this instance, "you cannot use the text as you want, but only as the text wants you to use it," he declares. (ibid) "An open text, however 'open' it can be, cannot afford whatever interpretation." (p. 10.) To the contrary, the open text produces all the paths of its 'good' reading" while offering "the widest possible range of interpretative proposals." (p. 33) "Even the more 'open' among experimental texts direct their own free interpretation and pre-establish the movement of their Model Reader," Eco maintains. (p. 24) "The reader finds his freedom (i) in deciding how to activate one or another of the textual levels and (ii) in choosing which codes to apply." (p. 39) Eco essentially posits two 22

kinds of such "freedom": "the free interpretative choices elicited by a purposeful strategy of openness" versus "the freedom taken by a reader with a text assumed as a mere stimulus." (p. 40) It certainly is clear by now which one of these liberties Eco condones. Ecos concept of poetics of open work is based on the assumption that texts are intentionally provided with ambiguous and plurivocal meanings so that the reader may arrive at multiple interpretations. The author foresees the role of the reader in the act of writing, and the readerin turnhas an indirectly collaborative role while following one of the textual strategies interwoven in the text. Yet, though the reader may reach multiple interpretations, Eco stresses that there are limits to the power of the interpreter/reader. In essence, one can make an intentionally ambiguous text say many things, but one dare not make a text say what it was not meant to say. Eco constructs a model decoder whose actions can be described and even predicted. The "text itself" contains the profile of its "good" reader, Eco asserts, "because the pragmatic process of interpretation is not an empirical accident independent of the text qua text, but is a structural element of its generative process." (p.19) Eco calls this considerate individual "the sensitive reader" (p. 26) who respects the senders rights to his own text." (p. 34) Because "the reader is strictly defined by the lexical and the syntactical organization of the text," Eco suggests, "the text is nothing else but the semantic-pragmatic production of its own Model Reader." (p. 10) Even when the model reader is obliged to engage in far-ranging interpretation, or what Eco refers to as "inferential walks" leading away from the 23

text, constant respect for the text is to be maintained in order to remain within the semiotic universe firmly controlled by the encoder/text. Such "walks," he says, "are not mere whimsical initiatives on the part of the reader, but are elicited by discursive structures and foreseen by the whole textual strategy as indispensable components of the fabula." (p. 32) An "unsuitable reader," on the contrary, is "unable to do the job he has (...) been postulated to do." (p. 9) This disrespectful decoder will "read a given text in the light of 'aberrant' codes," Eco argues, here referring to codes "different from the ones envisaged by the sender." (p. 22) The encoder/text loses all semblance of control over the decoder should such decoding be tolerated. Encoders are stripped of whatever authority and restraints they are presented with in Eco's closed sense of openness. This is why he characterizes unrestricted open decoding as, paradoxically, closed.

1.3.3 Fidelity and Inventive Freedom In A Theory of Semiotics, Eco asserts that while interacting with a text and torn between assessing authorial intention and exploring "new interpretive possibilities upon the text the author has set out before him," the ideal decoder "never wants to completely betray the author's intentions." (p. 276) Instead, the respectful decoder establishes "a dialectic between fidelity and inventive freedom." He accepts perhaps celebratesthe fact that "the addressee seeks to draw excitement from the ambiguity of the message and to fill out an ambiguous text with suitable codes." (p. 276) Nonetheless, Eco insists that the decoder is "induced by contextual relationships to see the message exactly as it was intended, in an act of fidelity to the author and to the historical environment in which the message was emitted." (p. 24

276) Unlike V. N. Volosinov, Eco returns repeatedly to "possession" of the sign by the encoder. Failing this control, a decoder failing in respect would feel at liberty to produce random signs. A "reliable reading," can therefore only be based upon "reasonable" associations consonant with a consensual agreement. (1989, pp. 80 85) On the first page of Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language, Eco addresses his own model reader. There he proposes a compromised model of semiotic orientation lying somewhere between the two extreme viewpoints, the first holding that "every text (...) can be interpreted in one, and only one, way, according to the intention of its author," and the second held by those "who assume that a text supports every interpretation." (p. 3) Evidently, what Eco is doing is returning over and over to the notion that if the decoder is going to be analyzed systematically, an accompanying assumption of restraint in "decodification" has to be acceptedand accepted a priori. Stable grounds for interpretation would require thesauric and encyclopedic competence. Such a "social storage of world knowledge" would be the "only" way, Eco contends, to legitimize or justify the implementation any interpretation, "even in the case of the most 'open' instances." (1984, p. 3) Eco can only make this claim because he refers to the decoder's activities in a markedly restricted "open" manner. As late as the mid-1980s Eco was still operating on the same definition of the decoder's province that he had touted at the beginning of his career. When those pages were written, my readers focused mainly on the "open" side of the whole business, underestimating the fact that the open-ended reading I supported was an activity elicited by (and aimed at interpreting) a work. In other words, I was studying the dialectics between the rights of texts and the rights of 25

their interpreters. I have the impression that, in the course of the last few decades, the rights of the interpreters have been overstressed. In the present essays I stress the limits of the act of interpretation. (1990, p. 6) Comments of other authorities on the issues raised above may provide some helpful suggestions as to how a critical semiotics might overcome Eco's considerable uneasiness regarding the decoder. Remarking on the title of Eco's study on James Joyce, The Aesthetics of Chaosmos, David Seed notes that "This title strikes just the right note of tension between order and disorder which is implicit in Eco's notion of the open work." (p. 81) This tension surfaces throughout Eco's writings on the decoder, as the many quotations cited here attest. As a means of reducing, or eliminating, this tension, Eco tries to cast the decoder's function into the mold as a static, mechanical undertaking. "Eco's semiotics views interpretation as an interplay between the addressee and the work as an objective fact," Lubimir Dolezel notes. "As a signification system, the text restricts the range of its possible interpretations." (p. 115) Anna Longoni comments that

"considerations on the relationship between reader and text convince Eco that it is necessary to deny an excessive interpretative freedom, as the text itself sets some limits." (p. 214) This is how Victorino Tejera summarizes Ecos theory: Interpreters are free to do or say whatever they like; but if they are to speak to the work and the experience it informs, rather than about other things, and if they are to verbalize that informed experience, they must speak out of, or according to, the interpretants determined by the work-as-the-literary-sign that it is. These interpretants arise in the interaction or transaction between the reader's literary competence and the (complex) design of the (composed) work. When readers assent to a proposed interpretation it is because they share interpretants with its propounder: their responses, including their aesthetic responses, will be differential and not quite verbalized in the same way. (p. 150).

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Thus the basic essence of Ecos criteria for limiting interpretation should read as follows: Any interpretation given of a certain portion of a text can be accepted if it is confirmed by, and must be rejected if it is challenged by, another portion of the same text. In this sense the internal textual coherence controls the otherwise uncontrollable drives of the reader. (1992, p. 65)

1.4 Other Approaches Supporting Limited Interpretation

1.4.1 Equivalence of Response Applying linguistic theory to the concept of translation, Eugene Nida arrived at a very straightforward description of equivalence. In fact, what he arrived at was termed more like a sociolinguistics of translation than anything else. (Fawcett, p. 121) Eugene Nida argued that accuracy in translation depends on generating an equivalent effect in the target-language culture. The receptors of a translation should comprehend the translated text to such an extent that they can understand how the original receptors must have understood the original text. (Nida and de Waard 1986, p. 9) Nida postulates three criteria for an optimal translation: general efficiency of the communicative process, comprehension of intent, and equivalence of response. (p. 173) Thus we understand that the translator should ensure that the target language reader arrives at the same possible interpretation/s of the target text as does the source language reader upon reading the source text. This

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equivalence of response theory assumes a set of interpretations inherent to any given text. This notion of equivalence of response takes us back to the concept of the mood of poetry that was earlier mentioned. A poems character (embedded in the lines by the poet) is what the translator tries to capture and pass on. 1.4.2 Skopos and Interpretation The Skopos Theory reflects a general shift from predominantly linguistic and rather formal translation theories to a more functionally and socio-culturally oriented concept of translation. (Schffner, p. 235) According to the Skopos Theory translation is the production of a functionally appropriate target text based on an existing source text, with the relationship between the two texts specified according to the skopos (or purpose) of the translation. Hans Vermeer, in his Skopos Theory developed in the late 1970s, argues that the skopos of the translation of any given literary text should be the determining factor in its interpretation. At first glance it may seem that assigning a skopos to the translation of every literary text restricts the possibilities of its interpretation. A given skopos may of course rule out certain interpretations because they are not part of the translational goal; but one possible goal (skopos) would certainly be to preserve the precise breadth of interpretation possible in the source text.

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CHAPTER II

2.1

Interpretation in Poetry Translation

Verse translation, by nature, is the medium most sensitive to interpretation. Perhaps one of the most comprehensive classifications of types of verse translation is James Holmes fan. The verse translation of a poem (metapoem) in another language being at the center, this fan is based on the principle that all translation is an act of critical interpretation. (Holmes, p. 24)

Critical essay in the language of the poem

Poem

Poem inspired by poem

Critical essay in another language

Poem about poem

Prose translation

Imitation

Verse translation (metapoem)

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On the extreme left of the fan we have the first form: the critical comment on the poem written in the language of the poem. (p. 25) Holmes points out that this form is easier in terms of solving the problems of interpretation since the medium is the language of the poem. Forms two and three (Critical essay in another language and Prose translation respectively) are also interpretive in intent. The fourth form i.e. verse translation (metapoem) is like the previous forms, interpretative in intent () at the same time it is fundamentally different from them since it is a poem in its own right. (p. 25) The remaining three forms on the right hand side of the fan: imitation, poem about poem and poem inspired by poem are unlike all the first four forms in the absence of interpretation of the original as one of their major purposes. (p. 24) No matter at what level, interpretation is here to stay and so is overinterpretation. In fact, interpretation has become inescapable -- so much so that even a poem which explicitly demands to be read without interpretation cannot be left alone, especially if it falls prey to academic circles. The very interpretation that the interpreter so avidly seeks does not spontaneously appear out of the blue. If there is something to be interpreted, it is inserted there by the poet, and with a definite purpose, too. Similar to the addresser who shapes his form of address to attain a certain goal, the poet will assign a meaning to his poem with the hope of getting his message across. Concentrating solely on interpreting the message of a poem however will produce just as lame a translation as a form oriented interpretation. Problems await those who lean either way. Neither context nor form is enough on its own to 30

interpret a poem. A structural analysis of a text based heavily on a critical interpretation that merits semantic aspects only fails to allow the translator a complete perspective. Similarly, a purely linguistic analysis would also fall short of addressing the whole picture. Many interpretations of poetry totally disregard rhyme, syntax and the conventions of the genre and focus solely on the complexity of images due to the belief that poetry should have its own peculiar system based on imagery and that ordinary grammatical structures do not apply. The translator needs to capture the whole picture -- the complete presentation of form and content rolled into one -- only to deconstruct it into its elements and then reconstruct a new whole in an alien setting, for an alien receptor culture. In fact, if the translator can first accomplish this elementary level of understanding and then distance himself from this outlook enough to see that art is not only about something; it is something. A work of art is a thing in the world, not just a text or commentary on the world. (Sontag 1965, p. 21) The translator might be able to forego what is said and how it is said for a moment and just see the poem in front of him in its pure state. Another general presumption is that the interpretation of a poem should entail explication. In dealing with poetic texts, wherein meaning is primarily

implicit, there is surely an important role for an approach to interpretation that aims at making the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic structures of meaning as explicit as can be. (Scholes 1982, p. 56) Touching the untouchable, opening up what was intended to be kept under wraps, revealing someone elses secret this is certainly tempting. Firstly, however, we cannot be certain what we are revealing as translators is what was 31

initially hidden. Secondly, if the poet intended his secret to be easily accessible he would not have gone to so much trouble to hide it in the first place. If the reader of the poets native tongue is allowed to decipher the poem using the textual (sometimes extra-textual) clues laid down by its author, then why should the translator make it impossible for the foreign language reader to do so by placing his interpretation between the poet and his readers? What does the poet mean? What does s/he intend to convey? Finding answers to these questions is difficult enough. The translators interpretation further complicates the situation due to its distance from the original poem. Thus, the translator of poetry should avoid his/her own interpretation completely otherwise, what s/he does will not be the translation of a poem, but a poem inspired by a poem. (Kayahan 1988, p. 148 -- translation mine) It is rather ironic that contemporary theories praising the invisibility of the translator at the expense of an unburdened, easy read would welcome such explication. In todays common culture where everything is served as an easy-to-swallow pill, where we purchase ready meals rather than cook our own, where we strap on exercise bands as we read the newspaper to keep in shape rather than actually going out to jog, where even cash machines are drive-in; it is not at all surprising for the reader to demand an easy text. By easy text I mean a familiar text. Almost as familiar as a text written in his/her own language. The transparence of the text takes on the meaning of allowing for an easy reading rather than letting the author shine through the translated text. The invisibility of the translator takes on the meaning of a re-authoring of the text to streamline its language to fit the receiving culture rather than the translator avoiding his/her interference/interpretation to come through.

