"Renegotiation Rather Than Reinvention": The Spectator Interviews Carson on Translating Rimbaud

Last week, Ciaran Carson was interviewed by The Spectator on his upcoming collection In the Light Of, a translation of Arthur Rimbaud’s Illuminations (1874). The interview covers everything from Carson’s newest collection to some of his older works. However, most of the interview centers on Carson’s critical approach to the act of translation. One issue that we find particularly interesting in this discussion is Carson’s standpoint on literalism. For Carson, “‘Literal meaning’ is a problematic phrase when it comes to translations of poetry.” He states that

The temptation with Rimbaud’s Illuminations, because the pieces are ostensibly in prose, is to render them more or less word for word, thus ignoring their music. But the more you examine them, and read the French aloud, you can see that the prose has metre, and occasional rhyme embedded in it. 

Carson solves this problem by translating Rimbaud’s form rather than his content. Similarly to his 1998 publication, The Alexandrine Plan, Carson’s first priority with In the Light Of is to revive “the rhyming couplets of the French alexandrine.” He states that he “wanted the dreamlike imagery to rhyme, chime, and echo: to make some kind of music to my ear.” By using Rimbaud’s form as the anchor for his translation, Carson does precisely that.

Below is the opening stanza from Carson’s translation of Rimbaud’s most famous poem, La Dormeur du Val as well as Oliver Bernard’s 1962 translation, which was a point of reference for Carson. In comparing the three poets’ works, we can see that Carson’s word choice differs greatly from Bernard’s “literal” approach. But in the end, much is gained from his decision to stray from tradition. Carson’s translation honors the original context of Rimbaud’s poem just as much as Bernard’s. However, with Carson’s 12 syllable lines and rhyming couplets, we get a sense of the tempo and rhyme structure that Rimbaud would have wanted his readers to hear, something which is lost in Bernard’s approach.   

Rimbaud (1870)

C'est un trou de verdure où chante une rivière,

Accrochant follement aux herbes des haillons

D'argent ; où le soleil, de la montagne fière,

Luit : c'est un petit val qui mousse de rayons.

Ciaran Carson (1998)

It's a greeny dip where a crazy guggling till

Makes silver tatters of itself among the grass;

Where the sun pours down from the wild mountain-sill;

It foams with light like bubbles in a champagne glass.

Oliver Bernard (1962)

It is a green hollow where a stream gurgles,

Crazily catching silver rags of itself on the grasses;

Where the sun shines from the proud mountain:

It is a little valley bubbling over with light.

Carson admits that this decision to translate Rimbaud’s form sometimes requires him to stray from traditional approaches to diction. However, the key message of this interview is that both writers and readers should refrain from considering such diversions as an issue in the process of translating of poetry. As Carson says himself, Rimbaud’s “poems are visceral reactions: they come out in their own weird and zany logic.” Ultimately, one cannot forget that “the poet often doesn’t know what he has in mind: he follows the language, and sees where it might lead him, which is usually a very different place from what he thought at the onset.” And so, what we get from Carson’s translations is not only a combination of Rimbaud’s diction and form, but a sense of his process as well.

To read the full article, click here!

-Posted by Gigi