The Politics of Translation: Amichai and Ravikovitch in English Chana Bloch ome lines in a love poem of Yehuda Amichai?s, Precise Woman,? illustrate very neatly a problem all translators grapple with: literal versus ?free? translation. Amichai writes in praise of his beloved: A?lu tsa?akot ha-ta?avah le? seder, akhat akharey ha-shniya ve-lo me?urbavot: yonat bayit, akhar kakh yonat bar, akhar kakh tavas, tavas patsua, tavas, tavas. Akhar kakh yonat bar, yonat bayit, yona yona tinshemet, tinshemet, tinshemet. Even her cries of passion follow a certain order, one after the other: tame pigeon, then wild pigeon, then peacock, wounded peacock, screeching peacock, then wild pigeon, tame pigeon, pigeon pigeon thrush, thrush, thrush. The word I?ve translated as ?thrush? is tinshemet in Hebrew, and its dictionary de?nition is ?barn owl, barn owl, barn owl.? What is one to do? I lifted mine eyes unto the Bible, whence help often comes. But tinshemet appears only three times in the Bible, and no one seems to know what it means. In Leviticus 11:18 (and Deuteronomy 14: 16), the tinshemet, along with the vulture and the bat, is listed among the unclean birds that we are prohibited from eating; in the Bibles I con- sulted, it is translated variously as ?swan,? ?water hen,? and ?little owl.? To add to the confusion, a little later in the same chapter of Leviticus (11:30), the tinshemet appears in a list of unclean creeping things; here I found it translated as ?mole? and ?chameleon.? When I turned back to the Hebrew, it struck me that Amichai was not thinking of any of these ?abominations? Chana Bloch, a poet, critic, and translator, is the White, jr Professor of English at Mills College. She has received a National Endowment for the Arts (NBA) fellowship to complete a new collection of poems, Falcon, Jackal, Hawk. This article was presented as a paper at the Writer in the Jewish Community Conference (sponsored by the National Foundation for Iewish Culture) held in Berkeley, California in October of 1988. 70 TIKKUN VOL. 4, N0. 4 (though a case could be made for that large-eyed night bird, the owl). I asked him whether he chose tinshemet primarily for its sound, and he con?rmed my guess. Tinshemet is based on the verbal root nasham, ?to breathe,? and in this context the sibilant sh suggests breathing?or heavy breathing, I shOuld say. So I found ?thrush,? perched between albatross and zebra ?nch in my trusty thesaurus. But since I?m a little shaky on the names of birds?J know a hawk from a handsaw and an owl from a pussycat, that?s about it?I was relieved to see that lWehster?s identi?es the thrush as a European bird, which brings it within Amichai?s purview. Then I discovered, in his ?Seven Laments for the War Dead,? that Amichai once read about the thrush in an old German zoology text. And so it came to pass that the lady recovers from her passion?in English?like a thrush. This example illustrates the point that in translation it is often the spirit of the word, not the letter, that is called for. It also suggests that a ?free? translation is not always the result of an unfettered ?ight of the imag- ination. You open the Bible (or rather, the Bibles), the concordance, the dictionary, the thesaurus, the complete works of the poet?and let your ?ngers do the walking. Then you can *?kit A problem all translators of Hebrew poetry must confront is that of biblical allusion. Israeli readers, who are required to study the Bible?even in the secular public schools?from their earliest years, have no trouble with such allusions. There is clearly a dif?culty, however, in English. I am reminded of the discussions about staging Pyramus and Thisbe in A Midsummer Night?s Dream: how do you bring in the Bible without frighting the ladies? Bottom and his friends come up with two kinds of solutions. Starveling, on the one hand, recommends cutting whatever is likely to be troublesome; Bottom, on the other, plumps for elaboration and explanation. ?Write me a prologue,? he begs. A translator of Hebrew poetry often faces these two choices. Let me offer an example of each. The ?rst comes from Amichai?s ?Seven Laments for the War Dead?: Adon Beringer, she?bno nafal ba-te?alah, khafaruha zarim bishvil oniyot, la?avor ba-midbar, over derekh sha?ar yafo, leyadi. Mr. Beringer, whose son fell at the Canal that strangers dug so ships could cross the desert, crosses my path at Jaffa Gate. In the second and third lines, nafal kbafaru/oa zarim, Amichai echoes