FRÅNS MARS – 79 by Tomas Transtromer

[Bloggsworth]

FRÅNS MARS – 79

Weary of all those who come with words, words but no language,
I went to the snow-covered island.
The feral have no words.
Unwritten pages are spread out in every avenue!
I discover traces of deer spoor in the snow.
Language without words.

[Antcliff]

Morning Bloggsworth,
not knowing the language I can't judge accuracy, I can only judge what emerges as a poem.

On the face of it...a call for "language rather than words", with language being explained by comparison with deer spoor. Language being then something caused/left by?+leading to something. Your translation produces a poem clear enough in what it wants/rejects.

In passing, I am reminded of something that may be interest to you. There was (I think still is) a school of thought that took the "aboutness" or referring aspect of language to be definable in terms of a relation of reliable indication...akin in some ways to the relationship between tracks and animals. I won't clutter yer thread further on that though beyond noting that if you type in the name Jerry Fodor you will be able to follow the tracks into that sort of view. (Fodor being a sometime leading philosophical advocate of that sort of view),

Best wishes,
Ant.

[Bloggsworth]

Thanks Antcliff,

Perhaps I should have included this with my translation. Perhaps a bilingual Swedish forum member can elucidate.

FRÅNS MARS – 79

Trött på alla som kommer med ord, ord men inget språk
for jag till den snötäcka ön.
Det vilda har inga ord.
De oskrivna sidorna breder ut sig åt alla hall!
Jag stöter på spåren av rådjursklovar I snön.
Språk men inga ord.

The published translation

Sick of those who come with words, words but no language,
I make my way to the snow-covered island.

Wilderness has no words. The unwritten pages
stretch out in all directions.

I come across this line of deer-slots in the snow: a language,
language without words.


I have translated tired as Weary as I get a sense of ennui from the poem; tired as a word is like nice, a portmanteau word which can carry any meaning you attribute to it.

snötäckta or snö täckta, translates as snow-covered.

Vilda is “wild”, but in the published version it has been translated as “wilderness” (vildmarken), I have chosen feral, as landscape cannot have words, so it is an illogical proposition, and projecting forward, my reading ties in with my translation of rådjursklovar – rådjur being deer and sklovar being ?, I can’t find an exact translation for it, but it means as far as I can deduce, something along the lines of marks or tracks, which the “published” version has translated as slots (for a screwdriver?), but which I interpret as spoor, animal tracks, which have a language for a tracker, but of course, no words.
Hall is hall, hallway, lounge, lobby or colonnade none of which seems appropriate, the published translation has chosen to be indeterminate “all over the place” while I have gone for avenues, as in avenues of trees which describe, in a sense, a natural hallway.

[David]

I have no Swedish at all, but I like your poem, Bloggs. Not sure about "feral", though. It didn't seem right when I first read the poem, and after reading your justification for its use it still doesn't seem right.

A good poem, for all that, though.

Cheers

David

[Bloggsworth]

I have no Swedish at all, but I like your poem, Bloggs. Not sure about "feral", though. It didn't seem right when I first read the poem, and after reading your justification for its use it still doesn't seem right.

A good poem, for all that, though.

Cheers

David

Not my poem - It belongs to the Nobel Laureate who wrote it!

[Lake]

Hi Blog,

No Swedish from me either. I've read a few translations from the translated poem of Transtromer, which I like very much.
Like David, I'm not sure about "feral" either. I know it is so hard to balance between faithfulness and ...

Thanks for sharing.

Lake

[David]

Not my poem - It belongs to the Nobel Laureate who wrote it!

The translation makes it yours, surely? If only provisionally.