MARAM AL-MASRI’S POETRY IN TRANSLATION: AN INTERVIEW

RIVISTA DI STUDI ITALIANI

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LETTERATURA STRANIERA

MARAM AL-MASRI’S POETRY IN TRANSLATION: AN INTERVIEW

ANNALISA BONOMOUniversità Kore

Enna

earth and desire, love and hope: that is the quintessential thrust ofMaram Al-Masri’s poetry.The setting of her poems shifts from the far away Lattakia (Syria)

where she was born, to Paris, where she has lived since 1982.After her first collection I Threaten You with a White Dove, which came out

in Damascus in 1984, she published in Tunis A Red Cherry on a White-TiledFloor in 1997. Thanks to this collection she won the acclaim of internationalcritics, being awarded the famous Prix Adonis in 1998. Her poems have beentranslated into many languages, including English, French, Spanish, Italian,Serbian, and German.

In 2007 Maram Al-Masri published the collection I Look at You in France,although an earlier version of this work in Arabic had already appeared inBeirut in 2000. It’s also worth noting that her latest work, Les âmes aux piedsnus, published by “Le Temps des cerises” in 2009, is the result of a series ofmeetings held at the French Association Halte Aide Aux Femmes Battues inParis. In this collection, the images of female suffering (both physical andpsychological) and feelings of humiliation and despair stand out for theirunusually sensitive and provocative presentation. The same book alsocontains a section dealing with the intricate relationship between fathers andsons, and it ends with a series of considerations about love in general.

As Claudio Pozzani argues in the Preface to the Italian translation of A RedCherry on a White-Tiled Floor1, Maram Al-Masri’s elegant and sensualpoetry harks back not only to the world of Emily Dickinson and her love for“small things”, but also to “the irony of Mina Loy or the tragic passion ofAnne Sexton”2. Nevertheless, despite the indebtedness to such poems asLoy’s Lunar Baedecker (from The Lost Lunar Baedeker, 1923) or Sexton’sFor My Lover Returning to His Wife (from Love Poems, 1969), what drivesAl-Masri’s poetic achievements is undoubtedly her truly unique and personalview of the world. Although the author is steeped in her own Syrian culturalbackground, the real appeal of Al-Masri’s verses consists, like any genuineartistic expression, in their capacity to transform a personal poetic vision intoa universally shared experience.

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This ability to reach a wide reading public is precisely what lies behind Al-Masri’s international success, an indication that her works, like those of otherauthors who enjoy a similar literary status, possess the wherewithal tosurmount the cultural and linguistic obstacles, which normally affect worksin translation. It is in this context that Al-Masri’s extensive poetic productionraises a number of interesting issues vis-à-vis the current debates revolvingaround the theory of translation and the nature of interculturalcommunication.

To illustrate and contextualize some of the problems mentioned above, Ihave recently interviewed Maram Al-Masri regarding her ideas about poetryand literary translation. Her response, which I have transcribed here largelyunchanged, constitutes a part of a larger study on translation, which will bepublished in a future issue of this journal.

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What does “being a poet” mean to you?

It is very hard to say what “being a poet” means to me. It should be self-evident and easy to do...but for me, it’s not.

To be a poet is to have something to say and to take part in the constant fluxof history. What this comes down to, at least for me, is the necessity toarticulate one of the most basic needs of people everywhere: the desire tolove and be loved. Indeed, as the world becomes smaller and increasinglycomplex and alienating, a poet’s unique way of thinking and feeling hasnever been as relevant to our culture as it is today. Of course, a poet is not theonly figure on whom I would bestow this special status in Western society.It’s obvious that other artists and intellectuals have been equally important inthe social and cultural development of their communities. Yet, I feel that apoet can still make a difference in man’s universal search for the smallersigns of life...almost as if the poet had a third eye with which to decrypt ourhuman aspirations. For this reason, a poet has the responsibility of givingothers the purest enjoyment, which is both pleasure and knowledge.

Do you think there are important literary differences between a “malepoet” and a “female poet”?

We do like to classify everything, don’t we? No, I do not think there areliterary differences between them. Nonetheless, the experiences of a “malepoet” could be different from those of a “female poet”.

