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Discovering Neruda: an Interview with H of that text's own intentions it may be the translator's imagination that is best able to relate it to the intentions of others. Notes 6Rainer Schulte, "The Act of Translation: From Interpretation to Interdisciplinary Thinking," Translation Review, NO.4 (1979), pp. 3-8. , Octavio Paz, "Traduccion: literatura y literalidad," in Traduccion: Schulte's suggestions for translation as re-vitalized critical reading Iiteratura y literalidad (Barcelona: Tusquets, 1971), pp. 7-21. An complement very well Roger Shattuck's recent call for a English translation of this essay ("Translation: Literature and reexamination of "the relations between criticism and its host, Literality") by Lynn Tuttle appeared in Translation Review, No.3 literature." See "How to Rescue Literature," The New York Review of (1979), pp. 13·19. Books, (17 April 1980), pp. 29-35. 2George Steiner, After Babel (New York: Oxford University Press, 70ctavio Armand, Piet menos mia, Special number of the magazine 1975) and Serge Gavronsky, "The Translator: From Piety to Escolios (Los Angeles: California State University, 1976), p. 9. Cannibalism," Sub-Stance, No. 16 (1977), pp. 53-62. BRamon del Valle-lnclan, La lampara maravillosa (Buenos Aires: 3Jorge Luis Borges, "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote," trans. Espasa-Calpe, 1948), pp. 129-30. James E. Irby in Labyrinths. Selected Stories and Other Writings, ed. 9Ernst Robert Curtius, European Uterature and the Latin Middle Ages, Donald A. Yates and James E. Irby (New York: New Directions, 1975), trans. Williard Trask (1953; rpt, New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1963), pp.36-44. pp. 345-346 and Carol Maier, "The Concept of Language in La 4Marilyn Gaddis Rose, "Entropy and Redundancy in Decadent Style: lampara maravillosa," in Waiting for Pegasus. Studies of the Translating Villiers de L'lsle-Adam," Sub·Stance, No. 16 (1977), pp. Presence of Symbolism and Decadence in Hispanic Letters, ed. 144-148. Roland Grass and William R. Risley (Macomb, Illinois: Essays in 5John Felstiner, "Translating Pablo Neruda's 'Galope m uerto," PMLA, Literature, 1979), pp. 77-87. 93, 2 (March 1978), 185-195. Discovering Neruda: An Interview With H. R. Hays* By Jonathan Cohen H(offman) R(eynolds) Hays was born in 1904, When I was trying to write my first book, I in New York City. He took his B.A. at Cornell found the most amazing things in the Reading University in 1925, and his M.A. at Columbia Rooms - the two big ones with their green University in 1928. He has published various kinds lampshades and ecstatic high ceilings - of the of books, including four novels, several works of New York Public Library on 42nd S1.; and one anthropology (his In the Beginnings won the of the most astonishing to me was H. R. Hays' nonfiction award from Putnam in 1963), books of 12 Spanish American Poets. poe~ and of verse-translations from both Spanish (Jimenez, Andrade) and German (Brecht). 12 * * * * * * ** * *** * ** Spanish American Poets, his landmark anthology presenting Neruda (Vallejo and others) in English This book is a mountain pass. How odd was originally published by the Yale University that you don't even know of the mountains until Press in 1943. you are in the pass! I am grateful to H. R. Hays Hays is also the author of about twenty-five for so many gifts, in prose and poetry ... but television plays, and his books have been especially for this gift. translated into Arabic, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, French, Portuguese, German, and Japanese. He is It is in the same tribute that Bly acknowledqes Hays now working on a biography of anthropologist as the one who showed him "how wild Neruda Franz Boas, for Prentice-Hall, and he continues was."1 writing poetry. Hays published his firsttranslations of In 1977, Street Press published a special Neruda's poetry in 1941, in the May issue of issue, H. R. Hays & Spanish America (guest-edited , by myself). This volume opens with a tribute to Hays, written by Robert Bly, called "H. R. Hays as H. R. Hays died on October 17, 1980. This interview was conducted in a Mountain Pass," in which Bly says: May 1980. 