I do agree that in the excerpts I prefer Brown to Howard but the only improvement your crib makes over Waldrop is the “tumbling” and the “chord.”
Partly I disagree with you on the idea that you express as your goal in a translation, but mostly you just seem to be reading a very old translation as if it were modern. Howard was of that generation that sought to convert to syntactical English rather than preserve some underlying original syntax. French and English use nouns and verbs differently and if you read eg Wallace Fowlie’s Rimbaud you see how awkward and flat it sounds to preserve the syntax without any alteration, especially when you see how Mark Polizzotti and John Ashbery solved the problem. You can see the same issue Howard has if you look at the old Stuart Gilbert translation of l’etranger versus the newer one from tge 80s. British translators were particularly guilty of this. So Constance Garnett’s Dostoevsky is a travesty and Pevear and Volokhonsky sounded revelatorily WEIRD and opened up some new space in Russian even if many quibble with them.
You might find Norman shapiro’s translation interesting for how it struggles to preserve rhyme with syntax. Not always successful but a noble effort.
I have read Fowlie's Rimbaud; I've read Ashbery's. I've read Stuart Gilbert's Camus. I've read both of the Dostoevsky translations you mention. I've read Norman Shapiro's Baudelaire. It's terrible. In fact I own all the books you mention besides Polizzotti & several other translations of each besides.
The problem with, e.g., Fowlie is that he provides a plodding literality. Nowhere do I advocate such an approach. As I note, Brown retains a lyricism (you seem to have missed my point about "elegance"). Howard's is still considered the preeminent translation of Fleurs, which is why I use him as a foil. You seem to feel that I have some obligation to take the state of translation studies into account when discussing how well a given translation works; au contraire.
Really curious, if anyone is still responding here, about the author's take on the Aaron Poochigian version; in quick comparisons for me his sense of the rhythm of the work, with occasional but intermittent rhyme, works well as a fluid, modern (not contemporary, but not not-contemporary) take on the poems. I read his prose as a little more limber than Brown's, although not perfect by any means.
The Richard Howard versions are more musical to my ear, but nothing in English ever really sounds like CB.
I was too kind to Howard.
I do agree that in the excerpts I prefer Brown to Howard but the only improvement your crib makes over Waldrop is the “tumbling” and the “chord.”
Partly I disagree with you on the idea that you express as your goal in a translation, but mostly you just seem to be reading a very old translation as if it were modern. Howard was of that generation that sought to convert to syntactical English rather than preserve some underlying original syntax. French and English use nouns and verbs differently and if you read eg Wallace Fowlie’s Rimbaud you see how awkward and flat it sounds to preserve the syntax without any alteration, especially when you see how Mark Polizzotti and John Ashbery solved the problem. You can see the same issue Howard has if you look at the old Stuart Gilbert translation of l’etranger versus the newer one from tge 80s. British translators were particularly guilty of this. So Constance Garnett’s Dostoevsky is a travesty and Pevear and Volokhonsky sounded revelatorily WEIRD and opened up some new space in Russian even if many quibble with them.
You might find Norman shapiro’s translation interesting for how it struggles to preserve rhyme with syntax. Not always successful but a noble effort.
I have read Fowlie's Rimbaud; I've read Ashbery's. I've read Stuart Gilbert's Camus. I've read both of the Dostoevsky translations you mention. I've read Norman Shapiro's Baudelaire. It's terrible. In fact I own all the books you mention besides Polizzotti & several other translations of each besides.
The problem with, e.g., Fowlie is that he provides a plodding literality. Nowhere do I advocate such an approach. As I note, Brown retains a lyricism (you seem to have missed my point about "elegance"). Howard's is still considered the preeminent translation of Fleurs, which is why I use him as a foil. You seem to feel that I have some obligation to take the state of translation studies into account when discussing how well a given translation works; au contraire.
Really curious, if anyone is still responding here, about the author's take on the Aaron Poochigian version; in quick comparisons for me his sense of the rhythm of the work, with occasional but intermittent rhyme, works well as a fluid, modern (not contemporary, but not not-contemporary) take on the poems. I read his prose as a little more limber than Brown's, although not perfect by any means.
Waiting for the Michael Robbins translation of “Fleurs.”