Hollander Memoir American eBook

7/30/2019 Hollander Memoir American eBook

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MEMOIR AMERICAN


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MEMOIR AMERICAN

Benjamin Hollander

dead letter office

BABEL Working Group

punctum booksbrooklyn, ny


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MEMOIRAMERICAN Benjamin Hollander, 2013.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

This work is Open Access, which means that you arefree to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work

as long as you clearly attribute the work to theauthors, that you do not use this work for commercialgain in any form whatsoever, and that you in no wayalter, transform, or build upon the work outside of itsnormal use in academic scholarship without expresspermission of the author and the publisher of thisvolume. For any reuse or distribution, you must makeclear to others the license terms of this work.

First published in 2013 bydead letter office, BABEL Working Groupan imprint of punctum booksBrooklyn, New Yorkhttp://punctumbooks.com

The BABEL Working Group is a collective anddesiring-assemblage of scholar-gypsies with no leaders

or followers, no top and no bottom, and only a middle.BABEL roams and stalks the ruins of the post-historical university as a multiplicity, a pack, lookingfor other roaming packs and multiplicities with whichto cohabit and build temporary shelters for intellectualvagabonds. We also take in strays.

ISBN-13: 978-0615808628

ISBN-10: 061580862X

Cover Image: details from Lucas van Valckenborch,Tower of Babel (1594), Louvre Museum.


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Table of Contents

V

Whose Babel

Like a Rumor through the Fact ofTranslation

Oscarine and Jacques and Me

Like a Rumor

Clear, Concise, Correct: A Drama

The Eloquence in Question:Reznikoffs Manner

Brandon Brown and Benjamin Hollander

References

1

3

7

9

17

21

35

55


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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank the editors ofA Review ofTwo Worlds: French and American Poetry in

Translation, Sagetrieb (Spring and Fall, 1992),Charles Reznikoff Issue, and Bombay Gin #32,

where sections of this manuscript first appear-ed.


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V

I take my title from the French word for memory and theAmerican word . . .

You take American to sound French,Amricain . . .

I take my title . . .

You take it to sound . . .

But if memory serves me

I am neither French nor American

(bound)


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Memoir American

Benjamin Hollander

WHOSE BABEL

You can only be invited to have your say ...

(which I did)

when Guy Bennett and Beatrice Mousli asked me toparticipate in a conference

in 2003, at the University of Southern Cali-fornia, which chronicled the historical andcontemporary correspondences between French

and American poetry, in translation. I was on apanel with, among others, the translators PierreJoris and Juliette Valery. To the questions Guyand Beatrice asked us to consider, I first spoke


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about Like a Rumor Through The Fact of

Translation, as well as to the family story ofOscarine, Jacques Derrida and me, and, later,towards a book which existed like a rumor, forJuliette and Emmanuel and me.


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LIKE ARUMOR THROUGH THE FACT OFTRANSLATION

Guy and Beatrice have asked:

What is the original text in translation?

What is the nature of collaboration in translation?

What, exactly, is the relationship between source andtarget text changing?

(so, among all these poets and translators, Illbegin with a simple claim)

I am no translator. I am (the) other, the sourceof someone elses beautiful or miserable trans-lation.

Theres little work in being the source ofsomeone elses beautiful or miserable trans-lation, something Walter Benjamin instinctively

knew when he refused to call his classic essayThe Task of the Translated.I dont mind being translatedin fact, I look

forward to it in precisely the same way one


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anticipates returning home. In other words, or

in the others words, being translated is apersonal story, sometimes an extension of afamily story, as if my poetry might not have ahome without it.

Guy and Beatrice have asked: What is theoriginal text in translation? But given the storyIm about to tell, I can only ask: What is theoriginal text if not in translation? In otherwords, for me, how could it exist otherwise butin the other languagefirst?

This is not an academic story. This is not amy poetics story. Its a much more personalstory inscribed in my book, The Book Of Who Are

Was, a collection of poems where characters orfigureslike lost and found letterstraversetime, encounter each other, correspond, andappear and disappear, as words do intranslation.

As it was written, the book depended on ahope and a question:

How would a future reader be implicated inthe theatre of its writing, as if in collaborationwith the writer?

Or more to the point: how would the familyhistory I told within it reach this reader, so thatthe book itself would become a correspondingfamily history between me and another who

found (herself in) it outside the time of itswriting.

This (therefore) will have been the storyabout the nature of collaboration in translation,


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BENJAMIN HOLLANDER |5

the family story of Oscarine and Jacques and

me.


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OSCARINE AND JACQUES AND ME

In 1992, I am invited to The Center of Poetryand Translation at Fondation Royaumontaroyal medieval abbey turned cultural center 30miles north of Paris on the Oise Riverto haveexcerpts of my unpublished manuscript, TheBook Of Who Are Was, translated by a collectiveof translators. The book begins with a citation

from the philosopher Jacques Derrida, whichreads in translation: This (therefore) will nothave been a book. Other words of his are em-bedded in my narrative.

Among the translators at Royaumont in 1992is Oscarine Bosquet, who takes up the task offinishing the translation of the text once I leave

the collaborators at Royaumont.Oscarine and I correspond over the years, in

which time she marries. In 1997, six monthsbefore the book is published in English withDouglas Messerlis Sun & Moon Press, a con-densed French versionLe Livre De Qui Sonttaitappears under Oscarines signature. Itscertainly not the first time a translation existsas a published book while the original is stillforthcoming. Still, I wonder: Whatand whereis the original text if not in translation? And


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how could it exist otherwise but in the second

language first?When the book is issued in English, I send a

copy to the philosopher Jacques Derrida, whomI dont know, but who writes me a beautifulnote, and I admire it so much that I name it tofriends, a letter. I wonder, however: which bookis he admiring? He must, I assume, have seenthe French edition six months earlier. He musthave seen it, I assume, not because he knowswho I am as a poet, but because he knows whothe translator has become over the years: thetranslator Oscarine Bosquet who hasyesmarried the son of the philosopher Jacques

Derrida, whose words, This (therefore) will nothave been a book, are cited in translation inBenjamin Hollanders The Book Of Who Are Was,the hope of which depended on how futurereaders would be implicated in the theatre of itswriting, as if in collaboration with its writer. Or,more to the point, on how its writer and its

future readers would make of the book itself acorresponding family history outside the timeof its writing, as have Oscarine and Jacques,who have written with me: This (therefore)will not have been a book, never only a book,never only an academic story, but a much morepersonal story about the nature of collaboration

in translation:How could the book exist otherwise?


