from version 1.1 – to – v1.2
contruibutions by Bess Rattray (3/19/2014)
(note: as for her point of view, she’s American, loves poetry, loves Walt Whitman, she doesn’t speak Hungarian, although she spent some years heres, she didn’t know the poem)
see v1.1 here (PDF)
the suggested changes are being highlighted …
her reactions were:
“I love this poem! I really love this poem! The start of the poem reminds me of Hungary, yes, and it also reminds me of Walt Whitman (who is my favorite, and also my long-long-long-lost distant cousin). I relate to poems about the specific-ness of places, about being from somewhere. That is one of my favorite subjects.”
her suggestions:
• Instead of “on those bright an’ sunny days” I would say “on those bright AND sunny days” (because using “an” or just “n” instead of “and” is a little too cute, it’s a bit kitschy)
• I would also remove the word “For” here: “For we are guilty just like the other nations her…” and just do “We are guilty” — or start it with some other word, like “And we are guilty” might sound a lot better. This is because “For” sounds a bit stiff, a bit school-poem-ish.
my reactions:
I totally agreed .) I was really grateful for the omitting the “For” – suggestion …
cause it really feels strange when reading it …
how did we get here, did i miss something?
why, all of a sudden, do we talk about being guilty?
why this conjunction? that has nothing to refer to beforehand …
In Hungarian, it’s different …
it bursts out … out of the blue …
this judgement …
retrospectively … as if for all that time he had been thinking about this in the back of his mind …
yet, it must work in English …
it must first work … then unfold the meaning …
it’s undesirable that the reader’s head pops up like “what?” …
it has to be a flow …
even though Radnóti made clear that this was a second unit of the poem …
it has to be a flow … undisturbed .. and using an AND can really fit, since AND-s are
totally established during the previous UNIT …
an AND conjunction has the advantage of connecting this new UNIT – and the new thought ..
without a gap, without a jump … just fluently …
yet, the “we are guilty” comes totally out of the blue, like this too …
with this AND this new UNIT becomes a new cycle (of images, thoughts, statements) …
continuous to the previous but the level has been raised … it’s a new round, obviously …
it’s a new act …
to which the AND functions as a sum up of the previous act … (just like “For” would, which is the most precise translation to “Hisz”)
anyhow, thanks to her!:)
3/19/2014
Nem tudhatom... ( I can't tell ... ) 