|
Brother
Anthony Opening
Address at the International Literature Festival held
in Kathmandu (Nepal) December
27-29, 2019, with poets from Nepal, Bangadesh, Sri
Lanka, India, Cambodia, Hong
Kong, Korea, Australia. We
are living in a very special era when it comes to
World Literature, thanks to
the rise of the Internet. Blogs, internet sites and
online magazines nowadays
make freely available a steady stream of translations
from a multitude of
countries, from a host of unfamiliar languages and
cultures, that would never have
been available in the days of printed publication. Of
course, poets and other
writers have always written in many different
languages in many diverse lands
across the globe, languages which are often little
known beyond each country’s
frontiers, or even each region’s. It has long been
obvious that translation
into multiple languages is the only way by which
literature, which is otherwise
by definition regional and temporal, can become
universal and in a sense
eternal. In
England in the 17th
and 18th centuries John Dryden and
Alexander Pope made the great
epics of Virgil and Homer accessible to multitudes who
would never master
enough Latin or Greek to read the originals. Constance
Garnett is today vilifed
for her “inaccurate” translations of the Russian
classics, but it was thanks to
her vast labors that the English-speaking world came
to love the great works of
Russian literature. James Legge in the 19th
century produced an
almost incredible series of English translations of
all the essential Chinese
Classics, then Arthur Waley brought Chinese lyric
poetry to life in a way that
enabled lovers of Western poetry to respond to it
feelingly. More recently,
great works of Asia’s past centuries have been made
available. Classical poems
and other works written in centuries past, translated
into major modern
languages, form the foundation and core curriculum of
World Literature today.
I left my native England over fifty
years ago, first for France, then for Korea, where I
arrived forty years ago. Over
the past thirty years my concern has been to translate
the poetry (and some
fiction) written in South Korea by currently living
writers, not dead celebrities
but still living human beings of our contemporary
world. Here, too, I am not
alone. Contemporary writing is at the forefront of
today’s interest in
international literature, more especially the fiction
written by the younger
generations. Young writers no longer focus uniquely on
readers in their land
and language of origin, they write in part at least in
the hope of being
translated and read beyond any frontiers, whether
national, linguistic or
cultural, in a variety of languages. This might be
especially true for fiction,
since it is fiction that forms the great bulk of most
people’s reading diet.
Poetry has in many places lost its privileged position
and is only now once
again beginning to regain popularity because of its
ability to communicate the
depths of the human heart, the sensitive individual’s
experience of life in all
its complexity.
Poets first must write their poems,
which sooner or later translators might try to
translate. Both poets and
translators face a great hurdle in finding publishers
for their work. Poets
might idealistically claim that they write to express
their inward joys and
sorrows, but poets who do not somehow or other seek to
publish (make public)
what they write will remain in the state of the man
evoked in a poem by our great
Korean poet Ko Un, “a poet who never once wrote a
poem.” But print publication
costs money, producing a book is inevitably a
commercial activity, and the
usual expectation is that books will be sold to
readers, though poets frequently
give their away many books as gifts. When I translate
a poem, it seems clear
that the purpose of my activity is to make that poem
accessible and known in
places where it will never be understood in its
original language. I sometimes
reflect that for a poet writing a poem, that purpose
of “making known to others”
might not be so clear, especially when the poem being
written is a record of
anguish or doubt or private experience. I sometimes
wonder whether poets always
write with the aim of being widely read, or not. The
ambiguity of fame desired
might compromise the purity of the unread masterpiece.
The answer is, of course, that
publication of one’s personal poetry is not done to
gain fame or wealth but to
communicate, as one human being with other human
beings across the distances
separating us one from another. In the Renaissance,
courtier-poets often
published their poems in hand-written form, inviting
their fellow
courtier-poets to admire their verbal skills and copy
their poems by hand into
their commonplace books. This was a sharing from
friend to friend, as well as a
form of self-promotion in a premodern economy, where
royal and noble patronage
was the only means of earning a living. Today poets
communicate their poems as
best they can, hoping to be recognized as poets by
fellow-poets especially,
becoming part of a community of poets, but also hoping
that readers will find
their poems rewarding to read, a source of comfort and
courage, of joy and
compassion, of insight into another person’s fragile
if not wounded heart.
