(no subject)

[godplaysdice.livejournal.com]

The one part of this otherwise wonderful poem that just will not sit right for me is the part in the third stanza where Bly translates, "In the far North where the day/ lives in a pit night and day." In the original Swedish, Tranströmer uses two words (both of which do, presumably, translate to "day"): dag and dagen, and the poem reads better for it. Anyway, does anyone here know enough Swedish to tell me what the difference between the two forms is?


Sailor's Tale
by Tomas Tranströmer
(trans. Robert Bly)

There are stark winter days when the sea has links
to the mountain areas, hunched over in feathery grayness,
blue for a moment, then the waves for hours are like pale
lynxes, trying to get a grip on the gravelly shore.

On a day like that the wrecks leave the sea and go looking for
their owners, surrounded by noise in the city, and drowned
crews blow toward land, more delicate than pipe-smoke.

(In the Far North, the real lynx walks, with sharpened claws
and dream eyes. In the Far North where the day
lives in a pit night and day.

There the sole survivor sits by the furnace
of the Northern Lights, and listens to the music
coming from the men frozen to death.)

Comments

[-sappho--.livejournal.com]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that, like in most Northern Germanic languages, "dag" is "day" as in "a day", any old day... and "dagen" is "day" as in "the day", the daytime... because the wordplay would be lost in English anyway, Bly chooses "night and day" as a bit of poetic licensing; it's not really direct at all.

[theodoreroethke.livejournal.com]

At least Bly's a better translator than that jerkoff Ezra Pound.

[dirtygirl687.livejournal.com]

fight! fight! fight!