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Sometimes the translation of a novel, poem or play is said to be more understandable than the original and that this is considered an achievement on the part of the translator. However, such assessments are completely contradictory to the soundness of literary translation. The same contradiction is true for the assumption that the translation of a poem can be better than its original. In either case, the translation may be acceptable with respect to the transfer of the content but it often lacks stylistic equivalence which determines the quality of a literary translation. In such situations, the translation which is said to be more understandable and better than the original can even be regarded as unsuccessful (Gktrk 1986, pp. 102-103 translation mine) Translators are very much aware that any sense of authorial presence in a translation is an illusion, an effect of transparent discourse, comparable to a stunt, but they nonetheless assert that they participate in a psychological relationship with the author in which they repress their own personality. I guess I consider myself in a kind of collaboration with the author says the American translator Norman Shapiro, Certainly my ego and personality are involved in translating, and yet I have to try to stay faithful to the basic text in such a way that my own personality doesnt show. (Kratz 1986, p. 27) Nermin Menemencio lu agrees The translator should avoid conveying any image which is not intended by the poet. (1988, p. 22) Two of AkAit Gktrks articles in his book Beyond the Utterance (Szn tesi): Literary Translation as an Interpretative Process (Bir Yorum Sreci Olarak Yaz?nsal eviri) and The Problem of Literary Translatability (Yaz?nsal evrilebilirlik Sorunu) define the translation of literary texts as an interpretative activity and emphasize the fact that in the translation of literary texts, the translator must first take on the readers role successfully and interpret the text. Nilfer YeAil asserts

33

that this approach is hermeneutical and also has traces of New Criticism, i.e. meaning is determined by a structure within the text. (p. 32)

2.2

The Case of Difficult Poetry

Poetry constitutes a most refined use of language. The significance of each and every component of a poemdenotation or connotation of the words, pauses and punctuation, and rhythm and rhyme -- not to mention the visual image of the text on the printed pageputs a separate strain upon the translator. Each of these aspects presents an individual component with still other identities related to its own. The components represent themselves, point to other elements or serve as a gate opening to meanings beyond themselves. The relationships between the direct and subsidiary identities woven by a skillful poet call for a reader who can envision the entire pattern at once. comes into play. Should we believe that poetry represents the genre with the most economical use of language, it goes without saying that no wordno single componentremains idle. Each component serves a purpose, whether obvious or disguised. Only when we recognize the task of each component (a reflection upon the poets efforts as well as on our own capability as a reader), do we appreciate the authors skill. It is when the task allocated to the components and/or the nature of the relationships between them stubbornly eludes us that we realize we have come face to face with a difficult poem. Why difficult? Difficult because we are Here the model reader of Umberto Eco

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unable to grasp all that the poem represents to the poet (sometimes even after an excruciating dissection of the text). When faced with the task of translating this difficult poetry into another language, the situation becomes even more complex. Being an avid reader carried away by an overbearing urge to over-interpret whatever we read (a disease that troubles most of us today, as intimated in Chapter I) is one thing; it is something else to study a poem with the intention of translating it. A readereven a model readeris allowed the luxury of appreciating a poem for what it is without succumbing to any urge of deciphering what is behind it. The translator, on the other hand, is compelled to do so because he or she bears the responsibility to passing on to the reader certain gems beneath the surface that sparkle in the eyes of the author. How many of these treasures the translator can recover comes into question. While some translations recover nearly all such gems, others miss the majority, leaving most of the treasures buried at sea.

2.2.1 A difficult poem: Ryoanji by Gnter Eich Christopher Middleton, a professor in Germanic Languages and Literature at the University of Texas, well-known as both a poet and translator, felt it useful to describe the quandaries he faced in translating Gnter Eichs poem Ryoanji into English. Translation does involve interpretation, he argues. Misreading, in a narrow or broad sense, is usually what upsets a translation. Yet the two procedures can be incongruous. Why should that be so? If the original ventured upon is more than usually cryptic, more than elusively subtle, either procedure is 35

apt to be subverted by the very capricious edginess of judgment that the original, being so cryptic or subtle, tends to occasion. (p. 125) In his essay entitled On Translating Gnter Eichs Poem Ryoanji, Middleton guides us through his earnest efforts to understand the poem in order to provide one of his students with an English translation. He remains only partially satisfied with his efforts: Yes, he does say something here, but the poem develops only to the verge on recanting much of what is said. It builds up its energy by stalling its own emergence, I think. The meaning that you carry away is hardly weightier than one tuft of dandelion seeds that has landed on your forearm during a walk through a field when all the silver dandelion spheres are being popped and diffused by a fierce breeze. (p. 126) Middleton begins his essay with the title (a geographical location) and then works his way through the poem. A brief look at what he has done in interpreting the first section of the poem should suffice to give us a good idea of the translators problems in coping with difficult poetry. The title is very significant, referring to a spot in Japan well known for its temples, clinics and spas. The poem is set in one of the more spa-like clinics for patients suffering from lung disease. The translator mentions what he calls his glimpses of certain specific features. These include cameras (toted perhaps by tourists) that have captured exercises prescribed by physicians with English surnames and messages or notices pinned up on the walls, referred to in the poem as Sprachtheorien (language theories). Ryoanji (first section) Rauchzeichen fr Freunde ein gnstiger Tag, windstill, am Abhang, nordstlich 36

antwortet es mir weiN. Ich mische Kiefer ein. Und nun Wand an Wand mit Sprachtheorien, Wand an Wand hustet mit Goldzhnen meine Traurigkeit, auf den Holzgngen Regen und Holzsandalen, berall ende ich, sorgenvoll bewegen meine Zehen im Finstern das Finstere, ich bedaure mich, ich bin nicht einverstanden mit meinen Zehen nicht einverstanden mit meinem Bedauern, ich vermisse die Rauchzeichen, alt, schwarz und zugeneigt. Jetzt kommen sie nicht mehr, jetzt ist Nacht Jetzt kommt das Feuer, (...) Middletons translation runs as follows: Smoke signals for friends, the day propitious, no wind, to northeast, on the slope, theres an answer for me, white. I mix pine into it, and jawbone. And now wall to wall with theories of language, wall to wall my misery coughs with gold teeth, on the walkways of wood rain and wooden sandals, Im coming to an everywhere to an end, my careworn toes move in the dark the darkness, I regret myself, I dont agree with my toes, dont agree with my regret, I miss the smoke signals, old, black, and affectionate. Now they no longer come, 37

now it is night, now comes the fire, () The translator admits that he is puzzled with the content of lines four and five, nun Wand an Wand / mit Sprachtheorien, which he has therefore translated literally. Middleton can visualize these messages, however, being entrusted to the river or stream Kamo, folded into paper boats. The poem describes wooden walkways and wooden sandals worn barefoot. The mention of coughing and sputum is what has brought a sanatorium to the mind of the translator. The speaker in the poem is concerned about communication with friends. The smoke signals, white at the beginning of the poem and black later on, might suggest reference to an ex-smoker who once enjoyed a friendly smoke. Middleton also mentions the possibility of the speaker sending smoke signals, i.e. messages against the white sky that might represent a poem about friendship written on white paper. Kiefer in line five also presents a problem. One literal translation would be pine tree, but the translator points out thathere lacking specific gender or numberit might also denote the jaw. The translator has cautiously employed both, associating jawbone with what he calls the other physiological cognates: misery coughs with gold teeth, toes. Kiefer is mentioned again at the end of the second paragraph of the poem in the plural form, die Kiefern. Because the objects mentioned here are obviously in pots, Middleton rendered them as evergreens. Here the translator as reader/decoder has opted for the alternative given by the encoder.

38

The voice in the poem continuesdespite coughing, despite the internal argument with toes and self-regret. The smoke signals have disappeared; then comes the fire. This very line Jetzt kommt das Feuer has reminded the translator of one of Hlderlins poems, Andenken. Middleton mentions this relationship, but because he was not one hundred percent sure, he decided to delay judgment until the poem was otherwise complete. He exercises caution because he is loath to jump to conclusions regarding intertextuality: Whatever the anxious interpreter of the poem may do to plot the glide as a whole and feel out the kinship system of particulars, the translator ought to resist any impulse to shout (explicate) what the voice has chosen to mutter (implicate). (p. 127) At the end of his essay, Middleton searches for a paradigm to express this experience of interpreting and translating a cryptic poem in any language you know only from the outside. (p. 141) His search I find as inconclusive as his attempt at interpretation. This is hardly surprising with such difficult poetry. Middleton has indeed explored the possibilities in interpreting the original poem and then attempted to convey them in his translation. A poem is a statement that requires no verification. It exists in its own right. Poetry does not necessitate an explanation/explication to justify its existence. Attempts at elucidation may even bury what makes the poem poetic in the first place. It is pre-occupation with interpretation that causes a reader to label a poem difficult. What if the poet is not cooperative? I like to leave the reader no other way than the way, in which I prefer to be difficult, says French poet, Jacques Lacan. (Kahraman, p. 8) 39

If indeed a poem entails a producer and a consumer as Hasan Blent Kahraman (p. 362) argues, then the amount of cooperation between them intrinsically depends on the will of the producer. Ecos open work assumes that all texts contain some intentionally ambiguous and plurivocal expressions that allow the reader to arrive at multiple interpretations. Ecos model author empathizes with the reader while writing, providing him or her with an indirectly collaborative role in deciphering the textual strategies interwoven in the text. Although the reader may reach multiple interpretations, the clues are present in the text and accessible to the model reader.

2.2.2 Y=ld=z by Lale Mldr Another example of what may be termed difficult poetry, this time in Turkish, is Lale Mldrs Y?ld?z (A/The Star). A brief look at the first stanza will suffice to convey the difficulty of interpretation: Y ld z bir babil su tanrSasS belki de oturkuvazdeUiVken beyaz denizkabuUu kadSnyedi ySldSzS ve astral ikiziyle Linga Sarirasunmaya baVlamadan nce hayat iksirini ka iris ySlS geti bylesiyahbeyaz bir kelebek ruhu onun nehrin geiVinin alfabesini okur...aqua kaynaklarSna geri dnmek istiyor seller ve buharlar gkkuVaUS kprs yeni bir aU umudu iziyor suyun ve ateVin sentezi bir ySldSzuzaklarda daha uzaklardaparlamak iin snyor kaplan ve civa gksel bir arktan...gksel bir arktan... inancS UrenecektirUrenecektir... Rnesansesanssanssans ()

40

The poem begins with the attributes one might expect in a Babylonian water goddess. The Babylonian civilization (eighteenth to sixth century BC) was urban in character, with an economy based on agriculture. The religion of this culture was based on that of the Sumerians, who worshiped a pantheon of deities human in form but superhuman in power and immortal. Eachalthough invisible to the human eyecontrolled a particular aspect of the cosmos. Each reigned over some realm of the heavens, earth, or sea, commanding the sun, the moon and the planets, the rivers, mountains and plains as well as cities and city-states. Because water was very precious to the Babylonians, they depicted the water goddess as a fertility goddess, always holding some object from which water flowed. The water goddess described in the poem is likened to turquoise, a semi-precious stone that may take on various shades of blue and green depending on exposure to sunlight or heat. Referring to the water goddess as a precious stone might emphasize her worth. Then again, the changeable hues of turquoise might refer to the fickle nature of women. This suggestion is further accentuated by the word de,i-ken (changeable) immediately following turquoise. Any interpretation given of a certain portion of a text can be accepted if it is confirmed by, and must be rejected if it is challenged by, another portion of the same text. In this sense the internal textual coherence controls the otherwise uncontrollable drives of the reader. (Eco 1992, p. 65) The second line then addresses the woman as a white seashell. The general connotations of the color white may be in play here: purity, virginity, and innocence. There may be much more to decipher in seashell other than its being a white object found in the water. Seashells, renowned for their beauty are frequently used