Perhaps a poet’s greatest joy comes when a composer
sets a poem to music so
that it can be sung?
In the Renaissance, convention and
imitation dominated poetry, until one could never be
sure that the poet of a
love poem had ever really loved in fact. Having passed
beyond Romanticism,
Modernism and many other –isms, today we read
contemporary poems in search, I
think of traces of authenticity, of truth unveiled,
even of pain endured, no
matter how stark, austere, hesitant, fragmentary or
challenging the result may
be. And above all we seek to hear the unique,
individual voice of the poet
ringing across the gaps separating us one from
another. In Korean Buddhist
temples there is often a very large metal bell hanging
in a pavilion all alone.
It is struck by banging a section of a tree-trunk
against the rim or side of
the bell but the resonance is greatly increased and
improved by burying a large
pottery jar directly beneath the bell. The jar
receives the vibrations produced
by the bell, amplifies and modifies them, then feeds
them back into the stream
of sound issuing directly from the vibrating metal,
rounding it out, making it more
agreeable to the ear, richer, more resonant. Such,
perhaps, is the task of the
translator. Neither jar nor translator have any voice
of their own, their role
is to wait until a voice rings out from something or
someone outside of
themselves, then to receive, modify, and amplify it
before sending it out into
the surrounding world to be heard and admired.
Without a translator, a poem’s
voice remains single, poor, limited, heard and
understood only within a narrow
circle of like-speaking hearers / readers. With every
translation a poem speaks
more widely, gains an increasing richness of voice,
yet always somehow
retaining the same voice, for the poem continues to be
printed with the name of
the original poet. A conscientious translator does not
wish to give a poem a completely
new voice and content that has no connection whatever
with the original. It
will certainly be a totally different poem in every
way, in its sounds,
language, writing, grammar, word order, since
languages differ so widely, but
yet it must still be that same poem, only more so.
Today, we live in an age of massive
extinctions, every day we hear bad news about the
destruction of the planet’s
biodiversity. But one process of extinction we hear
less about is the
extinction of languages. There are more and more
languages that nobody speaks,
that have never been studied and codified. When the
last speaker, the last
singer, that last poet dies, the language and its
poetry die with them, unless
there has been an act of translation. Even without
total extinction, there are
vast swathes of the world where almost no languages
are spoken and alive. The
worst cases are probably the regions where English is
the standard language.
Since English is so widely spoken and understood, few
people in such countries
feel a need to master other languages. In addition,
the UK, Australia and North
America are islands with virtually no direct
geographical contact with regions
having multiple languages. Many people living there
have insular mentalities
and are positively unwilling to visit other regions
with other languages. Translation
by contrast connects the world, but it is very rare
indeed to find someone in
the UK, North America or Australia who has studied
even such major languages as
Russian, Chinese, Hindi or Arabic, let alone Nepali,
Bengali, Cebuano, or
Tibetan. English-only ignorance is especially
appalling, given the power and
influence of the countries involved.
This is not simply to talk about the
need for poetry translation. Knowledge of other
cultures, other languages, is a
matter of mutual respect and understanding, of
communication, and thus of
peace. Without comprehension and acceptance of the
otherness of others we are
unable to appreciate the gifts they possess and that
we need to have access to.
To bridge these gaps, translation skills are vital. I
think we all agree on
this, so let me move on to a related example which is
particularly important
for me personally. I
have been asked to
translate poetry by a Korean poet called Park Nohae.
In Korea in the 1980s his
name meant a lot to many younger people, students,
workers, social activists,
all those opposing dictatorship and the exploitation
of workers. His name
itself was a trumpet call, for everyone knew it was a
pseudonym, ‘No’ meaning ‘workers’
and ‘hae’ meaning ‘liberation.’ Nobody, least of all
the police and
intelligence agencies, knew his real name, some even
thought it might be a
collective name. Equally, nobody knew what he looked
like, if he was a real
person, or in what factory he was working. His first
collection of poems, “Dawn
of Labor,” was published in 1984 and sold nearly a
million copies. He became
known as “the faceless poet.” He was, the poems
showed, a worker living and
working as one of Seoul’s many factory workers,
familiar with their pain and exhaustion,
their lack of freedom and their exploitation, looking
for a better future where
people might live in peace and harmony, one for
another, sharing the joys and
pains of daily life, with time for love and family
life. Radically opposed to
capitalism and authoritarian dictatorship, he joined
with others in launching a
movement that dared use the name “Socialist,” “the
South Korean Socialist
Workers’ Alliance,” which in South Korea was
understood to mean “Communist,”
and merited the death penalty.
