The Translator’s Invisibility

The other day beside a hedge
I found a low-born shepherdess,
Full of joy and ready wit,
And she was the daughter of a peasant woman;
Cape and petticoat and jacket, vest and shirt of fustian,
Shoes, and stockings of wool.

I came towards her through the plain,
“Damsel,” said I, “pretty one,
I grieve for the cold that pierces you.”
“Sir,” said the peasant maid,
“Thank God and my nurse
I care little if the wind ruffle me,
For I am happy and sound.”

“Damsel,” said I, “pleasant one,
I have turned aside from the road
To keep you company.
For such a peasant maid
Should not, without a suitable companion,
Shepherd so many beasts
In such a lonely place.”

(Pound 1952:62–63)

Pound’s version is again rather close, and it is not distinguished by prosodic and lexical invention. His sharpest departure from the Provençal, however, is extremely pointed: he used the archaism “damsel” to render the knight’s epithet for the shepherdess, “toza,” which Emil Levy defined as “jeune fille” (“young girl”) (Levy 1966), yet with an unsavory connotation, “fille de mauvaise vie” (“immoral girl”). (The Provençal text also stigmatizes the girl with {240} “mestissa,” a reference to her low birth that likewise carries the sense of “mauvais, vil.”) Pound’s use of “damsel” at once idealizes and ironizes the image of the girl, sarcastically marking her inferior social position and portraying the knight as a wittily devious seducer, out to overcome her resistance with flattering appeals to her (presumed) class aspirations.

Pound so enjoyed the knight’s predatory sexuality that he wistfully imagined the girl yielding at last. After quoting his partial translation of the poem, he added that “The adventure is finally brought to a successful termination” (Pound 1952:63). But the fact is that the girl withstands the knight’s advances and concludes the dialogue with some cryptic wit of her own—in Frederick Goldin’s rendering,

“Don, lo cavecs vos ahura,
que tals bad’en la peintura
qu’autre n’espera la mana.”

“Master, that owl is making you a prophecy:
this one stands gaping in front of a painting,
and that one waits for manna.”

(Goldin 1973:77)

Blackburn translated Marcabru’s entire text, and his version quite clearly borrows lines from Pound’s, while just as clearly revising the father’s phallic aggressiveness:

The other day, under a hedge
I found a low-born shepherdess,
full of wit and merriment
and dressed like a peasant’s daughter:
her shift was drill, her socks were wool,
clogs and a fur-lined jacket on her.

I went to her across the field:
—Well, baby! What a pretty thing.
You must be frozen, the wind stings…
—Sir, said the girl to me,
thanks to my nurse and God, I care
little that wind ruffle my hair,
I’m happy and sound.

{241} —Look, honey, I said, I turned
into here and out of my way
just to keep you company.
Such a peasant girl ought not
without a proper fellow
pasture so many beasts alone
in such a wild country.

(Blackburn 1958:24)