Category: Medieval Literature

Well, that was fast. After expressing a wish that A. S. Kline would live to complete his new verse translation of Wolfram’s Parzival, (as Chrétien de Troyes failed to do with his own Perceval), I got an email from him with a link to the finished product on April 14^th.

And I’m enjoying it very much. I haven’t been trawling it for minor errors, but I can report that it conveys Wolfram’s tale of Parzival in well-written rhyming couplets. If that sounds good to you, read it here.

My other post on Parzival only covers prose translations. Those are in a different world from verse translations. They’re more academic, produced for scholars who want to know precisely what Wolfram said and—insofar as this is possible for a translator to convey—how he said it. Certainly you can read them for fun, but…not a lot of people do.

In a sense, verse translations are less accurate than prose translations because of all the juggling and refashioning that must be done to make them rhyme and scan. However, in another sense they are more accurate because, as poems, they give you an experience that is closer to that of the original audience. The prose translations are interesting and informative, but because they’ve changed both the language and the literary genre, the poetic experience is quite disrupted. Compare a prose version of this passage from Parzival to a rhyming one:

This flying image is far too fleet for fools. They can’t think it through, for it knows how to dart from side to side before them, just like a startled hare. Tin coated with glass on the other side, and the blind man’s dream—these yield a countenance’s shimmer, but that dull light’s sheen cannot keep company with constancy. It makes for brief joy, in all truth. [Cyril Edwards]

Or

Now, such a winged metaphor,

Flies all too fast for the unsure,

Slower minds will grasp it not.

It will speed past, and be forgot,

Gone flying like a startled hare.

Thus with a dark mirror we fare,

Or a blind’s man’s dream, all dim

Do features seem, to us and him;

They shine not with a steady light,

Grant but a momentary delight. [A. S. Kline]

Feel the difference? Edwards gets points for precision, Kline for sensibility.

You might wonder whether a poem can ever really be translated. According to the venerable linguist Roman Jakobson, “The pun, or to use a more erudite, and perhaps more precise term—paronomasia, reigns over poetic art, and whether its rule is absolute or limited, poetry by definition is untranslatable. Only creative transposition is possible: either intralingual transposition—from one poetic shape into another, or interlingual transposition—from one language into another, or finally intersemiotic transposition—from one system of signs into another, e.g., from verbal art into music, dance, cinema, or painting.” That may be so, but a good interlingual transposition is worth something, right?

Market forces have decreed that Jessie Weston’s transposition from 1894 is worth $0.99 as a digital download, so I got it to compare with Kline’s. Here are their versions of the two passages presented as samples in my post on prose translations:

Kline	Weston
For I shall now retell a story, That doth speak of great loyalty, Womanly womanhood, anew, And a manly manhood, so true, In every trial, his steel prevailed, His heart within him never failed, While his hand, in battle, likewise Seized on many a glorious prize; Honour-seeking, in nature slow, (For thus do I hail my hero) A sweet sight to woman’s eye, Yet a bane to the heart, thereby; Yet one, indeed, that shunned all wrong. Is yet unborn to this fine tale, Yet shall be born here, without fail, The lad of whom this story’s told,   With all its wonders that I unfold.	A tale I anew will tell ye, That speaks of a mighty love; Of the womanhood of true women; How a man did his manhood prove; Of one that endured all hardness, Whose heart never failed in fight, Steel he in the face of conflict: With victorious hand of might Did he win him fair meed of honour; A brave man yet slowly wise Is he whom I hail my hero! The delight he of woman’s eyes. Yet of woman’s heart the sorrow! ‘Gainst all evil his face he set; Yet he whom I thus have chosen my song knoweth not as yet, For not yet is he born of whom this wondrous tale shall tell, And many and great the marvels that unto this knight befell.
‘OPEN!’ To whom? Who goes there?          ‘To enter your heart thus, I would dare.’ ‘Then you try too narrow a space.’ ‘How so? Can I not seek a place? I promise not to jostle and press, I would tell you wonders, no less.’ ‘Is’t you, Lady Adventure? Pray How does he fare, your knight, this day?	‘Ope the portal!’ ‘To whom? Who art thou? ‘In thine heart would I find a place!’ ‘Nay! If such be thy prayer, methinketh, too narrow shall I be the space!’ ‘What of that? If it do but hold me, none too close shall my presence be, Nor shalt thou bewail my coming, such marvels I’ll tell to thee!’ Is it thou, then, O Dame Adventure? Ah! Tell me of Parzival, What doeth he now my hero?

As you can see, Weston’s style is solidly Victorian, which is fine for people who like that kind of thing. But I’m happy to have a fresh version.

