We could have a small discussion here, if you like.
You're all so few, so it--
I'm not too scared to talk to you.
No?
[LAUGHTER]
Yes?
What did you mean in that one quote,
when you said that our history was called?
It was a three-stance poem, and it--
I can't remember [INAUDIBLE].
Yeah, as I received a letter from America,
you are involved in it.
[LAUGHTER]
"A letter from America drew me out again,
started me walking through the luminous June
night in the empty suburban streets,
among newborn districts without memories, cool as blueprints.
Letter in my pocket, you wide ranging,
walking you are a kind of prayer for others.
Over there, evil and good actually have faces.
For the most part, with us, it's a fighting between roots,
numbers, shades of light."
So "over there" is from the Swedish point of view.
It was in '66, and the war is, of course, there,
in the background.
Yeah?
[INAUDIBLE]
Yes.
This is a translation by Sam Charters, who is--
I couldn't write anything directly in English,
impossible.
I don't know the language that well, you
see, but did you-- did you think this last term was too Swedish?
It's impossible to ask you like this,
but what was most difficult to grasp?
[INAUDIBLE]
Huh?
Yeah?
[INAUDIBLE]
You think so?
[INAUDIBLE]
Yeah?
Yeah, reading it in English isn't
very different from reading it in Swedish,
so I can feel that it's a good translation, as it sounds.
One of his books is in the library,
in the Poetry Center Library.
I'm curious about May Swenson.
Where did she get her background in Swedish to be translated?
She was born by Swedish parents who
had immigrated to Utah, because they were Mormons, I think.
And she knew Swedish when she was a child,
but then she left it completely.
So, I don't know actually how much Swedish she knows,
I think it's very little, and--
but so much that she can work very well together
with Leif Sjoberg, who is Swedish professor at Stony
Brook, who helped her with this pure, linguistical problems.
But I have never spoken Swedish with her, so I don't know.
She says somewhere in the Forward that--
Yeah.
He shared with the assistance of Leif Sjoberg,
distinguished linguist, who furnished
word-for-word transliteration.
Otherwise, my unschooled knowledge of Swedish
would not have been equal to this project.
Yeah, I helped her too.
We had some correspondence.
I wrote--
[INAUDIBLE]
I have translated into Swedish, yes, from English.
The important thing is that you know your own language well.
[INAUDIBLE]
Oh, I translated Merwin, James Wright, Bly from English,
and Simpson.
And I have-- these are what is published,
but I have certain things that I have translated,
which are not published yet.
I am also translating a few of--
what his name?
Shelton or something.
It's about Dick Shelton.
And I have translated from German a little
and from Hungarian.
This Hungarian-- I think I mostly
translate from Hungarian, that's a language I don't know
a word of, but it's happened that I'm
very good friend of an Hungarian exile who lives in Sweden.
And he is there to support himself, and no Swedish to 98%.
So we work very well together, and we have translated
many Hungarian poets together.
Illyes, [INAUDIBLE],, Pilinszky, et cetera.
I've never heard these names.
Now, the Hungarian poetry is completely
neglected in this country, why?
Does anyone come from Hungary from the beginning here?
You have an Hungarian name or something.
No.
I don't know where they immigrated.
[LAUGHTER]
Oh?
What kinds of poets do you find most difficult to translate
into [INAUDIBLE]?
That's very difficult to say.
There are certain poets like Stafford and Creeley,
which are very good in English, but for some reason,
they don't go over to Swedish.
And I don't know really.
In Creeley's case, I can understand it
because he's a writer with very few words,
and they have very special--
they are so much inside the American way of speech,
and so on.
But Stafford should be able--
should be possible in Swedish, but he isn't good in Swedish
as he is in America-- in the English language.
I don't know.
But the main problem, I think, is the cultural problem,
so to say, that you--
the poems have to do with certain surroundings,
a certain way of thinking, and so on, that
is unknown to a Swedish reader, and that
is the problem to translate.
I remember one poem of Robert Lowell I almost
succeeded to translate.
It was about-- he spent a year in the prison
during the war as a pacifist.
And this poem is, I think, is a strong one,
but it's full of your abbreviations.
I am a CO, I am a--
they are talking like this.
And to translate that into Swedish would be very
difficult, because you have to have footnotes all the time,
[INAUDIBLE] a CO is a consciencious objector--
[LAUGHTER]
And the poem would look like a Christmas tree after this,
so it couldn't be translated so well.
There are many such things in American poetry
that makes it difficult, but I must say, I am not--
I don't have an ambition to translate
other poems than the poems that can be translated to 95%.
So I have never tried to do a whole book or something
like that, but Bly has translated a whole book of mine
into English, and Night Vision.
But already, I think he has succeeded very well,
but certain poems here must be misunderstood in English,
I think--
inevitable.
Even the title might be a little difficult because--
what do you think Night Vision means actually?
What does it mean?
[INAUDIBLE]
It could be a--
A dream.
A dream, yes.
It could be--
[INAUDIBLE]
Yes.
You see in Swedish, the word [SPEAKING SWEDISH]
means only one thing.
Namely, it's a medical expression
or technical expression for adaptation to darkness,
your ability to adapt.
For instance, cats have it, owls have it,
car drivers should have more of it.
[LAUGHTER]
And it's called Night Vision.
How is your Night Vision?
But it also, in English, means visions of the night,
and all these pathetic things, which it is.
[LAUGHTER]
So already, the title is a little difficult to translate.