{"id":111373,"date":"2017-05-31T11:51:48","date_gmt":"2017-05-31T15:51:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=111373"},"modified":"2017-05-31T12:50:58","modified_gmt":"2017-05-31T16:50:58","slug":"five-complaints","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/05\/31\/five-complaints\/","title":{"rendered":"Five Complaints"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Containing sundrie small Poemes of the Worlds Vanitie.)<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

1.<\/p>\n

Suppose you want to know whether a given Czes\u0142aw Mi\u0142osz poem rhymes in the original. Or you want to know if it\u2019s in meter. If you don\u2019t speak Polish, friend, you have some serious fuss ahead of you.<\/p>\n

Tell you one thing. You won\u2019t find out by reading the introduction to any English translation of Mi\u0142osz I\u2019ve ever looked at. Questions of this sort are regarded as matters of absolutely no interest.\u00a0Why would you want to know anything about a poet\u2019s prosody<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

2.<\/p>\n

Books and books\u00a0are\u00a0translated out of Sanskrit, and the translators never tell you how to pronounce anything. Consequently you run around putting the stress on the next-to-last syllable of every single proper noun, as if Sanskrit were Spanish or Italian \u2026<\/p>\n

X\u00a0Ramay\u00e1na<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0whereas it should be<\/em>\u00a0\u2713\u00a0<\/strong>Ram\u00e1yana
\n<\/strong><\/span>X\u00a0Mahabhar\u00e1ta<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0whereas it should be\u00a0\u2713\u00a0<\/strong>M\u00e1ha\u00b7bh\u00e1rata
\n<\/strong><\/span>X\u00a0Vatsyay\u00e1na<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span>whereas it should be<\/em>\u00a0\u2713\u00a0<\/strong>Vatsy\u00e1yana
\n<\/strong><\/span>X\u00a0Rav\u00e1na<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span>whereas it should be<\/em>\u00a0\u2713\u00a0<\/strong>R\u00e1vana
\n<\/strong><\/span>X\u00a0Kadamb\u00e1ri<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span>whereas it should be\u00a0\u2713\u00a0<\/strong>Kad\u00e1mbari
\n<\/strong><\/span>X\u00a0<\/strong>Prajnaparam\u00edta<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>sutras<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0<\/strong>whereas it should be<\/em>\u00a0\u2713<\/strong>\u00a0Pr\u00e1jna\u00b7par\u00e1mita<\/strong>\u00a0sutras\u00a0<\/strong>\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

And it\u2019s the same thing with Chinese. The translators and publishers feel\u00a0no need<\/em>\u00a0to guide the helpless American reader with regard to the pronunciation of words like\u00a0xian<\/em>,\u00a0qi<\/em>,\u00a0zhuang<\/em>, and so on.\u00a0Why would anyone need to know that<\/em>.<\/p>\n

(Two honorable\u2014very<\/em>\u00a0honorable\u2014exceptions. The volumes of the Clay Sanskrit Library tell you where the stress falls every time,\u00a0and<\/em>\u00a0they provide a full explanation as to how the transliteration system works. Honorable exception #2: the old Aylmer translations of Tolst\u00f3y always tell where the stress falls on Russian names. That way, you don\u2019t go around saying BOR-is, when it\u2019s bor-EES (like\u00a0Maurice<\/em>\u00a0except with a B). Also Vlad\u00edmir, not Vl\u00e1dimir, et\u00a0cetera, et\u00a0cetera.)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

3.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t understand why no one ever revises the lyrics to songs. There are millions of good songs whose lyrics could use some touching up.<\/p>\n

Take Elton John\u2019s \u201cCrocodile Rock<\/a>.\u201d First bit is fine:<\/p>\n

I remember when rock was young
\nme and Susie had so much fun
\nholding hands and skimmin\u2019 stones
\nhad an old gold Chevy and a place of my own \u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

but the second isn\u2019t much:<\/p>\n

But the years went by and the rock just died
\nSusie went and left us for some foreign guy
\nlong nights cryin\u2019 by the record machine
\ndreaming of my Chevy and my old blue jeans<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Surely somebody could get in there and fix the wiring. Or Stevie Wonder\u2019s \u201cIsn\u2019t She Lovely<\/a>.\u201d Try and sing it. The parts you remember are good; the parts you\u00a0can\u2019t<\/em>\u00a0remember are like this:<\/p>\n

I never thought
\nthrough love we\u2019d be
\nmaking one as lovely as she<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Or look at the Fixx\u2019s \u201cSaved by Zero<\/a>,\u201d David Bowie\u2019s \u201cDiamond Dogs<\/a>,\u201d the Velvet Underground\u2019s \u201cOh! Sweet Nuthin\u2019<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the Middle Ages, nobody would have hesitated. The song belonged to whoever was singing it. If the singer saw a way to improve the piece, of course he or she jumped on it. Adding verses, dropping verses\u2014standard practice.<\/p>\n