41

for decoration, seashell collecting is a popular hobby throughout the world. If we consider, too, that seashells are naturally hard, indeed the protective armor of invertebrate water creatures, we may also infer that the use of seashell in the poem may refer not only to the beauty but to the tough nature of the goddess as well. The line continues with the seven stars (the constellation Orion) and their astral twin (the Big Dipper). Orion is a constellation on the celestial equator named after the hunter often represented in Greek mythology; three bright stars represent his belt, and four dimmer ones his sword (a total of seven). The Big Dipper also consists of seven starsall very brightthat form the outline of a giant scoop or ladle. At the bend/end of the handle of the Big Dipper is the readily visible double star called the twins. As it is in many cultures, the number seven was also sacred to the Babylonians. Their greatest temple was a seven-storied edifice, and the hanging gardens of Babylon were among the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. The name Linga Sarira at the beginning of line three refers to a female figure in Hindu mythology believed to have presented mortals the elixir of life. To Babylonians the afterlife was nothing more than a dismal reflection of life on earth. Without promised rewards for the deserving, everyone saw death as a frightful end. It is not surprising that Gilgamesh, the great epic of the Babylonians, is based upon a heros search for eternal life. In the poem many iris years passed before Linga Sarira bestowed the elixir of life upon mankind. The word iris here is significant because it carries so many different meanings. Iris in Greek mythology is the goddess of the rainbow, one who traveled the world from one end to the other with the speed of wind, often depicted with wings and a halo of light, nearly always 42

dressed in robes of brilliant hues with a rainbow trailing in her wake. Iris traveled to the bottom of the seaand to the underworld and back. The common meanings of the word today are also based on color. The iris is the part of the eye that gives it color. An iris is also a flower -- any of the various plants of the family Iridaceae that produce flowers of lovely hues. Still another iris represents a prismatic crystal of quartz that is iridescent because of internal cracks. The common aspect of all the meanings presented here is an abundance of colors in fact all colors under the sun. Considering that iris is used in the poem as an adjective modifying years, one might think of time passing like the wind. Then again, so many iris years, might recall the myriad eyes that have gazed upon the earthor even suggest the many glances cast about in search for the elixir of life in the long period before Linga Sarira presented it to them. The goddess soul is described like a black-and-white butterfly. In Indian mythology butterflies symbolize the metamorphosis of the human soul, and returning to Greek mythology, we have the goddess Psyche sometimes depicted half-human, half-butterfly. Personifying the soul, Psyche represented a beautiful maiden who infatuated the god Eros. The butterfly is today the most frequently mentioned ADC (after death communication) sign. Because of its metamorphosis from a worm or caterpillar crawling on the ground into a beautiful, ethereal creature fluttering through the air, it has become a spiritual symbol for life after death, as well as for personal growth and spiritual rebirth. Associations are copious and thus the possible interpretations are many and varied. The poets choice of color here is also puzzling. Butterflies are generally very colorful creatures. There must have been some reason for the poet to choose black and white here. The connotations 43

of white have been mentioned above with reference to the white seashell. The concept that everything entails its opposite may be in operation here: black and white, pure and corrupt. Indeed the first line of the poem mentioned the changeability of the goddess. In the fifth line the goddess begins to read the alphabet from the waters of the river flowing past. The concept that every object and creature has its own alphabet is found in Judaism; it is something the eye should be trained to see and the body to read. The Babylonians are among the first civilizations to employ an alphabet. Theirs consisted of pictographs or ideographs representing sounds rather than objects or concepts. The largest set of pictographs in the Babylonian alphabet represented the sound of water, and thus it follows that aqua (the Latin word for water) would come first in the alphabet of the river. One is also reminded of the 11th sign of the Zodiac, Aquarius, the Water- Bearer. The floods, the mistswater in all its formslong to return to their sources. It is possible that this reference (line 6) denotes the climatic cycle whereby water, the source of life, often changes form, but in the end always returns to its liquid state. Water is the source of life. Everything wants to return to its source. A rainbow bridge now heralds new hope for a new era. Which new era the poet is talking about is unclear, but soon comes her reference to the Renaissance, an age which revamped the values of the past. Thus the rainbow bridge might be heralding the Renaissance. Saying has it that at the end of every rainbow lies a pot of gold. The Renaissance is also referred to as the Golden Age, perhaps this is what lies at the end of the rainbow bridge. This line leaves me hesitant to venture any interpretation. 44

Line eight refers to a star, the synthesis of fire and water. What is referred to here is likely to be the star of Judaism. In Judaism the symbol of water symbol of fire come together to form the star: : and the

This star in the line dies out

to shine (again?), indicating that there is time yet for the star to have its day. According to Judaism, a day will come when the Jewish people will save the world. The word uzaklarda used twice here may indicate a long period of time or a long distance. From the point of view of Judaism it is more likely that this word is used to indicate a long period of time. In the following lines, a tiger and mercury learn about faith from an arc in the sky. It is difficult to understand the relationship of this unlikely pair. In many ancient cultures tigers have been considered the one reincarnation of restless spirits capable of taking on various forms. Tigers are huge but very agile; the largest and most muscular of all cats, they are regarded as one of the most dangerous species in the world. Mercury, on the other hand, is the only liquid metal. In Turkish the saying c/va gibi is often applied to extremely agile people, those who seem to be constantly on the go. This is at least one common point between the two. In fact the English translation of c/va, mercury, is taken from the Latin name for the ancient Roman god of commerce, a protector of rogues and thieves, as well as the messenger of the gods. Thus a relationship was seen between the mobility of this liquid metal and the traditional fleet-footedness of the god. Now ark yapmak in Turkish is used to denote the flow of electric current, and here one cannot help but remember the term mercury arc (a set-up in which an electric discharge through mercury vapor in a glass or quartz tube emits a blue-green light rich in actinic and

45

ultraviolet rays). Mercury is also dangerous, being a very poisonous substance. If we assume that the tiger in this line symbolizes the brutes on the face of the earth and that mercury symbolizes the quick-footed dangerous types, then we could say that even these will be brought to faith by an electric current reaching down from the sky. The last line of the first stanza finally introduces the much-awaited new era, the Renaissance. The period thus generally referred to as the Renaissance began in the early 14th century and lasted well into the 18th. It was characterized by enthusiastic and vigorous activity along literary, artistic, and cultural lines and distinguished by a revival of interest in the past, by an increase in the pursuit of learning, and by an imaginative response to broader horizons in general. It is taken to represent the birth of modern humanity and consciousness after a long period of decay. The term itself means rebirth and it is the French translation from the Italian rinascita. Indeed it is with the Renaissance that the great western era of discovery and exploration flourished. Even religion became accessible to the common people and was no longer viewed as a strict set of rules threatening disobedient subjects with grotesque punishments. Perhaps the learning mentioned in line eleven refers to this. The word Renaissance has been broken into meaningful units in French (both spelled like they sound in Turkish): esans for the French essence and sans for the French sense. The general tone of the first stanza, i.e. the fragmented and abrupt juxtaposition of images, suggests the divination of a fortune teller in trance. Such behavior was common practice in ancient Babylon. In fact, it is recorded that the

46

inspection of tiger entrails and the study of birds were the two most common methods of fortune-telling in Babylon. As Umberto Eco puts it, the reader enters an interplay of stimulus and response which depends on his unique capacity for sensitive reception of the piece. Within this scenario, it is always the author who authorizes this openness. There are copious hints and links, some of which lead nowhere in particular. There are many possibilities offered to the reader/interpreter willing to accept the challenge. In Y?ld?z (Star) by Lale Mldr, I find a good example of what Christopher Middleton terms cryptic poetryotherwise known as difficult poetry.

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CHAPTER III

3.1

Dylan Thomas

Dylan Thomas was born in Swansea in Wales (1914) and educated at the local grammar school where his father was an English master. He was not a promising student in any subject but English, where he was exceptionally brilliant. An aspiring writer, Thomas contributed generously to the school magazine. Many of the future qualities of his literary genius are present in his early work -- the morbidity, the sprinkling sense of humor, and a liking for alliterative sounds. After school he went on to work as a newspaper reporter at the Herald of Wales, a Swansea weekly paper, and attracted notice when still quite young for his dense, brilliant and difficult poetry. Unfortunately, at the time, Wales had little to offer to an aspiring poet. Swansea was in those days an industrial town in the grip of an economic crisis. The best alternative for Thomas was London where he managed to get his work published. His first book of verse Eighteen Poems was published in 1934, followed by Twenty Five Poems in 1936. His work received much praise. In 1939, just before the outbreak of WWII, The Map of Love, a celebration of his love for his Irish wife Caitlin and the birth of his first son, was published. The World I Breathe came out in the USA the same year, and later in 1942 New Poems was published. The publication date for his first book of short stories is 1940. Deaths and Entrances, a new book of verse, published in 1946, established his reputation, while across the ocean in the USA, The Selected Writings of Dylan Thomas was published.

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Dylan Thomas worked for the BBC during WWII. After the war he continued to work for the BBC doing documentaries, writing film scripts and

reading/discussing poetry in the Third Program. His brilliant reciting of poetry and captivating voice also earned him parts in radio plays. At the time of his death he was working on a novel titled Adventures in the Skin Trade, a play in verse Under Milk Wood and a long poem In Country Heaven. He died in the USA in 1953.

3.2

The Poetry of Dylan Thomas

Much has been written on the obscure verse of Dylan Thomas. The overall dismal nature of his poetry, and his enigmatic use of language have challenged scholars and critics alike. Various attempts made to place him within certain schools of thought have been without success; Dylan Thomas subscribes to no one school of thought in particular. He is his own man, his own poet: a Welsh bard in the true sense of the word -- a bard is 1). a tribal poet-singer (as among the ancient Celts) gifted in composing and reciting verses usually to the accompaniment of a harp, in honor of the chief or successive chiefs and their deeds and as a record in verse, of tribal history, tradition, genealogy, or religious law; and 2). a poet, especially a poet who writes impassioned, lyrical or epic verse. (Websters Third New International Dictionary). His particular gift in converting his -- what the general readership would term -- tiring and puzzling verse into the most animate and captivating tale of human existence, bringing out the singsong quality of his alliterative lines, has been the major influence in earning him this reputation. Perhaps Thomas heritage

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as the grandson of a Welsh preacher also played a part in this legacy. There is a specific Welsh word -- hwyl -- which describes the peculiar chanting tone that marks a preachers peroration. It is said that the tones that Thomas used in delivering his verse were often those of the hwyl, without the monotony of that convention. Among the attempts at pigeonholing Thomas into one or two of the wellknown trends in poetry, a few seem to have a point or two to make. One of the most believable of them is the theory that places Dylan Thomas as the predecessor of The Apocalypse -- pioneers of the New Romantics. The Apocalypse led by Henry Treece, G.S. Fraser and J.F. Hendry, chose Thomas and Surrealism as logical points of departure for their own movement (Stearns, p. 115) As much as Thomas might be their starting point, there are differences in their points of view. The Apocalyptics believed that poetry should not exist for its own sake, and that it should serve a purpose. This is where they differ with Thomas. Perhaps Thomas is somewhat of a New Romantic; however, this term excludes the New Apocalyptic movement. The New Apocalyptics (such as Henry Treece, J. F. Hendry, Nicholas Moore, Norman McCaig, Tom Scott, Vernon Watkins, F.S. Fraser) admired Blake, Lawrence and Thomas who in direct irony did not care for a purpose. The only shared interest between these poets and the Apocalyptics may be the desire to express the deep and hidden side of mans nature. (Geoffrey Moore, p. 259) Thomas may have influenced others. He can even be said to be the point of inspiration for this movement or the other but Thomas is certainly unique. Still, Geoffrey Moore has a point in labeling Thomas as a New Romantic since he says that Thomas is a poet who was able to express the simplicity of the childs 50

vision and the wisdom of the heart. (p. 267) However, this is not the end of the story. There is more to be said on this matter. Moore goes on to claim that Thomas poetry links Shakespeares concept of imagery with the symbolical use of language (p. 261) and I agree with him. The case he argues and the evidence he supplies is convincing: A feeling for language used in a symbolical and dramatic way and that perception of similarity in dissimilars which is the essence of the Shakespearean metaphor, seem, in fact, a more likely vehicle than bare and Imagist verse to catch that sense of multifariousness which is the legacy of Symbolism. Dylan Thomas, whose work was itself a symbol of this new-old approach to poetry, was able to express the simplicity of the childs vision and the wisdom of the heart and the senses in a more memorable way than any poet since Hopkins. (p. 267) Here it may be useful to further clarify Moores use of the term symbolism: I refer here not to the use of symbols in the traditional sense, but to the concept of language itself as symbolical which has developed since the experiments of the late nineteenth century French Symbolists and which was given an added impetus by the publication of Hopkins poems in 1918, of Ulysses in 1925, and of the Work in Progress which became Finnegans Wake in 1939. (pp. 260-261) The Hopkins mentioned here is of course none other than the Welsh poet Gerard Manley Hopkins who made a thorough, scholarly study of Welsh metres and developed in particular the idea of consonantal chime which he got from cynghanedd, which is a strict intricate system of alliteration and rhyme used in Welsh poetry (Websters Third New International Dictionary) Some have regarded Thomas a religious poet as W. S. Merwin did. (p. 236) Merwin says that, in most of Thomas earlier poems the I is man trying to find a means of imagining and thereby redeeming his condition: Much of the seemingly baroque and motiveless agony of the earlier poems stems from the 51

desperateness of this need. (p. 237) Whatever the interpretation, both the theme and the structure of Thomas poetry deserves closer inspection.

3.2.1 Freud and the Bible: Sexual and Religious Themes The major theme of man in Thomas poetry is variously accompanied by the minor themes of religion and sex, which are often side by side. Although Thomas declared himself an atheist, his poems reveal a strong religious influence. Biblical references are plenty although his references are likely to be characterized more by rebellion than conformity. The poets attitude towards sex is central and closely connected with the allied themes of religion and man. Man for Thomas is man from seed to grave, with the emphasis on the grave, and the poet constantly attempts to view the entire progression simultaneously. (Stearns, p. 116) Genesis, the Garden of Eden, the Fall, Adam, original sin, Cain, Job, Jacob, Abraham, Lazarus, the legends of Christ and Mary form the bulk of the referencematter, and even subject matter of the Twenty-five Poems. (Scarfe, p. 99) Thomas called himself a holy maker, whose poems are written in praise of God. (quoted in Tyndall, p. 8) Indeed, God and Christ are rarely absent from his service; and the later poems, abounding in bells, books, and candles, are as ritualistic as anything by Hopkins or Eliot. His familiarity with the Bible, which remained a principal source of his imagery, dates from his Sunday school days. In Poem in October God is mythical, and as to Death Shall Have No Dominion, whatever its ritualistic manner, it certainly is far from orthodox. (Tindall, p.8) The Rituals often appear in his poetry in different forms, hovering around the central themes of life, death, and resurrection. In William Y. Tindalls words, 52

Imagery of worship (steeples, bread, wine and masses) conspires with Freuds to summon glory. (p. 614) If, as Freud says, myth is dream, and if we admit the Bible to be myth, then the connection between Thomas Freudian and Biblical images becomes plain. The Biblical images of the early poems -- water, towers, snakes, and ladders -- must owe something to The Interpretation of Dreams. Poetry must drag further into the clear nakedness of light more even of the hidden causes than Freud could realize, (Scarfe, p. 106) wrote Dylan Thomas in his admission that he had been influenced by Freud. Indeed the poets interpretation of sex is still as close to the Old Testament as to the psychology of Freud. (Scarfe, pp. 108 109) The philosophy is simple: the universe is sexually dynamic; bird, beast and stone share the same (sexual) life with man (...), but, forever conscious of a sense of sin. (Scarfe, p. 99) What Scarfe calls the sex-sin problem in Dylan Thomas is as unresolved as the life-death problem. These dualisms are reminiscent of the theological dualism, body-soul.

