WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.540 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.540 --> 00:00:04.920 align:middle line:84% The translation is a very good exercise for people who write. 00:00:04.920 --> 00:00:10.710 align:middle line:84% Ezra Pound once said that anyone writing poetry 00:00:10.710 --> 00:00:14.970 align:middle line:84% ought to translate at least 70 lines a day. 00:00:14.970 --> 00:00:18.810 align:middle line:84% That's too much probably, but I think we see what he means. 00:00:18.810 --> 00:00:21.450 align:middle line:84% Ezra Pound, like most great poets, 00:00:21.450 --> 00:00:25.110 align:middle line:84% believed writing poetry is very hard work. 00:00:25.110 --> 00:00:27.900 align:middle line:84% And Pound said once, learning to write 00:00:27.900 --> 00:00:32.580 align:middle line:84% poetry is at least as hard as learning to play the piano. 00:00:32.580 --> 00:00:35.770 align:middle line:90% At least as hard. 00:00:35.770 --> 00:00:38.430 align:middle line:84% Most of the great poets have insisted on this. 00:00:38.430 --> 00:00:42.630 align:middle line:84% One cannot say this too much to the young who yearn to write 00:00:42.630 --> 00:00:47.190 align:middle line:84% poetry, and who decide the third month they're writing, 00:00:47.190 --> 00:00:49.320 align:middle line:90% that they're poets. 00:00:49.320 --> 00:00:51.330 align:middle line:84% And that they're significant poets. 00:00:51.330 --> 00:00:54.090 align:middle line:84% And everything that comes into their head and goes on the page 00:00:54.090 --> 00:00:55.050 align:middle line:90% is great. 00:00:55.050 --> 00:00:59.970 align:middle line:84% It's not how you learn to play the piano, the third or fourth 00:00:59.970 --> 00:01:01.170 align:middle line:90% month. 00:01:01.170 --> 00:01:03.330 align:middle line:84% It's going to take a long time, and a lot 00:01:03.330 --> 00:01:06.900 align:middle line:84% of work before anything very significant works out. 00:01:06.900 --> 00:01:08.850 align:middle line:90% Especially if you think that-- 00:01:08.850 --> 00:01:11.160 align:middle line:84% I don't know how many people are in this camp 00:01:11.160 --> 00:01:13.650 align:middle line:90% was writing poetry, 20, 30. 00:01:13.650 --> 00:01:16.080 align:middle line:84% How many colleges are there in America, are there 00:01:16.080 --> 00:01:20.370 align:middle line:84% 50,000 young men and women setting out as poets? 00:01:20.370 --> 00:01:21.570 align:middle line:90% No, maybe. 00:01:21.570 --> 00:01:24.610 align:middle line:90% Will 10 make it? 00:01:24.610 --> 00:01:25.110 align:middle line:90% Maybe. 00:01:25.110 --> 00:01:26.760 align:middle line:84% I'm not trying to discourage anyone, 00:01:26.760 --> 00:01:29.850 align:middle line:84% I'm saying work is all it's going to matter. 00:01:29.850 --> 00:01:33.060 align:middle line:84% And if anyone thinks he just arrives automatically, 00:01:33.060 --> 00:01:35.010 align:middle line:90% he's probably wrong about this. 00:01:35.010 --> 00:01:37.890 align:middle line:84% Well, I say this in connection with translation, 00:01:37.890 --> 00:01:42.640 align:middle line:84% which is one thing you can do for work. 00:01:42.640 --> 00:01:45.480 align:middle line:84% You can always translate-- you can't write poetry 00:01:45.480 --> 00:01:46.290 align:middle line:90% all the time. 00:01:46.290 --> 00:01:49.440 align:middle line:84% I don't think-- that's too much poetry. 00:01:49.440 --> 00:01:52.710 align:middle line:84% Sometime count through the collected poems of Yeats, 00:01:52.710 --> 00:01:56.670 align:middle line:84% and see how much he wrote per day over his lifetime. 