The Translator’s Invisibility

Since P.B. uses so many anachronisms on the modern side, why “targe” for “shield.” The rime scheme of this sestina aren’t [sic] followed in the translation anyway and, being spotty, would be better omitted. But if a rime must be had (and God knows the “targe—garage” is nothing to be awfully happy about), why not “shield—field”? […] The “garage” part is bad from all angles. If “tarja” must be “targe,” why not have Bertran too poor to fight “at large”?

Guthrie seemed willing to recognize Blackburn’s attention to prosody: free verse that was “spotty,” with the concealed rhymes and semi-submerged alliteration that Pound had recommended for the “cantabile values” of the Provençal text. Yet Guthrie remained unwilling to license Blackburn’s heterogeneous discourse. By crossing languages, cultures, historical periods, the “targe” / “garage” rhyme preempts transparency, any illusionistic sense of an authorial voice, and calls attention to the multiple codes that make this an English-language translation, with a cultural political agenda. Guthrie’s response shows that Blackburn’s translation was in part the casualty of literary values that dominated American culture during the Cold War, in and out of the academy, values that were elitist in their exclusion of marginal cultural discourses, and reactionary in their refusal of the democratic politics that animated Blackburn’s modernist project.

After the Macmillan episode, Blackburn’s writing took various developments. Some responded directly to Guthrie’s report; most continued his already significant accomplishments as a modernist poet—translator, but in new directions. Blackburn’s relationship to the Provençal translation certainly changed. The depth of Guthrie’s impact can be gauged from the final version of the translation: Blackburn incorporated some of Guthrie’s suggestions—even when these conflicted with his modernist experimentalism. At several points, {260} Blackburn followed Guthrie’s insistence on standard English: he used Guthrie’s recommended spelling, “night,” instead of his initial choice, the subcultural “nite”; he accepted Guthrie’s change of “like” to “as” in the colloquialism, “like/they say” (Blackburn 1958:32; 1986:46, 47). Here Blackburn was browbeaten by Guthrie’s distaste for grammatical improprieties, by his rather ethnocentric assumption that the troubadours should be held to English-language cultural norms: “That ‘like’ for ‘as’ must have Guilhem twirling in his grave,” wrote Guthrie, “It fills me with a creeping horror.” Blackburn also abandoned the much criticized “targe” / “garage” rhyme, adopting Guthrie’s “shield” / “field” (Blackburn 1986:164).

Finally, however, Blackburn did not make numerous revisions in the lexicon and syntax of the 1958 versions. Instead, he expanded the selection of Provençal translations, including four more satires by Marcabru that required a larger variety of obscenities. He also added annotations that provided some of the information Guthrie requested and sought to answer his objections. In one note Blackburn commented on the variant spellings, revealing the different, somewhat contradictory determinations that shaped his final version: the historicist impulse apparent in his respect for the Provençal manuscripts, but also his concern with the prosody of his translation, and even his partial acceptance of Guthrie’s call for consistent, modern spelling. Blackburn’s note specifically addresses Guthrie’s report: