Thursday 28 May 2015

Archaic Torso of Apollo




I've laid out my views on translating poetry elsewhere on this blog; suffice it to say that in the case of Rilke's perhaps most famous poem, the "Archaischer Torso Apollos", it looks to me as though the translators out there aren't quite facing up to their task. Rilke wrote a sonnet, and most of them, from professional translators like Stephen Mitchell to modern poets like Don Paterson, are writing free verse paraphrases or resorting to half-rhymes. Maybe we ought to get a rapper or a performance poet like Kate Tempest to do the job instead - at least they still know why rhyme and metre matter. Anyway, enough dissing the opposition: here's my try. Criticisms welcome!

Archaic Torso of Apollo

We never knew that high-reputed head
With all pride's ripeness in its eyes. Yet here
Still stands its torso, like a chandelier
Inset with lamps - and their glow instead

Must be this figure's gaze. For were it not,
How could its rising breast thus blind? or bend
Of hips to thighs a subtler smile send
Down to the centre that new life begot.

Lacking that light from each true place, this stone
Should under marble's sheen lie maimed and prone:
It would not glisten like a wild beast's pelt,

And would not like a star obliterate
All lines of form: force such that you felt
It saw you, crying: Live now, do not wait.