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In the early 1990’s I published a series of interviews with translators in the magazine Materion Dwyieithog / Bilingual Matters which was produced as a project with students on a course I taught at the time.
These included lengthy interviews about translation and original work from Tony Conran and Joseph Clancy which seem worth putting on a more permanent record. So I have made pdf versions of the relevant pages from the editions available for free download HERE~>
One of many stranded
as the tide ebbed
from the wet sand
gleaming in early morning light
shimmering as on the still living sea
“All borders – the lines and symbols on a map, the fretwork of walls and fences on the ground, and the often complex enmeshments by which we organise our lives – are explanations of identity. We construct borders, literally and figuratively, to fortify our sense of who we are; and we cross them in search of who we might become.”
Frances Stonor Saunders
The author of this fascinating take of borders also asks, “What threshold rites do you perform before you leave home? Do you appease household deities, or leave a lamp burning in your tabernacle? Do you quickly pat down pockets or bag to check you have the necessary equipment for the journey? Or take a final check in the hall mirror, ‘to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet’?”* . Borders can be the mental as as well as the physical lines we draw, not just the lines on a map dividing ‘us’ from ‘them’; and the conceptual borders which divide ‘our community’ from those not belonging to it; but also the personal lines we all draw between ‘I’ and ‘you’, and beyond that between ‘I’ and everyone else. These are often not the same borders and might cross each other in complex ways. Such is the nature of identity which may be complex and even contradictory. Because as well as dividing us from others and hemming us safely in, it aso separates us from creative opportunities both for personal and community development.
Seeing borders in this way as both necessary and natural for our identities, but also as constraints preventing us from living adventurously, puts them in a context which allows us to accept them as fluid entities, to place ourselves in the world, or worlds, that we inhabit as well as recognising other worlds as valid and potentially inhabitable. People have always crossed borders. National borders, as absolute as they may seem to those living within them, have often previously been lines in the sand, washed away by the tides of history. The cultures they have nurtured, often across borders, have also shifted through past ages merging and enriching each other but also conflicting defensively when people feel threatened. Identities, whether national, racial, religious, cultural, sexual, and a range of other categories from the substantial to to the ephemeral, are not things we can escape, because we need to know who and what we are. So however arbitrary they may be, they cannot simply be dismissed. But that is not the same as regarding them as absolute. The fact that we need to own an identity does not mean that it cannot change, or cannot include others who may have seemed not to be included. Nor does it imply that different identities cannot be recognised even when they are not our identities.
These are complex issues, not only because identities overlap and shift, but also because the act of self-definition creates psychological lines of division beween ‘us’ and ‘them’ which the breaking down of physical, legal or conceptual barriers do not necessarily remove. But recognising complexity, and living within our identities, both chosen and inherited, while stretching their limits and allowing others to do the same, not only removes anxieties which lead to conflicts, but also enables us to live as ultimately we have always lived, in ways that share what we value with others and receive from them what they have to share, without denying ourselves any sense of who we are and the meaning that identities give to our lives.
It can sometimes seem that we live in an unprecedented age of social greed and acquisition, draining us of any sense of values beyond those represented by material wealth. Perhaps so. But it can often be instructive to look back at previous ages when commentators came to similar conclusions. Early in the nineteenth century Wordsworth’s sonnet ‘The world is too much with us’ expressed the view that “Getting and spending we lay waste our powers”.
Going back much further, the Roman philosopher Seneca (?4 bce – 65 ce) had this to say:
Philosophy has the single task of discovering the truth about the divine and human worlds. The religious conscience, the sense of duty, justice and all the rest of the close-knit interdependent ‘company of virtues’, never leave her side. Philosophy has taught men to worship what is divine, to love what is human, telling us that with the gods belongs authority, and among human beings fellowship. That fellowship lasted for a long time intact, before men’s greed broke society up – and impoverished even those she had brought most riches; for people cease to possess everything as soon as they want everything for themselves.
(Letters From a Stoic)
For Seneca, Philosophy – imagined as a female figure – tells us how to live. In particular how to live in fellowship rather than in competition with each other. The ‘company of virtues’ embodies the idea of a well-lived life, where individuals take only what they need, not amassing wealth at the expense of others nor encumbering themselves with superfluous possessions. These are counsels of perfection, and it is unlikely that Seneca himself followed them to the letter. But they are also indicative, as he makes clear, of how he thought people should live rather than how they did, or indeed still do.
His final point about people ceasing to possess everything as soon as they want everything for themselves is pertinent here. It makes logical sense that desiring to possess everything means that you will never be satisfied that you have everything you want. But it also indicates a continuing facet of human nature to want more than is necessary. Seneca thought that there had been a time when this was not the case. It is always tempting to blame our own decadent times for the failings of society and imagine a past ‘Golden Age’ when all was harmonious. This may even be a necessary adjunct of striving to make things better in the future as it sees human nature as corrupted rather than irredeemably corrupt. Such a desire should, no doubt, also be one of the ‘company of virtues’ that sustain a good life.
