venuti

Margin 253domestic tendency. Allied to a modernist poetic movement thatdefined itself as “a total rejection of all those qualities typical ofacademic verse” (Allen 1960:xi), Blackburn’s translation was radicalin its ideological interrogations (of the foreign texts, previousEnglish-language appropriations, contemporary American culture)and populist in its juxtaposition of elite and popular culturaldiscourses.The publishing history of Blackburn’s manuscript showswithout a doubt that the cultural and political values representedby his translation continued to be marginal in the United States lateinto the 1970s. In Blackburn’s case, however, the marginality wasnot signalled by mixed reviews or bitter attacks or even medianeglect; there was never a publication to review. The manuscriptBlackburn felt was finished in 1958 did not see print until twentyyears later.In March of 1958, the influential poetry critic M.L.Rosenthal,who had taught Blackburn briefly at New York University (1947),recommended the Provençal manuscript to Macmillan. 9 In 1957, aspoetry editor for The Nation, Rosenthal had accepted one ofBlackburn’s translations, his Pound-inspired version of Bertran deBorn’s Bem platz to gais temps pascor. Rosenthal was now advisingEmile Capouya, an editor in Macmillan’s Trade Department, on aseries of poetry volumes. Blackburn submitted the manuscript,tentatively entitled Anthology of Troubadours. It was a translation ofsixty-eight texts by thirty poets, considerably reduced from the“105 pieces” that Blackburn mentioned to Pound, “cut fr/150” (17March 1958). Capouya solicited an outside reader’s report andthen, despite a highly critical evaluation, accepted it forpublication, issuing Blackburn a contract that paid a small advance($150) against a full author’s royalty (10 percent of the cover price,$3.50, with a first printing of 1500 copies), plus all the income fromfirst serial rights (initial publications in magazines andanthologies). Although, by October of 1958, the contracts had beensigned and countersigned, the manuscript was not complete:Blackburn needed to submit the introduction he had planned.Capouya scheduled the publication date for the fall of 1959, butBlackburn did not complete the manuscript, and the projectlanguished until 1963, when, a few years after Capouya’s departurefrom Macmillan, another editor decided to cancel the contract.During the 1960s Blackburn tried to get his manuscript accepted byother publishers, like Doubleday, who asked Rosenthal to evaluate