What They Might Have Said…
A Bow-Wow-Shop Competition
Philip Morre
A short while ago the appearance of a translated sonnet by Gaspara Stampa (Padua 1523 - Venice 1554) on another website, and my meditations thereon, gave me the idea for a new Bow-Wow-Shop Competition: What They Might (even Should) Have Said. First here's the sonnet, in the original Italian:
Gaspara Stampa: Rime, CXIV
Mille volte, signor, movo la penna
per mostrar fuor, qual chiudo entro il pensiero,
il valor vostro e 'l bel sembiante altero,
ove Amor e la gloria l'ale impenna;
ma perché chi cantò Sorga e Gebenna,
e seco il gran Virgilio e 'l grande Omero
non basteriano a raccontarne il vero,
ragion ch'io taccia a la memoria accenna.
Però mi volgo a scriver solamente
l'istoria de le mie gioiose pene,
che mi fan singolar fra l'altra gente:
e come Amor ne' be' vostr'occhi tiene
il seggio suo, e come indi sovente
si dolce l'alma a tormentar mi viene.
As it would be unsporting to reproduce another man's efforts only to slight them, I offer a version of my own, which I can call uninteresting with impunity:
A thousand times, my lord, I move my pen
to prove outwardly what inwardly I know:
your high courage and your proud brow
where Love and glory like two eagles reign;
yet he who sang the Sorgue and the Cévennes
with great Virgil and Homer assembled now
could not together your true virtues show:
cause enough that my poor words refrain.
Therefore it is right I turn my mind
to the long story of my suffering's joys,
that are mine alone among our human kind,
and to how Love keeps his court behind
your lovely eyes, and sallying forth destroys
so delicately my heart's pretended poise.
It seems to me that such attempts are necessarily unrewarding, except in a technical, crossword-solving sense, because Stampa's greatness lies in her absolute mastery of a now dead courtly convention. What she has to say is completely without interest - for all that a small amount of biographical background can have us hoping that there might be an element of satire in her over-the-top lauding of Collaltino di Collalto, that (one imagines) rather wooden and snobbish rugger-blue type, who was really only happy when he was off somewhere selling his sword with the boys: having fucked and chucked poor Gaspara, he was soon back to laying siege to the perfidious English in Boulogne, in the pay of Henri II.
No, what we admire in la Stampa's artistry is not what she says (which could be made mildly more interesting by substituting 'loveless' for 'lovely'), but her way of saying. Possibly the eleventh line in this sonnet is a bit feeble (and worse in my English), but generally it is a performance of absolute grace and assurance, a little ballet in language. In the Italian language. Felicities such as 'Amor ne' be' vostr'occhi' are simply not translatable. One might arrive in passing at the odd pleasing effect, but it is very rarely going to be the same effect: I quite like 'delicately' for example - but it's a liberty anyway.
To my mind, the only useful way to render these lines is in a 'plain prose translation' such as that adopted by George Kay in his excellent Penguin Book of Italian Verse (1958) - or alternatively one can go down a different street altogether:
How often, Smartiboots, I've dreamed a contract
to broadcast what my secret scars know well,
as you prance by with another on your
pommel,
and me at the curbside with my suitcase packed.
But even the twerp who warbled at Di's last act,
or famous Simon and elusive Garfunkel,
could not get a tune from truths I dare not tell;
besides, your past rancours counsel tact.
So I've launched instead an anonymous blog
on the sad history of our needy collusions,
which distinguish me not markedly from your dog.
That the fireworks of our lust are certainly fusions
is cold comfort to me here whistling through the fog
for you to sweetly return and relight my illusions.
And here we get to the point: it was penning the above that has led me to propose the new Bow-Wow Shop competition, wholly, I believe, in the spirit of this enterprisingly debunking site:
What they might have said
The competition is open to all. Any poem, contemporary or ancient, by friend or foe, Pindar, Prior or Prynne, is fair game. Some metrical similarity to the original should be retained and ideally the new version might be underpinned by biographical fact or rumour, as in Gaspara's case. It will be judged by the editor and myself and the best results will of course be published in a forthcoming issue. While there are no precise length guidelines, don't go on for too long, certainly no longer than the original.