one of the oldest poems in the Bible, the ?Song of the Well? from the Book of Numbers: Ali be?er, enu lah: be?er khafaruha sarim Spring up, 0 well; sing ye unto it: The princes digged the well. (Numbers 21: 17- 18.) This biblical verse is familiar to Israelis, first of all because they have to study it?perhaps to memorize it?in school. They are even more likely to know a version of it in the popular folk dance?and-song, be?er ba?sade/a k/aafaruba ro?z'm (in this case, it?s a ?well dug by shepherds?). The biblical poem about digging a well in the desert and the hopeful song from Israel?s pioneer days are both heard in Amichai?s line about the Suez Canal, the scene of deadly battles in the Yom Kippur War; they serve to intensify, by contrast, the poet?s sorrow for the fallen soldier. Encountering a biblical allusion of this sort in Hebrew, one becomes an archaeologist, tunneling down and discovering older and older strata right beneath one?s feet. Much as I admire this line, I must admit it?s the sort of thing that can drive a translator to distraction. Suppose I were to mimic the archaism, echoing the language of the King James Version, and say Mr. Beringer?s son ?fell at the Canal that strangers dzgged?: what exactly would I achieve? No readers would understand why I availed myself of the King?s English unless they already knew the Hebrew verse. They certainly wouldn?t have the exquisite literary pleasure of hearing three different texts resound together, as they do in Amichai?s poem. All they would gain is a threepenny archaism to prove that the translator had done her homework. If they were attentive readers, they would probably be puzzled; perhaps they would even wonder if the translator had made some mistake. In a case like this, to paraphrase Bottom?s friend, I believe we must leave the allusion out, when all is done. On the other hand, there are times when the translator needs to elaborate, to ?write a prologue? of sorts, in order to bring the allusion home to the reader. One of Dahlia Ravikovitch?s recent poems is about an unknown man who was shot in the Hebron marketplace and'left to die because no one knew his identity; the Jews assumed he was an Arab, the Arabs a Jew. The last stanza reads: Ki yimatse khalal ba-sadeh, ki yimatse khalal ba-adama, ve?yat?su zekenekha ve-shakhatu egla ve?et efra ba-nakhal yefazru. If a dead body is found lying in the ?eld, if a body is found in the open, let your elders go out and slaughter a heifer and scatter its ashes in the river. These lines are based on Deuteronomy 2121?9; without reference to the Bible, their point would probably be lost on many readers. Exactly how much help does the reader need in confronting a biblical allusion? A footnote didn?t seem quite enough in this instance. Crucial to the mean- ing of the poem, though not explicitly mentioned, are some lines at the end of the biblical passage: And all the elders .. . shall wash their hands over the heifer. . . . And they shall . . . say, Our hands have not shed this blood, neither have our eyes seen it. . .. And the blood shall be forgiven them. (Deuteronomy 2126-9.) When Ariel Bloch and I translated this poem, we decided not only to name the passage in question but also to quote from it at some length. Then we moved the quotation from the notes at the end of the book and set it as an epigraph to the poem. Finally, we talked about changing the poem?s title. The educated reader of Hebrew would recognize the title, ?Egla Arufa,? as biblical and would know that Ravikovitch is writing about the community?s response to the loss of a human life, about guilt and collective responsibility and ritual absolution. A literal translation into English, ?Beheaded Heifer,? has no such implications. Casting about for a title that would have something like the same resonance, we considered taking a phrase from the biblical verse I?ve just quoted: ?Our Hands Have Not Shed This Blood.? This phrase points up?perhaps too question of our communal unwillingness to come to terms with our responsibility. We also thought of ?Scat? tering Ashes,? from the last line of the poem, which suggests a familiar ritual for laying the dead to rest. We finally settled on ?Blood Heifer? because it summons up the archaic ritual of the Hebrew title, and thus under- scores, by contrast, our community?s painful confusion. THE POLITICS OF TRANSLATION 71 poem from its homeland and send it into exile. ?How shall we sing the Lord?s song in a strange