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LIKE ARUMOR

for

Juliette and Emmanuel and me

re: the question,

What, exactly, is the relationship between source andtarget text

changing?

Did I tell you I was born in Israel? Well, Ill getback to it, as one source. In the meantime, let

me say:If I am the source of someone elses trans-

lation, how does the translation change me andthe poem?

The source of my poem nme wassounded in the dark: I turned off the lights, theappliances, double locked the door, drew thecurtains, and I started writing without seeingthe words before me. After a half hour, Iswitched on the lights. Letters were spiralingand circling into each other on the page. I saw


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three syllables over and over, which I pro-

nounced nme, almost like an omen: nmenme nme. It sounded like a figure on therun, like a rumor. A scare tactic in the dark. Itworked. On me.

It worked so well that I lost sight of thethree words actually spelled out before menot nme, but O No Me, a startling bit ofself-recognition, as if the whole time I hadsounded nme, I couldnt know or see theme in it, as if the word scared me out of myown skin. Is this what Oppen meant when hesaid: When the man writing is frightened by aword, he may have started. I started itlike a

rumor.When Emmanuel Hocquard and JulietteValry saw it, their translation and publicationof this poem started another rumor, whichchanged it.

In English, the poem is 2-3 pages. In French,its almost the same. Yet the rumor I hear sug-

gests its reception among the French, and thusmaybe its status, is different, different enoughto have changed it in English.

In French, the small poem has appeared as asmall book. This is Juliettes chapbookherFormat Amricain series. But it was only a smallpoem, only a few pages when I started it.

In French, I hear, it is sometimes taught, theway a book is sometimes taught.

In French, it has appeared in severalanthologies of American poets in translation


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and one time, most curiously, in an anthology

of mostly French poets. In English, my poe-try has not appeared in even one anthology ofmostlyAmerican poets.

In French, its been critiqued in a review ofdetective novels in France, as if it were a book,a novel, long: the reviewer called it a detectivepoem, a pome policiera genre unto its own,I suppose. Maybe thats why, being a genre ofits own in French, no one needs to call it muchof anything in English. These are the rumors Ihear about its reception in French, in trans-lation, so how does the fact of this translationchange my small poem in English? And, if we

are charting the here of there, how does itsthereness in French affect this small poemhere in English?

Well, I make itwhat elsea book, thebook in English it never intended to be. That is,seeing how Emmanuel and Juliette have spreadthe word of this 2-3-page poem like a rumor

through the fact of translation, I write 30 morepages. I follow their lead. And partly because ofthem, I perpetuate the rumor I started.

nme the name becomes a character. Itturns into a figure of speech, Onoma, thecontraction of a Greek phrase meaning, theBeing that is avidly sought. On the run. Like a

rumor. Like, ah, Bartleby the Scrivener. It lurksunder the sign of anomie, the name for whatEmile Durkheim calls urban lawlessness. Afigure on the run like a rumor in Durkheims


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urban lawlessness, it transforms into the

detective poem it never intended to be. InEnglish, it incarnates the atmosphere of thepoem the French reviewer said was like exper-iencing someone after an evening of drinking,when one is too much seeing things ahead oftheir representations. As if its always discover-ing the name it could be but is not. As intranslation: where, Emmanuel says (and I citeit), language itself can turn to rumour.

And so it does with nme, which generatesa long companion sequence called Levinas andthe Policewhere another Emmanuel(Levinas) follows like a rumour what the first

Emmanuel (Hocquard) started. With me. WithJuliette. With Emmanuel, who has written: Totranslate American poetry into French is to gainground, so that the surface area of Frenchliterature is expanded into unexplored zones. Unowned territory. No mans land. NoFrench poet could ever write this, he says.

Yes, I agree: No French poet could everwrite this. But having been born in Israel andgiven my particularly accented and ambiguousrelation to American English, I have to sayabout my poetry a fact Emmanuel alreadyknows: that no American could ever writethis. Which, if my poetry is read in translation

more hospitably than it is at home, makes for astartling bit of non-self (or nonsense) recog-nition: that no French poet could ever writethis which no American [poet] could ever


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write. This No-mans land and this No-One

Land: this being in the poetry of the extra-territorial or, to use Giorgio Agambens phrase,reciprocal extraterritorialities.

Is this the ideal political poetic imaginary? Acurious state to be in which is, curiously, not astate at all but a future condition (tat),unowned territory which is neither Frenchnor American but is negotiated by the rumor ofa poetry which emerges from both, or, if I thinkabout the territory where I am really fromthesource of my sourceswould neither be calledIsrael nor Palestine but the rumor of a landemerging from both, a future condition (tat)

which seeks the name it could be but is not.As in translation.


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V

Second American Fact:My Motto has always been clear, concise, correct.

~Bob Sheppard, NY Yankees Stadium Announcer


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CLEAR,CONCISE,CORRECT:ADRAMA

Actors: B & U

B: Hi, Im calling because Im interested infinding out if you, that is, whether you, have acertain book in stock.

U: Certainly, let me log (you) in.

B: Thank you.

U: Can you give me the title?

B: Yes. (slowly enunciating each word) The Book

Of Who Are Was, by Benjamin Hollander.

U: (heard typing) The Book of Im sorrycould you repeat that?

B: Certainly: The Book Of Who Are Was, byBenjamin Hollander.

U: O.K.let me type it in The Book of Who IWas?


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B: No, Im sorryits are was.

U: Its what?

B: Benjamin Hollanders The Book Of Who AreWas.

U:The Book Of Who Benjamin Hollander Was?

B: No, hes the author.

U: Who?

B: Hollander

U: Of What?

B:The Book of Who AreA.R.E.Was.

U: Oh, The Book of Who You Were. Is that it?(silence on the line) Are you still there?