Regarding the bold lines above, it’s always interesting to see how translators handle the key description of Parzival, “er küene, traecliche wis.”  Members of the prose gang render it variously as “A brave man slowly wise” (Mustard & Passage), “Dauntless man, though laggard in discretion!” (Hatto), and “Bold was he, laggardly wise” (Edwards), while the modern German prose side of the Reclam edition says “Kühn war er, und nur langsam gewann er die rechte Lebenserfahrung” (“He was bold, and only slowly did he gain the right life experience”).

Kline’s “Honour-seeking, in nature slow” may seem an outlier, but how do knights seek honor in chivalric tales? Through deeds of valor, of course, i.e. by being brave and bold, so I’m cool with that. Wolfram doesn’t say anything about “nature,” but “in nature slow” gives me the same impression as “he’s a slow boy,” which feels right for Parzival, although it does raise the question of whether it was his own nature or his isolated upbringing that made him “slow”—a question that would require its own blog post, essay, or tome.

Edwards’ “laggardly” is a good reflection of Wolfram’s eccentric diction (and the same goes for his “storywise, yet unborn” – see the other bold lines above about being “unborn to this fine tale”); this is an aspect of Wolfram’s style that doesn’t come through very strongly in either Kline or Weston.

In the intro to his prose edition, Edwards specifies aspects of Wolfram’s Parzival he wished to preserve in his translation: richness of imagery, neologisms and nonce words, personification, the “frequent grammatical leaps and bounds” of its syntax, a sense of “playful arrogance,” and unusual constructions such as double or triple genitives (e.g. “woman’s eyes’ sweetness”). Some of these considerations will inevitably fall by the wayside if you set out to translate the work as rhyming couplets—you can’t do everything.

This is why I said in my previous post that “no one in our time has been insane enough publish a rhyming-couplets version. Jessie Weston did it in 1894, but translation standards were looser then.” What I meant was that with our current standards for literary translation, anyone who puts a rhyming version out there and dares to call it a “translation of Wolfram’s Parzival” will be swarmed by nitpickers with endless quibbles about the lack of double genitive constructions or whatever.

In contrast to Edwards’ warning that his translation imitates Wolfram by giving the reader “a rough ride,” Kline says he decided to “tidy Wolfram up” so the text could be “one to enjoy for the general reader.” Weston described her verse translation as both “faithful to the original text and easy to read,” which is kind of hilarious considering that the original text is notoriously hard to read. But by “faithful,” she probably meant “tells the same story.” Pan out a bit and you’ll see this approach is in tune with medieval literature. Someone handed Wolfram an incomplete and rather basic French tale of Perceval and the Grail and asked him for a German translation, and he responded by producing this unbelievably elaborate shroom trip. If he could see how many pains scholarly translators are taking with his work today, I think he’d be perplexed. He’d punch them in the arm and say, “Bro, just make up your own version! And make it rhyme!” Then he’d gallop off after a startled hare.

Translating Wolfram’s Parzival has got to be a total nightmare, though it’s probably also fun.

His style is, by his own admission, comparable to a startled hare darting this way and that. This applies to individual sentences but also to the entire narrative. Some questions you may ask yourself when reading Parzival include: Did we already meet Plihopliheri in a previous chapter or was that Plippalinot? Is everyone in this book related? How much cousin marriage is going on here? Where did those guys come from and why are they attacking that castle? Why are we talking about the neutral angels again? How many times will I have to read this sentence before I understand it? And many more.

There are three published prose translations of Parzival: a joint effort from 1961 by Helen Mustard and Charles Passage (who aren’t characters from Toast of London but probably should be), a 1980 Penguin Classics edition by A.T. Hatto, and a fairly recent effort by Cyril Edwards for Oxford World’s Classics (2004). No one in our time has been insane enough publish a rhyming-couplets version. [Update: in fact, there is a new verse translation. See here.] Jessie Weston did it in 1894, but translation standards were looser then.

I have a soft spot for Cyril Edwards’ translation because when he was working on it, he came to St. Andrews to speak to the German medievalists. He gave us a very informative presentation about his own choices and how they compared to previous editions. I particularly remember how proud he was to have found the most accurate possible translation for “ramschoup” in Book IX. Apparently after laborious research he determined it was “purple moorgrass.” Our professors thought this would sound oddly specific in context – other translators were content to call it “straw” and it’s hard to imagine one character telling another, “I don’t have furniture but you can sit on that pile of purple moorgrass over there…” – but he couldn’t bear for his research to have been in vain and insisted on keeping purple moorgrass because that’s what ramschoup is! And indeed, there it is on p. 204 of the book: “Then they went back to lie on their purple moorgrass, by their coals.”

