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James Kirkup |
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Bookshop |
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James Kirkup |
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MY VERY FIRST VIRTUAL BOOK I am not ashamed to confess that I am not the blissful owner of an Internet, though I rather regret not being able to have my own Internet site. Better not, perhaps -- it might take up too much of my valuable time -- and when I say valuable I mean priceless because I have reached the noble age of 84 and therefore every second is now golden -- too precious to be wasted upon what I believe is called "surfing" the Web. I know how frail webs can be, and as for surfing, what I have seen of it on film seems extremely dangerous, indeed back-breaking and terribly wet. But I am always fascinated by new scientific developments, and I have nothing personal against the "Net" (as I think addicts call it). However, as a substitute for real books, it seems to me to be an evanescent form of reading. I like to be able to feel my fingers actually turning pages, and I love the smell of paper and ink. I am an addict. I even make a special point of buying the wonderful books published by Corti in Paris, because he is the only publisher left who produces books the pages of which have to be cut with a paperknife, of whîch I possess a beautiful carved ivory example from China -- the sweet pleasure of handling this imperial heirloom, stroking it and playing with it and sniffing the last whiffs of opium dens on its pure blade is one of my oriental perversions impossible to duplicate on a horrible square electronic screen. I heard from a publisher friend recently that the great surge of unseemly excitement at the news that an "electronic book" was to be manufactured was a little premature. The very thought of such a thing sent tremors of disgust thrilling through every remaining vertebra in my normally permissive body! I was therefore delighted to learn that several publishers who had begun this improper printing business have had to abandon it because of a lack of popular interest. But a VIRTUAL BOOK -- now that sounds very promising! I love the echo of the word VIRTUE in that fairytale appellation. For one thing, I am told it can be useful for publicity purposes -- though the arts of publicity seem to me to be grossly overrated. From the literary point of view, I have no particular need for such exposure to the general eye, and I have reservations about textual corruptions, archival permanence and context as well as presentation. (Prissy old pedantic twit!) Well, we shall see what we shall see, and as I have every faith in Brian Cole's literary judgment, I am perfectly willing to leave my poetic self in his capable hands. Already, though I cannot see the book because of its diaphanous virtuality, I can imagine what it is like, and it has already influenced one of my recent translations, Robert de Montesquieu's fine sonnet LIS VISUEL whose literal translation is "Visual Lily" which sounds silly -- though of course he was a very silly Proustian person, so I have translated or rather "rendered" it as VIRTUAL LILY! Thank you, web site www.brindin.com! And don't forget to dot your coms! ************************************************************************** MY TANKA TRANSCRIPTIONS This new method of translating poetry is my own invention, and recent examples in "Modern Poetry in Translation" (School of Humanities, King's College, University of London) have caused quite a stir in the academic pigeon-lofts. Serious scholars have gone so far as to qualify my "transcriptions" as ''eccentric" and even, I'm shocked to find, perverse! I call these translations "transcriptions" -- a term used by musicologists to describe the virtuoso piano versions of orchestral and operatic works by transcendant technicians like Liszt, Godowsky and Horowitz. These musical inventions, once very popular on player-piano rolls, are original works of musical and technical genius in their own right, and are widely respected as such. My verbal variations in the ancient Japanese forms of 31-syllable tanka and 17-syllable haiku are careful to respect the vocabulary and mood of the (so far, mostly French) originals. Numbers of celebrated French poets in the 19th century complained bitterly about the outworn conventions of rhyming. Among them was Paul Verlaine, who in his "Art of Poetry" wrote: the killing joke, the cruel shaft, the dirty laugh that make heaven's blue eyes weep -- all garlicky kitchen grub! Seize eloquence, and twist its neck! You would do well, while you're about it, to mortify your rhymes a bit: watch out -- they can lead astray! O the sins of Rhyme! What deaf child or idiot brute cobbled up for us all these shop-soiled trinkets that ring false even as you write? ... |
Copyright: James Kirkup 2002