“Gratitude to Old Teachers”: Leaning into Learning Legacies

Amongst a group of poet-scholar friends, all of us students of the American poet Robert Bly, often speak of our “gratitude to old teachers,” the title from one of Bly’s (1999) poems. We cherish a meditative awareness of deeply rooted presences holding us up, buoying us as we stride across “Water that once could take no human weight” that now “holds up our feet / And goes on ahead of us ….” What is this mystery? Through the love and support of “old teachers,” we are held, led, and supported, into an unknown future that, without their guidance, we might never have reached. Many of Bly’s students (myself included) refer to how meeting him “changed” or even “saved” their lives. Similarly, I could say this of meeting and studying with Canadian curriculum scholar and poet Carl Leggo. Practicing gratitude to old teachers fosters vital pedagogic engagement and personal connection in a world often fraught with isolation and despair. Reflecting on how these poetic influences have inspired and guided my own personal and professional life, this essay ruminates on grateful legacies within literary and curriculum studies, and beyond. Keywords: gratitude, curriculum studies, mentorship, poetry, poetic inquiry

An American Mystic in the East: Tracing the Origins of Robert Bly’s Interest in Persian Literary Tradition

The American poet Robert Bly is among the most important literary figures in the second half of the 20th century. He worked in various capacities as a poet, translator, teacher and workshop organizer among other things, so much so that he is sometimes compared to Ezra Pound on account of the variety of his interests and the extent of his influence. Like Pound, Bly developed an interest in Asian poetic traditions, including that of Iran, and in doing so, he translated the poetry of Rumi (better known as Mowlana in Iran) and Hafez into English. The present study seeks to trace the paths through which Bly came to develop an interest in Persian mystical poetry and to demonstrate two concerns that guided and informed his interest in this tradition; that is, the socio-political vocation of the poet and the formal advantages of the poetic form known as Ghazal. Such concerns, it will be argued, are firmly rooted within the American literary tradition and therefore this study reveals the continuities that underlie Bly’s interest in Persian poetry, suggesting that he sometimes approached Persian poetry on his own terms, without paying proper attention to the context, a shortcoming that, as will be shown, is the result not of ignorance but what may be called methodological laxity.

A Mystical Reading of Ḥāfiẓ’s Translation by Robert Bly and Leonard Lewisohn

Robert Bly and Leonard Lewisohn are among the latest translators of Ḥāfiẓ who have selectively translated thirty ghazals of Ḥāfiẓ into English. A close investigation of their translation reveals how they have manipulated the original texts to a great extent which results in having merely a mystical interpretation of Ḥāfiẓ’s multi-layered poems. However, due to the literary form of Ḥāfiẓ’s poetry which is ghazal, it can be in praise of different issues such as nature, youth, beloved, loveliness, etc.; in Bly and Lewisohn’s translation, most of them have been ascribed to divinity. In other words, by means of translation, they have rendered their own worldview along with their personal reading of Ḥāfiẓ’s poetry. The authors argue that Bly and Lewisohn’s translation renders a mystical reading of Ḥāfiẓ’s poetry and presents him as a moral preacher whose poetry is saturated with mysticism and Sufism. Being highly against the American society’s materialism, by introducing Ḥāfiẓ as a mystic and insisting on mystical and spiritual interpretation of his poetry they intend to survive their society from corruption and cater to the moral and spiritual needs of the target culture. Since American literature compared to Persian literature, lacks some repertoire related to mysticism thus Lewisohn and Bly, by means of translation try to provide their culture with a sort of nourishment in order to contribute to the amendment of the society.

De compte-fil à garde-fou : la lecture du traducteur de poésie

Plusieurs représentants de la tradition herméneutique, dont Umberto Eco, Paul Ricoeur et George Steiner, considèrent le texte littéraire inachevé sans le concours du lecteur, lequel est cependant tenu d’en respecter la cohérence interne. Dans un tel contexte, l’affirmation selon laquelle le traducteur serait d’abord un lecteur constitue une évidence qui recèle, en soi, de multiples implications. Dans cet article, nous verrons d’abord comment l’oeuvre littéraire conditionne la lecture et, par conséquent, la traduction pour nous pencher ensuite sur la tension que présuppose la lecture d’un poème à traduire. Pour ce faire, nous comparerons cinq modèles décrivant le processus de traduction poétique des théoriciens suivants : Robert De Beaugrande, Andrei Bantaş, Francis R. Jones, Christopher Millis et Robert Bly. Ceux-ci s’inscrivent, selon nous, dans la lignée herméneutique en ceci qu’ils préconisent une lecture attentive du poème source, mais cherchent à en contrebalancer les effets par une révision obligatoire minimisant l’apport subjectif du traducteur. L’analyse de ces modèles permettra de constater l’importance réelle de la lecture dans la tâche du traducteur de poésie.

"Språket är inte huvudproblemet. Problemet är det andra, landskapet." Tomas Tranströmer och Robert Bly om sina ömsesidiga översättningar

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Current Trends in Translation

Driven by the growth of a global economy and developments in high technology, the process of creating and translating technical documentation has been evolving rapidly. In particular, machine translation (MT) has shown increasing capabilities of efficaciously accomplishing the early stages of the eight stages of translation identified years ago by Robert Bly. As a consequence, translators have learned to use MT as a tool to accelerate their work, but they have also grown wary of MT’s potential for replacing them. To ensure steady employment, some translators have begun cross-training as technical writers; correspondingly, a few technical writers have begun cross-training as translators, as the two professions appear to be undergoing a gradual trend of convergence. Academic programs are urged to respond to the evolving trends.

JOHN HARBISON'S ‘MIRABAI SONGS’: RELIGION, RITUAL, LOVE AND EROTICISM

Captured by the 16th-century Indian poetess Mirabai and her works (transcribed by Robert Bly), John Harbison was especially intrigued with the manner in which she combined religion with ritual and eroticism. He has stated:Her answers involved the ecstatic, the devotional and the artistic, but her independence and resolve and her dancer's vitality led my setting toward narrative and characterization, unusual territory for a song cycle.