The poet-translator John Frederick Nims put the Mitchell strategy well in describing his own translations of Provençal poetry: “Let me show you how it goes, I imagine myself saying to the reader curious about Provençal—which he has no intention of learning. He only knows that during the twelfth century some great poetry, it is said, was written in Provence; he would be interested in knowing what it was like. Not just what it said—what it was like. . . . The greatest infidelity is to pass off a bad poem in English as representing a good one in another language.”* These, and other translations of Rilke’s sonnet, were discussed by German-into-English translators at the American Literary Translators Association conference in the fall of 1995. The translators, some more experienced than others, focused primarily on how each translator captured Rilke’s images and interpreted the content of his poem. There was little talk about form and even less about beauty or competence or the quality of the translations as a whole. When fidelity to content is an unquestioned given, this is often the consequence: missing the forest for the trees. When it comes down to it, the ethical question of fidelity is, I think, usually less important than the practical question of competence. Peters’ translation is faithful to form and also as much as possible to content, but it lacks the original’s beauty. Bly’s translation is faithful to content (according to his interpretation), pays only passing homage to the form, and achieves a beauty currently in favor, but which relates to Rilke’s beauty only to the extent that Rilke’s beauty was also in favor when and where he was writing, another way to define fidelity. Just as Dryden and Pope did not really choose the heroic couplet for their translations, I don’t think Bly chose free verse to capture Rilke’s verse. Jean Longland is supposed to have said that turning a sonnet into free verse is like sculpting the Venus de Milo in wet sand.* I think that’s a little harsh; a modern material such as plastic is more appropriate. Mitchell’s translation is as faithful to content as Bly’s, it suggests the original form, and it captures much more of the original’s beauty and power than either of the others. This doesn’t mean that the baby bear is always just right; it only works when the translator appreciates the original, strives to find equivalent effects in English, has the talent to succeed, and is being read by 71
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