3.2.2 Wales One: I am a Welshman; two: I am a drunkard, three: I am a lover of the human race, especially of women. (Dylan Thomas 1960, p. 251) The Welsh are known to be lively, quick-tempered and proud. They are also prone to a jolly, almost musical disposition. This fact perhaps has its roots in the traditional Welsh way of life. In his description of Thomas as a young boy growing

53

up in Swansea, Geoffrey Moore paints the picture of a grubby, curly, cheeky boy, in depressed South Wales of the between-wars period. (p. 252) The grown-up Dylan Thomas made it clear that he despised Welsh nationalism as such. Therefore he did not make Welshness into an issue. However, even though being Welsh is not the central theme of his poems and certainly not the structural backbone either, the Welsh feeling (p. 257) is there: In the natural qualities of his poetry its high emotional charge and sonorous rhetoric, and the lilt and exaggeration of its phrasing Dylan Thomas reveals himself as a true son of the Cymry. For his subject matter he also turned to Wales. (...) Finally, in his technique Thomas reveals affinities with Welsh poets past and present. (...) The metrical tricks and patterns he uses are personal to him and much less complicated than in the Welsh, but they are of the same general type. (Moore, p. 255) Deliberately or not, Thomas continued in the tradition of the great Welsh enigmatic poets of the fourteenth-century, using some of their devices, namely mystery paraphrasing and delayed suspense. In short, being Welsh certainly does account for parts of his poetry, while it definitely is not the sole aspect of it.

3.2.3 Language Dylan Thomas to most readers is unreadable at first scanning and impenetrable at first hearing; however, the reward is all the greater when repetitive familiarity allows contact to be made. Those used to the traditional English verse style will definitely find him difficult to understand. He is, deep down, a singer, a bard and his poetry must be read out loud. It is precisely his reading of poetry on the BBC that

endeared him to the general public, who would have otherwise probably went on living their happy, Thomas free lives without having missed much at all. 54

Thomas poetry has been referred to as mind music. (Moore, 265) His tools for achieving the communication of this music are internal rhyme and assonance, as shown by Geoffrey Moores brief analysis of the poem The Conversation of Prayer: The conversation of prayers about to be said 1 2 By the child going to bed and the man on the stairs 2 1 Who climbs to his dying love in her high room, 3 4 The one not caring to whom in his sleep he will move 4 3 And the other full of tears that she will be dead. 1 2 1 (prayers/stairs/tears) 2 (said/bed/dead) 3 (love/move) 4 (room/whom) The rhyming/assonance pattern is continued through the four stanzas on a groundwork of these four vowel sounds. It is not cynghanedd, but it is keeping with the idea of it. The fact that Thomas does not seem ever to have used the rhyme schemes of any of the three varieties of cynghanedd seems to indicate that what he got from the example of his forefathers was inspiration rather than specific working patterns. One of the other tricks Thomas frequently uses is neologisms: man-iron, bonerailed, seaspindle, all-hollowed. Some of these are puns -- like allhollowed in I in My Intricate Image (1935, pp. 4044) used for a mummy 55

eviscerated for embalming and a saint -- are indicative of Thomas pedantic dry humour. Distortion of meaning is another of Thomas powerful tools. Minstrel angle which can mean ministering angel, or alternatively, Thomas tricks and devices; and Triangle landscape (triangular + trinity, formed by the crosses of Christ and the robbers or perhaps pyramids, delta and according to Freud the female principle) are both in the ninth stanza of Altarwise by Owl Light (1936, pp. 8085). Another example is ship-racked gospel in the tenth stanza of the same poem. Then there is resorting to false epithet as in colic season, indicating the poets immaturity, and metal Neptune for a suitable diving suit for a dangling triton -- both from I in my Intricate Image (1936, pp. 40-44) Thomas use of language also bears a trace of surrealism as in house of bread and tree of nettles in Altarwise By Owl Light. Reversing word order is another of his common devices, as in tide-tongued in O Make Me a Mask (1938, p. 94) The last of the Thomasian tricks I would like to mention is his inaccurate use of verbs, as exemplified in the following lines from The Seed at Zero: Through the rampart of the sky Shall the star-flanked seed be riddled... (1936, pp. 49-51) Elder Olson describes Thomas poetry as characterized by unusually powerful and original conceptions, formulated in symbols difficult in themselves and complex in their interrelations (...) The dramatic presentation of Thomas poetry, he argues roughly, the whole body of clues by which the reader determines who is speaking in the poem, to whom, of what, in what circumstances is full of deliberate, even 56

studied, ambiguity. (Olson, p. 229) He becomes easier to read if one is aware of his linguistic devices. He is fond of ambigious syntax, and he achieves it sometimes by punctuation, as in O miracle of fishes! The long dead bite! which leads us to think both expressions are phrases, whereas the last is a sentence. (p. 234) One of the best descriptions of the poetry of Dylan Thomas can be found in Karl Shapiros following words: Thomas moves between sexual revulsion and sexual ecstasy, between puritanism and mysticism, between formalistic ritual (this accounts for his lack of invention) and irresponsibility. In his book one comes, on one page, upon a poem of comparative peace and lucidity, and on the next page, upon a poem of absolute density and darkness. His dissatisfaction with his own lack of stability is reflected in his devices which intend to obscure even the simple poems: he leaves out all indications of explanation quotation marks, punctuation, titles, connectives, whether logical or grammatical. In addition, he uses every extreme device of ambiguity one can think of, from reversing the terms of a figure of speech to ellipsis to over elaboration of images. There is no poetic behind these practices only an undefined mystique () It is significant that his joyous poems, which are few, though among his best, are nearly always his simplest. Where the dominant theme of despair obtrudes, the language dives down into the depths: and some of these complex poems of the depths are among the most rewarding, the richest in feeling and the most difficult to hold on to. (pp. 277-278) Or if we ask the poet himself, My poetry is, or should be, useful to me for one reason: it is the record of my individual struggle from darkness towards some measure of light. (Stearns, p. 119-120) I think looking at his complete opus one can see that indeed his earlier poems reflect a darker mood while he seems to grow less dismal in his later work.

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3.3

The Interpretation of And Death Shall Have No

Dominion"
From where did the translators of Dylan Thomas And Death Shall Have No Dominion get their sense of direction? On what basis did they construct their interpretation? Is their interpretation well-founded? Do we have a case of overinterpretation? It is not possible to answer these questions without first studying the poem itself for interpretative clues. A poem by myself needs a host of images, because its center is a host of images. I make one image though make is not the word; I let, perhaps, an image be made emotionally in me and then apply to it what intellectual and critical forces I possess let it breed another, let that image contradict the first, make, of the third image bred out of the other two together, a fourth contradictory image, and let them all, within my imposed formal limits, conflict. (Moore, p. 265) This is pure Thomas, in his own words. And Death Shall Have No Dominion And death shall have no dominion. Dead men naked they shall be one With the man in the wind and the west moon; When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone; They shall have stars at elbow and foot; Though they go mad they shall be sane, Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again; Though lovers be lost love shall not; And death shall have no dominion. And death shall have no dominion. Under the windings of the sea They lying long shall not die windily; Twisting on racks when sinews give way. Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break: Faith in their hands shall snap in two, And the unicorn evils run them through; Split all ends up they shant crack; 58

And death shall have no dominion. And death shall have no dominion. No more may gulls cry at their ears Or waves break loud on the seashores; Where blew a flower may a flower no more Lift its head to the blows of the rain; Though they be mad and dead as nails, Heads of the characters hammer through daisies; Break in the sun till the sun breaks down, And death shall have no dominion. The very first thing for us to look at would be the title of the poem: And Death Shall Have No Dominion. Only fifteen or so of the eighty-nine pieces in Thomas Collected Poems carry titles not reiterated in the poems themselves. The rest, indeed, usually have as titles the opening words of the poems. This is not precisely overstraining to give the reader information. Yet, in a good many instances an appropriate title would have made all the difference between clarity and obscurity, between the readers comprehending and not comprehending. Thomas refrains do have an auditory as well as a semantic effect, as in And Death Shall Have No Dominion. Here the title of the poem serves as a musical motif. It constitutes the first and last lines of the poem and comes at the beginning and end of each stanza. It forms the explicit theme of the whole poem. The title is a declaration, a stance. And the same feeling is echoed throughout the poem with the use of shall and shant. Thomas, as always, adapts Christian scripture and symbols to suit his own purposes. In St. Paul (Romans 6:9), the phrase death hath no more dominion refers to the eternal life of a spiritual aspect of man called the soul. Thomas poem deals with resurrection. It is a highly imaginative statement of the scientific fact that matter cannot be destroyed. This

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theme is openly stated and restated throughout the poem. Here Thomas is like a preacher conducting a service for all the dead, in the hope of glorious resurrection. As William Tindall puts it, in this poem Thomas sounds like a preacher with hwyl. Thanks to the sublime rhythm of the poem and the symphonic vowels, Thomas conducts his service with grandeur and in a kind of ecstasy. (pp. 121-122) Another point worthy of notice is that the poem starts with And indicating the continuity of things -- the circle of life, reincarnation.

3.3.1 The First Stanza The first stanza paints a picture of Thomas vision of Judgment Day. He talks about naked dead men which calls to mind the saying that you cannot take anything with you when you are dead. Man is born naked. He comes to this world with nothing on and when he leaves he takes nothing. Earthly possessions mean nothing in death. All people are equal on Judgment Day. Everyone will be in front of God that day. God is everywhere we look, in the wind on the moon, everywhere. All will rise on Judgment Day, even those who have been long dead. Even those who have died so long ago that all that remains from their earthly bodies is their bones, picked clean by the insects in their graves. It does not matter if it has been long enough for their bones to have withered away. There is one very puzzling line here that I could not decipher They shall have stars at elbow and foot. Try as I might, the clues presented here by the author whether textual or intertextual did not suffice to arrive at a sound interpretation. Anna Longoni suggests that "The context must give the reader a guideline that will set the boundaries within which to move in the oscillation of interpretation (which becomes wider the more complex 60

the interpreted text is)." (p. 214) Even at the widest of angles, here as an interpreter I was literally lost for words. After talking about the bodies of the dead in the first five lines, Thomas moves on to the souls of the dead. In the case of souls, just as with the bodies, even extreme cases will be welcome on Judgment Day. Those who have gone mad will come to their senses. There is resurrection even for those whose souls have been impaired. This idea is further justified by the immortality of the soul and of human feelings. Feelings are eternal. Thomas throws in a convincing example here: Even when lovers themselves are long gone, their love remains. This line (line 8) constitutes a covert reference to many great works of literature that we all know, whose subject matter is undying love.

3.3.2 The Second Stanza One possible interpretation of this stanza can be summarized with a single word: martyrdom. Thomas this time refers to the dead buried under the sea. Just as in the Bible (The sea gave up the dead Revelation, 20:13) he is depicting the rising of the dead from under the sea. The main idea of this stanza seems to be that salvation is not by faith but by nature. Even those who have been tortured and lost their faith will rise on Judgment Day. Here again Thomas is including all extremes. His manner, preacher-like and with much vigor and hwyl reminds me of the much simpler logic in the Sufi poet Roumis famous line Gel, ne olursan, kim olursan gel (Come, whatever you are, whoever you are). Faith is lost through the experience of evil (and evil would, in this sense, have to be construed as a belief in death rather than in life). The torture of men, the 61

twisting on racks and the strapping of men onto wheels -- these lines may very well symbolize the ordeals of everyday life and the world we live in (wars, famine, disease) Even those who cannot hold onto their faith after going through such ordeals will be saved on Judgment Day. Lines two and three of the second stanza are particularly interesting. Thomas is fond of words with multiple meanings and multiple syntactic functions. He uses them for puns and other literary devices, for achieving simultaneous meanings, and for parody: Under the windings of the sea They lying long shall not die windily Elder Olson also comments on Thomas use of such devices: He would let his images evolve through strange and anomalous grammatical constructions the kind that e.e. cummings had made familiar with American verse, but which Auden and his followers had never wholeheartedly adopted ranging from the simple phrase a grief ago to all sorts of powerful, but wrenched, verbing of nouns and compoundings. Like die windily in And Death Shall Have No Dominion. (Olson, p. 43) Winding (noun): A bend or turn. A whole turn of something that is wound or coiled. Windily (adv.): 1). Accompanied or characterized by wind. 2). Exposed to or swept by the wind. 3). Consisting of or resembling wind. 4).Characterized by or given to prolonged empty talk, verbose, bombastic. A windy speaker, a windy speech.