B: Yes, Im still here

U: Is it The Book Of Who You Were?

B: It is not.

U: It is not? Are you certain?

B: (reading Kamau Brathwaite over the phone)


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it is not it is not it is not enough it is not enough to be free

of the red white and blue

it is not it is not

it is not enough

to be pause, to be holeto be void, to be silentto be semicolon, to be semicolony

So Brathwaite says in History of the Voice:

What I am going to talk about this morning islanguage from the Caribbean, the process ofusing English in a different way from thenorm. English in a new sense as I prefer to callit. English in an ancient sense. English in a verytraditional sense. And sometimes not English atall, but language.

So I wonder, in like-minded correspondence:where a book is somewhat unpronounceable inEnglish, as if the original already existed in avocabulary and syntax alien to native speakersof English, as if it were not at home in its ownskin, as if it were already in translation, sum-moned, as it were, to what could be called TheHouse on un-American Poetry, would it be anymore sayable to an American bookseller if hewere being asked to look for, say, Le Livre DeQui Sont tait?


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Or would its eloquence be in question?


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THE ELOQUENCE IN QUESTION:REZNIKOFFSMANNER

A few weeks ago, rereading Charles Reznikoff, Ithought to write a piece on the fifteenth poemin the second section ofBy The Manner (sic) OfLiving And Seeing [see full text of poem in

Appendix to this section of the essay]. Out of

The Eloquence of Question, and The Elo-quence at Question, the above title was chosenas the one which sounded most correct for apiece still un-written. Why did the eloquence ofhow to say this elude me? I knew that to chooseone title and suppress the others would be totell a story about how one manner of English

gets written under the influence of what doesnot see print. Fumbling in the head for thecorrect preposition, I would force the title tomanifest a fluency in standard English (TheEloquence in Question), which masked afailure of what is not (The Eloquence of Ques-tion).

Unlike the other Objectivists, Reznikoff isnot a poet I have spent much time reading.Perhaps I have avoided him because I have be-come too dependent on how others see him.


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The emphasis is almost always with certainty

on the poets eye. The focus is on focus. Thecritical literature is a naming of Reznikoff thelegal visualist, the neutral observer of workingclass and cityscape, the arhetorical, underrated,prophets eye removing the I from the scene,the precisionary witness excising contemporaryfrom historic particulars, the man of othermens and womens testimony showing itselfwithout his judgment through the clear lines ofhis poetry. All these readings suggest Rezni-koffs confidence in the act of seeing and in theuse of an English that would represent it. Fewconfidently question that confidence, that fo-

cus, that use of English. In fact, when the focusis not on the poets eye, it is on his ability toknow and invoke American speech well enoughto capture its essential rhythms and sounds.There is a decisiveness to that last proposition,and Im not sure about it.

What strikes me about this fifteenth poem,

and the others across this section of the book,is the indecision and questionable fluency ofthe poets voice. Is it or is it not standard

American English? What is standard AmericanEnglish in it and what is accented by an alieninflection. Furthermore, how is an Americanpoets voice transformed when it is written under

the influence of other languages which do not needto manifestly show themselves to be felt presentin the poem, and which we know are evidenced inthe poets life?What of what he hears in another


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languageReznikoff, we know, heard and

spoke Yiddish as a childgets translated intohis misrepresentations of English, whetherintentionally or not? And what of what he hearsof misspoken EnglishReznikoffs mother hada very limited knowledge of Englishgetstranslated into his (mis)representations ofthe poems language? Obviously, this is nearlyimpossible to pin down and detect precisely interms of causal links, but this is not to ignorethe effects of a manner of intonation in some ofReznikoffs work that may suggest somestrange and estranged turns in his use of lan-guage which this poem, in particular, high-

lights.The poem enacts a common enough scene.The speaker witnesses two (most likely) immi-grants sitting on a (most likely) NYC bus andspeaking in what we assume is their (mostlikely) native language (either Greek orItalianthe poet cant decide). A hearing

woman, seated, cant stand hearing it. Thespeaker projects a hypothetical clichd argu-ment, imagining that these immigrants could

just as easily be Jews who, if they knew enoughEnglish, would shut the woman up by claimingtheir status as free citizens able to speak anylanguage they wanted in a free country (either

that or they might become silent). Thewoman, however, will not shut up, and shewants comforting. She jumps up, sits next tothe speaker, and asks his opinion about these


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crazy foreigners unable to speak the native

lingo. Carefully, the speaker rationalizes themens condition and behavior as immigrants.The woman looks suspiciously at the speakerand rushes off the bus, as if she knows (orhears) he is one of them. Finally, the men, inthe best of American, fluent in a language theyhave concealed from the woman, quietly say tothe speaker: Shes a little cracked, isnt she?

On one level, this poem addresses typicalxenophobic assumptions, where the ability tospeak in the common tongue tests an immi-grants worth and place in American society,and becomes a prerequisite for free citizenry

among English Only Americans. Given theopportunity to make their money here, theforeigners debt to the country should be repaidin full in the linguistic currency of their adoptedhome. Anything less is a sign of arrogance andingratitude.

The narrator, of course, is familiar with this

attitude, and so are the two men, whose refusalto speak the language is not from lack ofknowledge but from a resistance to the wo-mans demands. They can distinguish all toowell when and for whom private understandingof a language should be publicly acknowledgedor withheld. The narrator also knows this, but

is willing toperhaps he cant notreveal hisaccent in English, as is shown in the womansreaction to him. But what kind of accent isthis? How can we tell? Does the narrator know


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it himself? Is it Reznikoffs? The answers de-

pend on the paradoxical locutions and wordchoices in the poem.

Two men were seated near me in a bus;well dressed, well-fed; in the forties;

The first two lines frame a perfect descrip-

tion in English, except the two men are in theforties. Its strange to hear this as an era, butnot so strange to hear it as a (common ESL)mistake, where the more appropriate in theirforties would be expected. One might alsoexpect the colon after bus to yield threespecific modifiers for the men, certainly not ageneralized time frame. This is not an isolatedexample of Reznikoffs the-for-their switch,which appears elsewhere in this part of thebook. If we assume Reznikoff is the speaker,then it seems as if he is also formalizing hisaccent, eloquently distancing from the for-

eigners yet overcompensating a bitsoundinghimself a touch foreign in the process. As such,it is the-not-their speech we hear. Curiously,however, and perhaps purposefully, Reznikoffseloquence is not consistent, since he choosesthe colloquial talk to represent how men ofgood breeding and education might, ideally,

speak. Is Reznikoff confused or is he justplaying with our preconceptions about goodEnglish? I am unsure, yet I sense he is doingboth, particularly when the question of what


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English is in question.

