Translation Studies

ISSN: 1478-1700 (Print) 1751-2921 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rtrs20

Brodsky Translating Brodsky: Poetry in Self-

Translation

Jerzy Jarniewicz

To cite this article: Jerzy Jarniewicz (2016) Brodsky Translating Brodsky: Poetry in Self-
Translation, Translation Studies, 9:1, 114-116, DOI: 10.1080/14781700.2015.1015160

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14781700.2015.1015160

Published online: 27 Feb 2015.

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TRANSLATION STUDIES, 2016
VOL. 9, NO. 1, 114–123

BOOK REVIEWS

Brodsky Translating Brodsky: Poetry in Self-Translation, by Alexandra Berlina,

New York, Bloomsbury, 2014, 232 pp., £60 (hardback), ISBN 978-1-62356-173-4

For theoreticians of literary translation, self-translation proves a serious challenge, as it under-

mines some of the most important premises on which translation as traditionally understood
rests, such as the primacy of the source text over its later versions. With the merging of the
author and the translator into one person, the seemingly obvious concept of original as
opposed to translation becomes deeply problematic. In the case of such bilingual, self-translat-
ing writers as Samuel Beckett, we tend to speak not of translations, but rather of different ver-
sions, without prioritizing one over the other. The mere chronological fact that one version
came later does not mean that it is less original. Beckett’s Waiting for Godot or Endgame
appeared first in French; their English versions (or translations) were written a few months
later, after their first theatrical productions, when Beckett could verify his plays on stage
and modify them accordingly. In consequence, the later (English) versions, though having
French texts as their source, can be deemed richer, more exact, and closer to the author’s pre-
sumed intentions. Beckett’s self-translations into English are by no means mere copies of the
original – they are texts of the same artistic quality, and, one would argue, the same authority,
as their French predecessors.
But examining self-translations may also be an inspiring method of interpretation, a
problem more of literary criticism than translation theory. Aleksandra Berlina’s monograph
Brodsky Translating Brodsky is a good example of this. Less an attempt to re-examine trans-
lation as determined by a variety of its contexts than an important contribution to inter-
national Brodsky studies, Berlina’s book uses the poet’s self-translations to arrive at detailed
reinterpretations of his work.
In 1980, having spent eight years in the US, Brodsky started translating his poetry into
English, producing 55 self-translations, often introducing significant changes; he also regularly
cooperated with translators of his work. In Berlina’s study, the self-translations function as
authorial comments on his own poems, but, more interestingly, are often seen as extensions
of the source text which have to be taken into account in critical interpretations. In this
way Berlina redefines the concept of translation, looking at Brodsky’s poems rendered into
English by the poet himself as if they were variants of his original poems, comparable in
status to Beckett’s self-translations. It seems that what interests her most are the interpretative
and aesthetic effects of the changes made in the process of self-translation, rather than their
cultural, linguistic or political determinants, though the latter are also within the scope of
her critical attention.
Berlina is not afraid of making strong, even provocative statements: that translation studies
is a form of comparative literature, for instance. She goes even further, arguing for “the use of
translation studies as a tool”, since “translation analysis is an interesting way of studying lit-
erature (or culture), not the other way round” (p. 5). Her readings of Brodsky’s translations
provide ample evidence of this radical approach which intentionally subordinates translation
studies to literary criticism. Berlina’s “comparative” temperament finds its fulfillment here:
apart from confronting Russian originals with their English translations, she draws
 TRANSLATION STUDIES 115

