Blog Post 2 By Drew

 I really like this sentence: “Petrarch has been of greater influence on English literature than Dante, Boccaccio, Ariosto, or any other of that nest of birds that was the glory of the Italian Renaissance.” And it makes total sense. I knew of Petrarch in the context of his sonnet innovations, but it was illuminating to realize that he popularized the concept in Western writing of short poems inspired by a passing experience, inspiring Shakespeare and Sidney. We owe him a lot! I like how Musa talks about emphasizing the sound elements of a translation when it feels clear that Petrarch was focusing on the music in his original. Form is always provides both constraint and freedom, so I enjoy Young talks of meter as “demanding” but also allowing for “considerable flexibility of expression.” In the litany of different translations, his is my favorite, though Bergin’s is impressive too.

Some of Parks’s criticisms strike me as a bit unfair, such as “And so it goes on, a repository of melodramatic cliché” (in reference to phraseology that, while not particularly inventive, doesn’t strike me as uber-familiar either). And while I’m sure there are political forces at play in the selection processes of international literary prizes, when he raises tonal concerns as a non-Korean speaker, it feels a little like he’s saying “I didn’t really like this novel’s style, so they must’ve picked it because it’s about _____” (though I would likely be more responsive to the assertions if they were delivered less snippily, and by someone with more ranging expertise).

For example, I like Yun’s more nuanced take, which argues that Smith poeticized the original (spare, plain-stated) work, but that (despite the errors) there is still artistic merit to the translation. And Smith reminds us that translation is inherently creative; the question becomes: when is the creativity too much? I guess I’m gonna have to learn Korean and read The Vegetarian in order to formulate an opinion.