venuti

260 The Translator’s InvisibilityBlackburn followed Guthrie’s insistence on standard English: he usedGuthrie’s recommended spelling, “night,” instead of his initial choice,the subcultural “nite”; he accepted Guthrie’s change of “like” to “as” inthe colloquialism, “like/they say” (Blackburn 1958:32; 1986:46, 47).Here Blackburn was browbeaten by Guthrie’s distaste for grammaticalimproprieties, by his rather ethnocentric assumption that thetroubadours should be held to English-language cultural norms: “That‘like’ for ‘as’ must have Guilhem twirling in his grave,” wrote Guthrie,“It fills me with a creeping horror.” Blackburn also abandoned themuch criticized “targe”/“garage” rhyme, adopting Guthrie’s“shield”/“field” (Blackburn 1986:164).Finally, however, Blackburn did not make numerous revisions in thelexicon and syntax of the 1958 versions. Instead, he expanded theselection of Provençal translations, including four more satires byMarcabru that required a larger variety of obscenities. He also addedannotations that provided some of the information Guthrie requestedand sought to answer his objections. In one note Blackburncommented on the variant spellings, revealing the different, somewhatcontradictory determinations that shaped his final version: thehistoricist impulse apparent in his respect for the Provençalmanuscripts, but also his concern with the prosody of his translation,and even his partial acceptance of Guthrie’s call for consistent, modernspelling. Blackburn’s note specifically addresses Guthrie’s report:Mareuil (Dordogne): I use the modern French spelling tonormalize the place name. In the manuscripts you’ll find Maroill,Maruoill, Marueill, Maruelh, Marvoill, Merueil, Meruoill, Miroill,and Miroilh. Some of these may be simply copyists’ mistakes, butthey also reflect slight differences in pronunciation from area toarea. […] The point I would make here is that neither thepronunciation nor the orthography was particularlystandardized. Especially in the poems, I use the version that suitsmy ear at that point. In the razo here I use Anfos for the king ofAragon: the name is also Amfos, Alfons—I don’t remember usingthe French Alphonse ever.(Blackburn 1986:285)The publishing history that banished Blackburn’s Provençaltranslations to the margins of American literary culture, available onlyin small-circulation magazines and limited-edition books, inevitablyconfined the influence of their striking effects. These inspired, not the