explanatory parallels with other poems by Brodsky or works by other authors, Russian or
otherwise. Consistent with her approach, she hardly refers to works on translation theory –
her bibliography, though extensive, lists no more than half a dozen books on theoretical
aspects of translation. Her priorities are stated already in the subtitle: “Poetry in Self-Trans-
lation” – what interests her primarily is literature, not translation. Sasha Dugdale, quoted
on the back cover, seems to recognize this, claiming that Berlina’s book is “an illuminating,
playful and highly original guide to the great poet”.
Poetry first, seems to be Berlina’s credo. And her book is structured accordingly. It offers a
series of meticulous close readings in which Berlina analyses, often line-by-line, a rich selection
of individual poems, starting from Brodsky’s first translations and including his three Nativity
poems, four elegies, poèmes à clef, “Centaurs” and “Sextet”. These poems are always discussed
in their triangular relationship: Russian versions, sometimes transliterated, are supplemented
by literal English translations and then set against Brodsky’s renderings into English. Berlina
moves between the three corners of this triangle, focusing on the differences between the literal
translation and Brodsky’s English version, but nearly as often refers us to the Russian texts to
discuss formal qualities that may disappear.
Underlying Berlina’s analytical method is a problematic though unacknowledged assump-
tion: that there is something like a neutral, word-to-word translation, which can be used as a
reference point for the discussion (and evaluation) of the formal and semantic changes in lit-
erary translations. And yet Berlina’s literal translations, undeniably helpful to the reader with
no knowledge of Russian, very often undermine their own status of allegedly neutral texts.
There is no way of escaping linguistic or poetic indeterminacy. Ambiguity, vagueness and
polysemy characterize all levels of language. In almost all her literal translations Berlina
thus leaves space for indecisiveness, offering alternative solutions, though in most cases
these are limited to the choice between the definite and the indefinite article. And yet it is deba-
table if, for example, he regarded everything as enormous is indeed a literal translation of the
Russian yemu vsye kazalos ogromnym (p. 49): the two phrases, however close in meaning, are
not mere copies of each other. Literal translation is already a creative act of interpretation, one
of the many possible readings, as Berlina herself has to admit whenever she resorts to footnotes
and additional commentaries.
The bulk of the book is composed of detailed close readings of concrete poems and their
English versions: Berlina brings to her analyses critical intelligence, meticulous attention
and deep contextual knowledge. Moving freely between cultures and literatures, she looks at
Brodsky’s poetry not through a telescope that would give us a compressed view of the
whole, but a microscope that lets the eye peer into the poem’s tiniest cells. In her readings,
despite the risk of over-interpreting, seemingly marginal or trivial changes are reclaimed as
meaningful. Everything seems worthy of her critical attention.
Some of the differences between Brodsky’s originals and his self-translations form larger
patterns, or, as Berlina calls them, leitmotifs. In the final chapter of her study she identifies
two. The first is the use of sexual allusions, which seem to be more frequent in the translations
than in the source texts. According to Berlina, the reason for this lack of symmetry lies in the
two cultures’ different degrees of permissiveness: Russian being supposedly less liberal in
sexual matters than Anglo-American. The other leitmotif is the recurring image of “hurtful
horizons” – here again, Berlina supplies evidence that this image appears in Brodsky’s trans-
lations significantly more often, which she explains as a reflection of the poet’s personal situ-
ation. Berlina claims that this image’s higher frequency in his English translations not only
coincided with but was also triggered by Brodsky’s emigration. It seems natural, then, that
she suggests interpreting the image as the line dividing Brodsky’s new homeland from his
native Russia.
116 BOOK REVIEWS

These more general reflections on emerging patterns, mechanisms and recurring themes
which link Brodsky’s translations with his condition of an émigré belong to the most interest-
ing fragments of Berlina’s study. Self-translation is here translation by someone who is himself
– to use Salman Rushdie’s phrase – a translated man. The target language is Brodsky’s foreign
tongue, the language of his exile, branded by the poet’s personal predicament. Translating his
own poetry into English might have had a therapeutic function for the poet, helping him to
cope with his sense of estrangement, but, as Berlina demonstrates, it was also an opportunity
to use the effect of alienation, Brechtian and yet existentially authenticated, for artistic
purposes.
Berlina interprets some changes – for example, the greater regularity of rhyme patterns – as
Brodsky’s attempts to affect American literary conventions and, more specifically, to question
the dominant position of free verse in American poetry of the period. That target culture lit-
erary conventions determine a translator’s choices sounds banal. Berlina argues for something
less obvious: that in Brodsky’s case we speak not of a passive response to these conventions, but
rather a challenge launched by the bold newcomer against what he saw as literary shortcom-
ings of his new culture.
Berlina’s illuminating and often provocative study is worth a careful reading, if only to see
how she manages to integrate Brodsky’s self-translations with the poet’s oeuvre and link them
with his dislocated biography. The seriousness with which she treats these translations as
rewritings reflecting the poet’s artistic and existential choices makes her final statement –
that “Brodsky in English becomes more Brodskian” – not just a witty paradox, but a convin-
cing, insightful conclusion.

Note on contributor
Jerzy Jarniewicz lectures at the University of Łódź. He has published nine critical books on
contemporary Irish, British and American literature, including The Bottomless Centre: The
Uses of History in the Poetry of Seamus Heaney (2003) and Ekphrasis in the Poetry of Derek
Mahon (2013), and has written extensively for various journals. He is editor of the literary
monthly Literatura na Swiecie (Warsaw) and has translated works of many novelists and
poets, including James Joyce, John Banville and Seamus Heaney.

Jerzy Jarniewicz
University of Łódź, Poland
jjarniew@uni.lodz.pl
© 2015 Jerzy Jarniewicz
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14781700.2015.1015160

Roman Theories of Translation: Surpassing the Source, by Siobhán McElduff,

Abingdon and New York, Routledge Monographs in Classical Studies, Routledge, 2013,
266 pp., £85 (hardback), ISBN 978-0-415-81676-2

“My aim here is twofold,” asserts Siobhán McElduff in the introduction to her welcome and
stimulating new study of Roman translation: “to show both overall tendencies in Roman the-
orizing about translation, and how Roman ideas about translation shift in tune with individual
needs and circumstances” (p. 3). It is an ambitious task but, with often remarkable concision,