00:01:56.670 --> 00:01:57.840 align:middle line:90% Not much. 00:01:57.840 --> 00:02:01.800 align:middle line:84% You'll find out, what was he doing at other times? 00:02:01.800 --> 00:02:05.790 align:middle line:84% In part working, thinking about working. 00:02:05.790 --> 00:02:08.550 align:middle line:84% He translated a little, but with help. 00:02:08.550 --> 00:02:10.470 align:middle line:84% This is a thing one can do though. 00:02:10.470 --> 00:02:15.960 align:middle line:84% And also in translating, you're taken away 00:02:15.960 --> 00:02:21.300 align:middle line:84% from the narrow limitations of your own language. 00:02:21.300 --> 00:02:22.710 align:middle line:84% Elliott says somewhere, if you're 00:02:22.710 --> 00:02:26.640 align:middle line:84% going to imitate anybody, and young people do. 00:02:26.640 --> 00:02:28.500 align:middle line:84% If you're going to imitate anybody, 00:02:28.500 --> 00:02:32.640 align:middle line:84% it ought to be someone who writes in another language. 00:02:32.640 --> 00:02:36.150 align:middle line:84% Because the verbal echoes don't give you away. 00:02:36.150 --> 00:02:38.760 align:middle line:84% If you begin to write like E.E. Cummings, 00:02:38.760 --> 00:02:41.130 align:middle line:90% you're instantly sunk. 00:02:41.130 --> 00:02:44.370 align:middle line:84% I mean this is second hand immediately because Cummings 00:02:44.370 --> 00:02:46.260 align:middle line:90% has done it perfectly. 00:02:46.260 --> 00:02:49.800 align:middle line:84% And he did it as nobody else did, he was original. 00:02:49.800 --> 00:02:51.540 align:middle line:84% But there actually are young people 00:02:51.540 --> 00:02:54.060 align:middle line:84% who think they're being original by imitating E.E. 00:02:54.060 --> 00:02:59.430 align:middle line:84% Cummings, or somebody like Hopkins, for example. 00:02:59.430 --> 00:03:04.170 align:middle line:84% You can't do it that way anymore, it's been done. 00:03:04.170 --> 00:03:09.810 align:middle line:84% Whereas if you read say Lorca, Machado, Valery, someone 00:03:09.810 --> 00:03:13.320 align:middle line:84% who writes in another language, and imitate pretty closely, 00:03:13.320 --> 00:03:16.650 align:middle line:84% not so many people are going to know. 00:03:16.650 --> 00:03:17.640 align:middle line:90% And I don't mean-- 00:03:17.640 --> 00:03:20.970 align:middle line:84% I don't merely mean that you're getting away with something, 00:03:20.970 --> 00:03:23.970 align:middle line:84% I mean that you are doing more yourself. 00:03:23.970 --> 00:03:27.960 align:middle line:84% Because these writers did not give you the words, 00:03:27.960 --> 00:03:31.230 align:middle line:84% they gave you ideas of technique, and so on. 00:03:31.230 --> 00:03:34.600 align:middle line:90% And the words are your own. 00:03:34.600 --> 00:03:36.450 align:middle line:90% This is one reason to translate. 00:03:36.450 --> 00:03:39.610 align:middle line:84% And then also it takes you out of your own time, 00:03:39.610 --> 00:03:44.580 align:middle line:84% which is quite a dangerous place for a poet to be. 00:03:44.580 --> 00:03:47.400 align:middle line:84% I found a good example of that lately when 00:03:47.400 --> 00:03:50.910 align:middle line:84% I found a book called something like the most 00:03:50.910 --> 00:03:54.280 align:middle line:90% brilliant young American poets. 00:03:54.280 --> 00:03:57.810 align:middle line:84% And I opened it, and there were 30 names 00:03:57.810 --> 00:04:00.150 align:middle line:90% of which I had heard of one. 00:04:00.150 --> 00:04:04.020 align:middle line:90% This was published in 1903. 