Ashbery/Rimbaud

 Of course this Ashberyan tone or flavor is all a matter of very specific word choices, like rendering the “niais” of “Parade,” “Sideshow,” as “nincompoops” rather than the “dimwits” or “fools” we find in other versions, or the “subalternes” of “Villes [I],” “Cities [I],” as “flunkies” rather than “underlings.” Perhaps the most Ashberylike of all the Illuminations is “Vies,” “Lives,” in which the poet confess, “I don’t miss my old role in divine merrymaking.” How far other translators seem from this wild ruefulness, as when Wallace Fowlie reduces it to “I do not miss what I once possessed of divine happiness” — which just might work, I admit, if pronounced with a Nawlins accent by an actress playing the part of Blanche Dubois — or Martin Sorrell to “I do not regret my erstwhile share of divine gaiety,” which wouldn’t do even for an academic on his deathbed looking back on his too-many sherries with the English Department. And at the end of the same poem, compare Ashbery’s “I’m really beyond the grave, and no more assignments, please,” with the same two translators’ versions: “I’m truly from beyond the grave, and completely unbeholden” (Sorrell) and “I am really from beyond the tomb, and without work” (Fowlie). Ashbery’s Rimbaud knows he’s putting in a performance, while those of his predecessors are just mumbling to themselves. Not to belabor the point, but allow me one more example, this time from “Villes [I],” “Cities [I].” Fowlie: “For the foreigner of our day, reconnoitering is impossible.” Sorrell: “For the stranger of our time reconnaissance is impossible.” Ashbery: “For today’s tourist, orientation is impossible.” A pedant might object that Rimbaud’s “étranger” is certainly a foreigner and in that sense a stranger but might not necessarily be a tourist — but surely this very slight heightening of specificity on Ashbery’s part amounts to a tiny tweak of Rimbaud’s sense that gives this version a huge gain in immediacy.