GR translation: her glassy wastes

[Mike Jing]

Again, sorry for being thick.  I guess I don't fully understand what
exactly you mean by "how it makes sense".  Anyhow, I am trying to
figure out what it might mean in order to aid the translation.  I am
certainly not directly translating the words into what I think it
might mean.  There might not be definite answer to these questions,
but one can't help but wonder.  If you think it's a waste of time, so
be it.

As I said before, a poetic translation is far beyond my ability.  I am
not even sure if it's possible.  The bar I have set is much lower.  If
it means it's not worth reading, well, I'd still give it my best shot.

On Sat, Oct 29, 2011 at 9:24 PM, alice wellintown
<alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
>> In the case of "social eye", I think I misread the sentence from the
>> very beginning, so did many others, and that was why it was so hard to
>> make sense of it.  Once it was read differently, the meaning became
>> much more clear, and the translation easier.  Poetic resonance is all
>> well and good, but even poetic language has to make sense on some
>> level.
>
> The evening sun goin down on the social eye and that surrender does
> resonate with Faulkner's tale and the song from the father of the
> blues. But this is only poetic dancers and the dance and has nothing
> to do with Yeats or Faulkner or W.C. Handy.
>
> The social eye is described with a simile, in space (the edge) and in
> time (ten minutes) about the sun going down. The list after the colon
> runs into elipsis then the light is said to diminish like certain
> music.
>
> It makes sense on a bunch of levels. How it makes sense, I contend, is
> far more important to a translator than what it means. A translation
> of WHAT it means will not be worth reading.
>