When the woman, for instance, says, Whydont they talk American? she may be talkinglike some Americans but not like someone fromNYC, who would most likely say, Why dontthey speak English? One of three things couldbe happening here: First, Reznikoff could becorrectly citing the woman, in which case wehave someone whose language (talk Ameri-can) assumes a down-home antagonismgrounded in mis-projected class differences shediscerns between herself and men of goodbreeding and education, intellectuals who shesenses (even as she does not understand them)

are not of her class (odd that she doesnt noticethat they, like her, are also riding the bus).Second, Reznikoff could be drawing distinctionsbetween American and Englishas the Frenchtranslate from the American, not Englishthusshowing his sensitivity to the differencesbetween the two, a particularly ironic aware-

ness, given his accent across the poem.Finally, he could be somewhat blind to thedifferences, in which case he really believes heknows Englishat least his brand, perhapslearned abroad or influenced by those who havecome from abroadand is not familiar with the

American version. As a Jew, he imagines a

scenario where other Jews, isolated in the samecontext, perhaps like himself, would turn to thewoman and uneasily say, This is a free country,isnt it? If, that is, they knew enough English,


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not American. Reznikoff may be projecting

himself as one of those Jews, whose English isalways learned abroad and accented, howeverslightly, no matter how fluent. Yes, English isnot an easy language to learn, since no matterhow well educated and well-bred one is, it is,after all, recognized as English and not Amer-ican, never echoing smoothly within a certainclass of American speech and society.

If we listen to Reznikoffs language, it is notdifficult to detect its foreign tenor. First, thereis his insistence on Englishnot Americanwhich he, the men, and the imaginary Jewsmight be speaking here. Second, in the best of

formal, eloquent Englishsounding a bit likethe well-meaning lecturerand without a noteof urban contentiousness, he reasons:

You must not be so impatient English is not an easy language to learn.Besides, if they dont learn it, their children will:We have good schools, you know.

The there, there, my dear manner of into-nationas well as the request for under-standingis why the woman looks at himsuspiciously and why she flees the foreigncontamination which Reznikoff, in saying

our contamination, now confesses he exudes.But it is the last few lines that suggest what thiswoman senses, which is Reznikoffs positionamong these other men. It is not only thatthe best of American is an odd turn on the


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best of English (perhaps Reznikoffas out-

siderdoes not know the right way of puttingit), but that the phrase, Shes a little cracked,isnt she, does not sound American or urban

American in its register of bemused reticence.Even if one could argueand I think onecouldthat there is nothing un-Americanabout this expression, it seems strange to methat Reznikoff, who has already marked hisaccent in other ways across this poem, wouldknow it (or know it to be the best ofAmerican). Perhaps my dilemma about whetherthis expression is American or not is exactly thepoint, since its ambiguity puts Reznikoffs

relation to the language (American or English)and the men in question. His accent, as such,is undetermined, provisional and fluid, depend-ing on context. He can mimic the (possibly)

American expression, at the same time as hecan create doubt about its and his authenticitywithin the American language and culture:

seemingly invisiblehe is, perhaps, the mostdangerous kind of their kind.To identify Reznikoff with the speaker and

these men is not to deny his distance fromthem. In other words, his knowledge of Ameri-can and English could be extensive and con-fident enough that he is playfully and ironically

creating this scene outside of himself. Myguess, however, is that the irony has beencomposed after the factperhaps as the poemwas revisedand that it does not preclude the


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accidents of poor standard American English

(as well as the confusion between American andEnglish) which initially surface in the writing ofthe poem. Or it could be that irony and liter-ality are simultaneously exposed here, wherethe mis-locutions are initially unwilled and thenimmediately realized, giving Reznikoff thechance to play with his mistakes for the sake ofthe reader (fluently covering his foreigntracks, so to speak).

If we turn to what Reznikoff said about hisrelationship to language(s), we see that thedistinctionswhether he could make them ornotbetween American and English were not

lost on him. In a 1974 interview with ReinholdSchiffer (Charles Reznikoff: Man and Poet,National Poetry Foundation, 1984), Reznikoffadmits that, American common speech, well, ithasnt got to me, it hasnt got, say, the musicthat Irish speech has, and English, but I try tosupply it. Unlike William Carlos Williams, who

notes in his translation of Sappho that, I dontspeak English, but the American idiom. I dontknow how to write anything else, and I refuseto learn, Charles Reznikoff, as if he were inconversation with Carlos Williams, counters: Idont find anything in American speech as such,but of course my medium is English. My

medium is English, not that I chose it, but, letme say [laughs], God chose it for me, and thatsthe speech I know, somewhat. Obviously,Reznikoffs somewhat could be taken as a


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simple, tongue-in-cheek tag. I suspect, however,

that it could also indicate his lack of confidenceand full trust in the English medium, with thatword medium representing a site not chosen,unowned, perhaps, in some way, outside ofReznikoffs being, even as a native-born

American poet writing in what looks likeEnglish as a first language. It may not be thatReznikoff felt isolated in English (which heclaimed he did not in another interview), butonly that he recognized it as a medium he usedoutside the place he lived and practiced hispoetry. It may certainly be, however, that hefelt isolated in American, no matter how well he

might be able to mimic, in his work, what heheard of this talk.1What I hear, then, in Reznikoffs manner, is a

poem guided by errors in fluency which areevidence of the traces of the language which is notAmerican, influenced by and translated from an

1 Many years later, as I was walking up the stairsdwelling on what Carlos Williams had said, that hedont speak English, but the American idiom. Idont know how to write anything else, and I refuseto learn, I remembered an old friend of Charles,Carl, who was convinced when I visited with himthat my speculation about Reznikoffs so-called un-

American American talk was, well, a bit ambiguous, abit cracked and intellectual. It didnt walk the speechCarl heard from Charles: Why dont you talkAmerican? I heard him say, or so I thought, to me,cause that dont sound like Rezi, to me.


