Thomas Lowe Taylor -- THE TRADUCERS

***************



les trasduciers VS Naipul
de Fanon

Le Tradu
Trasducier

"Le Trasducier"<-->The Trasducer
Trasducer

To carry the spirit of a composition
into a new realm, (series, decay)
(rebIrth & form)


I


"implied poetics"

"I think it can be tremendously refreshing if a creator of literature has something on his mind other than the history of literature so far. Literature should not disappear up its own asshole." (Kurt Vonnegut, Paris Rev., #69, p. 86)

From Shang Ch'in: "Even the stars are the same." After the light is turned off, the curtain falls down; outside the window is nothing but the stiff night. Inside the house a person, after having lost his hair, has lost also his lips and tongue; the arms each from its back and shoulder, from the breasts and waist disappear; his legs and his ankles go a little bit later. After that, what is left is the so-called BEING.

It is a poetry of Phenomenon in one instant's epiphany and usually in a static equilibrium made possible by the bird's eye view spotlighting.

...elimination of links of connection, merging with the objects, anti-linear structures, etc
is to grasp hold of a self-contained image or phrase as it emerges from Phenomenon.

A lyricism in which the poet, merged with objects, allows their inner lives to grow, change and gesticulate by themselves according to their own natural laws, and yet maintains a certain amount of his subjectivity. But in relating to Phenomenon, he does not impose his subjective self upon the order that is shaping itself from this cosmic scheme; rather, he considers his subjective self part of Phenomenon participating in the shaping.


II


Dear father:
Fruits die in their taste and nourishment
We say good-bye to fields and to work
Door beyond door, gate beyond gate
In a park, thunderous steps
We loosen our hair into flags
And--naked--sing:
Corpulent circle, turn O turn
You, outside the circle
I, inside it
Corpulent circle, turn O turn
Circle turns into a dot
You and I sleep on a cot
Corpulent dot, turn O turn


Often up on the steeple, we unmoor the stars
And speed on the five-strings among cloud-trees
And think of the death of fruits in cabins
Night comes: all mountains rise
Drumsticks fall, water birds soar
We join hands to anchor one by one
By the sky-obscuring guitar's loins
And loosened hair flutters
Fluttering hair is our Name

Yip, The Crossing, III

A flow of actual movement presented goes actually to a specific description and enactment of an experience, direct in encounter as the visual act, that is, as read, is light, is the speed of thought itself actual in the reading is words seen not heard the speed of light, that is, is the speed of thought, words by themselves do not move in relation to centers of depth & illusions of space-time point at encounter in the revolutions (turning) of sensual fantasy counters, accretion of absolutes at targeting of perceptual inclusion, a stroke or two
that is, as encounter, poem and subject as EVENT, in contact, wheels floating over curved surface, figures bounding in air-floating lines are written thought, in situ, as event describes itself, seeing seen, then, at time to become in being, not an art which would permit the moment of perception to be dissociated from the relations between things themselves, spin as light, nuclear fusion within synaptic shapes, the form of the poem recreates a subtler translation of energy from one state to another by making it happen within the experiencing self of the witness.

A style is also a behavior.

III

In a mode of consciousness in which there is no disturbance of intellectual impositions, no hurry-scurry to establish causal relations, each object or moment is given the fullest chance to emerge in spotlighting distinctiveness much the way everything appears keenly fresh in the orbit of a child's vision.
While the emptying out of intellectual interference allows the things in Phenomenon to emerge in their cinematic concreteness, it also enables the reader (the poet having become Phenomenon itself) to see all sides of a moment of experience simultaneously, in fact, of many moments simultaneously...not to hide the boat in the ravine...but to hide phenomenon in Phenomenon (in which case time and space become indistinguishable, and therefore we are aware only of blocks of experience moving in and out of Phenomenon, blocks of experience interdefining one another).

IV

Out of this (Pound's) poetics--the language that he developed which has consequently been followed and modified by other American poets, notably Williams, Olson, Creeley, and Snyder--it has been possible for translators to put back into the translation of Chinese poetry the same degree of readers' participating and the same exercise of imagination that the interpretive translations had taken out by replacing the dramatic with the analytical mode of representation.
Both the Taoist and the Confucian poetics demand the submission of the self to the cosmic measure rather than the Kantian attempt to resist and measure oneself against the apparent almightiness of nature, resulting in a much greater degree of noninterference in artistic presentation.
At turn, what revolves is a point, in some, the time of the grandfathers' return. Gertrude says that in a time of universal conflict, cultural, epochal or cosmic, the artist is more important, tactically, than the general, for it is at the outer reach of creative thought that the real maneuvers are made; as consciousness attempts to reveal itself through itself, the real hard edge of courage becomes. And as Becoming evolves into Being, the old order of Romanticism decays into a new order of the Classical: and the center of the poem becomes the cosmic battleground, cf. Emerson's The Poet.
The poem, as centerfold of conscious reflection vis a vis the Word, speaks through the hierarchy of acts as the top of the line. It goes back. So the manifestation of Being is more accessible here than in Image, for instance; Image is frame, as poem is energy-state. The evolutions of form are constant, recognizable.
A higher poem requires a higher perception: one cannot invent the cosmic, but enter & witness: thus, syntactical organization is seen to change within certain circumstances. The prisoner describes his room, the bird, his lighted realm. Thus, a revolutionary art is instructions in personal behaviors as befit the new man....
But we have gone back, ouroboric whip-tail, snake-teeth, tale-biter, Eagle snapper, the stories do not repeat and in translation, we see ourselves.
So it is the traduction which occurs, even as I read, I recreate the simplest correspondences, I AM, and reinforces the kind of energy which characterizes the culture itself. A language without gerunds wd reflect a culture without potential, figure that one out....
Without causality, the evanescent emerges, and no less real, the synchronistic: so changing the language, which is what most poets pretend at, is really the most radical message we could see. If they knew what we were up to, they would ban the language itself...for in communication we declare our nuances, our intelligence, our love.
But really, it is our own transformation we yearn for, the psychogenic, developmental leap, the Jump to being with its associated myths & revelations, the becoming which is being, the flags & pennants, the mystical battle, the poem itself....

Available Yip:
Ezra Pound's Cathay, Princeton U. Press, 1969.
"...to Ezra Pound, if he wants it..."
Modern Chinese Poetry, 20 poets from the Republic of China,
1955-1965, selected, translated and introduced by,
Univ. Iowa Press, Iowa City, 1970.
Hiding the Universe, poems by Wang Wei, trans. & introduced by,
Grossman/Mushnisha, 1972.
Modern Chinese Poetry, Major modes & genres, Univ. Calif. Press,
1976, incl. essay " Translating Chinese Poetry:
The Convergence of Languages & Poetics--a radical introduction," 41 pp.


TRADUCTION


"...right now there is no right place to be from...." (1)

Media is duplicate (2)

aduction / to

The thing with chinese
syntax is, it goes in
either direction, backwards
or forwards. Ours is a linear, sequential, serial.
A paragraph can be an
ideograph.

Sensimilla, the dream without light

"Ya gotta feed 'em." (3)

Notes:

A revolution is a hard-on.
(1) Randy Rand, in Borrowed Times (Missoula MT), on music.
(2) Dennis Blank, written on wall of classroom, De Anza College,
Cupertino CA, 1974
(3) Striz, on his front porch, on women.