Come to think of it, I don\u2019t even do this\u00a0in private<\/em>. The most I\u2019ll do is change maybe a word or two.<\/p>\n

\u2669\u00a0So, goodbye, Yellow Brick Road,\u00a0\u266c
\n\u266c\u00a0 as the dogs of society howl \u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I sing \u201cas,\u201d but the original says \u201cwhile.\u201d I don\u2019t know why \u201cas\u201d is better, but apparently I think it is, \u2019cuz that\u2019s the way I always sing it. But why would I never dare add a whole other verse to the thing. What is the meaning of this.<\/p>\n

When I memorize people\u2019s\u00a0poems<\/em>, I don\u2019t hesitate to change \u2019em. I\u2019m not a museum. You write something and it\u2019s got a stanza I don\u2019t like\u2014pook!<\/em>\u2014I just leave it out. I\u2019m not a documentary. I\u2019m not a museum. I can do whatever I want. It\u2019s my head.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

4.<\/p>\n

In 1948,\u00a0T. S. Eliot got up there at the Library of Congress and gave an address so witheringly condescending to Edgar\u00a0Allan\u00a0Poe that I felt angry reading it. What do I care about Edgar\u00a0Allan\u00a0Poe?\u00a0Yet I felt angry.<\/p>\n

The thing Eliot was setting out to explain was: Why do French snobs think Poe is a god, whereas American snobs think he\u2019s just for kids? Could it be the French know something we don\u2019t? Eliot\u2019s answer: The French are dumb; they don\u2019t speak English. Their poetry had a death wish, and Poe\u2019s asinine ideas were simply a convenient rope with which they hanged themselves. Poe is no good, the French are a dead end, thank you very much. Where\u2019s my Nobel Prize.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a different hypothesis, why not. Poe\u2019s good stuff is good. For lots (but not all) people, Poe\u2019s good stuff has the quality of distracting them from his bad. One looks away. This is not an unfamiliar phenomenon. \u201cThe Man That Was Used Up\u201d is good stuff\u2014never mind \u201cThe Black Cat.\u201d \u201cThe Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar\u201d is good\u2014never mind whatever. \u201cAnnabel Lee\u201d is good; \u201cHelen\u201d is good; even \u201cThe Raven\u201d is\u00a0kinda<\/em>\u00a0good. I mean, isn\u2019t this what we do with most writers?<\/p>\n

So what\u2019s the difference between the French and the Americans? The French had nothing at stake with regard to Poe\u2019s immature or tedious writings. They didn\u2019t need to rush to disavow that stuff, \u2019cuz who cares. Whereas, Americans had a just-being-born reputation to protect.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s like the high school kid who\u2019s allowed to enjoy superannuated bubblegum pop,\u00a0e.g.\u00a0the Monkees. Not everyone is allowed to listen to the Monkees, but the French had such a huge record collection, they could get away with liking whatever they wanted. And anyway there\u2019s nothing wrong with the Monkees.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

5.<\/p>\n

Marianne Moore. If you take the trouble to type up her poems, eliminating all the line breaks, and in their stead putting in paragraphing wherever it makes sense to you, you will not fail to observe that the poems become much, much clearer. In fact, you will very likely see things you\u2019ve never seen before, because her line breaks have a tendency to hide much more than they highlight.<\/p>\n

So, question: Can it be said that while we are gaining in clarity we are also\u00a0losing<\/em>\u00a0something in terms of delight? Maybe even something in terms of meaning?<\/p>\n

I \u2026 don\u2019t see it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Anthony Madrid<\/a> lives in Victoria, Texas. <\/em>His second book of poems is\u00a0<\/em>Try Never<\/a>\u00a0(Canarium Books, 2017). He is a correspondent for the\u00a0<\/em>Daily.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In which Anthony Madrid files strongly worded letters about T.S. Eliot, lazy lyricists, and Sanskrit translators who never tell you how to pronounce anything.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1005,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22700],"tags":[6037,18995,26578,461,1759,20867,1091,865,687,13106,2006,7221,165,2047,10976,9738,29012,13487,18374,1772,11776,530],"class_list":["post-111373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-correspondents","tag-chinese","tag-complaining","tag-complaints","tag-czeslaw-milosz","tag-edgar-allan-poe","tag-edmund-spenser","tag-elton-john","tag-france","tag-language","tag-lyrics","tag-marianne-moore","tag-poems","tag-poetry","tag-poets","tag-pronunciation","tag-revision","tag-sanskrit","tag-songs","tag-stevie-wonder","tag-t-s-eliot","tag-tolstoy","tag-translation"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nFive Complaints About Poetry<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In which Anthony Madrid files strongly worded letters about T.S. 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