Aliki Caloyeras

Translating Anne Spencer’s “Translation”

We encounter, on the last page of James Weldon Johnson’s selection of Anne Spencer’s poems in The Book of American Negro Poetry, two brief poems. On the page, “Translation” sits, left-justified atop the centered “Dunbar,” a five-line poem, which asserts a poetic lineage that includes the Romantics, “Chatterton, Shelley, Keats,” along with the titular Paul Lawrence Dunbar (218). I will defer a close reading of “Dunbar” in favor of “Translation,” but I would like to note the importance of the placement of the poems on the page, which came about as the result of Johnson’s editorial choices to include these poems in this way in his anthology. “Translation,” in other words, might be thought of as built–though built askew; that is, a little to the left– upon the metaphorical foundation of a Romantic tradition that includes Dunbar as the most recent predecessor.

Dunbar may in fact be the “friend” to which the speaker refers in the first sentence of the poem: “We trekked into a far country,/ My friend and I.” The word “friend” indicates that the speaker’s relationship with the “he” of the poem is platonic; however, upon reading the poem for the first time, it is striking how many references to romantic love pop up as the poem unfolds. The “wooing” bird’s “mating-note” in line 7 recalls the love lyrics of the Romantic tradition. And the enjambment of “We laid tired bodies ‘gainst/ The loose warm sands” places the emphasis on “bodies ‘gainst,” suggesting sexual imagery before the next line indicates that the bodies are laid against “warm sands.” In the antepenultimate line, the stars watch over “lovers in oblivion,” which may directly refer to the “we” of the poem (ll. 13-4). But then, the object of the lovers’ love is not clear–if we take “lovers” by itself, the object of love could be one another; however, the word is modified by the possessive pronoun, “their,” suggesting the possibility that the lovers love the stars. The meaning is ambiguous. Do the stars possess the lovers simply because they guard them “in oblivion,” offering starlight in darkness? Or do the lovers both direct their love to the stars rather than toward each other? Whatever the relationship, it is clear that the “he” and “I” of the poem are kindred spirits, perhaps two poets, who understand each other despite the fact that their “deeper content” is “never spoken” (l. 3). One possibility, is that this friend represents Dunbar.

Whether or not the friend is Dunbar (or a Dunbar-figure), we must wonder what this “far country” is into which they trek. A metaphor, surely, but for what? The title of the poem offers rich clues. How are we to read the trope of translation? “Translation” might refer to language. “Our deeper content was never spoken/ But each knew all the other said” suggests that the impossibility of total translation, total communication between the two figures of the poem–there is always something lost in translation. Yet, it also suggests an ease of understanding and knowing between the two. In one sense, the “far country” may be the poem itself, which must be translated from a thought or idea into language or writing. And the two friends seem to share a writerly sensibility. But, “translation” also has religious and supernatural undertones.

According to the OED, translation specifically refers to the “removal of [a bishop or minister] from one charge to another; also, the removal of the body or relics of a saint to another place of interment,” and more generally to the “removal from earth to heaven, orig. without death, as the translation of Enoch; but in later use also said fig. of the death of the righteous.” The far country, then, might be thought of as death. And, within the space of the poem, the speaker communes with the “friend” as he is translated to the “far country.” The friend, indeed, tells the speaker, “how calm his soul was laid/ By the lack of anvil and strife” suggesting that he is at peace a difficult life full of toil and conflict. Such a reading might also refer specifically to Dunbar, an exalted and saint-like poetic peer and predecessor. Finally, “Anvil and strife” suggest physical labor and continuous antagonism, which alongside the image of “trek[ing] into a far country” recalls a northward escape from slavery. I want to suggest that vehicle of this metaphor carries multiple parallel tenors: The trek into a far country, is a march towards freedom, towards death and salvation, towards poetry.

The making of the poem, in other words, is connected to freedom and salvation. In fact, as the poem develops, poetry and salvation become more and more intricately linked. As previously noted, the kestrel “wooing” in line 7 might, at first glance, remind us of a romantic songbird. But kestrel, according to the OED, is really a bird of prey, a small hawk. Who would this bird of prey be wooing? And if he “mutes his mating-note,” is he getting ready for the hunt? And then, according to another line of thinking, wooing and hunting might be considered parallel endeavors if not the same thing. The kestrel is then wooing death. These lines draw attention to the tension between strife and harmony as connected through lyric poetry.

It is tempting to say so that the speaker of the poem is a woman since the poet is a woman, but there aren’t really any clues. The Romantic love poetry undertones suggest a heterosexual love relationship according to romantic convention, but in the end this is not a love poem. Or if it is a love poem, it is one of mourning. The harmony attained in the poem is the “harmony of this sweet silence” (l. 8 ). And we notice that there is a prevalence of “silence” in the poem: the “deeper content was never spoken” and the kestrel “mutes his mating-note,” which both lead up to the silencing of the speaker’s own song. The last lines of the poem: “my evening prayer/ Stole my morning song.” As prayer replaces poetry, we must wonder if the morning song is not a specific kind of lover’s lyric (an aubade?) but a mourning song. Note that the poem breaks free of form. Thus, “Translation” might be read as a kind of free verse prayer, an elegy for Dunbar–the tragic death of whom has translated him to saint-like status.

If the far country is death, and Dunbar’s soul is calm and at peace, then how are we to read the speaker? The space of the poem seems to be a kind of dream space where the speaker encounters the dead poet. The “I” encounters the “he” and is struck silent, unable to make poetry, by the loss. Yet, the poem is made. There is one other definition of translation that may prove relevant here, and that is the legal definition: “A transfer of property; spec. alteration of a bequest by transferring the legacy to another person.” Thus, if we read the speaker as the female poet who writes the poem and her friend as Dunbar, then the poem enacts a legal translation of Dunbar’s poetic legacy to his kindred spirit, Anne Spencer.