venuti

Margin 237anachronistic, used in later periods than the Middle Ages. “Stiver,” asmall coin, is first used in the sixteenth century. The verb “nicker” is anineteenth-century usage for “neigh,” appearing in such literary textsas Sir Walter Scott’s novel The Monastery (1820). “Brassard” is Frenchfor “armor,” but in English it constitutes another nineteenth-centuryusage, this time Victorian, adding a touch of pre-Raphaelitemedievalism to the translation. The word “proches” is also French, atleast in spelling; in Blackburn’s translation it is a pseudo-archaicneologism, an Anglicized French word that appears to be an archaicvariant spelling of “approaches” but actually isn’t (no such spelling isrecorded in the OED).And of course there is the borrowing from Pound, “stour,” one ofmany such borrowings that recur throughout Blackburn’s translations(Apter 1987:76–77; and Apter 1986). Apter has argued that theyconstitute a “homage” to Pound “as the source of [Blackburn’s] interestin and guide to the translation of Provençal lyrics” (1987:77). Butinsofar as the borrowings insert Pound’s language in a differentcontext, their meaning is variable, and they can just as well signify acompetition with Pound, even a betrayal. Blackburn’s borrowing of“stour” allows his translation to contest Pound’s appropriations ofBertran’s poem, and the rivalry is figured, interestingly enough, inprovocative revisions that interrogate the ideological determinations ofPound’s texts. Thus, in striking contrast to Pound, Blackburn rendered“chascus om de paratge” as “no boy with a brassard.” The phrasecreates dizzying possibilities of meaning. It can be taken as a moderncolloquialism, an affectionate expression of male bonding. Blackburnused “boys” in this way at the beginning of Guillem de Poitou’sCompanho, faray un vers…covinen:I’m going to make a vers, boys…good enough,But I witless, and it most mad and allMixed up, mesclatz, jumbled from youth and love and joy—Yet the singular “boy” in the translation can be taken as another sortof colloquialism, a masculinist expression of contempt, usually foranother’s weakness. Even taken in its most accepted meaning (“malechild”), Blackburn’s use of “boy” neatly ironizes Bertran’s euologyof feudal militarism, branding it as childish, unmanly, and deletingthe suggestion of aristocratic domination in “paratge”. What isinteresting here is that Blackburn’s oedipal rivalry with Pound,although possessing a masculinist configuration in itself,