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This translation is wrong. This translation killed the poem and then its author. This translation would be transcendent except for the ego of the translator seeping into the ego of the original. This would be a translation except for the lack of a source text.
The translator is clumsy, night-blind, far too fat, far too famous, infamous for inserting grace into everything, blotto on cooking sherry. The translator made up the original author then trademarked “him” then wrote the “translation” then copyrighted it then faked an author photo using cattails and an excess of lime-green crêpe paper. It all took place on a beach in Normandy but that had to be changed. (So that wasn’t Amaury saying vous to his father? So there is no Tzatzikistan?) The translator died but the work kept on, revisions written in mouthfuls of air surviving in sunken submarines.
It’s wrong, this translation, it’s wrong and I won’t pay for it.
I need the whole thing translated or the hop-picking chutes won’t articulate. The life of the thing is in the ellipses, the lie of the thing. The beauty of the original was in the footnotes; the translation just runs away from me, hands helplessly splayed. There was no submarine in the original, there never was.
The translation outlawed all words in both languages and went away to a place I am still trying to locate. I need my life back-translated so I know what the hell I was thinking those five long years. There are no nouns on my planet though we’ve formed a committee for that. Some things you shouldn’t say in any language.
Let’s go over this word by word. This only works as Mad Libs chiseled into rock slabs. I see red when I read this translation. I stray. This translation lies but that’s a good thing. |
