The Translator’s Invisibility

And of course there is the borrowing from Pound, “stour,” one of many such borrowings that recur throughout Blackburn’s translations (Apter 1987:76–77; and Apter 1986). Apter has argued that they constitute a “homage” to Pound “as the source of [Blackburn’s] interest in and guide to the translation of Provençal lyrics” (1987:77). But insofar as the borrowings insert Pound’s language in a different context, their meaning is variable, and they can just as well signify a competition with Pound, even a betrayal. Blackburn’s borrowing of “stour” allows his translation to contest Pound’s appropriations of Bertran’s poem, and the rivalry is figured, interestingly enough, in provocative revisions that interrogate the ideological determinations of Pound’s texts. Thus, in striking contrast to Pound, Blackburn rendered “chascus om de paratge” as “no boy with a brassard.” The phrase creates dizzying possibilities of meaning. It can be taken as a modern colloquialism, an affectionate expression of male bonding. Blackburn used “boys” in this way at the beginning of Guillem de Poitou’s Companho, faray un vers…covinen:

I’m going to make a vers, boys…good enough,
But I witless, and it most mad and all
Mixed up, mesclatz, jumbled from youth and love and joy—

Yet the singular “boy” in the translation can be taken as another sort of colloquialism, a masculinist expression of contempt, usually for another’s weakness. Even taken in its most accepted meaning (“male child”), Blackburn’s use of “boy” neatly ironizes Bertran’s euology of feudal militarism, branding it as childish, unmanly, and deleting the suggestion of aristocratic domination in “paratge”. What is interesting here is that Blackburn’s oedipal rivalry with Pound, although possessing a masculinist configuration in itself, {238} paradoxically leads to a translation that questions the poetic father’s phallic aggressiveness, his investment in the feudal patriarchy figured in the Provençal texts.

This rivalry drove Blackburn to exceed Pound in the development of a translation discourse that Pound himself had pioneered. And given the oedipal construction of their relationship, it was inevitable that the discursive competition would get played out over the troubadour representations of the lady. Just as Pound produced his innovative work with Cavalcanti by challenging the pre-Raphaelite image of the lady in Rossetti’s versions (Pound’s poetic “father and mother”), so Blackburn increased the heterogeneity of his translations and questioned Pound’s investment in the patriarchal images of the Provençal love lyric.

Female characters in Provençal poetry are often the objects of male sexual desire, but their representation varies according to their class. Aristocratic women undergo a spiritual and physical idealization, transformed into a passive ornament by the elaborately worked imagery of their lovers, who meet with varying sexual success; women of lower classes receive a more realistic treatment involving forms of seduction that range from pleasant cajoling to brutal intimidation. For The Spirit of Romance Pound translated Marcabru’s “L’autrier jost’un sebissa,” which he identified as a “pastorella,” a dialogue in which a knight riding through the country comes upon a farm girl and attempts to seduce her. Pound’s version is written in precise, current English, lightly archaized:

L’autrier jost’un sebissa
trobei pastora mestissa,
de joi e de sen massissa,
si cum filla de vilana,
cap’ e gonel’ e pelissa
vest e camiza trelissa,
sotlars e caussas e lana.

Ves lieis vinc per la planissa:
“Toza, fim ieu, res faitissa,
dol ai car lo freitz vos fissa.”
“Seigner, som dis la vilana,
merce Dieu e ma noirissa,
pauc m’o pretz sil vens m’erissa,
qu’alegreta sui e sana.”

{239} “Toza, fi’m ieu, cauza pia,
destors me sui de la via
per far a vos compaignia;
quar aitals toza vilana
no deu ses pareill paria
pastorgar tanta bestia
en aital terra, soldana.”

(Dejeanne 1971:33)