The Translator's Invisibility: A History of Translation

238 The Translator’s Invisibility
paradoxically leads to a translation that questions the poetic father’s
phallic aggressiveness, his investment in the feudal patriarchy
figured in the Provençal texts.
This rivalry drove Blackburn to exceed Pound in the development of
a translation discourse that Pound himself had pioneered. And given
the oedipal construction of their relationship, it was inevitable that the
discursive competition would get played out over the troubadour
representations of the lady. Just as Pound produced his innovative
work with Cavalcanti by challenging the pre-Raphaelite image of the
lady in Rossetti’s versions (Pound’s poetic “father and mother”), so
Blackburn increased the heterogeneity of his translations and
questioned Pound’s investment in the patriarchal images of the
Provençal love lyric.
Female characters in Provençal poetry are often the objects of
male sexual desire, but their representation varies according to their
class. Aristocratic women undergo a spiritual and physical
idealization, transformed into a passive ornament by the elaborately
worked imagery of their lovers, who meet with varying sexual
success; women of lower classes receive a more realistic treatment
involving forms of seduction that range from pleasant cajoling to
brutal intimidation. For The Spirit of Romance Pound translated
Marcabru’s “L’autrier jost’un sebissa,” which he identified as a
“pastorella,” a dialogue in which a knight riding through the
country comes upon a farm girl and attempts to seduce her. Pound’s
version is written in precise, current English, lightly archaized:
L’autrier jost’un sebissa
trobei pastora mestissa,
de joi e de sen massissa,
si cum filla de vilana,
cap’ e gonel’ e pelissa
vest e camiza trelissa,
sotlars e caussas e lana.
Ves lieis vinc per la planissa:
“Toza, fim ieu, res faitissa,
dol ai car lo freitz vos fissa.”
“Seigner, som dis la vilana,
merce Dieu e ma noirissa,
pauc m’o pretz sil vens m’erissa,
qu’alegreta sui e sana.”