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English which tends to sound a trace of a foreign

accent, even as that accent cant be determined. Ican hear this crossing between American andEnglish as an act of translation, where, inMyung Mi Kims words, a sense of disarticu-lation (which might in this case be Reznikoffsfirst impulses appearing as convoluted mistakesin standard American, perhaps informed ormisinformed by his living under the conditionsof a second language household) comes to anapproximate articulation and fluency in Eng-lish. And I can think of this as the place wherespeech enters and intones the writing: anawkwardness or strangeness or inarticulateness

which might be recognized even as it cant behelped, and which, like The Eloquence ofQuestion, is a little cracked.


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APPENDIX

Charles Reznikoff, By The Well of Living andSeeing, Section 15:

Two men were seated near me in a bus:

well dressed, well-fed; in the forties;obviously respected members of their community;talking together calmly,the way men of good breeding and education talk,and the speech may have been Greek or Italian.I could not hear enough of it to decide.Suddenly a woman seated directly behind them

Began in a loud voice:Why dont you talk American?You live here, dont you?You make your living here?Talk American!

One of the men turned to glance at herand then the two went on talking in Greek or Italian,

calmly, quietly,although every now and then the woman cried out,Talk American, why dont you?

If these men were Jews, I thought,how uneasy they would have become,and their faces would show it.

One of them might even say to the womanif he knew enough English,This is a free country, isnt it?And there would be a noisy argument.Or they might become silent.


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The two men, however, continued to talk,

as they had been doing,and neither turned to glance at the womanor show by gesture or grimacethat they heard her.Finally, she jumped up and sat down beside me.What do you think of these men? she asked.Why dont they talk American?

They live here, dont they?They make their money here!

You must not be so impatient, I said.English is not an easy language to learn.Besides, if they dont learn it, their children will:we have good schools, you know.She looked at me suspiciously

and, when the bus stopped, hurried offfleeing our contamination.One of the men then turned to me and said quietlyin the best of American with not a trace of a foreign accent:Shes a little cracked, isnt she?


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BRANDON BROWN AND BENJAMINHOLLANDER

NOTE: Between 2004 and 2005, and upon histranslation into American English of HoracesLatin Odes, Brandon Brown wrote to BenjaminHollander, who wrote back. This is theircorrespondence, one from Brown, one from

Hollander, both

about the transference of power throughtranslation, about odes which make emp-erors and chancellors kneel, about how toreturn home to disclose the imprint ofthe invaded in the language of themaster. Which means, in effect, to comehome to spy on your own as if youyourself were there to be revealed insomething that needed to be said aboutthe country, something found in anunsealed memoir, aMemoir American.

This correspondence acted without title,once.

If these letters had a title today, they wouldnot stand more revealed


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December 6, 2004

Dear Ben,

Traduttore, tradittore. Translator, traitor.The adage depends on the substitution of thevowel i for u (I for You); its Latin equivalentwould depend on the substitution of con-sonants, the difference between transLationand transDation. Translation: the bearing, car-rying across (I prefer lug across on one handbecause it emphasizes the human body inbetween writings and on the other displays thepain the body suffers in translating.) Trans-

dation: the handing-over of one. At the veryroot of any notion of traitorship (tradership) isthis handing-over. The adage is equational. Theequation in the adage depends on the Englishwords across and over being not only similarin signification but synonymous. But of coursethe difference between make it across the

pool and hand it over, pal is precisely thedifference the adage puns on, making theequation.

But what kind of traitorship is it? In theBenedict Arnoldian sense, the translator be-trays her country by handing-over the preciouscultural commodity of the country. Countrys

wrong. Not country (pater) but no less than themother tongue (mater) is handed over. In thissense the translator is a spy, loose-lipped,spilling the secrets before the torture even


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begins. Do we suppose in our daily practices,

writing poetry, that we are acting in secret(dealing in secrets)? The Benedict Arnoldsamong translators are, of course, the personswho translate the works of their mOthertongue into an Other tongue. What is thetraitorship of the translator who translateswork from the Other tongue into the mOthertongue? Antoine Berman writes:

Every culture resists translation, even ifit has an essential need for it. The veryaim of translationto open up in writinga certain relation with the Other, to

fertilize what is ones Own through themediation of what is Foreignis dia-metrically opposed to the ethnocentricstructure of every culture, that species ofnarcissism by which every society wantsto be a pure and unadulterated Whole.There is a tinge of the violence of cross-

breeding in translation.

The translator is a traitor in that she handsover the safety of the mother tongue. I desireto betray my mother tongue. Unlike JudasIscariot, I will not be paid talents of silver formy efforts.

Nor will I have protection. The translatorlike any spy is at risk.

Love, BB


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December 2004 April 2005

Dear Brandon,

You send me an email and call it a letter, butthe letter as real mail is never sent. Instead, asthe computer jingle goes, youve got mail,though I really dont (like a dead letter). ThoughI get it.

You betray your intention. You dont meanto call something that which it is not. You dontmean to call the email you sent me a letter, adead letter, but you do. Youre probably un-aware that youre betraying your intention. But

you do, and I get it, so youre on to something.Let me tell you: youre on to something. I meanit. Though you might know it.

Let me ask you: how useful is this discussionabout translation to how you and I, I and you,see our place in this world in relation to others?Thats the question. Thats the only question.

Do you really intend to call yourself atraitor? I ask because, for me, its not a questionof literary translation, really. If you call yourselfa traitor, you better mean it. You better knowwhat you mean. I mean it. Do you mean it?

* * *

Certainly, you cant mean ALL translatorswhen you write that, The Benedict Arnoldsamong translators are, of course, the persons


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who translate the works of their mOther

tongue into an Other tongue. Because whathappens, I ask you, when translation is meantas a gift and not as a betrayal?

