Poetry Notes

. Poetry Notes Winter 2010 Volume 1, Issue 2 ISSN 1179-7681 Quarterly Newsletter of PANZA humanism, largely purveyed by Inside this Issue Welcome journalists writing in rhyme. In Australia up to about 1910 both these Hello and welcome to the second issue poles exist in symbiosis in the Bulletin. Welcome of Poetry Notes, the newsletter of Although the same poles are found in 1 PANZA, the newly formed Poetry Australia, in Aotearoa they are given a Archive of New Zealand Aotearoa. local authenticity through the local Niel Wright on John Liddell Poetry Notes will be published quarterly colour, particularly the Polynesian and will include information about Kelly’s Heine translations background. goings on at the Archive, articles on At its best in Aotearoa the intellectual historical New Zealand poets of interest, Poetry Archive opening humanism takes Heine and Nietzsche as occasional poems by invited poets and a its masters. German literature is much and book launch 3 record of recently received donations to the most influential; it is still strong on the Archive. Ursula Bethell. Georg Trakl translations The newsletter will be available for free However, although the characteristics of 5 by Nelson Wattie download from the Poetry Archive’s this literature are clear, its success is web site: almost nil. This is because of the endemic banality and facileness which Classic New Zealand http://poetryarchivenz.wordpress.com 6 poetry blight its productions almost totally. Only an occasional poem shows the slightest merit. The established culture Comment by Ivan (jingoistic British Imperialism) and Bootham Niel Wright on John journalism saturated with Sir Walter Liddell Kelly’s Heine Scott’s verse style are the source of New publication by these blights. PANZA translations There is a considerable survival of 18th 7 century literary mores among the less Recently received educated. Scots by origin and education Wellington poet/critic/publisher Niel make a major contribution. A number of donations Wright discusses the 19th century New names can be quoted with large books Zealand translations by John Liddell or bodies of verse to their credit. About the Poetry Archive Kelly of German poet Heinrich Heine. Domett is sufficient. Such anthologies as Canterbury Rhymes (2nd edition Literature in English in Aotearoa had 1883) and New Zealand Verse (1906) already established a literary climate by are not unrepresentative. 1885, one hundred and twenty-five What we have to accept is that this is years ago. What I have to say about this where our English literature begins. It literature holds equally true for prose does not matter that by any standard it is PANZA and verse, but I will direct my remarks appallingly bad: 15th century verse was PO Box 6637 to the verse. as totally bad in England, but still gives Marion Square There are two poles, the popular rise to the Tudor-Elizabethan balladry which the Australians elevate Wellington 6141 Renaissance literature. to a national treasure, and an intellectual . Winter 2010 Although odd poems can be collected, Night lay upon my eyelids – Kelly’s title for all except the two there is only one substantial mass of Upon my lips lay lead, ballads at the end was Love Lyrics (from poems by a poet of this period that is With heart and brain all lifeless the German of Heine), showing the actually good. I lay among the dead. basis of his selection. He dates his This is John Liddell Kelly’s Heine translations of the Love Lyrics 1876-86. Poems, published in his 1902 book How long I cannot tell thee Kelly manages his translations with a Heather and Fern. I slept and never stirred; touch of genius. He lacks the music and Kelly was a Scots journalist who came But I woke, for a gentle beating phraseology which arrest and startle in a to Aotearoa about 1881 and is an elderly Upon my grave I heard. true poet. But Kelly is remarkably man by 1902. consistent in finding language, however He has all the defects of banal, facile “Arise, arise, dear Henry – pedestrian, cliche-ridden or formal it writing in his verse, except for his The endless day doth break. may be, that fits Heine’s poem. Heine translations. Here he produces Begun are the joys of Heaven, Kelly makes it look easy - that is a admirable work, the best translations of The dead are all awake!” supreme merit; but reference to other Heine I know: graceful, simple, genuine translators in verse (from Bowring to renditions. Here alone what Aotearoa I cannot rise, my darling – Wolfe and Lazarus) will show that it is literature in English was