Having recently skimmed all three translations, I suspect Mustard & Passage is the most readable. However, research into medieval literature and culture is always uncovering new things and solving little mysteries, so the fact that it came out in 1961 probably means it has more errors than the other two. These are unlikely to matter if you’re reading it for fun but if you’re a grad student, watch out.

Hatto’s has the most prosaic feel – he tends to collapse sentences or shift their parts around to avoid some of Wolfram’s twists and turns.

Both Hatto and Mustard/Passage tried to calm the startled hare of Wolfram’s style to make the reading experience less confusing. Edwards, on the other hand, says in his introduction that “this translation, in the interest of trying to convey something of Wolfram’s stylistic originality, will give the reader a rougher ride than its predecessors.”

Here are some excerpts to give you a sense of the different translations. First, from the prologue:

Mustard and Passage: I mean to tell you once again a story that speaks of great faithfulness, of the ways of womanly women and of a man’s manhood so forthright that never against hardness was it broken. Never did his heart betray him, he all steel, when he came to combat, for there his victorious hand took many a prize of praise. A brave man slowly wise – thus I hail my hero – sweetness to women’s eyes and yet to women’s hearts a sorrow, from wrongdoing a man in flight! The one whom I have thus chosen is, story-wise, as yet unborn, he of whom this adventure tells and to whom many marvels there befall.

Hatto: I will renew a tale that tells of great fidelity, of inborn womanhood and manly virtue so straight as never was bent in any test of hardness. Steel that he was, his courage never failed him, his conquering hand seized many a glorious prize when he came to battle. Dauntless man, though laggard in discretion! – Thus I salute the hero. – Sweet balm to woman’s eyes, yet woman’s heart’s disease! Shunner of all wrongdoing! As yet he is unborn to this story whom I have chosen for the part, the man of whom this tale is told and all the marvels in it.

Edwards: A story I will now renew for you, which tells of great loyalty, womanly woman’s ways, and man’s manliness so steadfast that it never bent before hardship. His heart never betrayed him there – steel he was, whenever he entered battle. His hand seized victoriously full many a praiseworthy prize. Bold was he, laggardly wise – it is the hero I so greet, woman’s eyes’ sweetness alongside woman’s heart’s desire, a true refuge from misdeed. He whom I have chosen for this purpose is, storywise, yet unborn – he of whom this adventure tells, in which many marvels will befall him.

There’s plenty to comment on here but I’ll just point out one thing: both M/P and Edwards have “storywise” where Hatto has opted for the more ordinary “to this story.” Wolfram’s word is “maereshalp” which is almost certainly his own neologism. “Storywise” is a solid translation and makes your ears perk up in the same way as the original.

Here’s what it sounds like when Lady Adventure knocks on the narrator’s heart:

Mustard and Passage:

“Open up!” – To whom? Who are you? – “I want to come into your heart to you.” – Then it is a small space you wish. – “What does that matter? Though I scarcely find room, you will have no need to complain of crowding. I will tell you now of wondrous things.” – Oh, is it you, Lady Adventure?

Hatto:

“Open!” – “To whom? Who is there?” – “I wish to enter your heart.” – “Then you want too narrow a space.” – “How is that? Can’t I just squeeze in? I promise not to jostle you. I want to tell you marvels.” – “Can it be you, Lady Adventure?”

Edwards:

“Open up!” – To whom? Who are you? – “I want to go into your heart.” – That’s a narrow space you want to enter! – “What of it, even if I barely survive! You’ll seldom have cause to complain of my jostling! I want to tell you of wonders now!” – Oh, it’s you, is it, Lady Adventure?

Big differences here in how Lady Adventure’s long response is translated. Edwards’ version might be closest to the original (“waz denne, belibe ich kume?* min dringen soltu selten clagen: ich wil dir nu von wunder sagen“) but Hatto’s sounds the most like something you might actually want to read aloud.

Which reminds me – the ideal way to experience this story is to sit with some friends and hear it recited. After all, according to Wolfram, it isn’t even a book and reading is for losers.

But however you experience it, a long engagement with this story will feel like an exhaustive tour of a Gothic cathedral that leaves you spent but filled with admiration.

Photo credits: baby hares by Jang Woo Lee, purple moorgrass by Elke Freese, Wolfram von Eschenbach in the Codex Manesse at: http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/cpg848/0294

You can access a verse translation by A. S. Kline for free here!

*(And btw I’ll admit to not being sure what “belibe ich kume” means – anyone want to enlighten me there?)