Francesca Richardson

AP Literature

Mr. Gallagher

Poetry In Translation
Meta-Cognitive

The two poems I chose for this assignment were both written by French poet

Philippe Denis and translated to English by Paul Auster. Along with being a poet and

translator, Auster also writes novels, screenplays and works of non-fiction.

For the original poem “Le Monde” by Denis, I chose to follow the structure in

which Denis writes. In Auster’s translation he changes the title to “Already. . .” however,

I chose to translate my title the same as the original title, “The World. . .”. I thought this

worked much better than Auster’s translation because it followed Denis’ purpose. The

poem is about changes in the world, and choosing that as the title adds to its importance.

In my translation, I also chose to keep the first line of the poem starting with “the world”

again. I thought that Auster’s choice to remove the phrase took away from Denis’

emphasis on the world.

Throughout the poem, I also chose to keep the same structure Denis does. I do

this because we know that behind every decision made by an author there is a purpose.

Therefore, I wanted to maintain Denis’ style and purpose when translating the poem.

Denis leaves one complete thought in one stanza and ends each with a period, until the

final stanza. Therefore, I ended each stanza with periods and did not capitalize the

beginning of each new line. This is because the thought is still being continued from the

capitalized word.
 I also did not choose the same words as Auster does throughout the poem. In the

first stanza Auster translated “apparence” to apparition; however I chose to translate it to

“vision.” My thoughts behind this were that an appearance is what people see you as, and

a vision is what more you wish to see. I felt as though vision worked better because it is

something we see in our minds rather than reality. I also chose to just use “us all” instead

of “each one of us all” like Auster does because by using each it makes everyone their

own person, but the way I did it was to create “us all” as one whole group. I did this

because “us all” are what makes us the world in which Denis is commenting on.

In the second stanza, I chose the word “haste” as Auster does because hâte in

French is directly translated to haste, and I thought it was the only word to use to fit

Denis’ meaning. I chose to the line “directing us to this future” because it seemed to add

more to the meaning of the world going down the wrong path. I thought here, Denis’ was

trying to say that some endings are inevitable.

The last stanza is where Denis becomes more abstract with his words and his

structure. As I said before, he keeps each stanza as one complete thought. However, this

last thought is broken into two stanzas, making the last line isolated. In my version, I

chose to use “medium of slowness” instead of “vehicle of slowness.” I felt as though

“medium” was much more powerful than “vehicle” because it can be seen as anything by

the reader. It also has a more spiritual because it is almost unknown. Like Denis, I chose

to keep the next line in parenthesis. However, again, I translated much differently than

Auster. I chose “obliqueness” rather than “sharp slanting” because obliqueness has

emotional connotation behind it along with an image. I also capitalized “Frost” because

“Froid” was capitalized in Denis’ poem. The next line is still part of the stanza, except it
is extra spaced to make it seem isolated. This is because it is the last line of the poem and

it is suppose to leave you with the most meaning. In my version, I chose to write “where

one image weeps.” I chose this because I felt it gave the image of someone crying. I

thought this worked best because since it is the end of the poem, it is meant to show how

what is happening to the world is upsetting enough to see people crying.

With the next poem, I had a lot of trouble trying to understand the meaning

behind it. Denis writes with so much complexity and abstraction, which also made it hard

to translate his poem. Therefore, I tried to match his style in my version of the poem also.

In the first stanza of “A Star. . .” I, again, followed Denis’ structure of the poem.

In the second line of his version, Auster uses “there-” where as I use “here-”. I made this

decision because in Denis’ version là directly translates to here. Also, saying here creates

the feel of the speaker being closer to what they are speaking of. Next, I decided to keep

Auster’s “unlivable,” however I did not use heart, instead, I chose “place.” My reasoning

behind this was because I felt as though place was more general. I also did not like that

Auster added words into his poem that were not in the original.

In this poem, I found Auster and my translations to be very different. In my

translation, the star is the main subject whose life is being lost. Which is why I chose to

write, “to chase away its life” in contrast to Auster’s “each living thing driven from life.”

I did this to have some specificity of what the poem is speaking of.

The second stanza is where Auster and I seem to have different opinions of Denis’

poem. I chose to use “the pain” in my version because “la douleur” translates to pain. I

felt that I should keep Denis’ words. Here the pain is the subject, which is why I chose

“injects total whiteness”. I felt as though these words put together show a painfulness of
nothing, numbness so to speak. And I believe this is what Denis meant by pain. In Denis’

poem, he uses the French word artère which translated to English means artery. I felt that

in context with the rest of my poem, using that word would not fit. Therefore, I thought

of what an artery does in the body, and I decided to translate the word to “in route”. This

went well with my next line, “of a demanding journey- ”. I chose to use “demanding

journey” because I wanted to express it as a challenge. Journeys themselves are known to

be challenging, but by adding demanding, I felt as though it emphasized its complexity.

Like his other poem, “Le Monde. . .” in “Etoile. . .” the last line is isolated from

the stanza before it. However, this line begins with a parenthesis, but does not end with

one. Therefore, I felt in my version it was necessary to show that there is no ending. So, I

chose my ending as “(the greatest pathway of water”. I felt the word pathway brought the

idea of something being never ending. I also used “the greatest” to emphasize the

pathway being something of higher power. In his poem, Denis ends with “D’eau” which

translates to water. It was hard to find a different word to use in place of water, so I

decided to keep the word.

Although Denis’ poem were hard to understand the meaning of, I felt my

translations were true to Denis’ style of writing. I wanted my poems to mirror his

abstraction and complexity, but have my voice. I believe I accomplished this with my

versions of “Le Monde. . .” and “Etoile. . .”. I felt “The World. . .” expressed how Denis

believed people were ignoring the negative changes happening in the world. And in “A

Star. . .” I felt I reflected Denis’ feelings toward life not being lived in happiness, but in a

predictable journey.