land?? Not every poem is able to make a new life for itself under such conditions. Let me offer an example from Yiddish. A few years ago I was asked to translate some poems by Abraham Sutzkever for The Penguin Book of Modern Yiddish Verse. On the list of poems assigned to me was ?Di Blayene Platn fun Roms Drukeray? (?The Lead Plates at the Rom Press?), which Sutzkever wrote in September 1943 in the Vilna Ghetto. The Rom Press was one of the great Jewish publishing heuses of Eastern Europe, famous for its editions of the Talmud as well as of modern Yiddish and Hebrew literature. Sutzkever?s poem is based on the Jewish underground?s plans to melt down the lead printing plates of the Rom Press and turn them into ammunition. The ?rst stanza sounds like this: I have been talking abOut what it means to uproot a Mir hobn vi ?nger geshtrekte durkh gratn zu fangn di likhtike luft fun der fray? durkh nakht zikh getSOygn, tzu nemen di platn, di blayene platn fun Roms Drukeray. Mir, troymer, badarfen itst vern soldatn un shmeltsen oyf koyln dem gayst funem blay. The Subject of the poem may be summarized in the last two lines of this stanza: ?We dreamers must now become soldiers and smelt into bullets the spirit of the lead.? I was reluctant to undertake this translation, not only because of the declamatory tone, which doesn?t travel easily, but also because of the which is very regular, very emphatic in Yiddish; the poem asks to be set to march music. Since Sutzkever is a master of prosody who delights in subtle effects, we can assume he has deliberately chosen this drumbeat regularity. The great temptation for a translator is to make the more subtle, that is, more palatable to the reader of English. But if yOu use slant rhyme and tone down the march you misrepresent the original. On the other hand, if you faithfully reproduce the thumping the reader will more than likely assume you?ve done a poor job of translation. You can hardly add a footnote saying, ?Dear Reader, the is like that in Yiddish, too. Sutzkever did it on purpose. I did it on purpose.? This is a no-win situation for a translator. There?s no way to be true to the original and, at the same time, to make a poem that doesn?t sound clumsy in English. I had an exchange of letters abOut this poem with Ruth Wisse, one of the editors of the volume, along with Irving Howe and Khone Shmeruk. Ruth?s argument almost convinced me: Sutzkever became a folk hero in the ghetto for rea- 72 TIKKUN VOL. 4, No. 4 sons that had nothing to do with subtleties, though the poem is actually far subtler than it appears, despite the and militant rhyme. [So he ought to be] represented by at least one poem of a hortatory public nature. On the one hand, we want the volume to contain the best poems. On the other, if as ?nicky a poet as Sutzkever modi?ed his idea of poetry to this degree for these reasons, can we falsify the record with only nature, Israeli landscape, ruminations, exotica, aesthetic credo? As an editor, of course, Ruth Wisse was perfectly right in wanting to include the poem. But as a translator, I didn?t feel equal to the task. I wrote back to say, ?Please ?nd someone else.? But not without a twinge of guilt. I asked myself: Does my responsibility to the vanished culture require that I make the attempt? Do I have the luxury of aesthetic choice? ecently I f0und myself on the other side of the fence?or, to be more exact, on both sides of it. Ariel Bloch and I just translated and edited a collection of Dahlia Ravikovitch?s The Window: New and Selected Poems, drawing upon ?ve volumes of poems published between 1959 and 1986. In the 1986 volume, Real Love, there?s a section of overtly political poems, under the heading ?Sugyot be-Yahadut bat Zmanenu? (?Issues in Contemporary Judaism?). At ?rst we omitted all but one of these poems?on aesthetic grounds, we told ourselves: they seemed to us declamatory and shrill (as is often the case with political poetry), far less com- plex and subtle than most of Ravikovitch?s work. This view was supported by Ravikovitch herself, who said in a phone conversation that many of these poems were ?newspaper verse.? ?They were good when they were written, at the time of the war in Lebanon,? she told us. ?But now, six years later, some of them seem outdated, too sharp; they don?t all hold up as poems.? She left the editorial decision to us, with the understanding that we would make the decision on aesthetic grounds. We had decided to include