00:04:04.020 --> 00:04:08.160 align:middle line:84% Well, if you are simply following the net-- 00:04:08.160 --> 00:04:12.060 align:middle line:84% the great net, what seemed to be the great names of 64, 00:04:12.060 --> 00:04:13.920 align:middle line:90% you're running the same risk. 00:04:13.920 --> 00:04:16.380 align:middle line:84% In 20 years, who will know who they are? 00:04:16.380 --> 00:04:19.050 align:middle line:84% Probably, maybe if you're lucky you've 00:04:19.050 --> 00:04:21.279 align:middle line:84% picked out a good one to imitate. 00:04:21.279 --> 00:04:24.990 align:middle line:84% But the chances are you haven't because the people who 00:04:24.990 --> 00:04:28.680 align:middle line:84% appear a whole lot and a little and literary magazines 00:04:28.680 --> 00:04:33.690 align:middle line:84% for a few years are generally ephemeral, or generally so. 00:04:33.690 --> 00:04:37.860 align:middle line:84% And they're often the biggest names of their time. 00:04:37.860 --> 00:04:42.090 align:middle line:84% These names from 1903 were great names in 1903. 00:04:42.090 --> 00:04:44.070 align:middle line:90% The people were much imitated. 00:04:44.070 --> 00:04:46.200 align:middle line:84% They were names like Richard Burton, 00:04:46.200 --> 00:04:48.375 align:middle line:84% which is the one for some reason I remember. 00:04:48.375 --> 00:04:51.150 align:middle line:90% 00:04:51.150 --> 00:04:53.290 align:middle line:90% Not the other two. 00:04:53.290 --> 00:04:55.480 align:middle line:84% Now neither of the other two Richard Burton's you 00:04:55.480 --> 00:04:55.980 align:middle line:90% know about. 00:04:55.980 --> 00:04:58.050 align:middle line:84% The American poet Richard Burton, 00:04:58.050 --> 00:05:00.210 align:middle line:84% and I'll bet none of you has heard of. 00:05:00.210 --> 00:05:02.940 align:middle line:84% But he gave ratings in 1903 I'll bet. 00:05:02.940 --> 00:05:06.030 align:middle line:90% Big stuff in 1903. 00:05:06.030 --> 00:05:08.460 align:middle line:84% What should writers have been doing? 00:05:08.460 --> 00:05:12.960 align:middle line:84% Not being too devoted to the contemporary. 00:05:12.960 --> 00:05:17.010 align:middle line:84% Because of all the great poetry ever written, 00:05:17.010 --> 00:05:18.960 align:middle line:90% how much belongs to the present? 00:05:18.960 --> 00:05:24.300 align:middle line:90% One 100, not that much I think. 00:05:24.300 --> 00:05:29.070 align:middle line:84% And you can learn far more safe from Sappho and Catullus 00:05:29.070 --> 00:05:32.770 align:middle line:84% than from people writing in a whole lot of little magazines. 00:05:32.770 --> 00:05:35.460 align:middle line:84% If you want to write poems that will last 2000 years, 00:05:35.460 --> 00:05:36.960 align:middle line:90% read Catullus. 00:05:36.960 --> 00:05:38.760 align:middle line:84% And it's quite annoying to me what 00:05:38.760 --> 00:05:42.060 align:middle line:84% I get students in class who sound like a certain poet 00:05:42.060 --> 00:05:43.620 align:middle line:90% I've seen in the magazines. 00:05:43.620 --> 00:05:47.460 align:middle line:84% And they say, oh, yes, I am imitating 00:05:47.460 --> 00:05:49.350 align:middle line:90% Jimmy Anderson of Des Moines. 