Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 La poesía mutante del Siglo de Oro
- Part 1 Poetry in Creation
- 2 Moving in …Garcilaso de la Vega's ‘Dulces prendas por mi mal halladas’
- 3 The Movement of Thought and Feeling in the ‘Ode to Juan de Grial’
- 4 Metaphors of Movement in Two Poems of Fray Luis de León
- 5 El tiempo medido en versos: Camila Lucinda en las Rimas (1609) de Lope de Vega
- 6 Upwards to Helicon: Lope de Vega, the Laurel de Apolo, and Acts of Judgement
- 7 ‘Dulce es refugio’: El peregrino de Góngora se detiene
- 8 The Staging of Góngora's Three Funereal Sonnets for Margarita de Austria Estiria
- 9 Jealousy in María de Zayas's Intercalated Poetry: Lyric Illness and Narrative Cure
- 10 Hacia otra lectura del petrarquismo en Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
- Part 2 Poetry in Conversation
- 11 El conde de Salinas y Leonor Pimentel: cuando se juntan el amor y la poesía
- 12 Poesía popular en movimiento: los jeroglíficos ‘muy propios al intento y muy de su profesión’ en las celebraciones de la Valencia barroca
- 13 Responding to Góngora: María Rosal and the Clori Poems
- 14 Traveling in Place: Baroque Lyric Transports in Translation, or Flames that Bridge the Stream
- Works Cited
- Index
14 - Traveling in Place: Baroque Lyric Transports in Translation, or Flames that Bridge the Stream
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 November 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 La poesía mutante del Siglo de Oro
- Part 1 Poetry in Creation
- 2 Moving in …Garcilaso de la Vega's ‘Dulces prendas por mi mal halladas’
- 3 The Movement of Thought and Feeling in the ‘Ode to Juan de Grial’
- 4 Metaphors of Movement in Two Poems of Fray Luis de León
- 5 El tiempo medido en versos: Camila Lucinda en las Rimas (1609) de Lope de Vega
- 6 Upwards to Helicon: Lope de Vega, the Laurel de Apolo, and Acts of Judgement
- 7 ‘Dulce es refugio’: El peregrino de Góngora se detiene
- 8 The Staging of Góngora's Three Funereal Sonnets for Margarita de Austria Estiria
- 9 Jealousy in María de Zayas's Intercalated Poetry: Lyric Illness and Narrative Cure
- 10 Hacia otra lectura del petrarquismo en Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
- Part 2 Poetry in Conversation
- 11 El conde de Salinas y Leonor Pimentel: cuando se juntan el amor y la poesía
- 12 Poesía popular en movimiento: los jeroglíficos ‘muy propios al intento y muy de su profesión’ en las celebraciones de la Valencia barroca
- 13 Responding to Góngora: María Rosal and the Clori Poems
- 14 Traveling in Place: Baroque Lyric Transports in Translation, or Flames that Bridge the Stream
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
The title ‘Poetry in Motion’ suits the travel across language, culture, and time that constitutes literary translation. Across what bridge, by what mode, can a text arrive at the further shore – ‘[a] esotra parte, en la ribera’ – transformed to a new language and occupying a foreign literary context, yet with intangible spirit intact? Does it best travel naked or robed, empty-handed or with baggage? In particular, how do we bring across Baroque lyric: rhymed, metered, allusive, with incisively doubled meaning or gorgeously encrusted figuration. Should highly ornate originals be simplified in translation, in order to make them understandable? The paradoxically swift stillness and profuse simplicity expressed in classical Epicurean thought, and its relationship to the more familiar Stoicism, suggest a model not only for reading but rendering these poems into another language.
In this essay I splice two themes. First, an infrequently mentioned philosophical engagement with ‘Neo-’ or Christianized Epicureanism shapes Baroque Hispanic poetry and poetics along with more widely explored Neo-Stoic and Platonic influences. Second, Epicurean and Stoic models can illuminate approaches to the translation of early modern lyric into English today. Why mix these topics in limited space when each deserves full development? My brief answer: Epicureanism engages imagery that resonates with the intricacies of Baroque poetry, although in seldom acknowledged ways, and this philosophy can usefully inform a practice in translating that poetry. Indeed, the charged current between Stoic and Epicurean influences in the Baroque energizes my own approach to translating these works.
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- Spanish Golden Age Poetry in MotionThe Dynamics of Creation and Conversation, pp. 243 - 266Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2014