29 Decision. He introduced Neruda's work by saying exciting work around. Everybody was reading it. I "it seems likely that when it is better known to an read the poetry in French, because I knew the English-speaking audience he will be recognized in language; when I went to study at the University of the United States as one of the leading poets of our Liege for a year, I really got to learn French, time."2 Although, as Hays has more recently speaking it in Belgium. pointed out, "it took thirty years for the work of ... By the way, I was just reading in the last issue Neruda to penetrate the North American literary of The New York Times Book Review a review of a . establishment,"3 Hays was right about Neruda from biography of Jules Laforgue, which the reviewer the start. ends by saying we need new translations. I have Hays's translations have opened important translated a poem of his, and I like his work. It's new doors for many poets in the United States, and really quite tempting. If I were up and about more, I his translations enrich our own speech, our own art could go and cope with the editors ... and sensibility. Too often the translator is thought of Here's a poem I wrote in the thirties, before I as a mere adjunct to the original work when, in fact, knew Neruda's work: he is being asked to reproduce the totality of the original poetic experience in a natural, expressive English. Hays has given us real translations of MANHATIAN Neruda's poetry and, in doing so, he has made a I have eaten the city. tremendous contribution to American poetry. I have seen myself in a thousand doorways, Who is Hays the man of letters, the Simple as light, poet-translator? Where did his path cross Single as crowds, Neruda's? How have their poetic temperaments The air extinguishes my footsteps. come together? What follows is an attempt to My skin surrounds the shadow of the answer these and other questions about Hays's life monument. and work. The long afternoon, Burning with women's beautiful dresses, *** Flows with the tide of my blood. You have taken the credit for introducing Neruda to Among the public privacies of the sunset the American public in 1943, when you published I can hear the dust falling. 12 Spanish American Poets:' What were you doing The reflection of voices as a poet before this work, in the twenties and Struggles to rise thirties? Like a bird without wings. I have eaten the city, I hadn't really gotten started. Surrounded by musical silence, I have swallowed crowds of pigeons. What about your book of poems called Strange Grass grows on my eyelids. City which you published in 1929? My body is full of windows. 5 Yes, well, that I want to forget. It's too much like the *** stuff of the period ... too sentimental. Yes, you were way ahead of American poets of So when did you begin writing well? recent decades, who have been trying to write surrealist poetry ("heavy with images from the Not till I had been to Europe. In about 1930, I unconscious,"6 as Bly would have it), in an attempt became interested in what was going on there, and to get away from Pound's influence. read the literary stuff. I was studying Flemish There are people today who believe that the writing, the Flemish movement in Belgium. Paul present age of translation began around seventy van Ostayen, one of the Flemish poets, was very years ago with Pound's versions of Cavalcanti, the advanced and very experienced. He published two Troubadours, and the Chinese. Did you know what volumes of criticism and several volumes of poetry, Pound was doing in translation when you began to one of them really wild, with typographical stuff all translate poetry? over the page, all kinds of type and in several languages (French, Flemish, English). I gradually became aware of Pound. You see, I When I first read the French surrealists I had went to Cornell, which was not very humanistic. friends who were sort of involved in it. Charles Nowadays you'll have a young instructor who Henri Ford, for one, later ran a little magazine in knows what's going on, but in those days we didn't. New York called View [1942-47], for which I used to When I attended Cornell in the early twenties, I wrlte.. don't think anyone on the Cornell faculty had ever In 1930 French surrealism was the most heard of Pound. 30 During your early days at Cornell, T. S. Eliot Did you meet any poets and writers in Mexico? published "The Waste Land," and the year you graduated (1925) he published his poem "The I found that Mexican intellectuals were not really Hollow Men." How did you feel about Eliot's poetry very cordial to North Americans; it was very hard to at the time? do anything with them. I did meet one or two writers. There were three Revueltas: a painter, a I liked his work, but I didn't like the way everybody musician, and a novelist, Jose, who was a good started imitating his tone, doing the same thing. novelist, too. (Last I heard he was in a Mexican This got to be a bore very rapidly - there was too jail.) Anyhow, I translated a novel of his, The Stone much Eliotizing all over the place.
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