To the Reader
After “Mother Tongues”, “European Voices”. MPT seems to have become a little myopic perhaps! But as a New York friend of mine told me, the great Yiddish fiction writer Isaac Bashevis Singer once advised her: Never go anywhere! Of course, Singer himself had left Poland, thank goodness, but once ensconced in New York, he rarely travelled further than Long Island. The biggest adventures are to be had at home, since our present selves rather than projected ones are engaged. The Mother Tongues issue taught us residents at MPT a great deal, and the readings in Sheffield, Oxford, Cambridge and London, organized with such flare by our publicist Sian Williams, made it clear how worth while the venture had been. Not only were we given a glimpse of the great range of literatures in England, but also these writings were placed in the context of the whole rather than, as so often hitherto, appearing as local manifestations.
“European Voices” makes no attempt to represent the poetries of Europe today – how could it? – but gathers material that has come to us over a period of a year or so. Some 17 languages are represented, of Eastern, Central, Western, Southern and Northern Europe. On display are translations ranging from Classical Greek (from the Greek Anthology) to quite recent poetry, as well as re-translations of major European poets (Goethe, Verlaine, Pasternak, Montale . . .). The proper business of magazines, I think, is to be as eclectic as is consistent with the tastes of the editors, to showcase work in progress and to encourage experimental work. With MPT this would include new translations of the much translated, since we have always interpreted “Modern” as referring to the translations rather than to the source texts themselves. Magazines also often try to provide something of a platform for those writers they wish to keep in the public eye, as for instance, in our case, with James Kirkup, an astonishingly versatile and adventurous translator (his work was featured in MPT 11, summer 1997). Kirkup continues not only to translate major poets, like Verlaine and Mallarmé, but also to introduce new talents, discovered by him on his travels. Such dedication to the larger life of literature is, we believe, to be celebrated.
In the same spirit, the present issue contains a feature on the American poet, teacher, historian, translator Peter Viereck. Like Kirkup, in his eighties, Viereck too has always lived in that larger world of literature. The actual location of the writer is less important than a continuing commitment to language as such. Joseph Brodsky, who was a close friend of Viereck, once remarked that wherever he was, Leningrad, New York, South Hadley, Mass., the gesture he made as he reached for a dictionary was the same. Which is not to say, of course, that one is indifferent to one’s surroundings or that one accepts with equanimity exile or marginalisation of whatever sort.
A friend of mine remarked to me that the trouble with MPT was that it contained too much material, that the mixture was simply too rich! This may be so. I suspect that the reason for this tendency to produce an embarras de choix goes back to our early days, when we were more or less on our own in the field. We didn’t know how long we would last, and certainly had no thought of lasting for close on forty years! Ted Hughes had wanted the magazine to be, as he put it: “an airport for incoming translations”. We were its somewhat delirious air-traffic controllers, but the flights magically sorted themselves out, without collisions! So, we got as much into print as we could each time we were able to produce an issue. In any case, there seemed no end of worthwhile material. Somehow the cornucopia seemed inexhaustible (I suppose that is the nature of cornucopias!). Probably this was because, as we advanced into these virgin territories, more and more was revealed and, along with it, a number of dedicated lone translators who’d been there long before us, of course. As a member of the Poetry International Committee of the early 70s, I remember being shocked when it was suggested that by now we had invited all the best foreign poets and there was no one left to invite; if we continued, we’d have to ask them all again!
So, is there, in fact, too much in each issue? The danger, I suppose, is that with such a wealth of material competing for attention, many items might simply go unnoticed. I don’t believe this. At least, I myself am always coming across items in old issues of magazines that I missed first time round. Either they were too softly spoken for me at the time, or I just wasn’t ready for them. But once in print, at least, a poem has a chance of being noticed.
Anyway, we will keep up the barrage for as long as we can! As I survey the contents of the present issue I am once more struck by the eclecticism of the “translation scene”. So many people, often working in isolation or at least unaware of each other’s activities; I hope that the magazine also helps to spread a sense of common endeavour. The destructive polarities of today make ours just as much an “age of anxiety”. Meanwhile, translators labour on. America used to be spoken of as a melting pot. But Europe, too, is a melting pot. At least translators make it seem so. The eternal question for them is how to celebrate diversity while facilitating “intertraffic” between languages and cultures. It is no exaggeration to say, though, that the body lives only while its blood circulates.
Page(s) 5-6
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The