venuti

Margin 233Blackburn viewed obscene language as the prerogative of themodernist poet who uses a colloquial discourse, following WilliamCarlos Williams, and in his interview with David Ossman he treatedsuch language as male:if you want to start from the point of view that speech, and thatcommon speech even, is a very fair and valid medium for poetry,you’re going to find some people whose common speech iscommoner than most. That would include a lot of male members—ladies usually watch their language fairly carefully, and that’s onlyright.(Ossman 1963:25)In 1959, soon after Blackburn contracted with Macmillan to publish hisProvençal translation, he again wrote to Pound and suggested thatobscenity was the prerogative of the male poet—translator:Macmillan bringing out the troubadours in a condensed version inspring, if I get the intro. done. I believe I have saved the literal of‘tant las fotei com auziretz’ but on the whole, whenever theycomplained about strong language, I suggested cutting the pieceentirely from the book. Marcabru, Guillem VII etc. had no protestanttradition to deal with. Jeanroy cutting, eliminating those stanzascompletely in his fr. literal version in the edition. His wife read theproofs?(5 February 1959)Blackburn had rendered the Provençal fotei as “fucked.” The interest inobscenity, expressed in the version of “Truc Malecs” as well as thisletter, illustrates how the rivalry with Pound determined Blackburn’stranslation projects, occasionally in very direct ways.The most intensely masculinist expression of this rivalry, at onceintersubjective and intertextual, involves a text by Bertran de Born, acelebration of feudal militarism on which both Pound and Blackburnworked: “Bem platz lo gais temps de pascor.” Pound had done aversion of it in The Spirit of Romance, partly in verse and partly inprose, to illustrate his claim that “De Born is at his best in the warsongs”:E altresim platz de senhorQuant es primiers a l’envazir