capable of up I am sightless evermore; a rare accomplishment. Translation to 1914 is seen at its best and as good as The light hath gone from my eye-lids is not just a matter of language, it is a needs be asked, as good as anything Through weeping oft and sore! matter of culture; the culture of the done since. original poems must be understood, If these poems had been taken as a “I will kiss the night, dear Henry, appreciated, not just the words before model or benchmark by others it would I will kiss it from thine eyes; the translator can reflect the spirit and have had a good effect. Thou shalt see the glorious angels, quality of the text. Kelly was aware that he excelled And the splendour of the skies!” Kelly catches the rapport between himself in his Heine Poems, as he Germans and English just at the right explains in his poem ‘Heine’, which is I cannot rise, my darling, time to capture and transmit the mood representative of his best original work. For a wound bleeds at my heart, of Heine. Kelly allows himself the He acknowledges there the total failure Where a scornful word thou spakest occasional Germanism, by no means a of the rest of his corpus. His self- Once stung me like a dart. blemish. criticism is sound. No more need be Kelly was a contemporary of Hardy, said. “Upon thy heart, dear Henry, Stevenson, Wilde, Shaw, Rider So I was pleased in 1985 to reprint the My hand I will lightly lay; Haggard, Conan Doyle. Against that sort Heine Poems through my imprint The wound will bleed no longer of literary performance, is Kelly to be Original Books. I took them from the And the pain will die away!” seen as a trifler, an amateur, an archaist? 1902 publication, still to be found I don’t think so. His concept of poetry is without too much search in collections I cannot rise, my darling, within the code of the period and his of old Aotearoa books. From my head the blood flows free, execution is simpler, therefore better I reprinted these poems so that they Where I shot me, in my anguish, than most. Kelly almost reaches the would not remain buried, but rather When I was robbed of thee. mode that A E Housman made his own would be flagged up by my notice of a few years later. them. Kelly was confident that his verse “My silken hair, dear Henry, would ultimately be recalled. I consider Upon it I will spread; Niel Wright’s The Pop Artist’s Garland: the Heine Poems to be our only treasure I will make the blood cease flowing Selected Poems 1952-2009 was recently of verse in English from the 19th And heal thy wounded head!” published by HeadworX. century. No other poet of the He is co-founder and administrator for 19th century can be resurrected in equal She begged so soft, so sweetly, the Poetry Archive of New Zealand quantity with so much satisfaction. This I could not say her nay: Aotearoa. His poetry will appear in one swallow makes our spring. I tried from the grave to raise me Issue 14 of the online journal Not all are equally successful, but all And go with my love away. International Literary Quarterly (UK). show the same approach and style; so it seemed best to give them all. At this, in head and bosom, The two best are ‘Nacht Lag Auf My wounds fresh open broke; Meinen Augen’ and ‘Das Ist Der Alte The blood flowed fast and faster – Maerchenwald’; but others I cried – and lo! I woke! have the same qualities. Here is ‘Nacht Lag Auf Meinen Augen’ in its entirety: 2 . Poetry Archive such as a New Zealander, or Aotearoan. pushed into the corner of some other Poetry Archive Not everyone agrees with that. Recently broader structure. The fact is that no opening and book on a TVNZ programme, a panel was human society lives without poetry. I asked to discuss the poetry of James K. would even say that no individual lives launch Baxter. One of the panel opened the without poetry, and the media types discussion by saying that in the referred to a moment ago are fools not hierarchy of the arts, poetry is because they have no poetry in their somewhere below macramé, and this souls but because they don’t know that position was not challenged by anyone it is there; they live in a semi-conscious else on the panel. As long as literary state. opinion is led on our national media by In his book How Art Made the World, fools of that kind, we will have to look Nigel Spivey* has described how the elsewhere for any real insights into our universal need to make art has in fact culture. constructed our very perceptions of The place to look is not in our big what the world is.

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