Such differences could also exist between two male poets. Writing is linkedto our human condition. And it’s true that the lives of men and women arenot exactly the same in our societies. So certain differences do exist, but Icannot accept that a distinction between male and female writing could everbe the sole basis for separating “good” from “bad” poetry, or for justifying

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the use of such categories as “light” and “serious” poetry, not to speak ofcertain antiquated notions like “minor” and “major” literature.

How does language reflect your poetic mind? Can language be aneffective means of communication or do you feel that it is an inadequateinstrument with which to convey “the spirit of our times”?

Language is poetry and poetry is language. Language is the most importanttool...in fact, the quality of the poems I write is directly proportional to myability to use the language effectively. However, to make a poem workrequires not only a sensibility of feeling, but other ingredients as well. Wecannot forget that language alone is not sufficient to make a good poem. It isreally complicated to explain what the most important element is in writing agood poem. A good poem is sometimes a “miracle”...because there areoccasions when all the elements seem to be in place: the language flows, themood is right and the thought spontaneous…and yet the poem doesn’t work.

What does “translating” mean, according to you?

Changing clothes...

Do you think is it possible to translate poetry or do you think that thetranslation process is more suitable for prose in general?

Happily, it is possible to translate poetry. Otherwise, the number of peoplewho could read in their original language poets like Shakespeare, Brecht,Nazim Hikmet, Tagore, Lorca, and Neruda, just to mention a few, would befar too limited. Poetry everywhere would quickly stagnate if it wereprevented from circulating freely beyond a single region or nationalboundary. Indeed, it may be easier to translate prose, but the challengeinherent in translating poetry is the best reason to keep doing it.

What do you think is missing in translating poetry?

Its original language…

How do you feel as a “translated living poet”?

I’m happy about it, and I consider myself lucky. It’s a chance for my worksto move widely across borders and national cultures, which gives me theprivilege of knowing that I’m also a part of a more complex world other thanmy own. When I see, for instance, that some foreigners are able to recitewhole poems of mine by heart, then I know that some part of me has becomepart of them, and this is a feeling which is difficult to describe.

Which one of your collections do you prefer? And why?


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All my books, for me, are like children. How could anybody love one morethan the other? Each one of them is linked to a period of my life. When I feelthat any one of them is not “loved” enough, I become very protective of it.

Does your being born in Lattakia constitute a problem of integration inthe European cultural scene?

At the beginning I didn’t think I had a problem. But now I admit that,because of my Arabic roots, living in Europe is somewhat more difficult thanI anticipated. I may be partly at fault for this: the way I think and expressmyself is not so clear and straightforward...I suppose I’m not “Cartesian”enough for some Europeans, although as a poet I put on a totally differentgarb. When I lived in Syria I felt more protected, living as I was in a closedsocial environment. There I didn’t feel the shock of civilization. I feel it now,in my daily life, especially when I have to deal with officialdom, bureaucracyand the like.

Does poetry risk becoming extinct on account of the over mechanizationof contemporary life?

I think that poetry will survive, regardless of the circumstances...becausethere will always be people who will want to write poetry.

How would you describe your relationship with your translators?

I have a very good relationship with my translators. I can only feel gratefuland appreciative for their work...because they are the ones who carry mywords to distant places, as if they were the mirror of my poems.

What overall strategy do your translators rely on? Do they follow a“word for word” or a “sense for sense” approach?

I would be happy if they were able to do both.

What function do “colours” such as “red” and “white” have in yourpoetry?

I think poetry is a vision of life and life is inevitably a “coloured” affair. Redis my favourite colour, which to me stands for desire and pain. White is forpurity and transparency. Had I not chosen to be a poet, I probably wouldhave been a painter.

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Someone described you once as “the poet of naiveté”? Do you like such adescription and if so, what does it mean?

No I do not like it, but I think that the woman who thought of it was usingthis “label” as a compliment, so I accepted it. I’m often misinterpreted when Isay that I don’t play with cleverness in my writing, even though we have tobe clever in writing, but without ostentation. The only goal I aim at is to offermy readers an authentic personal vision of the world, which is all I can hopefor in my poetry.

Do you recall any anecdotes that might shed some light on the theoryand practice of your translators?

Yes I do. You know that my works have been translated into severallanguages, although I do not profess to know all of them, so I’m forced toadopt the trust of the blind.