(Websters Third New International Dictionary) Thomas here may be referring to a long and painful death as opposed to a sudden and smooth one, or dying in vain, for no special purpose, or as the case may be, for no holy cause. Here, again, we

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see an example of Ecos choices offered by an open text, which is indeed open to a wide array of pre-determined, pre-determinable options. In this stanza too, there is a line for which I have been unable to come up with a convincing interpretation. In line seven, Thomas uses the expression unicorn evils. The unicorn is a mythological figure that exists in both Eastern and Western mythology. There are even references to the unicorn in the Old Testament. In fact, the unicorn has come to be regarded as a pure and virtuous animal throughout history. The only negative reference to a unicorn that I could find is in the Book of Isaiah where the unicorn appears as a symbol of evil. Then again in popular fiction sometimes the devil is depicted in almost human form but with a single horn. However, none of these clues would lead one to a satisfactory interpretation. The possibility of evil disguised as beauty also comes to mind, since the unicorn is generally regarded as a beautiful creature. Perhaps men are being destroyed by evil that seems appealing on the surface. Perhaps I am delving into the realm of over-interpretation.

3.3.3 The Third Stanza The birds and waves of the last stanza sound like the Welsh poet Gerard Manley Hopkins poem of Sea and Skylark. The dead cannot hear the gulls or the breaking of the waves on the seashore or see the flowers anymore but what is the significance of the flower lifting its head to the blows of the rain? Where blew a flower may a flower no more Lift its head to the blows of the rain;

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A possible interpretation of this stanza could be that it does not matter if the dead can no longer hear the crushing waves or the seagulls; it is not important that where flowers used to be stand erect against the elements there are flowers no more; it does not matter that people have lost their bodies through death or that even some may have lost their minds; resurrection is for everyone and life will go on forever in some form or another (re-incarnation). The image of flowers hammering through the ground resemble images from Thomas other poems such as I Dreamed My Genesis and I in My Intricate Image they are dying in autumn, returning in the spring as in Paul and the Apocalypse. Hammering characters may refer to men re-born through flowers. At the same time one cannot help but visualize a graveyard full of flowers and tombstones with characters hammered onto them (names of the dead chiseled on the stones). Just as in Ecos open work, Thomas poetry has intentionally ambiguous and plurivocal meanings allowing the reader to arrive at multiple interpretations. The author foresees the role of the reader in the act of writing and the reader, in turn, has an indirectly collaborative role as s/he employs one of the textual strategies interwoven in the text. Of course, the reader may reach multiple interpretations; however, there are limits to the power of the interpreter/reader. The word play in the breaking of dawn and the sun breaking down may signify many things, such as the dependence of life on earth on the existence of the sun and/or the dawn of a new era, of life after death. The breaking of dawn or the rising of the sun, the readers of Thomas will know, generally symbolize re-birth and hope in Thomas poems the sun becomes the ultimate expression of faith, of

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hope, of some sort of immortality. This image may be used to strengthen the hope of resurrection and re-incarnation echoed throughout the poem.

3.3.4 Making Use of Thomas Poetic Devices in the Interpretation of the Poem Phonemic suggestiveness is one of the most ancient devices of the poet, but a device upon which recent psycholinguistic research has cast some new light, giving a partial empirical basis to what poets have always felt instinctively that

certain vowels and consonants within a context may have a meaningful symbolic value. By constant manipulation of long and short vowels, vocalic diminution and augmentation, patterning of plosives, stops, and liquids, phonemic chiasmus, Thomas created an aesthetic of sound. His persistent concern was to fashion an auditory correlative to the literal sense of each poem, and his effort was so deliberate and energetic that virtually every auditory device available to English poetry finds expression in his work. The use of the short, front vowels to suggest harshness is a trick frequently resorted to by Thomas. In And Death Shall Have No Dominion, the stopped consonants and velars are also utilized with the short vowels, accentuating the images of twisting and cracking: Under the windings of the sea They lying long shall not die windily; Twisting on racks when sinews give way, Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break; Faith in their hands shall snap in two, And the unicorn evils run them through; Split all ends up they shant crack.

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Especially Thomas early work tends to remain close to oral poetry. He generally has a unique attentiveness to sound patterning. In And Death Shall Have No Dominion he shows a preference for single syllable words that give a sharp sound effect, as seen in the lines above. Again at the beginning of the poem (in line three of the first stanza to be precise) we have the repetition of the w and m sounds: The man in the wind and the west moon. Also in the last stanza we have a repeated phrase: No more may gulls cry at their ears and Where blew a flower may a flower no more. Such alliteration is lost in all four translations we have at hand. An example of playing with, this time, the associated meanings of semantically linked words, is found in the last stanza: Though they be mad and dead as nails, Heads of the characters hammer through daisies; Although in this poem Thomas does not dwell on supernatural rebirth, he implies creativity and a new birth of some sort out of the dust. It involves an implicit denial of the terrifying judgment of the dead in the Revelation. Thomas drums St. Paul into us by using his phrase six times in a total of twenty-seven lines. But the point the poem makes is clear at the end: Though man be dead as a doornail, his flesh will go on living, will be hammered through daisies, and will break forth beneath the sun until the sun breaks down. This is the life over which death shall have

no dominion.

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With the death of the first man, the cycle of human and organic life is formed so that no further death occurs. The one dying partakes in the cycle of living nature. The poem offers possibilities, ready to be explored if one can make good use of the clues laid down by none other than Thomas himself. Like Umberto Ecos reader as reader/interpreter I entered into an interplay of stimulus and response based on my idiosyncratic capacity for a sensitive reception of the piece. However; It was always the poet, Dylan Thomas, within this scenario, who authorized this openness and thus the possible interpretations I came up with.

3.3.5 A Brief Look at the Four Translations of And Death Shall Have No Dominion

3.3.5.1 The Translation by Talat Sait Halman Hkm Hi Kalmayacak Art k lm lkesinin Hkm kalmayacak artSk lm lkesinin Tek gvdede Splak ller birleVecekler Rzgarla batan aydaki insanla beraber; SSyrSldS da savruldu mu artSk o kemikler Xskeletler tepeden tSrnaUa ySldSz dolacak. SaUlamlaVSr akSllarS SldSrsalar bile, Ummana batsa da Skar hepsi sahile; Kaybolsa da her sevgili kaybolmayacak aVk, Hkm hi kalmayacak artSk lm lkesinin. Hkm hi kalmayacak artSk lm lkesinin. oktan uzananlar denizin kSvranSVSnda Rzgarca lp bitmeyecekler boVuna; Gerilen etleri mosmor olacak cenderede, BaUlanmSV azap arkSna, hi kopmayacaklar. AvularSnda inan para para olsa bile, 67

Gulyabani ktlkler canevinden deVse, YarSlsalar da her utan, kopup kSrSlmazlar Hkm hi kalmayacak artSk lm lkesinin. Hkm hi kalmayacak artSk lm lkesinin. Ve SUlSk atmayacak martSlar kulaklarSna, Dalgalar sille tokat arpmayacaklar kSySya; Deli rzgarla uup dVtU yerlerde iek EUecek kamSlS yaUmurlara bitkin baVSnS. SlgSn da olsa, leV gibi cansSz da olsalar Kelleler fSVkSracak yerden ezip lleleri, atlayacaklar gneV altSnda, gneV atlayacak: Hkm hi kalmayacak artSk lm lkesinin. Since we are primarily concerned with examples of over-interpretation and since our subject matter is not translation criticism, I will not attempt a descriptive analysis of Halmans translation, neither will I proceed to write a critical account of his performance as a translator. My main concern will be to uncover instances of over-interpretation and explore the possible causes leading to them. The first example of over-interpretation may be found in line five of the first stanza. In the previous line the poet mentions the withering away of flesh after burial with a reference to how this process is accomplished the bones are picked clean by insects and worms. The poet then adds that even the bones wither away after a certain amount of time. Even if this be the case, these dead men will have stars at elbow and foot, says the poet. Halman chooses to refer to the dead men as skeletons in line five when he says skeletons will be covered with/filled with stars from head to toe. First of all referring to the dead men as skeletons based on the reference to bones in the previous line presents a case of over-interpretation -especially since the poet clearly indicates that the bones may have withered away already, i.e. there may be no skeleton to speak of in the first place. Assuming the

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poet is talking about skeletons just because of a reference to bones is perhaps a good example of what we would term jumping the gun. One does not have to go too far to find a second example of overinterpretation. A quick look at the following line (line six) should suffice. Here, Halmans use of the verb sa lamlaA?r constitutes the problem. The poet

simultaneously employs two contrasting conditions: going mad and being sane. Halman offers another dimension. He talks about the dead people becoming more sane/getting better even if they are mad to begin with. This is indeed the main idea lying behind Thomas original words. On Judgment Day, even those who died mad will rise again as sane. However, in saying this, Thomas does not openly use a verb that signifies getting better or becoming sane, since such verbs would immediately imply a hidden force causing/facilitating this process, which would constitute a more open reference to Judgment Day. Instead, he simply refers to a future condition: they shall be sane. Therefore, it can be argued that by using the verb sa lamlaA?r Halman is giving away more than Thomas has intended. A third example may be found in line eight of the first stanza where Thomas refers to the immortality of love. He is referring to love and lovers in general. In Halmans translation, however, what is referred to is each and every lover or all lovers. Perhaps Thomas meaning also encompasses this idea, but even if it does it is in a covert sense, not explicitly, not like the way Halman puts it. Moving onto the second stanza, we come across another example of overinterpretation in line eight. Here Thomas is depicting scenes of torture. Split all ends up they shant crack he says. Halman translates the cracking at the end as kopup k?r?lmak which is a lot more drastic than cracking. Perhaps the limbs of the 69

people being tortured will end up breaking off or worse, but Thomas doesnt say this. One must also bear in mind that the not cracking of the tortured people refers to their spiritual state as much as their physical condition they are enduring the difficulties of life on earth and they are not giving up. The last example of over-interpretation to be found in Halmans translation is in line four of the last stanza. Thomas flower is blowing in the rain, one would assume and lifting its head up to the blows of the rain. We do not know if the flower is firmly fixed to the ground but blowing from one side to the other in the wind, or whether it is dead and being blown away. We do not know if the wind is just a breeze or whether the flower is trying to cope with strong winds. Halman has obviously made his choice by calling it deli rzgr, thus eliminating the Turkish readers chance to make his/her choice, so skillfully offered to the English language reader.

3.3.5.2 The Translation by lk Tamer lm Kuramayacak lkesini Aram za lm kuramayacak lkesini aramSza, Rzgrdaki adamla, batS aySndaki; Tertemiz toplanSrken kemikleri, giderken tertemiz YSldSzlar SVSyacak dirseklerinde, ayaklarSnda; SldSrsalar bile akSllS olacaklar ySllara; Batsalar bile denizlerde yeniden kalkacaklar; lse bile sevgililer sevgi kalacak; lm kuramayacak lkesini aramSza. lm kuramayacak lkesini aramSza, KSvrSmlarS altSnda denizin Uzananlar kSvrSlamayacaklar lme; Kopmayacak sinirleri ne kadar gerilse, Ne kadar bklse gergeflerde ; 70

Ellerinde inan ikiye blnecek, Grlmedik ktler akacak ilerinden, DaUStSn ularSnS, hi atlamayacak; lm kuramayacak lkesini aramSza. lm kuramayacak lkesini aramSza, MartSlar baUSramayacak kulaklarSna artSk, Grltyle blnemeyecek dalgalar kSySlarda; AtSldSUS yere ieklerin, iekler KaldSramayacak baVlarSnS vuruVuna yaUmurun; SlgSnsalar bile, tSrnaklar kadar l, Papatyalar iinden arpacak kafalarS; Skecekler gneVi gn skerken; lm kuramayacak lkesini aramSza. The very title chosen by lk Tamer for his translation presents a case of overinterpretation. Tamers title literally means death will not be able to found its country among us. the dictionary meanings of the word dominion indicate that it is possible to interpret dominion with reference to a specific land or territory. The dictionary offers four possibilities: 1). The power or right of governing and controlling; sovereign authority 2). Rule; control, domination; 3). Territory, usually of considerable size, under a single rulership; 4).Lands or domains subject to sovereignty or control. (Websters Third International Dictionary) Thus Tamer, just like Halman, based his interpretation on the third and fourth meanings of the word dominion. In doing this both translators have limited the possible vision offered to the reader of the translated poem however, this is not what concerns me about this particular line. The problem with Tamers version is his addition of the word aram?za to the title. Even if we accept both Halmans and Tamers translations of deaths dominion as the land of death -- though both restrictive and limited compared to the original the addition of the word aram?za is a definite example of over-interpretation. The word dominion, whether it refers to having power or 71

sovereignty over a land always implies a subject. One has power over/or rules over someone or something. Obviously Tamer is thinking about death having

power over human beings, sovereignty. Yet, founding a country under our very noses, among us? This is perhaps best left to the reader to figure out. Another example is to be found in line six of the first stanza. We see that Tamer has added the word y?llara to his translation. Adding y?llara does not contribute to the meaning and/or understanding of the poem, neither does it serve to explicate any hidden element in the original poem that could otherwise not be expressed in the translation. I can only assume that it has been added to rhyme with ayaklar?nda in the previous line. Then again, even if we forget about the original and just look at that line as it is -- ?ld?rsalar bile ak?ll? olacaklar y?llara (even if they lose their minds they will withstand the years with sanity or they will make intelligent use of the passing years) -- what Tamer is saying is not really clear. However, it is clear that he is opting for a far-fetched, ill-founded interpretation. Perhaps this is a change made to establish and/or maintain whatever feeble rhyme scheme there is. This change has led to a forced interpretation of the line. A final example of over-interpretation from lk Tamers translation is in line four of the last stanza. This is the part where Thomas mentions the blowing flower. The verb Tamer chooses for his flower is at?lmak (to be thrown away). This verb immediately implies a deliberate act performed by a specific person/persons. It is quite difficult to follow a line of thought that runs from a flower blowing in the wind to flowers simply thrown away. If Tamer is trying to imply that the flowers have been thrown away by the wind, then we are entitled to criticize 72

and accuse him of a far- fetched interpretation based on insufficient clues. If this is not what he had in mind, then what is he thinking of?

