It is with a mixture of sadness and delight that I take up the last volume published by Marjorie Chambers, who died on 9 January 2019. The book in question is an attractively produced collection of her translations of modern Greek poetry, with her own brief introductions to the poets and three essays on Ritsos (previously published separately).
The bulk of the present volume is occupied by Ritsos (121 pages as against 69 for the five other poets represented) plus the three closing essays: ‘Ritsos and Greek Mythology’, ‘Ritsos in Belfast’ and ‘Ritsos in Dublin’. For each of the six poets, the translator has created not only a representative sample but above all a personal anthology. As the essays, especially ‘Ritsos in Belfast’, make clear, this poet's tempered optimism and commitment to world peace struck a deep chord with the translator.
Although the Ritsos selection includes a sequence of eight short love lyrics, most of the poems translated here are relatively long. It is a testimony to the translator's achievement that she has risen to the challenge of some seemingly intractable material (not least because long-windedness is neither fashionable nor readily adapted to anthologies) to produce lyrical passages that I found extraordinarily moving. The selection, like almost all the other selections presented here, is largely elegiac. It is characterised by two aspects not everyone immediately associates with Ritsos: grief and religious imagery.
I last saw Marjorie in Belfast in 2002, over coffee with that other distinguished translator of Greek literature, David Connolly. As I read her translations of Kondos in the present volume and compared them with his, I could not help feeling that the translators would have benefited from a discussion, if not a collaboration. In 2003, Connolly published a translation of the Kondos collection, Absurd Athlete (Ο Αθλήτης του τίποτα, Arc Publications), in a parallel text. Chambers’ seven Kondos translations are published here for the first time: they are in a different order from that of the 35-poem collection itself (25, 5, 32, 68, 23, 15, 29), but I don't know why and cannot ask her now. (The publisher does not know either). This rearranged sequence from The Nothing Athlete, (Chambers), comprises translations that are in some ways similar to Connolly's versions, though had she had these to hand, Chambers might have corrected herself in at least one place: ‘They say something about the prime minister / the increase in production, communications’. Connolly is surely right to render this, ‘They speak of the prime minister / rising prices of goods, public transport’; these lines are from ‘It could be a Bergman film’ (both translators use this title). On the other hand, in ‘Pedagogics’ (Chambers) / ‘Pedagogy’ (Connolly), the rendering of the imperatives is, in places (notably the opening) more convincing in Chambers:
than in Connolly:
Connolly, on the other hand, manages to be both closer to the Greek and more sinister. However, the closing injunction in Chambers, ‘And call in with me sometime / for a game of chess’ is more recognisable to a non-Northern Irish reader in Connolly's, ‘And come by the house sometime / for a game of chess’.
In sum, both translators have given us an excellent Kondos, with Connolly's, of course, the more complete. Rather than mirror images, we might see them as viable alternatives.
With Ritsos, Chambers really comes into her own, revealing a talent for translating the longer monologues that may not be unrelated to a lifetime of translating drama (most recently, Iakovos Kambanellis, Three Plays: The Courtyard of Wonders, The Four Legs of the Table, Ibsenland, Colenso Books, 2015). The selection from Ritsos presented here make this a perfect companion volume to Martin McKinsey's beautiful translations of the last Ritsos collection, unrevised at the old poet's death, Late into the Night (Oberlin College Press, 1995). Chambers and McKinsey share an ear for Ritsos; they capture his voice and tone like no other English-language translators.
Another major achievement in the present volume is the translation of Amorgos, the much-loved and highly influential extended poem by Nikos Gatsos. Unusually, Chambers also includes a translation of the ‘few fragments of unpublished poems’ by Gatsos, published posthumously in 1994 as Lend Silken Threads to the Wind (Δάνεισε τά μετάξια στόν ἄνεμο, Ikaros). Prior to the 1990s, there was a tendency to treat Gatsos as two different writers: the single-opus poet of Amorgos and the far more prolific song-writer. In 1992 (the year he died), however, the lyrics Gatsos wrote for music were issued as a printed collection, Φύσα, ἀεράκι, φύσα με, μή χαμηλώνεις ἴσαμε (Athens: Ikaros), implying that they could be read as poems.
The other poets represented here are George Vafopoulos, Nikiforos Vrettakos and Miltos Sachtouris. Chambers translates them all with sensitivity and style.
This brief review cannot do justice to Marjorie Chambers’ lasting achievements. I will close with a few haunting lines from her translation of Ritsos’ ‘The Moonlight Sonata’ (p. 58):
