A Very Particular Kind of Loaf

 Lydia Davis’ article “Loaf or Hot-Water Bottle” seems quite commendable to me, not least because it approaches its subject with such a direct candor that sometimes it contradicts itself or becomes acutely self-critical. While one could level some judgement against the inconsistencies between her initial approach of reading only one or two pages ahead and her later maxim that “we as translators should not presume to have understood everything he [Proust] was trying to do,” the article really offers an unprecedent glimpse into the translator's activity, one that is not always flattering. That initial approach seems fundamentally limited by the translator’s quality as a reader, wherein a certain immediate and correct understanding of the text is being presumed. In fact, I think that reading well is spectacularly hard in any language, even one’s own, and probably there is too much focus on the writing-work of translation than the reading-work for my taste, if the articles that we have encountered so far in this course are an indication. One strange moment in the Davis, which I found a little baffling, was her point that the highly literal “‘But who would have made me loaves so warm, coffee so fragrant, and even . . . those chickens?’’” would have worked fine, but that ultimately she chose instead to go with “‘‘But who would have made me such warm loaves, such fragrant coffee, and even . . . those chickens?’’” This seems like an instance where the meaning is fully intact either way, but the more literal option gives a truer sense of the linkage of the attributes warm and fragrant with the foodstuffs loaves and coffee. This kind of detail would be highly desirable to me as a reader, I much prefer the option which preserves the language-logic of the original text. It would also seem to better satisfy Davis’ own rules, as she lays them out. About this issue, she says, “This was an instance in which the more literal version would have worked, though in the end I did not retain it.” Such is the power and whim of the translator, I suppose.

About the Wang Wei, I like Eliot Weinberger and I like the idea of the book. I think that there is an inconsistent (and ultimately false) objectivity in the way he describes the features of some of the translations. He is very quick to condemn changes and additions that he thinks inappropriate or poorly done, but is happy to let them slide in the versions that he favors. I suppose I would do the same thing in his position, but the book seems to make an implicit claim that it will help a reader to learn something about how to translate well, and part of its instruction on that front appears to be stay on Weinberger’s good side. I tend to agree with Weinberger’s taste here, although I feel more forgiving of the faults of the earlier translations than he is. He arranges the versions chronologically, and deserves points for boldness in his claim that Kenneth Rexroth’s 1970 translation is “clearly the first real poem of the group.” The Gary Snyder version is indeed very nice, my favorite by a good margin.

-Elijah Frydman