3.3.5.3 The Translation by Blent Ecevit lme Kalm yacakt r Bu Dnya lme kalmSyacaktSr bu dnya. SrSlSplak ller Aydaki rzgrdaki adamdan olacaktSr; Kemikleri tertemiz ve tertemiz kemikleri yok olduUunda, YSldSzdan olacaktSr ayaklarS, dirsekleri; AkSllarS baVta olacaktSr delirseler de, Denizlere de batsalar ykseleceklerdir yine; Yok olsa da sevgililer sevgi yok olmayacaktSr; lme kalmayacaktSr bu dnya. lme kalmSyacaktSr bu dnya. DalgalarSn altSnda upuzun yatanlar DaUSlSp gitmeyeceklerdir denizde; Burulsalar da kaslarS koparan emberlere gerili, kSrSlmayacaklardSr; Kopsa da ellerinde gerilen inanlarS, Ktlkler dolu dizgin delip gese de onlarS; Parampara da olsalar zlmiyeceklerdir; lme kalmSyacaktSr bu dnya. HaykSrmaz olsa da kulaklarSna martSlar Gmbrdemez olsa da dalgalar kSySlarda; ieklerin fSVkSrdSUS yerde bir iek bile KaldSrmaz olsa baVSnS arpan yaUmura; Deli de olsalar l de iviler gibi BaVverecektir kiVilikleri kSrieUinden srer gibi; SkacaklardSr gneVe tkeninceye dek gneV, lme kalmSyacaktSr bu dnya. Ecevits translation reveals that among the four translators of the poem, he is the one who, in Donald Davies words, understands best the sort of poet and the sort of poetry he is dealing with. (p. 39) Yet there are two examples in Ecevits translation that may be labeled over-interpretation. The first is in line five of the first 73

stanza. Ecevits translation is based on the idea that the feet and elbows of the deceased will be made out of stars. There is no actual reference to the material constituting the elbows and feet in the original poem. A plausible explanation is that Ecevit tried to establish a sense of inner rhythm by using -dan olacakt?r in each of the first two lines of the first stanza, and therefore, resorted to this shift. The second example is in line three of the second stanza -- problematic spot where Thomas mentions those lying under the sea dying windily. The dictionary meanings of windily and the possible interpretations of this line have already been explored. The possible references of Ecevits choice da ?l?p gitmeyeceklerdir denizde cover a different spectrum. Ecevits translation suggests the bodies crumbling away, withering away, the bodies disintegrating and then being scattered. Windings becomes directly waves; while windily takes on the meaning of scattered in the wind which here becomes scattered in the sea. As mentioned before, one possible meaning of windily is exposed to or swept by the wind. Therefore it is possible that Ecevit tried to depict a scene in which the bodies drift away in the sea as if scattered by the wind. However, the term da ?l?p gitmek has stronger implications, as explained above, that carry the meaning far beyond this point.

3.3.5.3 The Translation by Cehnaz Tahir Ve lm Hkmszdr Ve lm hkmszdr. Splak ller bir olur RzgrSn, batS aySn insanSyla: Kemikleri sSyrSlSp bembeyaz kalSnca, beyaz kemikler yokluUa 74

karSVSnca, Dirseklere, ayaklara ySldSzlar konar; Onlar delirse de akSllSdSr, Batsalar da Skarlar ; AVSklar yitse de aVk kalSr; Ve lm hkmszdr. Ve lm hkmszdr. Denizin kefenine sarSlS YattSka yatanlar kSsa lmler lr; Kaslar iVkence masasSna teslim, Tekerlekte gerili, kopmazlar yine de; Xkiye ayrSlSr ellerinde inan, Ve tek boynuzlu Veytanlar geer ilerinden; Lime lime olur tm ular, ama paralanmazlar; Ve lm hkmszdr. Ve lm hkmszdr. MartSlar kulaklarSna tmez belki bir daha Ya da dalgalar kS ySlara arpSp kSrSlmaz; ieklerin fSVkSrdSUS yerde belki iekler ArtSk yaUmurun tokadSna baVSnS kaldSramaz, TSrnak denli l de olsalar, deli de, BaVlarS her papatyada yeniden aar ; Onlar gneV snene dek gneVtedirler, Ve lm hkmszdr. An obvious case of over-interpretation in >ehnaz Tahirs translation is in the eighth line of the first stanza. While Thomas in the original poem refers to the dead rising from the sea a usage with Biblical connotations that we already discussed during the interpretation of the original poem - Tahirs translation does not bear any direct reference to the sea. Batsalar da ?karlar naturally does carry an indirect

reference to some kind of liquid since the verb batmak (being submerged) automatically necessitates it. Since there is no direct reference in the translated poem, however, the liquid in question may be anything but sea-water as far as the target reader is concerned. Secondly, Tahirs choice has another meaning for the target reader reaching far beyond the implications of the original. The verb 75

batmak in Turkish also implies financial ruin and bankruptcy or getting into something troublesome or being involved in immoral dealings up to ones neck. Tahir may have chosen this solution since it covers both possible meanings of being submerged in liquid and rising up from corruption into better morals. However, in doing so she is opening up what was purposefully hidden by the poet and leading the target reader along a different path. Very much in line with todays dominant approach to interpretation, Tahir here falls into the trap of explication. As Scholes explains, In dealing with poetic texts, wherein meaning is primarily implicit, there is surely an important role for an approach to interpretation that aims at making the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic structures of meaning as explicit as can be. (1982, p. 56) Nevertheless, referring back to chapters I and II -- where the theoretical framework of such thoughts are examined -- we cannot be certain what we are revealing as translators is what was initially hidden. Secondly, if Thomas had intended his secret to be easily accessible, he would not have gone to so much trouble to hide it in the first place. If the reader of the poets native tongue is allowed to decipher the poem using the textual (sometimes extra-textual) clues laid down by the poet, then why should the translator make it impossible for the foreign language reader to do the same?

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CHAPTER IV

4.1

Ahmet Gntan the Poet

Born in 1955 in czmir, Ahmet Gntan is a graduate of the Department of Architecture at the Middle Eastern Technical University. He is presently employed in the advertising sector. Poetry collections: clk Kan (First Blood/1984), Kpkl Bir Kan, Bir Duman (A Froth of Blood, A Haze of Smoke/1989), Nezle (A Cold/1990 in Voyager 2, coauthored with Lale Mldr), Romeo ve Romeo (Romeo and Romeo/1995).

4.2

The Interpretation of Ahmet Gntans Uyanma Saati

Uyanma Saati Gel, dedi, birlikte taVSyalSm, dedi. TaVSyabildiUim kadarSnS, dedim. TaVSyabildiUin kadarSnS dedim, dedi. Gidiyorsun, gitme, burada ol dedim, dedi. UzaUa gitme dedim, dedi, diyor. Gitmiyorum, kalSyorum, dedim. Uyku dinlendirir dedi, dedim. Uyku siler diyor dedi, dedim. Sonuna kadar dinlerim, dedim dedi diyor. ASyor dedim, kapSyS dedim, Bana dedim, doUru dedim, Oradan dedim, gzkyor dedim, gelen dedim. KapSyor diyor bana, dedi. Ben aacaUSm, sen zlme dedim, dedi. Adalet Romeo! Adalet Romeom!

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The poems in Ahmet Gntans collection entitled Romeo and Romeo all evolve around the themes of sleep, dreams, repetition, and starting afresh. Furthermore, the sequence of the poems in the book forms a pattern: 1. Uyku Saati (time to go to bed) 2. Ninni (lullaby) 3. Uyku (sleep) 4. Rya (dream) 5. Uyanma Saati (time to wake up -- in this last, the opening of the door toward the end of the poem suggests entering another stage, the awakening perhaps) "Uyanma Saati" is what Eco would describe as an open text; the poem allows each recipient to refashion the text. The author as the encoder has authorized this openness, and determined its limits. The poem is intentionally ambiguous with plurivocal meanings; the reader may arrive at multiple interpretations, but must be aware of his or her limited power as a reader/interpreter. Uyanma Saati is a complex poem. At the first reading it is nearly impossible to discern how many people there are in the poem and who is who. The most immediate difficulty in interpreting the poem is the gender question. The only references conveying gender come in the last two lines addressed to Romeo and my Romeo. In English we are constricted to the personal pronouns he or she when speaking of a human beingwe cannot use it. The only alternatives, equally ambiguous, are one and the other. Yet, a careful reading of the poem reveals three characters, distinguished by He, he, and I in Gntan's own translation (see below). 78

4.2.1 The First Stanza In the first line of the poem, He (distinguished by an upper case H in Gntan's translation) is speaking to the narrator, I. Come, let us carry together, He says. What they might be carrying is the first question that comes to mind. The narrator I replies, As much as I can carry. Is the object to be carried very heavy? Is the narrator I sick or incapacitated? Then it is His turn to speak: I meant as much as you can carry. We understand that He would not expect the narrator I to carry more than he canor perhaps that He can make do with whatever the narrator I can carry. At any rate He does not mind if the narrator I can only carry a certain amount of whatever there is to be carried. One possible interpretation would be that sleep has come to the narrator I and is offering to bear some of his daily burden, some of his fatigue. Sleep (i.e. He) offers to ease the narrators troubles. The narrator (I) agrees to this on the condition that sleep leaves him only a small burden to carry. Sleep would then be agreeing to this.

4.2.2 The Second Stanza In line four the third person enters: he (lower case h in Gntan's translation). He (upper-case H) now reports to the narrator I what he has been told by this third person, he. You are going, he said has said to Him. Dont go, stay here, he has said and now He is reiterating this to the narrator I. He proceeds to repeat to the narrator what he has told Him. Dont go far away, he has said to Him.

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The He replies to the third person (him), I am not going, I am staying. Thus sleep might be departing. The narrator I then asks Him (or sleep) to stay, and He agrees to it.

4.2.3 The Third Stanza Him has told He that sleep puts you at rest and that sleep erases. Now He reports this to the narrator I. In reply to him, He has said that he would/will listen to the end. Thus sleep, or He, promises the narrator rest and promises to erase the troubles from the mind of the narrator I. Thus sleep would have offered to listen to the narrators problems.

4.2.4 The Fourth Stanza He is now opening the door towards the narrator I, who can see someone coming from there. The awakening might now be coming, opening the door, and the narrator can see it.

4.2.5 The Fifth Stanza Now he is addressing Him, reporting that the narrator I has said hell close the door on him. He tells him not to worry, that He will open the door for him. The door is being closed on me sleep would thus be spoken to the narrator, who promises to open the door for sleep. Dont worry, Ill open it, the narrator promises. Perhaps we could interpret sleep as closing the door, refusing to withdraw although the new day is dawning with the awakening (he) insistently 80

informing the narrator that he will open the door to awaken the narrator. Both sleep and awakening have their set time, and there is justice between them. Alternatively, the roles of He and he might be reversed. Perhaps it is the awakening that offers to carry some of the narrators burden. One of the major signs of depression is too much sleep and a reluctance to wake up. People retreat into sleep to avoid facing their problems. Awakening is trying to cajole the subject into waking up: Dont worry. You can wake up and face your troubles, Ill help you with your burden. Although they agree, the narrator seems to be drifting back into sleep and tells the awakening that sleep helps him rest and forget his problems. The awakening then promises to listen to the problems of the former. The awakening would then open the door, with sleep lurking around trying to close it as the narrator is half-asleep, holding eyes open only with difficulty. Awakening then reassures sleep, telling him not to worry. It would thus be awakening that opens the door and arouses the narrator. A completely different possibility would be to regard the poem as a conversation between two people in bed, one offering to share the troubles of the other. He would be telling the other not to be afraid of waking up and facing his troubles, promising that I am here and I will help. As can be seen, the poem has suggested just to meonly one readerat least three different interpretations. Obviously the author is submitting an open text to the reader.