But when I can understand the language of my translator, there are bound tobe differences of interpretation between us. For instance, when I gave apoetry reading at the University of Catania, I discovered that the word “shy”(“my shy breast”) became “small” (“my small breast”) in the Italian version.Which is not exactly the same thing. I’ll give you another example: in onepoem I used the words “fluid” or “liquid” to refer to the idea of “sperm”,whereas in the French translation they simply used the word “sperm”outright, which did not alter the actual meaning of what I wanted to say, butit destroyed the elegance of the original statement.

Is it possible in your view to think of a nation as being more poetic thananother?

Yes, I think so. I think there are different traditions of poetry and there arenations which have a long-standing relationship with those traditions. A lotdepends also on the social and political situation of individual countries.Poetry is a cry of dis-satisfaction, when we have a cause to defend. Iremember when I was in Denmark, a great poet told me: “We have lost thefire of your poetry because we have everything”.

Would you tell us something about I Look at You, A Red Cherry on aWhite-Tiled Floor and I Threaten You with a White Dove?

I wrote Je te menace when I was still young; it is my first whisper of poetry. Idid not even know if it was poetry or not because it was not anything liketraditional poetry. At the time, I did not have any definite literary goals, otherthan writing whatever I felt like writing. I think writing is like the fruit of atree. Each tree has his own special fruit. Writing is so biologically linked toour personality and inner being; it is like saliva or the touch of our skin.


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Writing is a craft, which is subject to the influence of others; it is a skillwhich can be improved, but it can never be totally acquired.

A Red Cherry on a White-Tiled Floor was written after sixteen years ofsilence and an almost total absence from cultural life…I lived as if I were inanother world. That’s why this work is like another world: a world of amother and that of a wife. It is set in another country, it is written in anotherlanguage, and deals with another way of living.

So my vision of life and love has changed but my style of writing hasn’tchanged significantly. I think the break I had from my former routine was apositive experience and it brought additional freshness to my poetry.

I Look at You came three years after Red cherry. So it was a way ofexploring further the same life experiment.

Since the publication of Red Cherry, I’ve undertaken other projects andaccepted other responsibilities, which I didn’t have before.

After I Look at you, I’ve written three other books of poetry: The Return ofWallada, The Barefoot Souls, and Signs and Bodies. However, this shouldnot be taken to mean that writing comes easy to me. On the contrary.Sometimes I feel like a prisoner who tries to break through jail in order toescape confinement. My writing requires long periods of sedimentation tosmoothen the rough edges, much like the action of waves over jaggedpebbles...because I write with my whole being and I need something specialto walk on when I break new ground.

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NOTES

1 Claudio Pozzani is an Italian poet, a novelist and a musician. He isappreciated all around the world. His poems have been translated in morethan ten languages. Worth mentioning are his Saudade & Spleen, Kate etmoi and Nuk di Nese Deti.2 Maram Al-Masri, Ciliegia rossa su piastrelle bianche, Italian translationby F. M. Durazzo, Genova:, Liberodiscrivere, 2005, pp. 6-7.

REFERENCES

Al-Masri, Maram (1984). مرام ,المصـــري منــذر ,المصـــري د محمّ ,ســــیدة ــــذرتك أنبحمامــة ,بیضــــــاء ,دمشــق عن الــوزارة الســـــوریة ــــــــة للتربی I Threaten ,والتعلیــــــــمYou with a White Dove, Damasco: Ministry of Education.

Al-Masri, Maram (1997). مرام ,المصـــري كـرزة حمراء ــى عل ـــالط ب ,ابیــــض ,تــــونس دارتــــبر مان ,الز A Red Cherry on a White-Tiled Floor: Selected Poems,Tunis: L’or du temps.

Al-Masri, Maram (2000). مرام ,المصـــري أنظــر ,إلیــــك ,بــــیروت شـــركة المطبوعـــاتـــــــع للتوزی ,والنشـــــر I Look at You, Beirut.

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Al-Masri, Maram (2004), A Red Cherry on a White-Tiled Floor: SelectedPoems, English trans. by Khaled Mattawa, Newcastle: Bloodaxe Books.

Al-Masri, Maram (2005). Ciliegia rossa su piastrelle bianche, Italiantranslation by F. M. Durazzo, Genova: Liberodiscrivere.

Al-Masri, Maram (2009). Les âmes aux pieds nus, Paris : Le Temps descerises.

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MARAM AL-MASRI’S POETRY IN TRANSLATION: AN INTERVIEW