Magin_Edward-thesis

34
Pound saw translations as new poems in two different, but connected,
ways. First, he viewed the past as an active participant in the changing of
the present. He selected for translation those poems which he felt
displayed desirable qualities lacking in contemporary poetry. His
translations from Provençal, Chinese, and Latin were deliberate attempts
to change the poetic sensibility of his time. Such translations are in
themselves new poems as well as reflections of old poems, because they
are intended to belong to the body of contemporary poetry.
Second, he believed that a translation cannot be the old poem; it can only
be the old poem viewed from the standpoint of the present. Therefore,
insofar as a translation is an augmented view of the past, colored by
intervening centuries of experience, it is a new poem.
Pound never set forth his translation theories in any one publication; however,
some of his thoughts on the subject are available in his essays and letters (Apter
1984:72). One term that he coined to describe one of his ideas is “logopoeia,” of which
he writes:
Logopoeia does not translate; though the attitude of mind it expresses may
pass through a paraphrase. Or one might say, you can not translate it
‘locally’, but having determined the original author’s state of mind, you
may or may not be able to find a derivative or an equivalent. (Pound
1968:25)
Apter (1984:73), in response to Pound’s statement, says:
Pound here takes for granted that the translator is interested, not in
translating the sense of the original, but in finding an “equivalent” for the
original author’s “state of mind.” This formula moves the translator
definitely away from paraphrase. Paraphrase is resigned to losing the
original author’s verbal mastery, rather than ever saying something he did
not say, while imitation, as Dryden (1956:119) explained, permits one to
add “new Beauties to the piece, thereby to recompense the loss which it
sustains by change of Language…” Pound restricted liberty in “adding
new Beauties to the piece” to those which are a “derivative” or an
“equivalent” of something in the original poem. Thus, he was describing
creative translation, not imitation.
Pound’s interest in the “original author’s state of mind,” and not “the sense of the
original,” would either place his idea of a creative poem between metapoem and imitation
on Holmes’ model, or it would simply be equal to an imitation. In practice, though,