In 1991 he was caught, tortured,
sentenced to life in prison, placed in solitary
confinement. He published 2
volumes of prison poems. the first contained poems
expressing a feeling of failure
and loss, the second with poems of hope for a more
communitarian world of
sharing and peace. Released and pardoned in 1998, he
made it clear that he no
longer believed in the value of protest marches,
strikes and demonstrations,
that the problems concerning him now were those facing
the poor across the
whole world, and that the secret of world peace lay in
living together in human
community, as people had lived together in rural
villages in times not so long
past. Then, with the Iran-Iraq war in 2002-3, he went
to the battlefronts in
the Middle East as a human shield, “to be close to the
crying, frightened
children.” From then on he visited many
countries, Ethopia, Myanmar, Pakistan, Peru, Columbia,
Syria, Sudan, always
carrying a notebook, and a small camera with a lot of
black-and-white film. He
found that simple people readily allowed him to
photograph them in their daily
lives, working together, eating together, studying,
fishing . . . . but always
together, in the simple lives of sharing that they had
never become weathy
enough to neglect.
From 2010 there have been frequent exhibitions
of his photos in Seoul, usually in a special gallery,
sometimes devoted to one
country, at other times a mixture. His photos, unlike
his poems, need no
translation, although I have translated the captions
he composed for his
current exhibition. Photos and captions together do
more than open a window on
life in the countries depicted in the photos. They
invite us to reflect on how
we are living in our large, impersonal cities, be it
Seoul, Kathmandu, or
wherever. Such
photos are
themselves poems, poems that need no translation,
unless the one looking is
blind, of course. Which can happen. Park Nohae is more
than “just” a poet, by
virtue of his sufferings, and of his spiritual vision
pointing toward a world
of sharing and community he is an inspirational
activist. The glimpses his
photos give of miners in Columbia, children in
Pakistan, the barley harvest in
Tibet, the potato harvest in the Andes, Ethiopian
women carrying water home, women
laboring in India, remind us how urgently our world
needs to be governed for
their sake and not for the sake of the wealthy few who
have appropriated it for
their own advantage. Life’s simple joys are the right
of every human person and
none have the right to rob a single person of their
joy. Poets, we hope, will
ever give voice to humanity’s deepest aspirations in
the simplest possible
ways. But always in their own place, their own way.
The universal can only be
intensely local.
To give a voice to the voiceless is
the supreme task of all who would serve peace and the
world’s poor, who
constitute the vast majority of humanity. Poets can
only truly be poets if they
draw on the pain in their own lives and that which
they see around them. The
smiling faces in so many of Park Nohae’s photos tell
us that pain and joy,
trials and dignity go together. He is a pilgrim of
peace, a witness to hopeful
community. The Community to which I belong, that of
Taizé in France, has for
decades now been engaged with young people across the
world in a Pilgrimage of
Trust on Earth. Without trust there can be no
communication, no peace, no
community, no sharing, no hope. Translators
are
sedentary pilgrims, they sit in their rooms and
patiently move word after word
across the great geographical, linguistic and cultural
chasms dividing
humanity. Translating is a matter of linguistic
mastery, for sure, but more
that that it is an exercise in transcultural,
international understanding,
which is what peace-building has to be. If a
translator canot feel an essential
sympathy and harmony with a poet’s work, translation
surely becomes impossible,
even if a translator cannot be expected to identify
totally with every poet she
translates. We are a kind of ventriloquists with many
voices at our command. I
have been translating Korean poetry for 30 years now,
working on poems by
countless poets. I only hope that they do not all
sound the same when they
express themselves in my English, because they were
each very different from
one another when I met them and heard them speak or
read. |