only a token sample of these political poems when our good friend and col- league Chana Kronfeld made us rethink the whole question. To omit these poems, Chana suggested, would be tantamount to censorship. As it happened, I?d had an experience of censorship in Israel, where I lived between 1964 and 1967. I?d written a journalistic account for Midstream about my experiences as an American in Jerusalem in the period just before the 1967 War, and I was told I had to have it cleared by the censor. This gentleman, wearing his army khakis, sat behind a little gooseneck lamp and read through my piece as I stood waiting for his stamp of approval. He paused for a while over some sentences in which I had written that people were crowding into the supermarket to stock up on imperishables?sugar, ?our, macaroni, matza, cooking oil. ?Now, how will that look in lebutz l?aretz [abroad]?? he said, half to himself and half to me. ?Won?t it create the wrong impression?? I was caught between con?icting emotions. As a witness, I was com- mitted to telling the truth, the whole truth; to omit what?s disagreeable is a form of lying. At the same time, I understood his anxiety that the whole truth might in some way be problematic. That memory came back to me when I heard the word ?censorship.? At the kitchen table, Ariel and I wrestled with the issues. The Window, we told ourselves, is a collection of New and Selected Poems, its purpose is to give the reader a notion of Ravikovitch?s best work. Many readers Will be drawn to the political poems because they are so shocking, perhaps to the neglect of the other poems. We imagined the reviewer who would fasten on a line like Tina/e lo borgz'm pa?amayz'm, ?You can?t kill a baby twice,? as an occasion to talk politics, instead of attending to a body of work written over a period of thirty years. On the other hand, these poems represent a real turning in Ravikovitch?s career as a poet. Much of her earlier work is about her personal suffering and has been faulted for solipsism; in these more recent poems, she brings her sensibility and power of expression to new subjects: the sufferings of women, the anguish caused by war, the resemblances between the plight of the Palestinians and that of the Jews, the moral dilemma of the Israelis. Such a dramatic turn in her work cannot be glossed over without seriously distorting the picture. Precisely because we were putting together a repre- sentative collection, we had an obligation, a responsi- bility, to include the political poems. Even the aesthetic argument against these poems wasn?t entirely convincing to us. Granted, we included what we consider to be Ravikovitch?s best work, but clearly some poems in the manuscript are better than others. Besides, we wondered, aren?t the political poems somewhat more effective than we at first admitted? They certainly make us feel uncomfortable; isn?t that a sign of their power? And ?nally, is our standard of judgment really just ?aesthetic?? Isn?t it colored by some underlying anxiety? There?s the rub. These poems were written in Hebrew for an Israeli audience that has the competence?the knowledge of the language, as well as of the literary and political context?to make sense of them. To trans- late them into English is to thrust them into a different milieu, where they may very well be misunderstood, perhaps even misused. Consider the following lines from Ravikovitch?s ?New Zealand?: Kvar en od ta?am lehastir: anakhnu nisayon she-lo ala yafeh, tokhnit she-nishtabsha, krukha be-ratzkhanut rabba midai. No point in hiding it any longer: we?re an experiment that didn?t turn out well, a plan that went wrong, tied up with too much murderousness. Given the ?sanctity? of the Zionist dream, ?an experi- ment that didn?t turn out well? is almost a blasphemy. Here Ravikovitch gives voice to her anger and frustration in Hebrew, in the closed circle of the family, where all angers start. I ?rst heard words like these over Friday night chicken in Jerusalem, where I lived with my family between 1984 and 1986. What does it mean to send such words out into the world? There is no doubt that they may be misunderstood. When I quoted this stanza to an American who is a devoted Zionist, he became incensed: ?How could Dahlia say the experiment has failed? Why, of all the states established since World War II, Israel is clearly the most successful! And what?s this stuff about going off to New Zealand [the ostensible subject of the poem]? Doesn?t she know there are race wars in New Zealand?? We were more troubled, of course, by the anticipated response of readers who are by no means sympathetic to Israel. ?Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Ashkelon; lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, lest the daughters of the uncircumcised triumph (II Samuel 1:20): If we ?publish? these poems in the streets of Berkeley and New York, won?t some people rejoice, perhaps even triumph? Is that what we want? Is that what Dahlia wanted? There are some further difficulties in the stanza I have just quoted. The last line here reads kruk/Ja be-ratzkbanut rabba midai. In our literal version of the poems we had first translated the Hebrew noun ratzk/yanut as murder- ousness. But the syllable-counter inside me, the little metrical abacus, got all rattled: ?You can?t say ?murder- ousness,? Chana. Too many syllables, too many s?s. Try ?savagery.?? Who was the tempter who whispered that? Wasn?t I secretly glad there were too many syllables, too many s?s, so we?d have to go looking for another word, one we could live with more easily? But then is ?savagery? really more bearable? And by how much? Other possibilities we considered were ?too much murder in the air? and ?too much murder on everyone?s mind.? Both are strong, though not strong enough. Ratzkbanut is not just something in the air, like pollen: the Hebrew word refers to both the mentality and the action. ?Murderousness? sounded odd to me; though I found it in Webster?s and the OED, I wasn?t sure I?d ever heard it spoken or seen it in print. Finally, it was the very THE POLITICS OF TRANSLATION 73 clumsiness of the word that appealed to me. Glibness, ease?perhaps those are the real dangers when we are talking about painful realities. ?Murderousness? carries a certain measure of conviction in its very awkwardness. There?s one ?nal dif?culty in this line. What does Ravikovitch mean by ratzk/Janut rabba mz?daz', ?too much murderousness?? Is ?too much? simply a loose way of saying ?a lot of?? In that case, should we smooth out the logic in English, in order to prevent further mis- understanding? Or is she saying, rather, that the very existence of nation-states inherently involves a certain level of murderousness; that a low level, while not desirable, may be tolerable, like a low rate of tar and nicotine? We followed the Hebrew phrasing exactly, hoping that our readers would come up against that question on their own. *?kak In one of her recent poems, ?Jewish Portrait,? Ravi- kovitch writes about the Diaspora Jew who ?looks around in fear.? Was that, we wondered, our initial response in confronting these political poems? ?How will it look to the goyz'm?? was one of the theme songs of my childhood, as the daughter of Russian Jews in Four Poems by Dahlia Ravikovitch the Bronx, and of. Ariel?s, as the son of German Jews in Nahariya. Our ?nal decision about what to include was in some way in?uenced by the poems themselves. In the most haunting of Ravikovitch?s new poems, ?Hovering at a Low Altitude,? the speaker presents herself as a witness to the rape of a young Arab girl, and describes herself satirically as watching from a distance and doing nothing: Makhshevotai ripduni bi-r?da shel mokh. Matsati 1i shita pshuta me?od, lo midrakh regel ve-lo ma?of? rekhifa be-gova namukh. My thoughts cushion me gently, comfortably. I?ve found a very simple method, not with my feet on the ground, and not ?ying? hovering at a low altitude. ?My thoughts cushion me gently, comfortably??the irony of these lines was painful to us. In deciding about which poems to include, we didn?t want to ?hover at a low altitude?; we didn?t want to make a ?comfortable? choice. The decision not to be political would have been, after all, a political decision. Translated and edited by Charm Bloc/9 and Ariel Bloc/J. Excerpted from The Window (The Sheep Meadow Press, 1989). NEW ZEALAND No point in going to Africa now. Plagues, famine, the human body can?t take it. Brutality. They ?og people with bullwhips. Asia?it would make your hair stand on end. Trapped in the mountains, trappedin the swamps. The human body can?t take it, who?s got the strength? As for me, He maketh me to lie down in green pastures in New Zealand. Sheep with soft wool, softer than any wool, graze there in the meadow. Truehearted people herd sheep there, on Sundays they go to church in their quiet clothes. 