Mother tongue: Polish Joined: February 18, 2003 Location: Poland
Verse or prose? Vote!
Following the discussion which started with Post #175215, I submit to you six translations of the Renaissance Sonnet 18 by Louise Labé, five of which are in verse and one in prose.
Whose verse do you like the best? Do you prefer verse or prose? You are allowed to vote for more than one option.
For the French original please refer to Post #175215, however in my opinion you can also appreciate English without speaking the SL.
Here are the six translations, as numbered in the original thread (Thank you, Nanna for putting them together! With the new editor it takes hours to copy and paste and fix and refix. Just adding sonnet numbers to the original post took me half an hour this morning because the post fell apart as a result):
Kiss me again, kiss, kiss me again;
Give me the tastiest you have to give,
Pay me the lovingest you have to spend:
And I’ll return you four, hotter than live
Soals. Oh, are you sad ? There! I’ll ease
The pain with ten more kisses, honey-sweet,
And so kiss into happy kiss will melt,
We’ll pleasantly enjoy each other’s selves.
Then double life will to us both ensue:
You also live in me, as I in you.
So do not chide me for this play on words
Or keep me staid and stay-at-home, but make me
Go on that journey best of all preferred:
When out of myself, my dearest love, you take me.
Kiss me, re-kiss me, kiss me again and more!
Give me a flavoursome delicious one,
give me an amorous ambitious one,
and I’ll give you a hot reply of four!
Oh, are you sad, let me relax you, please,
with ten sweet ones, kiss after honeyed kiss,
for by this means, the mingling of our bliss,
we’ll best enjoy each other at our ease.
Here is the double life lovers discover -
each lives in self and also in the other.
Permit me, love, to share a crazy thought:
I’m always sad when living self-contained;
my happiness can’t grow and be sustained
unless I take these risks and sally forth.
Kiss me again, rekiss me, and then kiss me again, with your richest, most succulent kiss; then adore me with another kiss, meant to steam out fourfold the very hottest hiss
from my love-hot coals. Do I hear you moaning? This is my plan to soothe you: ten more kisses, sent just for your pleasure. Then, both sweetly bent on love, we'll enter joy through doubleness,
and we'll each have two loving lives to tend: one in our single self, one in our friend. I'll tell you something honest now, my love:
it's very bad for me to live apart. There's no way I can have a happy heart without some place outside myself to move.
Kiss me. Again. More kisses I desire.
Give me one your sweetness to express.
Give me the most passionate you possess.
Four I'll return, and hotter than the fire.
There, did they burn? I'll change that hurt to pleasure
By giving you ten others—all quit light,
Thus, as we mingle our kisses with delight,
Let us enjoy each other at our leisure.
This to teach one a double life shall give.
Each by himself and in his love shall live.
Allow my love this mad and foolish thought:
I'm always sad when living so discreetly,
And never find my happiness completely,
Unless a sally from my self I've sought.
Kiss me again, kiss me again and kiss me. If you give me one of those long, loving kisses of yours, I will give you four more kisses, hotter than live coals. And if you are feeling sad, I will soon ease the pain by giving you ten more sweet, gentle kisses. Our kisses will melt into another, and we will relax and enjoy being with one another. We will each lead a double life. You will live in me, and I in you. I know these are mad thoughts. But I wish, at least, that Love will give me the pleasure of holding them in my mind. And even if I am forced to lead a discreet and mundane life for a while, I take pleasure in the thought that I could be happy when you take me on a mad journey beyond myself.
Even though (using Vista and MS Word 2007) I had the devil's own time discovering how to remove the grid from the online version, I still like Kirkup's version the best. His version is wonderfully translated* - hot and randy - and makes me laugh.
But --- Dunstan Martin's version is thoughtful and sober. I like that too.
I am not fond of the prose.
Nanna
* Translated. Since I don't read French, I actually do not know, for, I am looking strictly at the English version.
Expert Mother tongues: Polish, English Posts: 2907 Joined: September 13, 2008 Location: United States
RE: Verse or prose? Vote!
I am sorry to tell you this, Jacek, but I only like the prose, maybe this is why people started attempts to translate the sonnets as prose, since they were very hard to translate as verse, if one wanted to preserve the form of a sonnet.
If the many many sites and blogs are any indication, then half the people in the world are confused about the difference between verse and prose.
Definition of Prose Literary Term
Prose is ordinary language that people use in writing such as poetry, stories, editorials, books, etc. The word prose is derived from the Latin word 'prosa' meaning straightforward.
Prose comes in two types of text - narrative and expository. Narrative text is defined as "something that is narrated such as a story. Expository text is non-fiction reading material such as Description, Analysis, Classification etc.
Translation of Poems
When a poem, especially an epic poem such as the Iliad, is translated from one language into another, the poem is often converted into prose.
What is the difference between Prose and Poetry?
Prose is not confined to poetic measures and is usually grouped into paragraphs. Prose lacks a specific rhythm or the rhymes that can be found in poetry.
Poetry aims to convey ideas and emotional experiences through the use of meter, rhyme, imagery in a carefully constructed metrical structure based on rhythmic patterns.
What is Prose Poetry?
Prose poetry combines the characteristics of poetry with the apparent appearance of prose containing traces of metrical structure or verse. Prose poetry deliberately breaks some of the normal rules of prose to create heightened imagery or emotional effect.
What is Free Verse? Free verse is a form of poetry which uses fewer rules and limitations using either rhymed or unrhymed lines that have no set fixed metrical pattern. The early 20th-century poets were the first to write what they called "free verse" which allowed them to break from the formula and rigidity of traditional poetry.
Mother tongue: Polish Joined: February 18, 2003 Location: Poland
RE: Verse or prose? Vote!
With the arrival of the following #7 from Nanna I haven't been able to make up my mind...
O kiss me, kiss me, re-kiss me, and kiss!
Be reckless, impudent, hot-headed, bold!
O woo me! Pursue me! Kiss me like this:
And I’ll give back fifty as hot as red coals.
There, is it hurting? Come, let’s soothe the pain.
I’ll give you sixty others just like these.
And so we’ll kiss again and then again,
While we enjoy each other at our ease.
I know there’s fire within your unshaped clay,
And so, allow me, love, to share my happiness:
O let’s make burning passion rule today.
I’m fond of doing what I love to do,
Yet cannot feel supreme delight unless
I have my other wild encounters, too.
Thanks to her acclaimed volume of poetry and prose published in France in 1555, Louise Labe (1522-66) remains one of the most important and influential women writers of the Continental Renaissance. Best known for her exquisite collection of love sonnets, Labe played off the Petrarchan male tradition with wit and irony, and her elegies respond with lyric skill to predecessors such as Sappho and Ovid. The first complete bilingual edition of this singular and broad-ranging female author," Complete Poetry and Prose" also features the only translations of Labe's sonnets to follow the exacting rhyme patterns of the originals and the first rhymed translation of Labe's elegies in their entirety.
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