Translating Merwin: Navigating Nature, Place, and the Apo Koinou
Beginning with Merwin’s own concept of translation, this essay links his work as a poet and translator with early and recent theories of language and translation. Taking his poem “Leviathan” as an opening example, it shows how Merwin’s highly innovative way of using medieval models can be transferre...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Association Française d'Etudes Américaines
2024-12-01
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| Series: | Transatlantica |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/23967 |
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| Summary: | Beginning with Merwin’s own concept of translation, this essay links his work as a poet and translator with early and recent theories of language and translation. Taking his poem “Leviathan” as an opening example, it shows how Merwin’s highly innovative way of using medieval models can be transferred into German. The paper emphasizes the need for retaining the semantic and philosophical openness of Merwin’s poetry but also the importance of following the various thematic focuses and formal features of his later works, notably in The Shadow of Sirius. This volume, with its memory poems and its complaints about the loss of the old ways of life in the Occitanie region as well as the destruction of nature, serves as the main material for sketching the possibilities and obstacles of rendering such aspects in German. Our versions of these texts are, as Walter Benjamin argues, echoes of the originals, reductive and enriching, specific and exploratory. |
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| ISSN: | 1765-2766 |