00:05:49.350 --> 00:05:51.480 align:middle line:84% He's doing some pretty hot stuff these days. 00:05:51.480 --> 00:05:54.090 align:middle line:90% 00:05:54.090 --> 00:05:55.680 align:middle line:90% And this happens all the time. 00:05:55.680 --> 00:05:57.750 align:middle line:84% That's the name I made up, but I could 00:05:57.750 --> 00:05:59.760 align:middle line:84% think of some would all know who are 00:05:59.760 --> 00:06:02.760 align:middle line:84% no more important than Jimmy Anderson of Des Moines. 00:06:02.760 --> 00:06:06.630 align:middle line:84% Who is in all the little magazines right now perhaps. 00:06:06.630 --> 00:06:09.330 align:middle line:84% Well, this is another advantage of translation, 00:06:09.330 --> 00:06:12.630 align:middle line:84% it gets you in contact with the really great. 00:06:12.630 --> 00:06:17.100 align:middle line:84% And it introduces you to techniques 00:06:17.100 --> 00:06:18.510 align:middle line:90% you would not think of. 00:06:18.510 --> 00:06:22.980 align:middle line:84% It suggests experiments you would not think of perhaps. 00:06:22.980 --> 00:06:26.380 align:middle line:90% I have an example of that sort. 00:06:26.380 --> 00:06:29.850 align:middle line:84% And I repeat this in case anybody is thinking, 00:06:29.850 --> 00:06:32.100 align:middle line:90% he certainly is arrogant. 00:06:32.100 --> 00:06:33.840 align:middle line:84% Which is what people always think 00:06:33.840 --> 00:06:36.450 align:middle line:90% when one criticizes anybody. 00:06:36.450 --> 00:06:40.050 align:middle line:84% I did have to write lately a review of the collected poems 00:06:40.050 --> 00:06:41.430 align:middle line:90% of T.S. Eliot. 00:06:41.430 --> 00:06:44.640 align:middle line:84% T.S. Eliot seems to me somewhat overrated now. 00:06:44.640 --> 00:06:48.270 align:middle line:84% Though he sure is greater than Jimmy Anderson of Des Moines, 00:06:48.270 --> 00:06:51.390 align:middle line:90% but somewhat overrated. 00:06:51.390 --> 00:06:54.450 align:middle line:84% And I mention this, and I got a couple of mad letters 00:06:54.450 --> 00:06:57.330 align:middle line:84% from people who said, how dare you criticize your betters? 00:06:57.330 --> 00:07:00.090 align:middle line:90% 00:07:00.090 --> 00:07:02.880 align:middle line:84% Well, if you can't criticize your betters, who's 00:07:02.880 --> 00:07:04.560 align:middle line:90% worth criticizing really? 00:07:04.560 --> 00:07:08.820 align:middle line:84% Does this mean that you cannot have an opinion about a man who 00:07:08.820 --> 00:07:11.280 align:middle line:84% writes better poetry than you do? 00:07:11.280 --> 00:07:13.740 align:middle line:90% This is surely ridiculous. 00:07:13.740 --> 00:07:17.160 align:middle line:84% It means that-- does it mean that a girl can't criticize 00:07:17.160 --> 00:07:18.990 align:middle line:84% a girl who just because the one is 00:07:18.990 --> 00:07:21.690 align:middle line:84% more beautiful than the other, or even more smart? 00:07:21.690 --> 00:07:23.520 align:middle line:84% Now this doesn't hold for criticism. 00:07:23.520 --> 00:07:27.720 align:middle line:84% One can have a sincere opinion about these matters. 00:07:27.720 --> 00:07:30.390 align:middle line:84% What's this in connection with arrogance? 00:07:30.390 --> 00:07:30.930 align:middle line:90% Arrogance. 00:07:30.930 --> 00:07:33.030 align:middle line:84% I don't mean to sound arrogant when I say, 00:07:33.030 --> 00:07:35.950 align:middle line:84% here is something I learned from translation, 00:07:35.950 --> 00:07:39.240 align:middle line:84% but I do repeat again that I don't read this because I 00:07:39.240 --> 00:07:42.130 align:middle line:90% think it's a good poem. 00:07:42.130 --> 00:07:46.070 align:middle line:84% I don't know whether it is or not actually.