For example, lets say I offer to translateyour poetry into Latin at the request of a Latinscholar curious about why the anti-imperialpoet Brandon Brown has undertaken of allthings a translation of Horace usually reservedfor Latin scholarsa Horace for whomBrandon Brown has the paradoxical feeling ofawe at his metrical capability and skill, anddisgust at his war-loving, emperor-reveringpolitics. In translating you, then, am I a

Benedict Arnold among translators because Ihave taken the (our) mOther tongue (English)used by you and have offered it up to theLatinists? It depends, of course, on myintention: on whether my translation bearsyour poetry as a gift or betrays it like the horseof a gift. It depends, of course, on ones notion

of translation.Certainly, one conventional notion of trans-lation is one that your letter upsets. When onesays that an act of betrayal is embedded in theact of translation, one usually means the trans-lator thinks she is a traitor to the intention andthe singularity of the poem in the other

language, its original language, lets say. Thatsthe conventional lament

a lament


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the one

you upset.

Instead, you write about Transdation [as]the handing-over of one, about the translatorbetraying the language she was born into, thelanguage she translates other languages into,her own.

Let me say what you may already know: thehand youre handing over is your own.

Isnt it painful to hand ones own hand over?Isnt that the point? Thats the question, theonly question.

It may feel like youre doing translation. It

may feel like were in dialogue about it. It mayfeel this way in the same way it may feel thatyou think you are a traitoralthough thesefeelings may only be excuses or mediums forhanding something of yourself overon yourown.

The question is: what are you really handing

over? And what, in the handing over, do youwithhold?Lets say: any language, like any person, has

its baggagewhat we carry, what we lug, whatwe keep in confidence, perhaps.

And lets say: any translator when hetranslates has to deal with the baggage of his

mother tongue, with what he thinks he knowsbest because hes lived so long with(in) it.

The question is: how does he deal with hisbaggage when he is facing anothers? No doubt:


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he needs to make room for it, but he cant just

accommodate it.No doubt: bad translation would be good

accommodation.Instead, to deal with his own he must figure

out how it relates to the others unlike(ly)baggage, which is not only not an intrusion butwhich he willingly hosts, welcomes, so much sothat he risks the other (hypothetically) saying,get out or so long or make room for me ordont make room for me or I dont care, justleave and include me at the same time. Turnyour baggage inside out, if you have to. Dont

just accommodate me.

In reality, (t)his risk is imaginary. The othermakes no such demands, but that doesnt meanthat the good host doesnt feel compelled tomake them for the other. This profound com-pulsion is what threatens that species ofnarcissism by which every society wants to be apure and unadulterated Whole. It comes from

within that society. It comes from within andturns the one who hosts it inside out. Theirony, of course, is that a society can onlybecome Whole (though certainly not Pure)when this compulsion precisely and exclusivelythreatens its narcissism.

To act on this compulsion is one of the tasks

of the translator, as it is for the Israeli publisherand translator Yael Lehrer, whose imprint, Al-

Andalus, translates Arabic Literature into Heb-rew. To your question, What is the traitorship


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of the translator who translates work from the

Other tongue into the mOther tongue? Lehrermight respond: risky but not risky enough, tosay the least, because when you are compelledto say the most about your countrys barbarous

Arab policy, to translate from the other tongueto the mother tongue is the smallest such signof cultural protest, still a still small (but only astill small) sign, which can in no way normalizethe abnormal relations between occupier andoccupied, although it can, one hopes, threatenand eat at the self-image of a society blind tothe crimes that are being perpetrated in [its]name. Before Israeli readers get to know

Arabic literature, Lehrer writes, they shouldknow AND CARE about the crimes that arebeing perpetrated in their name. At times likethese, it seems that to do anything other thanstruggle against the occupation is to normalizean unbearable situation. By normalize, I meantreat the abnormal, the intolerable, as if it were

routine.The question is, Brandon, if we are writingabout translation (and, as I said before, Im notsure we are), how can one use translation sothat it does not normalize relations; that is, sothat it does notwill noteasily bear andtolerate an unbearable situation? For you, this

means subverting the mastery of form inHoraces poems, which are composed in theservice of the war-loving. For Lehrer, it meansdealing with her mother tongue, Hebrew, in


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relation to the people of the other tongue,

Arabic:

I was born into this conflict, it wasnt amatter of choice. I was also born into theHebrew language, my mother tongue aswell as that of both my parents. Since Ibecame a conscious adult, I have foundthis reality intolerable, but more im-portantly, I have tried to assume respon-sibility for it. I am the expeller, the dis-possessor, the oppressor, the occupier. Itwas I who riddled the tender 13-year-oldbody of Iman al-Hams of Rafah with 20

live bullets; it is I who holds the key tothe locked gate in the wall that separatesPalestinian schoolchildren from theirschool. Yet in any other country, and anyother tongue, I would feel myself a stran-ger, an immigrant. My fierce criticism ofZionism notwithstanding, it created me,

along with several million other nativeHebrew speakers whose only homelandwas established upon the ruins of ano-ther. Knowing this, it is my responsibilityto fight for national and civic equalitybetween Arabs and Jews; to work forhistoric reconciliation based on the Is-

raeli recognition of the Palestinian Rightof Return; for a life of partnership,

justice, and equality.


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To work for historic reconciliation, Israelis

must be integrated into a land they now sepa-rate with a wall. They must see themselves aspart of the Middle East, and this means, in part,as Arab-Jews. Lehrer cites the Israeli historian

Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin:

The category Arab-Jew isnt merelymarking an identity that was and still isthe basis for the consciousness of ArabJews [i.e., Jews who originated in Arablands]: it is meant to constitute a basisfor defining the consciousness of everyIsraeli, the new basis for Israeli identity,

whose existence and right to do so, mustbe premised on their existence in theArab world. As long as Israeli discourse ispremised on the dichotomy Arab vs. Jew,it will be impossible to frame an alter-native. Arab-Jew is, thus, a call forpartnership based on the decolonization

of Jewish identity in all senses andcontexts.

Imagine, then, translation as only one suchcontextperhaps even a modelfor decolon-izing ones identity. To take Lehrers example,this would require us to imbed Arabic

literature into the Hebrew experience; to createa textual middle-ground, an intermediatecultural space that blurs borders but avoids thepitfalls of Orientalism, which distances rather


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than draws closer. Blurring borders means

resisting the hegemonic dictate to separate andrefusing to accept the false binary Arab vs.Jew.

