Saedi, Ghareeb (2018) Foreign Affinities : Arabic Translations of English Poetry and their Impact on Modern Arabic Verse : A Discursive Approach. PhD thesis. SOAS University of London. http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/30281 Copyright © and Moral Rights for this thesis are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners. A copy can be downloaded for personal non‐commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder/s. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. When referring to this thesis, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given e.g. AUTHOR (year of submission) "Full thesis title", name of the School or Department, PhD Thesis, pagination. Foreign Affinities Arabic Translations of English Poetry and their Impact on Modern Arabic Verse: A Discursive Approach Ghareeb Saedi Thesis submitted for the degree of PhD 2018 School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics SOAS, University of London Abstract This is the first discursive study to examine the Arabic translations of a number of major modern poems in the English language in particular T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” and Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”. These translations were done by the Arab translators who were themselves modernist poets, including Badr Shākir al- Sayyāb, to whom a separate chapter is dedicated as a case study. The thesis begins by underlining the relationship between translation and modernity by reviewing some critical studies and translational strategies. The framework allows me to approach the given poems comprehensively, since this study argues that poetry is not only a linguistic composition but also a socio-cultural construct. Thus, this study treats each of these translations as a discursive process comprising three contexts: situational, verbal and cognitive. The situational context highlights the background of these poems and each one’s importance in its own system. It also reveals the reasons why Arab modernists were drawn to these poems. The verbal context studies the Arabic translations of the selected poems. It provides a comparative analysis, although its aim is to emphasize specific stylistic issues which function more than others in the target system. The cognitive context underlines the impact of these English poems on Arabic modernity on formal, stylistic and thematic levels. Finally, the thesis covers the main trends in the translation of English poetry into Arabic, and in so doing it presents a new approach. It also paves the way for more studies to explore further aspects of these works of translation. 3 Table of contents Abstract ........................................................................................................................ 3 Table of contents ......................................................................................................... 4 Introduction ................................................................................................................. 6 Chapter 1 An Overview of Critical & Translational Studies .................................. 23 1.1 An outline of modern Arabic poetry studies .................................................... 24 1.1.1 Modern Arabic poetry in the 19th and 20th centuries .......................... 24 1.1.2 Spatialization as a poetic discourse in al-Sayyāb’s experience ............ 40 1.1.3 Tradition and modernity in Arabic poetry ........................................... 49 1.1.4 Translating Perse by Adūnīs ................................................................. 57 1.2 Pound’s translational contribution ............................................................. 63 1.2.1 Translation as a vitalising tool in modernity ........................................ 64 1.2.2 Imagism and translation ...................................................................... 65 1.2.3 Pound’s translation method ................................................................ 67 1.3 Poetry translation strategies ....................................................................... 70 1.3.1 Holmes’ strategies ................................................................................ 70 1.3.2 Lefevere’s strategies ............................................................................ 72 1.3.3 Umberto Eco: translating old text into different modern translations74 1.4 Concluding remarks ..................................................................................... 76 1.5 Methodology ............................................................................................... 79 Chapter 2 The Arabic Waste Lands ....................................................................... 85 2.1 The situational context ................................................................................ 92 2.2 The verbal context ....................................................................................... 99 2.2.1 The title, the epigraph and the dedication .......................................... 99 2.2.2 The Burial of the Dead ....................................................................... 103 4 2.2.3 Death by Water .................................................................................. 130 2.3 The cognitive context ................................................................................ 140 2.4 Concluding remarks: .................................................................................. 154 Chapter 3 Translating Whitman’s “Song of Myself” into Arabic ........................ 157 3.1 The situational context .............................................................................. 168 3.2 The verbal context ..................................................................................... 176 3.2.1 I celebrate myself ............................................................................... 176 3.2.2 I believe in you my soul ...................................................................... 184 3.2.3 With music strong I come .................................................................. 192 3.2.4 I am the poet of the body and I am the poet of the soul .................. 198 3.2.5 Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son .............................. 208 3.2.6 I do not despise you ........................................................................... 211 3.2.7 I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable ............................ 215 3.3 The cognitive context ................................................................................ 221 3.4 Concluding remarks ................................................................................... 234 Chapter 4 Al-Sayyāb’s Translational Contribution .............................................. 236 4.1 The situational context: al-Sayyāb’s engagement with English poetry .... 236 4.2 The verbal context: .................................................................................... 254 4.2.1 Journey of the Magi ........................................................................... 255 4.2.2 The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter ................................................. 270 4.2.3 The Shadow of Cain ............................................................................ 279 4.3 The cognitive context ................................................................................ 292 4.4 Concluding remarks ................................................................................... 308 Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 311 Appendix .................................................................................................................. 319 Bibliography ............................................................................................................. 323 5 Introduction Translation, as a general concept, functions in most activities: writing, speaking, art, music, design and so on. All of them are regarded as forms of translation. We communicate with each other, whether artistically or ordinarily, by translating ideas, feelings etc. Literature and translation have always worked hand in hand. History shows us that these two activities have been practised in various ways in the classical world as ancient civilizations interacted with each other. Thus, the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh and other philosophic and scientific texts were translated into Babylonian languages. Greeks translated some Babylonian and Egyptian texts. Babylonians translated texts from Persia and so on. Translating literature was at the heart of their interaction since some sciences and philosophies were embodied or written in literary forms. Furthermore, the history of literature has shown us that many poetic movements have been based on translation. In the West, Roman poets ‘indirectly’ translated Greek literature into their works. For example, Homer’s the lliad resembles Virgil’s the Aeneid on thematic and stylistic levels. In an introduction to his translation of the Aeneid, David West notes that ‘the first words of the Aeneid are “I sing of arms and of the man …” (arma virumque cano). Since the lliad is the epic of war, and the first word in the odyssey is “man”, Virgil has begun by announcing that he is