venuti

242 The Translator’s InvisibilityProvençal text, but the unequal social relations in which she and theknight are involved, signified here by a colloquialism, “the lunchbasket”:—Sir, the owl is your bird of omen.There’s always some who’ll stand openmouthedbefore the simple show,while there’s others’ll wait untilthe lunch basket comes around.(Blackburn 1958:25)Given the interrogative effects of its mixed lexicon, Blackburn’stranslation can be read as a critique of the ideological determinations,both aristocratic and masculinist, that shape Pound’s version as well asMarcabru’s text.Blackburn’s Provençal translations are the distinguished achievementof a modernist poet—translator. Taking up the innovations that Pounddeveloped in his versions of troubadour poets like Arnaut Daniel,Blackburn cultivated a discursive heterogeneity to signify the linguisticand cultural difference of the Provençal texts. And he did it by recoveringvarious English-language dialects and discourses—residual, dominant,emergent. There is a rich strain of archaism, partly medieval, partlyElizabethan, suggestive of Chaucer, Douglas, Sir Philip Sidney,Shakespeare: “the king’s helots,” “choler,” “her soft mien,” “seisin,”“cark,” “sire,” “wench,” “harlotry,” “puissance,” “haulberk,” “doublets,”“thee,” “forfend,” “dolors,” “gulls,” “escutcheon,” “villeiny,” “beyondmeasure.” And there is an equally rich strain of contemporarycolloquialism, occasionally British (“tart”), but mostly American,including slang and obscenity from the 1950s, but cutting across differentperiods, cultural forms (elite and mass), and social groups: “jay-dee”, (for“juvenile delinquent”), “phonies,” “push-cart vendor,” “budged,”“cash,” “grouch,” “make-up,” “goo,” “asshole,” “cunt,” “the doc,” “we’llhave some lovin’,” “all of ‘em crapped out,” “balls,” “this bitch,” “hardup,”“shell out,” “nymphos,” “creeps,” “hide-the-salami,” “skimpy,”“floored,” “you sound like some kind of nut,” “Mafiosi,” “garage,”“steam-rolls,” “a pain in his backside,” “hassle,” “keep his eye peeled forthem,” “shimmy,” “90 proof.” Blackburn’s multiple lexicons are alsomultilingual, including Provençal (“trobar,” “canso,” “vers,”), French(“fosse,” “targe,” “copains,” “maistre,”), and even Gallicized pseudoarchaism(“cavalage,” drawn from the Provençal encavalgar, “to ride ahorse”).