Where I Had Kinda Strong Feelings

Persian Poets by Peter Washington
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I didn't like it much.

There are some great poems here, some interesting translations, but so much of this collection suffers from one problem that I never got into it at all: the translations are off-puttingly English. English like King James, or Shakespeare, or John Donne.

Like this (pretty much random example), from a poem by Rumi, as rendered by a popular British translator:

Time bringeth swift to end
The rout men keep;
Death's wolf is nigh to rend
These silly sheep

(In subsequent lines, we get"smiteth" and "lovest" and "thou'lt." I've never even seen "thou'lt" before. I feel like I need to dissect it to understand what it means.)

In just the first four lines I encounter two words I have never said aloud and two others I've never used unironically. But you know where I've seen them? I mean, the only place I've seen them? Right. British literature.

All through these translations, there's lots of "ne'er" and "offer'd" and "blest" and "'twas" and "pluméd" and "ev'n" and "hark" and "oft" and the like. All perfectly good words, if you're an 18th or 19th century British poet trying to sound traditional and maybe a bit archaic. But they don't say "Persian!" to me. It sounds like Coleridge:

She had dreams all yesternight
Of her own betrothèd knight

or Pope:

'Tis she!—but why that bleeding bosom gor'd,
Why dimly gleams the visionary sword?

or Dryden:

Whate'er he did, was done with so much ease,
In him alone, 'twas natural to please.

That's all I can see when I'm trying to read this very old Persian poetry. It's like someone hung powdered wigs all over the lines and tried to tell me no no it's still super Persian, just ignore the wigs...

Secondly (nope, this rant is not over), most of it rhymes. I hate that.

I get it--it rhymed in the original. But come on--it's hard enough to make a faithful translation that makes sense to readers like me, coming at it from a very different time and culture. Trying to force that language into English rhymes is only doing additional violence to the poem. It's like taking these glass figurines of poetry and packing them in a small box by smashing them up till they fit. What is left of the original at that point?

What I would like is a faithful translation that approximates the feeling and sense of the poetry without bothering with rhyme and archaic poetic diction. Yes, I want it well written, not just transcribed by google translate or something, but stripped down enough that the source material shines through, so that the reader can appreciate something of the original character and sense of the poetry.

Anyway. Not a fan. YMMV

Maybe I need a nap.

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