74 TIKKUN VOL. 4, NO. 4 No point in hiding it any longer: we?re an experiment that didn?t turn out well, a plan that went wrong, tied up with too much murderousness. What do I care about these people, or those? screaming till their throats are hoarse, splitting ?ne hairs. Anyway, too much murderousness. I?m not going to Africa and not to Asia, either. I?m not going anywhere. In New Zealand, in green pastures, beside the still waters, generous people will share their bread with me. BLOOD HEIFER If one he found slain, lying in the ?eld, and it he not known who hath slain him, the elders of the nearest city shall take an heifer, and shall strike o? the heifer?s neck. And all the elders shall wash their hands over the heifer and say, Our hands have not shed this blood. And the hlood shall he forgiven them. He took one step, then a few steps more. His glasses fell to the ground, his Skullcap. Managed another step, bloody, dragging his feet. Ten steps and he?s not a Jew anymore, not an Arab? in limbo. Havoc in the marketplace; people shouting, Why are you murdering us? Others rushing to take revenge. And he lies on the ground: a death rattle, a body torn open, blood streaming out of the ?esh, streaming out of the ?esh. He died here, or there? no one knows for sure. What do we know? A dead body lying in the ?eld. Suffering cleanseth from sin, it is said, man is like dust in the wind, but who was that man lying there lonely in his blood? What did he see, what did he hear with all that commotion around him? If thou seest even thine enemy?s ass lying under its burden, it is said, thou shalt surely help. If a dead body is found lying in the ?eld, if a body is found in the open, let your elders go out and slaughter a heifer and scatter its ashes in the river. YOU KILL A BABY TWICE By the sewage puddles of Sabra and Shatila, there you transported human beings in impressive quantities from the world of the living to the world of eternal light. Night after night. First they shot, they hanged, then they slaughtered with their knives. Terri?ed women climbed up on a ramp of earth, frantic: ?They?re slaughtering us there, in Shatila.? A thin crust of moon over the camps. Our soldiers lit up the place with searchlights till it was bright as day. ?Back to the camp, beat it!? a soldier yelled at the screaming women from Sabra and Shatila. He was following orders. And the children already lying in puddles of ?lth, their mouths gaping, at peace. No one will harm them. You can?t kill a baby twice. And the moon grew fuller and fuller till it became a round loaf of gold. Our sweet soldiers wanted nothing for themselves. All they ever asked was to come home safe. 75 HOVERING AT A Low ALTITUDE I am not here. I am on those craggy eastern hills streaked with ice, where grass doesn?t grow and a wide shadow lies over the slope. A shepherd girl appears from an invisible tent, leading a herd of black gOats to pasture. She won?t live out the day, that girl. I am not here. From the deep mountain gorge a red globe ?oats up, not yet a sun. A patch of frost, reddish, in?amed, ?ickers inside the gorge. The girl gets up early to go to the pasture. She doesn?t walk with neck outstretched and wanton glances. She doesn?t ask, Whence cometh my help. I am not here. I?ve been in the mountains many days now. The light will not burn me, the frost won?t touch me. Why be astonished now? I?ve seen worse things in my life. I gather my skirt and hover very close to the ground. What is she thinking, that girl? Wild to look at, unwashed. For a moment she crouches down, her cheeks ?ushed, frostbite on the back of her hands. She seems distracted, but no, she?s alert. She still has a few hours left. But that?s not what I?m thinking about. My thoughts cushion me gently, comfortably. I?ve found a very simple method, not with my feet on the ground, and not ?ying? hovering at a low altitude. Then at noon, many hours after sunrise, that man goes up the mountain. He looks innocent enough. 76 TIKKUN VOL. 4, N0. 4 The girl is right there, no one else around. And if she runs for cover, or cries out? there?s no place to hide in the mountains. I am not here. I?m above those jagged mountain ranges in the farthest reaches of the east. No need to elaborate. With one strong push I can hover and whirl around with the speed of the wind. I can get away and say to myself: I haven?t seen a thing. And the girl, her palate is dry as a potsherd, her eyes bulge, when that hand closes over her hair, grasping it without a shred of pity.