After Great Pain: Chill Translation of Dickinson

"After Great Pain, a Formal Feeling Comes—": Hungarian, Chinese, Portuguese

After great pain, a formal feeling comes—The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs—The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,And Yesterday, or Centuries before?

The Feet, mechanical go round—Of Ground, or Air or Ought—A Wooden wayRegardless grown,A Quartz contentment, like a stone—

This is the Hour of Lead—Remembered, if outlived,As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow—First—Chill—then Stupor—then the letting go—

(P341)

Szenvedés után, formális érzés jön—	After great pain, a formal feeling comes—
Idegek sorban, mint Sirkövek, ülnek,	The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs—
Merev a Sziv és kérdi, Ö volt aki birta,	The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
Tegnap, vagy Századonként?	And Yesterday, or Centuries before?
Lábak lépnek, körbe, körbe—	The Feet, mechanical go round—
Föld, vagy Lég, vagy Semmi körül—	Of Ground, or Air or Ought—
A Fauton	A Wooden way
Mely elhanyagolva	Regardless grown,
Egy Kvarc megelégedés, mint egy kö—	A Quartz contentment, like a stone—
Ez az Olom Óra—	This is the Hour of Lead—
Visszaemlékezve, ha tulélve,	Remembered, if outlived,
Mint Fagyoskodok, visszemlékeznek a Hóra—	As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow—
Elöször—Hideg—akor Kábulás—majd az elernyedés	First—Chill—then Stupor—then the letting go—

Translating Emily Dickinson's poem P341 into Hungarian, I realized that the poem itself can be read as a poem about the process of translation. What makes Dickinson's poem a unified, breathing entity in English is distorted, if not lost in the Hungarian. Using Dickinson's cemeterial metaphor, I mourn here those aspects of her work that the translation lays to rest in order to come into its own: 1) Word Choice, 2) The Split Lark of Music, 3) The Swelling Ground of Rhythm, 4) The Alabaster Chamber of Syntax, 5) The Sm(all) of Morphemes, 6) A Buzz of Rhyme, 7) The Carriage of Ambiguity, 8) The Vesuvius of Metaphor, 9) The Quartz of Compression, 10) The Pier of New England.

1. Word Choice

Rest in peace the word "Tombs." In English, the one word "tomb" will do for grave and stone alike. In Hungarian, the word must be made as explicit as is the word "tombstone" in English. Sir (pron. sheer) means to weep—sir, by metaphor, a place to weep. The plural of sir, sirok, sounds too close to sirók which, meaning those who weep, would identify the stone with those who cry at it. Kö means stone. Sirkö means tombstone. Sirkövek is the plural. By making the stone explicit the Hungarian separates the tombstone from what it marks—the grave and its inhabitant. Dickinson's metonymical compression makes the dead (in the rigor mortis of the "Nerves"), the tomb that holds them and the tombstones that mark them, one. Let us mourn the loss of her meaning, place a harebell at the tomb of word choice to soften the grief.

2. The Split Lark of Music

Here lies the mystery and horror of the sound [oo] in "Tombs," a sound that generates deep in the hidden caverns of the throat, sonorous, mournful, blocked by lips that close and round. Sir wheezes out its high frequency, excited [ee], a sound that opens the mouth, reveals the vibrating tongue. And here lies the shrill percussion of "Pain" to be replaced by the soft linger and repetitions of the syllables and vowels in the Hungarian szenvedés. Dickinson's dirge comes in monosyllables. The Hungarian replaces them with arias of megelégedés, visszaemlékezve, elernyedés. "First—Chill—then Stupor—then the letting go" lets go on a monosyllable low frequency vowel [oh]. Elöször—Hideg—akor Kábulás—majd az elernyedés puts up a struggle, especially in that last four-syllable word ending in a the bright high frequency [ee].

Let us place Lilies of the Valley at this tomb, for...