Welcome to the podcast “An Ancient Language for a Modern Soul. Poemi Conviviali by Giovanni Pascoli”. I’m here today with Professor Geoffrey Brock, who is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Arkansas where he teaches literary translation and creative writing. Geoffrey is a renown poet and translator who has received many awards. His book Last Dream, published in 2019, contains a beautifully translated selection of Pascoli’s poems. Today we will talk about The Sleep of Odysseus, a poem narrating one episode in the story of Ulysses’s long journey back to Ithaca You can listen to the poem in Geoffrey’s own translation at the end of our conversation. The poem is read by David Carter, the music is by Giovanni Tardini played at the Celtic harp by Arianna Mornico.

ELENA

The Sleep of Odysseus is based on a passage from the Odyssey book 10 lines, 28 to 55. While sailing to Ithaca Odysseus…( that is the Greek name of Ulysses. Ulysses is the Latin name, but here, Pascoli appropriately uses the Greek version of this name) So Odysseus falls asleep. He falls asleep just when his ship is sailing towards Ithaca. To make things worse, his companions decide to unleash the winds contained in a jar they had received from Aeolus, the God who was king of all the winds. Aeolus had bottled all the stormy winds in that jar so that Odysseus could have a safe and smooth voyage home. Unfortunately, while Odysseus is asleep, his companions become curious. They think there's a treasure in the jar. They open it, the stormy wind come out, and fatally, they divert this ship from Ithaca. It is very typical of Pascoli to choose this situation, which is the story of a missed opportunity in his own life. Pascoli had indeed missed many opportunities, opportunities for love, for personal fulfilment. Those opportunities passed him by, like Odysseus, sailing past Ithaca and Pascoli was always stuck in his own inability to live a full life. He never married, he never felt that he had achieved the recognition that he deserved. Geoff, why did you choose to include this particular poem in your collection? Well,Geoff, why did you choose to include this poem in your collection?

GEOFF

I'm thinking back now to when I was originally putting it together, and I guess the main reason is, you know, I wanted, I definitely wanted to have some representation of the Convivial Poems and, and I love the Odyssey, and I love Odysseus as a character is these are my favorite ancient epic and, and I love what Pascoli does with the Odyssey. And he returns to it, of course, often and, and so I just my favourite two poems from the Convivial Poems are The Sleep of Odysseus and The Last Journey and and I, if I had had more time and space, I probably would have also translated all of the last journey, but I didn't. I was sort of trying to have a relatively thin volume, and and so I just ended up translating the fixed or in from the last journey, as opposed to the whole sequence. But I did do the whole sequence of the sleep of it, it's just, and I just, I guess I just chose them because they're my favorite poems in that in that collection.

ELENA

Yes, and speaking of The Last Journey, as you said, you included another conviviale that's just a section “The Fixed Oar” from The Last Journey. But I'm also curious of your choice from this one poem, because both poems, they both start with the number nine. And so I was wondering if there was any connection between the two translations.

GEOFF

I love that you pointed that out, but I think it was really just a coincidence. And. Although it does kind of provide a nice segue from one to the other and and the main reason I Ipicked that section well, the “The Fixed Oar” section from The Last Journey is, is also that that's one of my favorite images from the Odysseus' story. Is that that that, or that he carries inland until it is seen as a winnowing fan and and I've just always loved that image. And this is a that this section of the poem hinged on that image, and so that was the main reason, and also it works as a kind of coda, I think, to The Sleep of Odysseus poem, because you have The Sleep of Odysseus , which is, of course, hinges on his inability to his he gets so close to home, and then he can't quite get there. But then the section of “The Fixed Oar” we do find him at home in front of his hearth. And so it sort of completes that narrative in a way as well, but mainly just because I love that image, the fixed door. And I think of it, it's such a fascinating juxtaposition. Is the or and the winnowing fan, and it makes me think of translation in a way, and maybe maybe mistranslation, or maybe just for adaptation or something, but the way in which an or, you know, a tool for the for sailor, it becomes misperceived or perceived differently in in by the farmer. So, yeah, it's almost like they're two visual languages or something, the sailors language and the farmer's language and it gets translated into a winnowing fan because it is changed context and so, so that something about that image just strikes me as very, very rich.

ELENA

That's interesting. Yes, also, when I was reading your two translations, I was thinking that they really are the opposite of each other, because The Sleep of Odysseus embodies that desire to go home and then in “The Fixed Oar” Odysseus is a home, but is bored, so in a way, then he's thinking of another journey. So the two of them, in my opinion, they are related, also that way. And so back to The Sleep of Odysseus. This poem has you, as you know, as a very regular structure. There are seven stanzas, and the last line is always a variation on the theme of sleep. And so in each stanza, we the readers and and you the listeners, they get to see all the things that Odysseus does that and also, sorry, the all the things that Odysseus does not see because he's sleeping. So we see the shores of Ithaca. We see his lands, his house, his father, his dog. And in a way, that variety always ends on a regular note, because Pascoli always ends his stanzas with “sonno”. How did you decide to translate that last line in each stanza? I know you kept a regularity there, too.

