 A bridge to nowhere
Painful to watch Hafiz or Rumi turned into soulless,
prosaic, meaningless platitudes
By Fereshteh Davaran
September 1, 2003
The Iranian
The one who says us, does not mean you
and me -- Bertolt Brecht
In response to Rob Levandoski's "He
is us", I had always assumed that
expressing wrath in the face of a literary review was a Persian
characteristic.
I now stand
corrected. In his response to my
"Khoda
Hafez Rumi", Mr. Levandoski-although acknowledging the right to
express differing opinions-nevertheless deigns to respond with
epithets like "ridiculous," "silly," "absurd," "false," and
several others that I had elected not to use
in connection with his dear friend's beloved novel. [Manouchehr Parvin's
Dardedel:
Rumi, Hafez & Love in New York]
Mr. Levandoski,
therefore, has not only flaunted the law of karma that I attempted to respect
in my
initial review, but he has demonstrated a lack of respect for intellectual
exchange that has of late become all too common in this country. Many times
Mr.
Levandoski appears to be angry not at what I actually wrote,
but at implications that he has chosen to find in my review. For example,
I
had written that "while the author addresses them [the poets Hafiz and
Rumi] as
'Hafiz jan' and 'Rumi jan', they most often refer to him as 'professor'."
Mr.
Levandoski asks how they should be addressed-"The great poet Rumi jaan?"-and
then calls it "silly" that I ever suggested anything
of the sort. Needless to
say that I did not suggest this. Moreover, Mr. Levandoski has completely
missed my point-the emphasis was not on how Pirooz addressed the
poets,
but
rather on how they addressed Pirooz. In another instance he is angry at
me, and apparently Henry James as well,
for calling Dostoevsky and Tolstoy inauthentic. As scrupulous as James
was, he
never called either Dostoevsky or Tolstoy inauthentic, nor did I suggest
that
he had done so.
I wrote that James criticized (I should have added, "even")
them for using omni-potent, omni-present narrators. Ever since James,
questions surrounding of narrator and viewpoint have been at the
core of
novelistic
innovation and invention. I held that it isn't necessary to adhere to
a Jamesian-or any other-theory: "some great modern and post
modern authors have
defied Jamesian rules, but always by going beyond it."
To be ignorant
and immune
to the literary discourse of one's own era should not be considered
a badge of
honor. Had Mr. Levandoski opted to read and quote me accurately,
he could have saved
himself from having to hold forth on the "absence of ultimate truth" and
the
importance of "subconscious and unconscious." Not that I
would wish to
prevent someone of Mr. Levandoski's obvious erudition from reaching
his audience,
but my point involved the novelistic quest of great writers to try
to catch and
discover voices other than their own, notwithstanding scientific
or psychological theories of truth.
Mr. Levandoski
writes: "In
another mystifying criticism,
Ms. Davaran declares that Professor Pirooz is indeed Dr. Parvin himself
in
literary disguise. That is not much of a revelation." This is
actually not so"
mystifying"-had Mr. Levandoski taken it upon himself to read
the entirety of
the passage in question, he would have found that I quoted Dr. Parvin
himself
on this matter.
Mr. Levandoski asks about my theory of translation
and wants me to cite a few
examples of Dr. Parvin's bad renderings. As any one who has ever
translated
anything knows, while a translator should be good at the language
that she or
he translates from, it is imperative to have mastered the language
that one
translates into. This is all the more crucial when the text in
question is
literary in nature. For this simple reason, despite my years of
studying English
literature and living in the U.S., I don't allow myself to translate
from
Persian into English, unless the text is simply not a literary
one. Poetry, of
course, is another story altogether. In one of the recent issues
of Iranshenasi, Professor Shafii Kadkani-a famous
poet and scholar of Persian Classical literature-writes about the
seriousness
of translating classical poetry. He related how he took an entire
semester to
translate half a line of Hafiz ("beh may sajjadeh rangin kon
garat pir-i mughan guyad") because each word is so densely
imbued with history, philosophy,
religion, literature, and culture.
So instead of citing Dr. Parvin's
many flat,
insipid, and monotone translations, I refer you, Mr. Levandoski,
to the book
itself. Read it, if you will, more closely than you read my review.
Can you
discern any difference in the rendering of Hafiz and Rumi? If
you were to
read translations of English poetry in which Byron, Cummings,
and Dr. Seuss had
exactly the same voice-and a poor one at that-you might be inclined
to think
that the translator had done an inadequate job, whether or not
you could do a
better one yourself.
Mr. Levandoski suggests that because Hafiz
and Rumi are so popular right now
(and it should be noted that much of this mass consumption is driven
by "translations" made by one who has openly professed ignorance
of the Persian
language in which Hafiz and Rumi wrote), it is the right time and
the right place to
use them as a bridge between east and west. But I find it painful
to watch as
hoards of would-be poets take pen to paper and change the poignant,
precise,
and beautiful words of Hafiz or Rumi into soulless, prosaic, meaningless
platitudes.
Mr. Levandoski asks whether these poets themselves
wouldn't prefer to
be translated, even if poorly. Unlike Dr. Parvin, I can't really
claim to know
what Rumi and Hafiz would want. But if I had written some of the
world's
most beautiful poetry, I would rather it remain untranslated than
poorly
translated.
Mr. Levandoki wrote: "who is Ms. Davaran to say
that 'God, like Hafiz and
Rumi' wouldn't admire free verse?" The regularity with which
Mr. Levandoki misquotes my review takes on an almost monotonous
character-having
been unable to
speak for either Hafiz or Rumi, I certainly would not attempt
to represent God. This apparently separates me from Mr. Levandoki,
who within three sentences
has apparently forgotten himself and claims to know that of which
God would
approve. This is the general tenor, attitude, and reasoning (or
lack thereof)
that marks Mr. Levandoski's article. Mr. Levandoki's general
argument,
buttressed by his disencumbrance with the actual text of my review,
represents one
instance of a class of arguments referred to by logicians as
Argumentum ad
Verecundiam. Because he is Dr. Parvin's friend and because he
has written books
reviewed in the New York Times, Mr. Levandoski is in a position
to put his stamp
of approval on this work, and how dare anyone else criticize
it? This
approach, however, effectively closes the door on honest review
and dialogue.
* Send
this page to your friends
|
A bridge to nowhere