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4.2.6 The Translation by Jean Efe Early to Rise Come, he said, together we can bear it, said he. As long as I can bear it, said I. As long as you can bear it I said, said he. Youre going, dont go, stay here I said, said he. Dont go far off I said, he said and says again. Im not going, Im staying, said I. Sleep relaxes one he said, said I. Sleep cleans the slate he says he said, said I. Ill hear you through clear to the end I said, he said and says again. The door, I said, its opening, I said, Straight, I said, towards me, I said, From there, I said, one passing by, I said, is looking in, said I. Hes closing it he says to me, said he. Ill open it, dont you worry I said, said he. Fair play, Romeo! Fair play, my Romeo! Focusing on examples of over-interpretation, the first occurs in the very first line of the poem. The original employs the verb ta-/mak (to carry). While the grammatical structure of the English language generally does not employ the transitive verb to carry without an object, there is no such restriction on the Turkish verb. This lead Jean Efe to look for an alternative. On the other hand, the alternative she has employed, to bear also requires an object. Therefore she might also have rendered the expression as carry it rather than bear it, still referring to a vague and unidentified object. Opting for the verb to bear does, nevertheless, invite further connotation. Websters Third International Dictionary givesmost importantly among others 82

the following definitions for carry: 1a) to move while holding up or supporting often with effort or special care, carry; 1b) to be accoutered or fitted out with: carry as equipment (the right to bear a sword in the kings presence); 1c) to harbor or entertain mentally or emotionally; to cherish (bearing malice in his heart), (the love he bore for his mother); 1d) to carry as a communication and usually to relate as news; 1e) to behave, conduct, deportused reflexively (bearing himself well in battle); 1g) to have as an attribute, feature or characteristic (bearing a likeness to the suspect); 1h) to adduce in testifying (bearing testimony); 1m) and to lead, escort (bearing the officer to his quarters). Obviously, the first meaning given is the most general, and this is what Efe told me she had had in mind when I asked her about it. She gave as an example the word pallbearer, one who supports and literally carries the body of the deceased at a funeral. However, the target language reader will no doubt consider other connotations implicit in bear, and thanks to this more open reference, will formulate even more different interpretations of this line. We have already seen that it is possible to reach

multiple interpretations with the verb ta-/mak (even when restricted to carry) in the original poem, some that do correspond to the implications offered by to bear. However, the main point is that, using to bear definitely constitutes a much more open reference to certain paths of interpretation, thus favoring some interpretations as opposed to others. Thus it constitutes a case of over-interpretation, or even explication, on the translators part. Another example of over-interpretation may be found in the eighth line of the second stanza. The original poem features the verb silmek (to erase). The solution offered in the translated poem is to clean the slate. Websters Third International 83

Dictionary offers the following definition for clean slate: a record unblemished by discreditable acts or measures (he left a clean slate for his successor in office). Although to clean the slate does include the meaning to erase, it also carries additional connotations as well, such as starting afresh, beginning anew, or settling a score. All or some of these connotations may be part of possible interpretations. However, the poet has avoided an open reference in the original poem. Here, too, Efes choice was tied more closely to grammar than to semantics. As in the previous example, here too, the verb to erase automatically calls for an object, whereas the Turkish silmek doesnt. However, the solution offered by the translator does not compensate for this fact; her choice also includes an object: the slate. The final example I would like to mention is in line 12 in the fourth stanza. Someone, somewhere is opening a door (literally the door opens is opening) and one of the persons in the poem glimpses someone coming (possible interpretations have already been explored in section 4.2.4). The translation, however, indicates a passer- by who might look in through the open door only unintentionally. When we read the original we receive no information as to whether the person outside the door is just a passer-by or someone coming to pay a call. Similarly, in the original poem there is only reference to someone inside aware of someone outside; there is no reference to anyone outside looking in. The reader of the original Turkish has no idea who the person outside is or what he is doing; the reader of the source text knows only that someone outside is approaching the door. Much more than this has been intimated to the target language reader.

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It would also seem that in translating this poem one of the major concerns of the translator was to preserve the sound quality of the original. This concern also seems to have interfered with her choices. Efes translation was submitted to and revised by Ahmet Gntan himself. The poets own translationif disregarding Efes grammatical concernsdoes remain as cryptic as the original. Time To Wake Up Come, said He, let us carry together, said He. As much as I can carry, said I. As much as you can carry said I, said He. Youre going, dont go, stay here said I, said He. Dont go far off said I said He, says he. Im not going, Im staying, said I. Sleep puts you at rest said He, said I. Sleep erases says He said he, said I. I will listen to the end said I, said He says he. The door, said I, is opening, said I, Straight, said I, towards me, said I, From there, said I, I can see, said I, the comer, said I. You are closing it says He to me, said he. Ill open it, dont you worry said I, said he. Justice, Romeo! Justice, my Romeo! Which version is more poetic? Although open to discussion, Jean Efes version does seem to have the upper handat least in terms of creating a rhythm similar to that of the original. Nevertheless, as we have seen, sacrifices have been made to achieve this.

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4.3

The Interpretation of Ahmet Gntans Dk L. Visconti

Dk L. Visconti Bir akVamst Herkesin merakla gkyzne baktSUS anda yere dVen o yapraUSn hikayesini en iyi nasSl anlatabilirsiniz Herkesin merakla gkyzne baktSUS anda Yere dVen o yaprak Ya da herkesin merakla gkyzne baktSUS Bir akVamst bir hikaye anlatmak Hemen bir saUanak arkasS YapraklarSn ucu demirli Yapraklar yere saplandS Bir Vair yere dVmV bir yaprak aldS Bir ses Bir zamanlar bir aVk vardS dedi Ve Vair bu sesin sahibini aradS Uzakta birisi gn Vairin bu aranSVSnS hatSrladS YapraklarSn yere saplandSUSnS grdm Sonra bir ses duydum Sesin yapraklarSn yere arpmasSndan SktSUSnS anlayamadSm Ses yapraklarSn yere arpmasSndan SkSyor diyemedim Ses yapraklardan geliyor demediUim iin YapraklarSn yere arpmasSndan bir ses SkmSyordu Uzun uzun anlatSlacak her Veyi tanSdSm ve sevdim BoV verip sonra olmadSk bir yerinde bir Viirin "Tam yaUmur yaUacakken bir kadSn yzndeki tl kaldSrdS diyebilmeyi UrettiUiniz iin Siz beni mutlu ettiniz Sizi seviyorum ben Dk Visconti "Bir akVamst... diye baVlayan bir Viir yazacaUSm AdSnS da Dk Visconti koyacaUSm Ah Dk Visconti Daha nce bin kere sylenmiV olsa bile Sylemek baUSrmak istiyorum ben de Btn Vizofrenler HayatSn kSySsSnda yaVayanlar Bir parmak gkyzn iVaret edince gkyzne deUil parmaUa bakanlar Ah siz ahmaklar Btn gn beraber olduklarS birine akVam evde

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mektup yazanlar Beni sevmeniz iin sizi hi bSrakmadan dinledim Btn anlattSklarSnSzS benim iin anlatmadSnSz mS Hemen bir saUanak arkasS Bir Vair o dVmV yapraUSn yanSnda yer aldS Bir zamanlar aVk vardS Tln kaldSrSp bakan kadSn uzun gn bu aVkS hatSrladS diyebildiUim iin Siz de beni seviyor musunuz Dk Visconti Herkes gkyzne bakSyordu Ve Vair Gkyzn seyredenlerin de bir hikayesi vardSr belki Ve bu hikaye en az bizimkisi kadar acSklSdSr diye yazdS Ve olmadSk bir yerinde bir Viirin Eser abuk aUSr abuk olmak zere blmden oluVuyordu dedi Bundan mutlu oldu Mutlu ryalarSn arkasS Sahiden Bir akVamst uyanSldS AUalardan dVerek Yapraklar yere saplandS Birimiz yapraUS grd Birimiz sesini duydu YaUmur yeniden camlardan szlmeye baVlayarak her Veyi sildi dendiUi iin YaUmur camlardan szlmeye baVlayarak her Veyi sildi uzun gn kendini camlS kVkte kalbinden vuran o Vair konuVuldu Sonra susuldu Ne h a y a t kelimesi kullanSldS ne de dili gemiV Son aUacSn son yapraUSyla hikaye bitti The very name of the poem, Dk L. Visconti introduces a strong association with a foreign culture with the title Dk (= Duke) that covers a broad range of

interpretation, basically meaning leader, or chief. It is generally employed when referring to one of the following: 1) a sovereign prince or ruler of a duchy on the continent of Europe, or 2) a member of the first and highest grade of the peerage in Great Britain (Websters Third International Dictionary). If we assume that L is the

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initial of the dukes first name, then Visconti may be his surname. Although the English viscount immediately comes to mind, it refers to a person of a different rank: 1) an officer acting as the representative of a count in the administration of a district; 2) a member of the fourth grade of the peerage in Great Britain, ranking below an earl and above a baron (Websters Third International Dictionary). It is scarcely conceivable that the poet confused such ranks. At this point the renowned film director Luchino Visconti comes to mind. One cannot help but form an association between the duke L. Visconti of our poem and the real-life count and film director Luchino Visconti, occasionally referred to as a Marxist duke. One of the primary personalities responsible for the rebuilding of the Italian cinema after World War II, Visconti was an enigmatic and influential figure. Born as a count into one of Italys most aristocratic families, the young Visconti lived a carefree life, cultivating a taste for opera and the theater. At the age of 30, he befriended Jean Renoir and followed him to Paris, where he designed costumes and rose to the status of an assistant director. In the French capital he fell under the influence of Marxist ideology, anddespite his family backgroundbecame an avid leftist and anti-fascist for the remainder of his life. In 1940 he returned to Italy, where he produced films of his own. He has 14 movies to his credit: Ossessione (1942), La Terra Trema (1947), Bellisima (1951), Senso (1954), White Nights (1957), Rocco and His Brothers (1960), The Leopard (1963), Sandra (1965), The Stranger (1967), The Damned (1969), Death in Venice (1971), Ludwig (1973), Conversation Piece (1975) and The Innocent (1976). Along with Rosselini and De Sica, he is considered a pioneer of the Italian neo-realist

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movement. To the end of his life Visconti remained an individualistic and inspired filmmaker. (available at http://www.Imdb.com) First I present an interpretation based solely on textual clues; this is followed by a brief commentary on alternative readings suggested by relating the poem to the film director Luchino Visconti.

4.3.1 The First Stanza The poem begins with the time of the day. It begins in the evening, on one particular evening just at the hour when everyone is gazing expectantly into the sky. A leaf falls to the ground. The poet, captivated, is contemplating the difficulty of telling the story of this leaf falling to the ground at this moment of crisis; it is by no means easy to compose a story when everyone is gazing at the sky. One possible interpretation of this stanza may be that human beings have always expected something to come from above (from the sky, from the gods or God on high). In doing this, always looking to some divine outside power, people miss what actually happens here on earth (symbolized by the falling of the leaf).

4.3.2 The Second Stanza Immediately after a downpour, the leaves on the trees are heavy, weighed down by raindrops. The leaves fall and stick to the ground; they penetrate the ground. The poet picks up a fallen leaf and hears someone say, Once there was a love. (This should be a specific love between specific people). The poet goes in search of the owner of that voice. Someone, far away, then recalls how the poet searched for the speakerfor three days. It is not clear, however, whether the poet has searched 89

for three days or whether the person far away has been pondering this for three days. Continuing along the line of our previous interpretation, the poets picking up the fallen leaf may be considered a significant act. While everyone else is waiting for the act of some divine power, it is only the poet who realizes what is happening on earth. He is the only one to notice the fallen leaf. Whatever our interpretation, this stanza leaves us with certain questions. Whose voice is it, whose love (or love affair) is mentioned, and who is this far-away person? The leaf heavily burdened by the water collected at the tip after the rain, and the fact that the leaf cannot withstand this burden, becoming so heavy it falls to the ground (and not only falls, but pierces the soil) carries some significance in the poem, for the falling of the leaf is repeated time and again throughout the poem. The heavy burden may be interpreted in many ways, perhaps the reason everyone is gazing at the heavens, perhaps even the concept of religion.

4.3.3 The Third Stanza In the third stanza we have someoneperhaps the poet--speaking. The poet is presented as one who can make things happen. Had the poet understood that the sound was coming from the leaves falling to the ground, and had he voiced this understanding, then the leaves falling to the ground would have made a sound. This is actually an idea quite similar to the reader-response theories discussed in the earlier chapters (the reader giving meaning and life to what the author has written). Similarly, it is the poet hearing the sound that makes the sound possible. What happens takes on meaning only when it is noticed by a human being. 90

4.3.4 The Fourth Stanza Here the poet states the great love and appreciation he feels for Duke Visconti. It is the Duke who has taught him how to disregard the mundane and how to utter unexpected phrases at unawaited moments. He appreciates the awareness the Duke has brought him. The poet vows to dedicate a poem to the Duke, one telling the story of what happened one evening at dusk. It seems that the poet wishes to repeat his admiration over and over, shouting it aloud even if it has become a clich heard a thousand times before. Alternatively, it is not his admiration that he wants to shout aloud; perhaps he wants to shout at those he terms the schizophrenics, introduced in the following line. A quick reference to Websters Third International Dictionary reveals a great deal about schizophrenia: 1) A psychotic disorder of unknown complex etiology that occurs as simple, paranoid, catatonic, or hebephrenic, is characterized by disturbance in thinking involving a distortion of the usual logical relations between ideas, a separation between the intellect and the emotions so that the patients feelings or their manifestations seem inappropriate to his life situation, and a reduced tolerance for the stress of interpersonal relations so that the patient retreats from social intercourse into his own fantasy life and commonly into delusions and hallucinations, and may when untreated or unsuccessfully treated go on to marked deterioration or regression in the patients behavior though often unaccompanied by further intellectual loss; and 2) Split personality. Could the reference in the poem refer to those who look at the pointing fingers rather than the sky itself? They cannot see the real thing, but are missing the point by looking at 91

the means rather than the end. The poet is addressing these people, calling them fools. This seems satirical; might the poet not actually be announcing his affinity to such people by referring to them in the same way the general public does? Isnt this poet claiming the Dukes sympathy because he has also become one of them? (It was after all the Duke who enabled him to notice the fallen leaf.) Furthermore, this poet actually admits that he is pleased that he can write about a poet finding his place or taking his stand beside the fallen leaf. This may mean that the poet is defending those unable to carry/bare their share of the burden of life and fall; it may imply as well that this poet himself is stumbling. I must admit that this part of the poem reminds me of the Turkish proverb DAenin dostu olmaz. (No one will befriend the fallen.)