GEOFF

Yeah, I feel like I kind of followed Pascoli pretty literally there. I don't always do that, but there I just, I liked the way he used that refrain, and the way he varied the refrain from stanza to stanza. As you say, that he always ends with the the noun thunder sleep. And he also always had includes the phrase the heart of Odysseus and in that last line. And so those two things repeat in each each final line, but he always changes the verb that links them. And so they there's always a slight difference from one stanza to the next. And I just tried to follow that pattern with an ear toward the the meter that I had chosen to use for that, for that poem, which was a four-beat line, kind of a loose tetrameter. And so I just, you know, tried to repeat it with with the variations, and with an ear toward the rhythm of the lines,

ELENA

And speaking of meters, Geoff, you are a very experienced translator of Pascoli, and you are often able to replicate both the richness of his semantic and phonetic choices, and his metres, which is quite amazing. I’m thinking of one line in particular, in Stanza 3, which the Italian is “un grufolare fragile di verri”, “frail grunting of hogs”, where “fragile” “frail” is mostly chosen for his sound, replicating the sound of hogs. And you translated “the delicate sound of rooting hogs”, where the sound of the hogs is contained in the word “rooting”. At least that is how I see it. Any other challenges or examples of how you go about translating Pascoli’s language that you want to share with us?

GEOFF

Sure? Yeah, I am also very interested in this, in the way, obviously, that he evokes sounds, and which he does so often, and is so he's so interested in sound, and he's such a wonderful poet of sound. And in this slide, as you say, that the sort of G's and F's are sort of evoking the grunting or rooting around of the hogs. But I think there's also something, there's also a way in which that word fragile here, in this context, for me, at least, it suggested the way, the way these sounds of the hogs, you know, which I don't often think of hog sounds as as fragile, or frail or or delicate. But here, I think the reason, what I liked about it is the way it evokes, for me, at least, the Odysseus is distance from the scene. It suggests maybe the way that the sounds as they reach that the ears of the sailors are muted and softened by that distance. I imagine, you know, the boat is just close enough to land that they can hear the slightest traces of the hog sounds, but they don't hear them in their full, sort of bestial loud, you know, loudness. And so I wanted to convey that, that tantalizing mix of proximity and distance, I guess. But with the, with the delicate, with the with the word delicate, but as you, as you say, he also uses this word, fragile in other places, often in connection with leaves. And so I also was thinking of the poem Novembre, where he has that wonderful phrase, di foglie un cader fragile. And there I translated fragile as frail instead of delicate. But the thing is, I was thinking about in the context of Novembre and that image of the delicate or the frail falling of leaves, you know, you hear, you hear us, a very muted sound. There even more muted, probably. But it also made me think of a of a poem by the American poet Richard Wilbur called Year's End, where, where he it's a it's a winter poem instead of an autumn poem. But he writes, he has the he describes night, a night during a snowstorm. He writes, night is all a settlement of snow. And so that, the way he used that word, settlement there that double meaning of it, which suggests falling onto the ground, but also suggests a kind of city of snow or something. And so I kind of wanted to echo Wilbur phrase there, and my translation of so I had a frail settlement of leaves, as if, as if Pascoli was sort of alluding forward in the future to Wilbur, or as if Wilbur had somehow known Pascoli’s poem and was alluding backwards to it, which, of course, I don't think Wilbur did, but I like to sometimes make those kinds of connections when they feel appropriate, because I think Pascoli is a poem Wilbur would have been influenced by if he had known him.

ELENA

Very interesting. And I recently also presented on your translation from Pascoli, some of your translation from Canti di Castelvecchio. And we were discussing with the group also the influence of Robert Frost, in a way, also thinking of the choice of what you said this this meters are also flowing and free so Pascoli uses hendecasyllables, but like he said to Marinetti in Italian, this verse is so freely accented, it's almost a free verse. And therefore some translators have also used Robert Frost as an example for the flow that they put in in the verses that they translated from Pascoli.

GEOFF

Well, Frost famously said, you know that English language poets have a choice between two meters loose iambics and strict iambics and, and I think that often his his use of loose iambics feels, you know, it feels very flexible, feels very close to speech, feels very almost close to free verse, but without but, but you still have the sort of rhythmic structure of the line and, and I do think, and I often do, sort of use that kind of looser I am mix, as I did, with this, these, both of these poems, The Sleep of Odysseus and “The Fixed Oar.” I sprinkle in, you know, plenty of anapests. And it gives it a kind of a looser, less rigid feel, I guess, and more more, more like that, the flexibility of the hendecasyllable in Italian, which I which I think is a bit more variable than the ambit contaminator usually is in English, until you get to people like Frost to make it more variable.

ELENA

Yes, that's That's very true. Well, we really want to have people enjoy this beautiful poem in your beautiful translation. So I'm going to end this conversation by thanking you very much for being here and now. Thank you all for listening and enjoy the poem in its entirety.

GEOFF

Thank you, Elena. I look forward to hearing it myself. I haven't heard the recording.