Of course, to resist separation is to insist onintegrating into ones worldview a historyoutside the history one knows. It is to divestoneself of ones old narrative interests. Its clearthat most Israelis like most anyone else wouldfind this difficult, and they would reflexivelyreject Lehrers fight for historic reconciliation.They would see her kind of reconciliation as abetrayal of the national narrativei.e. ourinterestssince they would believe that it is

not up to US to reconcile with THEM but theother way around. And, curiously and ironically,perhaps they would be right. Perhaps it takeswhat some would perceive as betraying onesown (story, language, belief, people etc.) toreconcile with what one perceives as the otherthan ones own (story, language, belief,

people). To fertilize what is ones Own throughthe mediation of what is Foreign, as [Antoine]Berman writes, might first mean to let go ofwhat one privileges as ones own in order toallow what is Foreign to cross. That textualmiddle ground, that intermediate culturalspace, may only be able to come into being

when one dissolves ones own borders, whichmay (but does not necessarily) depend upon abetrayal of the space one inhabits, of what ismine.


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Have not translators who translate work

from the Other tongue into the mOthertongue always considered this question of:what is mine, here, what is yours? And,Brandon, if you think you are betraying thesafety of the mother tongueof what is mine,hereone would have to ask: why would youwant to do this? And what do you think is safeabout it? Might it be worth naming and de-scribing what is safe about a mother tongue?Might it be worth naming and describing whatit would mean to betray that safety as well ashow and why oneyouwould do this?

For myself, not being like you the one in-

vested in the practice of translation, and withthe freedom to speak irresponsibly about thesethings as a poet who only has a feel for thesethings, I return to your feeling of betrayal of themother tongue as a sign of something moreurgent in your approach, something wordsmove towardsthe place [Jack] Spicer takes us

in his letter among letters to Lorca:

Words are what sticks to the real. We usethem to push the real, to drag the realinto the poem. They are what we hold onwith, nothing else. They are as valuablein themselves as rope with nothing to be

tied to. I repeatthe perfect poem hasan infinitely small vocabulary.

Let me say: whatever it is about the choice


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and arrangement of your words in translation

(say, your translation of Horace), or whatever itis about how Horace politically harasses you inthe original so that you desire to politicallyharass Horace back in translation; whatever it isabout the choice and arrangement of any poetswords, they are sticking to something quitereal. And, yes, they are dragging that realityinto your translation and, as deeply, into yourimagination of translation as disclosure. Thereis the urgencythere is the necessity: todisclose. To distance the close. To close thedistance.

To act on the firstperhaps we need a

different word than betrayal. To act on theseconda different word than reconciliation.Perhaps, to act on both at the same time, weneed a double-cross(ing).

Meaning: you take your history, you takeyour place, you ask: how do I (re)turn to what Ihave turned on? That would be the risk, the

double-cross,

the double-crossing where the voices say:alternately

You turn from the poem to translate.

(Whyit could have been the poem you neededto write.)

Or:


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You turn on the poem to translate.

(Whyit could have been the poem you neededto write.)

And:

Your translation turns into the poem you turned

on as if it were the poem you needed to write.But its not, not the poem.Precisely.Its always as if.

Its never the poem (you needed to write?).Why? Simplebecause its the other one, thetranslation, the one outside your story, yourlanguage, your people, which had to be crossed,

As ifin the same way that Horace wentover to the precedent Greek and came back likeany translator bearing in his body language thatwhich took him over from the outside. As if the

translation was one way to get to the poem youneeded to write but was a creation out of stepwith, out of difference with, out of defiance toyour own home, story, language, people. Atleast for you.

For Horace, however, things are different.To be sure, and as I just read in an introduction

to a book of his odes in English, he thought ofhimself as a translator [with] a gift for turningGreek (I first wrote that Greek as Freek)verse to Latin. But Horace was never out of


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step with his own Latin and his own Romans. If

anything, his Greek models for his own poetryonly enhanced his reputation as the rhythm ofRome. And his motives were other than yours,so that when he crossed over to the Greek andcame back with Greek verse for his own Latinodes, he returned and was claimed an

August(an) hero. So were back to intention, thetranslators intention when he crosses. Howdoes oneand not just anyone, but a formeresteemed Chancellor of The Academy of

America Poets (poet Rosanna Warren)crossinto American English Horaces address toCaesar?

dontlet some quick breeze snatch you away from usin your scorn of our vices

here, on earth, may you love great victories,here may you love us to call you Father and

Princeps,

and dont let the Medes go on scot-free, raiding,while you lead us, Caesar.

~Rosanna Warren

Its an American English which comes out of(t)his Latin:

neve te nostris vitiis iniquumocior aura

tollat; hic magnos potius triumphos,hic ames dici pater atque princeps,


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neu sinas Medos equitare inultos,

te duce, Caesar.

And then, of course, here you come, with yourparticularly sound mimicry of the emperor andthe emperors swooning flock, in the secondParade Ode, nailing the helium out of thespectacle floats:

And never tell us our vice is iniquitousOr alter our ardor

By talking. Here your major power can triumph.Here youll love to be dictator, daddy and prince;Never sign us off as equals. Insult the

Other! Caesar seize us! ~Brandon Brown

I see here, Brandon, how you turn onHorace. I see how you nail him, how you spy onhim, how you double-cross his praise of theleader and turn it into a mock commentary on

the royal measure of things. As The ChancellorPoets translation represents Horaces innocentadorned and adoring fans, yours makes themand their Caesar look, well, stupid and stupe-fiedor stupid because theyre stupefied. Itsbrilliant. Its a gas. Its (a) laughing gas. Itsmoving, I mean: its the right move you make to

turn Horace inside out and disclose your graspof the brillianceand your comic disgust at theexerciseof formal power at work here. Yes,your Horace in English calls him on his


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intentions; yes, your Horace in English is not as

safe or predictable or comfortable a read as thegood former Chancellor poets might be--isntthat why chancellors are chancellors, why theirpower is not your power or, as telling, why youare without their power, if that is what they arereally with? But I wonder: as youre crossingHorace, what are you carrying across to yourown? Granted, as a translator, you are spyingon Horace, granted you are turning him overthus, the common translators expression, hesturning over in his grave (sic, my joke)but Iwonder: how do you make this practice usefulfor Americans, for your own? After all, you

know this much is necessary to think throughbecause you wrote about it in the preface toyour translations of Horace:

In this time, with the election byAmerican citizens of a man who is theson of a leader, determined to both

correct the shortcoming of his father andensure the maintenance of a legacy ofmoral legislation, I found it difficult totranslate Horaces unabashed praise ofhis leader, considering my own bodysresistance to mine.