4.3.5 The Fifth Stanza The poet here acknowledges that the general public (those staring at the sky) might also have a sad story to tell, perhaps one not so different from that of his own and the Dukes (and of the schizophrenics?). Perhaps he sees himself as an eccentric, a misfit amid the general populace. He is obviously pleased that he is different. The reference to an opus consisting of three movements: allegro lento allegro, is open to debate. What is the poet referring to with the word opus? A poem? Life itself? Then one evening at dusk, as the leaves are falling to the ground, someone mentions the rain coming down and wiping everything away, and indeed this is what then follows in the poem. The poet living in his glass house (perhaps a reference to Sylvia Plaths The Bell Jar which is about a 92

schizophrenic?) shoots himself. That the cause of death is suicide might again suggest schizophrenics, among whom suicide is relatively common. People then talk about the poets death for three long days. The phrase three long days thus appears for the third (and last) time in the poem; it was employed in the very first stanza with mention of the far-off individual recalling the poets search for the source of the sound he has heard and then again at the end of the fourth stanza with reference to the woman who unveiled her face and treasured her love for three full days. Three days is, of course, in the minds of most readers, a very short period to cherish ones love or remembrance of a lost one. Gntans irony in his choice of three full days or three long days is worthy of note. At the end of the poem, once the three long days have passed, we are told that no one mentions the word spelled l i f enor even employs tenses that refer to the past anymore. The poet has been forgotten. Duke L. Visconti is a poem difficult to interpret. As I have tried to explain above, the interpretation I have arrived at, based on the clues laid down by the author, is centered upon the affinity felt by a poet towards the duke L. Visconti. The poet considers both himself and the Duke misfits within the general population. Certainly, we generally think of poets as those who see what the majority of the population misses. Why else should we grant them poetic license? They see things through their minds eye. Alternatively, if we are to contend that the duke in the poem is indeed the aristocrat and film director Luchino Visconti, this poem might well have been inspired by a one of his films or by a scene in any one of them. The poem may even combine details from various films. However, a study of the relationship 93

between Luchino Viscontis films and this poem of Ahmet Gntan would entail both the personal communication of the author himself and/or enough research to produce a separate masters thesis. Our subject here is simply unwanted overinterpretation on the part of a translator.

4.3.5 The Translation by Jean Efe Duke L. Visconti

One evening at dusk When the gaze of the populace is directed towards the sky What might be the best way to tell the story of the moment when that leaf fell to the ground The story of that moment when the leaf fell to the ground Or to tell a story at dusk when the gaze of the populace is directed towards the sky Soon after a downpour Leaves on stems of iron Leaves driven into the ground And as a poet picks up a fallen leaf He hears a voice say Once there was love He ponders whence the voice has come His wonder occupying the mind of a far-off individual for three days to be precise I saw the leaves penetrate the earth I heard something Whether it came from the piercing leaves I could not discern The sound is from the leaves striking the earth I could not say And as I failed to utter The sound is from the leaves No sound came from those leaves striking the earth I have come to know and love all things that have a long story Having taught me not to bother and how to be able to say Just as the rain was beginning to fall a woman unveiled her face in an unlikely corner of a poem You have made me happy I love you, Duke Visconti I shall write a poem beginning One evening at dusk I shall name it Duke Visconti Aah, Duke Visconti Even though its been repeated thousands and thousands of times I want to repeat it over again To repeat it and shout it aloud Oh, you schizophrenics Living on the very edge Those of you who fix your gaze on the finger pointing towards the sky rather than the sky itself Who write letters to individuals with whom you have just spent

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the whole day long Fools that you are So that you might love me I listened to the very end of all you had to say They were for me, werent they, all your explanations, all that youve recounted Just after a downpour Because I can say There was a poet standing beside that fallen leaf Once there was an infatuation and The woman who unveiled her face treasured his love for three full days Perhaps you do love me, Duke Visconti All were gazing at the sky And the poet wrote Those gazing at the sky might well have a tale to tell as poignant as our own In an unlikely corner of a poem he says The opus is comprised of three movements: allegro lento allegro This satisfied him well Following upon sweat dreams Its true that One evening at dusk there was an awakening Leaves falling from the trees Penetrated the ground One of us saw the leaf One of us heard the voice But because someone said The rain thats begun to seep through the panes has obliterated all there is to see The rain beginning to seep through the panes did obliterate all And for three full days the topic of conversation was the poet who had shot himself through the heart in his own glass parlor Then all talk of it ceased After which the word life was obsolete and the past tense meaningless The story ended with the last leaf fallen from the last tree

The first example of over-interpretation is in lines two and three of the second stanza. Referring to the first stanza of the original poem and the possible interpretations earlier discussed (section 4.3), there is no doubt that the poet is recounting the moment when a leaf fell to the ground. In the second stanza he proceeds to tell the story of just how the leaf fell to the ground. The second stanza of the translation, however, does not mention any falling at all. Here the translator has interpreted the word u (point, or tip) as stem, an interpretation obviously based on the idea of the leaves piercing the ground. However, as explained above, both the previous and following stanzas accentuate the fall of the leafand indeed the image of the fallen leaf dominates the poem. The specific interpretation of these lines in the translated poem, thus, interrupts the coherence of the poem.

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The second example is found in the last line of the second stanza where the translator has added a specific reference to the three days: three days to be precise. This instance of over-interpretation was a deliberate act on the translators part, probably undertaken to provide a further repetition of the p sound. The third example of over-interpretation occurs towards the end of the fourth stanza (line 46). Here the phrase Bir zamanlar a-k vard/ (Once there was love) has been rendered Once there was an infatuation, whereas the earlier occurrence of this identical phrase in line eleven, however, was translated literally: Once there was love." The translator, arriving at this interpretation in her initial capacity as reader, has not hesitated to imparting it to the target reader. The dictionary reference to infatuation in Websters Third International Dictionary reads as follows: Strong and unreasoning attachment especially to something unworthy of attachment. The original poem does not specify whether this is a case of infatuation or not. In fact, judging from the two lines immediately below, what the poet is talking about is more likely to be love in the sense of great fondness:
The woman who unveiled her face treasured this love for three full days Perhaps you do love me, Duke Visconti

The interpretation of love as infatuation leads the reader down yet another path. As Lubimir Dolezel has put it, once the reader co-products, then there are no limits to the co-productions. (p.114) In her translations of these two poems by Ahmet Gntan, Efes main concern seems to have been the preservation of a certain harmony in sound. This

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calls to mind Julia Olders expression of poeming a translation (p. 27), a phrase she uses to describe one poet/translators efforts to shape rough drafts of poems translated from foreign languages into more poetic, poem-like poems. As a final comment, I think it would be fair to say that the translator has certainly succeeded in one goal, that of providing examples of over-interpretation for us to discuss.

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CONCLUSION

We can like a poem even if we do not understand it, says poet clhan Berk. (Durak, p. 217) His claim is that poetry rests on imagery rather than meaning. In poetry, meaning isnt everything. A poem, indeed, does not necessarily have to say anything. Poetry does not exist so much to be understood as it does to be appreciated. Poetry, especially obscure poetry, has always been a controversial subject in translation. Furthermore, todays reader-response theories give the readers of poetry so much license that they can do whatever they please with a poem. Should this be the case, poet and the text are relegated to the shadows by the omnipotent reader, and anyone reading a translated poem is left at the mercy of the translators performance as a reader. Although it would be a fallacy to assume one single correct reading for any given poem, it would be equally ridiculous to assume that possible readings are infinite. Following a brief presentation of these ideas in the introduction, Chapter I offers a panorama of recent approaches to text analysis and interpretation, with special emphasis on the approach to interpretation most celebrated today, an approach based on post-modernism and deconstruction. Touching upon the current wealth of reader-response theories in this realm, I have also presented what I consider a very important approach pioneered by Umberto Eco; his view curtails the boundaries of interpretation. Ecos attempts to discourage the recent tendency toward over-interpretation have thus been discussed in detail, while two

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schools of thought from the discipline of Translation Studiesthe Skopos Theory and Nidas concept Equivalence of Response, have also been brought into the picture for additional support. Chapter II establishes a link between the theories discussed in Chapter I and the specific considerations involved in the interpretation and translation of difficult poetry. Following a brief discussion of poetry translation in general, I have focused on what is considered difficult poetry through the help of two examples. Chapters III and IV then analyze individual examples of over-interpretation. Chapter III focuses on Dylan Thomas poem And Death Shall Have No Dominion. Here my personal interpretation of the poem based on textual and extra-textual clues provided by the poet is followed by the analysis of over-interpretation in four different Turkish translations of the poem into Turkish. Chapter IV deals with two Turkish poems that fall into the realm of difficult poetry, Uyanma Saati and Dk L. Visconti by Ahmet Gntan. Here examples of over-interpretation in the English translations are considered. My focus in all the examples in Chapters III and IV, is over-interpretation. While making a special effort to pinpoint possible causes leading to these instances of over-interpretation, I have deliberately avoided any comparative study or descriptive analysis that would take me into the realm of translation criticism. The poems taken up in Chapter II show us just how difficult poetry can be. Despite the clues laid down by the author, the most earnest efforts of the reader/interpreter sometimes do not always bring the latter to a satisfactorily consistent interpretation. This does not necessarily spell out catastrophe for the reader. As readers, we unconsciously attempt to assign a meaning to everything 99

we read. An exaggerated concern with so-called hidden meanings lurking everywhere is perhaps a disease of our age. Although this is permissible for readers, who are free to delve into the original text as far as they please, once the readers assume the role of translators, they must repress their personal interpretation and remain faithful only to the clues the author has provided in the original. In the case of multiple interpretations, translators are duly bound to ensure multiple readings in their translations. If, as readers, when we look at Ryoanji or Uyanma Saati we come up with more than one possible scenario, fine; we are certain to prefer one over the other(s). Once we assume the role of translator, however, we are no longer free to pick out that we like the best and force it upon the target reader of our translation. The key points of advice to translators of poetry may be summarized as follows: First of all, as readers interpreting the poem, they should use each and every clue the poet has offered; their interpretations should be based on something found in the original poem. As Umberto Eco has said, If there is something to be interpreted, the interpretation must speak of something which must be found somewhere, and in some way respected. (Eco 1992, p. 43) Second, keeping in mind that there is a limit to the number of interpretations possible, as model readers, they should try to find as many as they can. Third, when beginning their translation of the poem, they should avoid selecting their favored interpretations to pass on to the target reader. As model readers, they are duty-bound to try and discover as many of the possible meanings as they can; as translators, however, their task is not to show off their clever 100

interpretation to the reader. They should avoid the urge to explain or explicate the poem to the target reader. As translators, their skills lie in directing the target reader to the clues. If restrictions of language or culture prevent them from laying down the clues exactly as the poet did, then they should make sure they lay down clues to the same effect. These should lead the target reader to his or her own personal interpretationsideally those at which the poet was hinting in the original source-language work. As a translator it is their duty not to limit the target readers perception; that was the task of the poet who composed the original text. Finally, they should not despair ifdespite all their effortsthey find little or no meaning. The target reader should feel the same frustration they have felt. They should not forget Ecos observation that the reader does not necessarily expect a secret meaning in every line of the poem, nor is s/he worried that the words on the page have been put there to conceal something rather than to reveal it. The pleasure of the reader is not based upon the discovery that texts can be interpreted to say almost anything, quite apart from what their author intended them to say. Poetry, moreover, is something that exists in its own right. Like a painting, it is there to impress the reader with some emotion; it need not be literal. No one (aside from a translator) needs to put into words the impressions it conveys. What target readers deserve is the effect of the original poem, not what the translator makes of it. In this thesis I wish to show that there are indeed many choices dependent upon the competence of the translator, but that these must respect limits based on the clues offered by the poet. Only a model reader knows how to single them out and how to weave all the possible interpretations into the translation. 101

The challenge of translation, however, does not end with being a model reader. There is also the sound and rhythm of the poem. As suggested in Chapters III and IV, refraining from over-interpretation does not create insurmountable obstacles, provided all possible interpretations are considered and semantics are not sacrificed to audio and visual considerations. Although theory and interpretations come and go, poetry remains. (Durak, p. 222)

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