Lost in translation..

This is fascinating stuff (& a really lovely bit of smut at the beginning - I'm clearly not the only person who appreciates the infelicities, and worse, that computer translation can inflict on us). It reminds me vividly of the occasion when I found a really cheap edition of "War and Peace" in one of those "£1-Classics" series that appeared in the early 'nineties. I very nearly bought it; but a single brief flip-through the pages was enough to make me drop it hastily. The translator had called Pierre "Peter" and Prince Andrei "Prince Andrew".

Peter is a good name; I used to imagine that if I had a son I'd like to call him Peter, in fact. But to reduce Prince Andrei Bolkonsky and Count Pierre Bezukhov, two of my greatest literary crushes, to mere Peter and (eeech!) Prince Andrew; it's horrible, it's shudder-worthy, it's yuk, yuk, yuk!

Mind you, although I agree with a lot of the points in that article (I can't agree with everything because I've never read "Madame Bovary"), I have to say that the best translations of poetry have to be relatively inaccurate. The very correct Princeton University Press translation of George Seferis isn't a patch on Rex Warner's stunning 1950s translation published by the Bodley Head.

Long before I ever went there, I knew Greece, her beauty, her history, her tangled present, through these poems, in Mr Warner's beautiful translations. I initially quoted a chunk of one of them here, from memory, but have just been reading an article (on "How publishing really works") on copyright, and realised with a dull sick feeling that I'd probably broken copyright in so doing. I was under the impression that one was allowed to quote other writers in small excerpts so long as it was attributed (which it was) - but it sounds from what I've just read as though I had this totally wrong. Ouch.

I was trying to pay tribute to a piece of writing I loved, and maybe even steer other poetry lovers and/or Philhellenes towards Mr Warner's great translation of Seferis. Boy, do I feel a fool now. I've taken it off, since I can't think of anything else to do, so now you'll have to go and look it up if you're interested. If you can track that edition down second hand (I'm pretty sure it's OoP), buy it - it's beautiful.

Gulp...

I just did it. I’ve made my first attempt.

I just sent the pitch letter (in about its fifteenth incarnation), synopsis and first 10,000 words of “Gabriel Yeats” to the first literary agency on my list. There. Now I’ve done it once, it can only get easier, no? I hope so (I feel all quivery at the moment).

It’s Friday, it’s five o’clock and I’m going home to try not to think about what I’ve just done. Cold beer ahoy (after I’ve done the watering).

It’s been a wonderful, scorching hot day. I went out into the Gardens on my bike at lunch, to see how the Rose Section is looking. Stunning, is the answer, despite needing a bit of dead-heading. One could smell all the roses as one came up the path, even from behind the ten foot yew hedges. In fact, everywhere I went the air seemed to be scented; linden blossom, pine needles, dry grass, lavender, roses, the resiny fragrance of Cistus ladanifer…

“There still remains summer, the yellow essence,
And your hands touching the sea bells in the water.
Your eyes unveiled suddenly, the first eyes of the world,
And the marine caves.
Bare feet on the red earth.
There still remains summer, the fair-haired marble youth;
A little salt that has dried in the hollow of a rock,
A few pine needles left after the rain
Raggedly strewn, and red like tattered nets…”

George Seferis; from “A word for summer” (translated by Rex Warner).

It’s that kind of summer day.

And I have finally made a start on trying to get an agent for “Gabriel Yeats”.