Brandon, I understand your difficulty intranslating this kind of Horace in this time in

America, and I understand the strategy to sub-vert his unabashed reverence. But for whom


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today, in this time in America, is he being

undermined by you? Whose listening? Whatsyour intention? Whats more: if you claim thata translator like any spy is at risk, what is ityou really want to put at risk and leave withoutprotection?

I ask the question because I think it has todo with why we are attracted to our subjectsand what we want to discover and makevulnerable through their exposure. In AQuestion of Accent, Murat Nemet-Nejat asksand brilliantly answers,

Why did Kafka writeAmerika, why was he

attracted to the subject of the UnitedStates? German also accents Amerika.What did he hear in the word Oklahoma?

A wild, alien, distant sound in German,Oklahoma! At the same time, an intimatesound, one of the rare words in Englishwith vowel harmony, which is also, I

imagine, in Czech. Kafka hears in Okla-homa the alien ground in which hisprivate soul can nest itself, the synthesisbetween the powerful and the victim.That is why he associates his open-ended,endless nirvana of liberation in theTheater (Noah's Ark) of Oklahoma. What

is the word Oklahoma after all, but theimprint of the Native American, thevictim, the invaded in the language of themaster, American English: the language


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which embodies that peculiar combina-

tion, victim and victor possessing thesame language, yoked together by fate.

Using American English as a poet is theoutsider, the victim, embracing, emulating thelanguage of the master, being constantly besetby the ambiguities of power.

To hear in a word something intimate andalienwhat else is this but another way offertilizing ones Own through the mediation ofwhat is foreign or through what only appearsto be foreign. It is to acknowledge as ones ownand not ones own the appearance of the alien

ground in which (ones) private soul can nestitself. Or: it is to return home to disclose theimprint of the invaded in the language of themaster. Which means, in effect, to spy onyour own as if you yourself were there to berevealed. Olson

was right: peopledont change. They only stand morerevealed. I,likewise

And for you: whether as a translator or notranslator, whether you think youre in Kansas

(City) or you dont think youre in Kansas (City)anymore, the question is: how to turn to ahistory which is foreign and integral to yoursand then use it once you return to your ownso that you can only stand more/revealed, to


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act the new basis for ones identitythe con-

sciousness whose existence must be premisedon ones existence in an other world?

Yours, Benjamin


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REFERENCES

S

Benjamin, Walter. The Task of the Translator(1923). In Walter Benjamin, Illuminations: Essaysand Reflections, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. HarryZohn. New York: Schocken Books, 1969.

Berman, Antoine. The Experience of the Foreign:Culture and Translation in Romantic Germany,

trans. S. Heyvaert. Albany: State University ofNew York Press, 1992.

Brathwaite, Kamau. History of the Voice. InKamau Brathwaite, Roots: Essays in CaribbeanLiterature. Ann Arbor: University of MichiganPress, 1993.

Brandon Brown and Benjamin Hollander. Bombay

Gin 32 (2006): 176 ff.Hindus, Milton, ed. Charles Reznikoff: Man and Poet.Orono, ME: National Poetry Foundation & TheUniversity of Main, 1984.

Hocquard, Emmanuel. Blank Spots, trans. StacyDoris. Un Bureau sur lAtlantique: Le Gam #2,1997: http://epc.buffalo.edu/orgs/bureau/tb_a.html.

Hollander, Benjamin. In A Review of Two Worlds:French and American Poetry in Translation, ed.Batrice Mousli. Los Angeles: Seismicity Edi-tions, 2005.


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Hollander, Benjamin. Le livre de qui sont etait : cinqse

quences. Grne, France: ditions Craphis etFoundation Royamount pour la traductionfranaise, 1997.

Hollander, Benjamin. The Book of Who Are Was. LosAngeles: Sun & Moon Press, 1997.

Hollander, Benjamin. nme. In Benjamin Hollan-der, Vigilance. Los Angeles: Beyond Baroque

Books, 2005.Hollander, Benjamin, nme, trans. EmmanuelHocquard, Vol. 4 of Format Amricain. Buffalo,NY: Un Bureau sur lAtlantique, 1994.

Horace, Parade Odes, trans. Brandon Brown.Horace: The Odes, New Translations by Contemporary

Poets, trans. Rosanna Warren, ed. J.D. Mc-Clatchy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University

Press, 2002.Lerer, Yael. The Word in Times of Crisis. oznik.com,

November 16, 2004: http://oznik.com/words/041116.html.

Nemet-Nejat, Murat, Questions of Accent.ziyalan.com: http://ziyalan.com/marmara/murat_nemet_nejat3.html. [Originally published in

1993 in The Exquisite Corpse.]Olson, Charles. Maximus, to Gloucester: Letter 2.In Charles Olson, The Maximus Poems, ed. GeorgeF. Butterick. Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress, 1985.

Raz-Krakotzkin, Amnon, cited in Lerer, The Worldin Times of Crises [see Lerer above].

Spicer, Jack. After Lorca. In The Collected Books of

Jack Spicer, ed. Robin Blaser. Santa Rosa,CA: Black Sparrow Press, 1975.


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W. dreams, like Phaedrus, of an army ofthinker-friends, thinker-lovers. He dreamsof a thought-army, a thought-pack, whichwould storm the philosophical Houses of

Parliament. He dreams of Tartars from the

philosophical steppes, of thought-barbarians, thought-outsiders. Whatdistances would shine in their eyes!

~Lars Iyer

www.babelworkinggroup.org


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