Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Presentation on Octavio Paz


BIOGRAPHY


Octavio Paz was born in Mexico City in 1914, during the Mexican Revolution. His paternal grandfather Ireneo Paz, was a liberal intellectual, novelist, and publisher. Octavio Paz lived with him for few years because his father went to fight in the revolution. While he was living with his grandfather in a small village named Mixcoac, which was in the outskirts of Mexico City, he was able to perceive how a Mexican family functions: traditions, beliefs, respect for the elders, folklore, etc. In fact, in his book, Itinerario, which he wrote in 1993, he mentions in the introduction, how he was inspired to write The Labyrinth of Solitude, in which he describes/defines very vividly and in detail the Mexican identity.

Because of his family's public support of Emiliano Zapata, one of the leaders of the Revolution, his family was forced into exile after Zapata's assassination. They served their exile in the United States. He lived in Los Angeles for few years and even went to kindergarten where he learned English. Paz started writing in 1931, at the age of 17, and founded several magazines such as "Barandal" and "Taller." In 1937, Paz participated in the 2nd International Congress of Antifascists Writers in Valencia, Spain. He became part of Mexico's diplomatic group in 1945 and was sent to Paris, where he collaborated actively with the surrealist movement. In 1947, he moved back to the United States where he immersed in the Anglo-American modernist poetry.
During the time he lived in this country, he was able to compare the American with the Mexican culture. In his book, The Labyrinth of Solitude, he mentions, “[T]he United States is a society that wants to realize its ideals” (22). He served as a diplomat in India in 1962 but renounced to his position in protest against the Mexican government because of the massacre of students and in Tlaltelolco in 1968. In 1990, Paz received the Nobel Prize for Literature "for impassioned writing with wide horizons, characterized by sensuous intelligence and humanistic integrity" (The Nobel Prize in Literature 1990" http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1990/ )


VIEWS

Paz is considered one of the most prolific poets in the Spanish language and in Latin-American literature. He is one of the leaders of the Latin-American renaissance, which covers from the modernist era to the surrealism of the late XX century. He asserts that languages are realities more vast than the political and historical entities called nations (from "Repertorio de Ensayistas y Filosofos" by Patricio Eufraccio Solano, UNAM, March 2000).
While living in India, he had the opportunity to learn about different kind of surrealism, or as he called it, a spiritual orthodox movement in which there is a connection and balance between body and mind, between consciousness and unconsciousness. He asserts that the modern poet in the western literature has no connection between his body and his mind; there is a gap between the two, a disassociation called modernism. In modern poetry, the poet writes about the city, the life in the city and how the city is around him or her: political and historical views. The Indian literature, on the other hand, criticizes/analyzes time as a historical illusion; not as a term of the past, but as something that remains near the poet to look at it and be inspired by.


THE ESSAY

In his essay, “Translation: Literature and Letters,” Paz points out that languages are not universal but form part of a universal society (152). Men have found a way to communicate with one another through translation. The universality of the spirit is the way men have been able to communicate with one another. Even though each society is a world with its language, tradition, and history, all of them have an affinity in signification of a specific idea, concept, phrase, idiom and word. And translation is the way by which societies learn about each other: we learn about the way we think and express ideas.
For example, in The Labyrinth of Solitude, Paz exposes the difference in concepts about Realism in Mexico and in the United States: A realist in Mexico is considered a pessimist because “of his willingness to contemplate horror […] The bloody Christs in our village churches […] the custom of eating skull-shaped cakes and candies on the Day of the Day” (The Labyrinth of Solitude, 23). In the US culture, a realist is an optimist that “delights in fantasy” and “wants to understand” everything[…] “he is an activist” (24). Another difference in concepts is the perception of death. Paz asserts that in the Mexican culture, the “cult of death is also a cult of life, in the same way that love is a hunger for life and a longing for death” (23). Meanwhile, in the US, the American “not only has no desire to understand it, he obviously avoids the very idea” (22).
In the way of analyzing literature, there are of course differences between the North American and the Mexican ways. The North American has “self-assurance and confidence” when giving an opinion, where as in Mexico or other countries to the south, the “long periods of dictatorship have made us more cautious about expressing our points of view” (21). These facts help understand how these two nations think and define life through languages and cultures to make the translation process a little easier.


Literal Translation

He mentions about the word-for-word translation (servile), which he says it is not a translation but a mechanism that serves the translator to see how the original language works (154). Of course, there are few instances where this mechanism works well, and most of the time this is found in translation of prose:

The cat chases the mouse.
Il gatto insigue il topo.
Le chat court après le souris.
El gato persigue al ratón.

In the case of the example above, the translation into Spanish requires to add the preposition “a” (to) because the verb “persigue” (chases) needs such preposition. In the French translation, the verb chase would be translated as court après, which literally means to run after. Therefore, in order to convey the meaning of the original sentence, it was necessary to transform the original text. As a result, translation implies a “transformation of the original” (154). And the translator must keep the meaning of the original despite the changes or mutation of the original text (metonym and metaphor).

Poetry and Translation

Paz is a visionary that believes that poetry is universal and thus translatable. This is a concept that many poets believe to be almost impossible. Nonetheless, Paz asserts that (and this is going back to the idea of universality of the spirit) poetry comes from within our souls, and a poet can perceive that regardless of the language in which the poem is written. A poet is able to perceive the essence of poetry and the meaning behind it. However, as Paz points out, a poet is not a good translator because “poetic translation […] is a procedure analogous to poetic creation, but it unfolds in the opposite direction” (158). A good translator must embrace poetry and re-create the poem making such poem a unique and original piece. In other words, the translated poem becomes an original piece but with the same meaning and the same essence: “the meanings of a poem are multiple and changeable; the words of that poem are unique and irreplaceable” (159).

YOUR COMMENTS
"Paz is just playing with language here, as opposed to actually saying that literal translation is not translation."
-Justin Conn

“Therefore, translation is simply allowing for men to understand the same principles and ideas that they express through poetry - creating a universal poetic voice of man.”
-Carrie Morrow


“By using different words in a different language to illicit the same meaning would constitutes translation.”
-Tyler Bellis


“He [Paz] sees poetry as transforming language, through the interchangeability of words; translation is doing the same things.”
-Joel Muzzey


“When I imagine the great variety of landscapes of our planet, I can see how this illustration effectively communicates the diversity of techniques and final products that can emerge from the act of translation.”
-Grace Chen


“We are striving towards this ideal goal of literal translation that preserves the poetics of the text without appropriating or inserting our own voice.”
-Matthew Wehren


“[I]n translation, the languages overlap to supplement each other: the elusive but supreme INTENTION.”
-Jeffrey Schoneman


“[T]he translator has the opportunity to use all of his/her knowledge in translating a poem.”
-John Berryman


“[A] translator of poetry should be a poet. But she should be a translator too.”
-Syndee Wood


“[T]ranslations and the act of translating at varying levels would not exist and we would simply live in a “babbling” world of chaos.”
-Nelly Toner


“It [the text] is unoriginal in the sense that the conversion from nonverbal to language is already translation.”
-Janette Larson


“Emphasizing that language itself is, above all, translation - from non-verbal to verbal, and from one sign or phrase to another, Paz describes a universality in context and process.”
-Colleen Stricker


“Are poets just a part of the symphony of musicians that play the same music even if they get a solo at times? If this were so, wouldn't translation be much easier because we could just look at the earlier symphonies for meaning in the later symphonies?”
-Shannon Wales

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