Middle Scots | Poetry | Scotland
February, 2019It’s not that some issues never change (the same central “y” in misogyny and gynecology, hysteria, and hysterectomy). It’s just that we haven’t rid ourselves of them yet.
Readers will, I hope, forgive me for translating the satire with sincerity and the sincere poem as a satire. I don’t mean that quite literally, of course. But whereas James VI’s “Satire” needs little subtlety to update its conclusive gendered vitriol, and is thus rendered as closely to the original as the simple modernization of its beast-driven vocabulary encouraged, William Dunbar’s “Praise” is of the more insidious kind: equally objectifying, but lovingly so, or so he thought. Dunbar’s 500-year-old homage is entirely innocent of intentional malice, and thus doubled my challenge to present it "strictly" as written, a hymenal hymn, while also nudging at all the obvious institutionalized sexism we see through his eyes but below our own critically furrowed brows (a task made easy by such woefully applied descriptors as “things” in line two, or his unquestioning assumption that pain should be a natural part of procreation for femme folk).
Additionally, the savvy reader will note that I strayed perhaps a bit farther overall in my version of Dunbar than of James, not out of personal egotism, but simply because Dunbar is universally acknowledged the superior poet, and thus deserved a bit more reward in his rendering. (I pray I did not plunge fully overboard in anyone’s estimation.) The pairing of the two poets, separated by almost a perfect century of life, is simply an exercise in examining the ongoing binary portrayal of cis-women by cis-men as being saints or shrews, ideals or irritants, but never as autonomous equals capable of their own self-identification and empowerment. As a cis-man myself, of course, I still can’t make that call on behalf of women—but I can, as I hope I’ve done here, call out my fellow men for their faults, no matter how vivid or visionary (or vile) the verse.
- Kent Leatham
Middle Scots | Poetry | Scotland
April, 2016It may seem odd or anachronistic to represent a poet by three radically disparate works: a punchy satire of a medieval snake oil salesman, a heartwrenching plea to God to stop the Black Death plague, and a rendition of the classic myth of Orpheus and Eurydice fit to rival Browning’s best dramatic monologues. However, for Scots poet Robert Henryson, such a range was second nature. Seamus Heaney, in the introduction to his translations of Henryson’s Testament of Cresseid & Seven Fables (FSG, 2009), described the Scotsman as “perfectly pitched, a poet whose knowledge of life [was] matched by the range of his art, whose constant awareness of the world’s hardness and injustice [was] mitigated by his irony, tenderheartedness, and ever-ready sense of humor.” High praise from a modern master, but worth every word. And as we move through these samples of Henryson’s work, the theme of chronicling humanity’s responses to mortality emerges as clearly and brilliantly as ever.
- Kent Leatham
Middle Scots | Poetry | Scotland
January, 2014The poetic form of flyting, meaning a public literary joust, quarrel, or insult-driven throwdown match, was generally regarded in Medieval/Renaissance Scotland as a jocular (and often court-commissioned) entertainment between friendly competitors, a tournament of talents rather than truly venomous vilifications. The form itself dates back to Old Norse and Anglo-Saxon verse; examples of early flytings include the "Lokasenna" ("Loki's Flyting") and the "Hárbarðsljóð" ("Lay of Hárbarðr"), as well as parts of "Beowulf" and Chaucer's "Parliament of Fowls." Dunbar, however, set the literary benchmark against Walter Kennedy (a fellow poet and Master of Arts at Glasgow University) for the court of James IV, employing an exhaustive compendium of alliteration, allusion, and altercation. Indeed, Dunbar's "Flyting" is claimed to mark the first use of "shit" as a personal insult in the Anglophonic canon. Inspired by his example,
Sixteenth century Scots literature blossomed with flytings by such other literary notables as David Lindesay, James V, and Alexander Montgomerie.
- Kent Leatham
Just as Virgil's Aeneid represented Rome's answer to Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, so was Gavin Douglas' Scots translation of the Aeneid in 1513 a rival's response to the English version published twenty-three years earlier by William Caxton. The first complete rendition of a classical text to be produced in the Scots vernacular, Douglas' Eneados represented, along with works by William Dunbar and Robert Henryson, the flowering of the golden age of the Northern Renaissance in Scotland. Douglas not only translated the epic poem with a careful attention to scholarly and artistic accuracy, but also added significant prologues to each of Virgil's twelve books. In the two prologue excerpts featured here (from Book One and Book Seven), Douglas first defends his use of the Scots language while blasting Caxton's earlier work, then settles down for a wintry physical description of his translation process. These prologues thus present a rare and fascinating insight into the growth of a poet and his language, literature, and culture, while also providing a thrilling opportunity to translate a translator.
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