Seeking to place ourselves somewhere between the ideal and the actual, between how we would wish things to be and the messiness of how they actually are, is a perennial concern of philosophy as it was understood by Seneca and other ancient thinkers. Defining the ‘good life’ and living the life we have will always be a matter of balancing ideals against practicalities. Knowing what you can change and accepting what you can’t was also one of the tenets of philosophy as practised by Seneca and his fellow stoics. It is knowing the difference between them that is the challenge!
Choosing his vocation as a poet, Dylan Thomas often reflected on the nature of his calling, as here:
I labour by the singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart.
‘In My Craft or Sullen Art’
It’s not that he didn’t want to earn his bread by his craft, and he was certainly not immune to the temptation to ‘strut’ on the ‘ivory stages’. But those ‘common wages’ were his core motivation and the driving force of his vocation as a poet, writing of course for himself who had no choice, but also for ‘the lovers ….. their arms/Round the griefs of the ages,/Who pay no praise or wages/Nor heed my craft or art.’
It was for them that he sang. But, in spite of his ostentatious rejection of the religion of his upbringing, he also said, in the Introduction to his Collected Poems, the following:
I read somewhere of a shepherd who, when asked why he made, from within fairy rings, ritual observances to the moon to protect his flocks, replied: “I’d be a damn’ fool if I didn’t!” These poems, with all their crudities, doubts, and confusions, are written for the love of Man and in praise of God, and I’d be a damn’ fool if they weren’t.
We write as we need to. But, whether we publish or not, who we write for is as important as why we write. God, the gods, the Muses, the awen,; we write out of ourselves because we are in the world and need to share something of ourselves in the world’s public space, to return the gift with which we feel either cursed or blessed!
I often return to John Keats’ term ‘Negative Capability’ which he defined in a letter to a friend as “…capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts”. For Keats this was an essential element in the creative process, so in that sense the condition is positive rather than ‘negative’. The way such terms can seem to pivot between opposite poles of significance suggests a dialectical process which itself embodies uncertainty. The Ancient Greek philosopher Socrates was known for his ‘negative’ questioning technique which forced people to examine the ideas and opinions they held, but he professed himself to be certain of nothing and to have no absolute knowledge. His interrogation of unexamined certainties was, however, a path to clarity of thought, an encouragement to be clear about the bases on which beliefs and opinions are held, often with a certainty that is belied by the shakiness of their foundations. But I think, too, in respect the perceived need to challenge the views of others, of the advice given in the Quaker ‘Advices and Queries’ : “Think it possible that you may be mistaken”.
This is not to argue that we shouldn’t have beliefs and opinions, or that we should abstain from criticism of things that we consider misguided or unjust. But closing off any possibility of further questions is to arrive at a finality that closes off the future. If, for Keats, the value of Negative Capabilty within the creative process precluded the “irritable reaching after fact and reason” and kept the channels of creativity open, for Socrates, whose business was analysis rather than creativity, it was necessary to remain open to truth as a process of exploration, allowing ‘facts’ to emerge from reason rather that imposing either on an argument before it has even begun. The two aproaches need not be incompatible. The dialectical pivot between imagination and reason works well enough if we are open to the needs of each scenario, but breaks the necessary balance if either our minds or our imaginative sensibilities are closed by preconceived ideas or creative cliches.
We stood on the beach
watching them circle and swoop
—the terns—
and then dive into the glassy waters
of the bay,
fishing for prey.
Behind us children dipped in pools
oblivious of the drama
out at sea
But it was for them, too,
that we watched,
humans in touch with the wild,
each in our own way.
They moved then
—the terns—
farther out as the fish
they followed must have moved
so we left them,
walked back up the beach
past the children and detached adults
to our own world far away.
Dadansoddiad o’r llun dyfrlliw David Jones yn y tudalenni ar lein o’r cylchgrawn O’R PEDWAR GWYNT
https://pedwargwynt.cymru/dadansoddi/vexilla-regisgan-david-jones
Analysis of the David Jones water colour in the on-line pages of the Welsh-language magazine O’R PEDWAR GWYNT
“One may observe from the names of places that another people once possessed that country” – Edward Lhwyd, 1705
A world there was for someone at another time,
another place, which was here and still scents the air
holding memories of a different shape of speech
now and then and once for a trace of time
a word spoken by a lost ancestor lingers
holding significance across centuries elusive as water
running to ground, draining through sediments settling
to re-call a landscape that was, and remains
sharp as gorse after rain.
Erthygl adolygu gennyf, yn trafod rhai llyfrau ynghylch adar (go-iawn/ dychmygol/absennol) yn rhifyn y Gaeaf y cylchgrawn ‘O’r Pedwar Gwynt’:
https://pedwargwynt.cymru/adolygu/adar-rhithiol
(Review article by me discussing books about birds (real/imaginary/absent) in the Welsh-language magazine O’r Pedwar Gwynt).
greghill