It has been said that a translator need not be fluent in the language he or she is translating from, but should be fluent in the language the poem is being translated into. But Cass Dalglish took her language skills above and beyond that of most poetry translations being published today. For Humming the Blues: Inspired by Nin-ne-šar-ra, Enheduanna’s Song to Innana, Dalglish learned Sumerian and translated texts written in cuneiform.
Enheduanna, a poet-prince-priestess, is recognized as the first poet to sign their poems. Her cuneiform texts were written in 2350 BCE, and Nin-ne-šar-ra is her poetic song to Innana, the great goddess of Mesopotamia.
Dalglish translated Enheduanna’s texts in all their intensity of flourish – the fawning praises and the honorific recounting of Innana’s mythological history. In the following poem, Enheduanna refers to Innana’s bold trip to the “Otherworld” and heroic return from what Sumerians referred to as “The Land of No Return”:
Your voice is the voice of the mountain
the song of crevices in the hill, the prayer of water embracing the bank.
There’s no ignoring you, no running away from the soil that turns rose-colored
under your rain, no saying “No” to you. You’re supreme over this land
and the heavens. But the other world is separate and taboo and nobody
expected you at the gates of hell. They treated you like a foreigner, so you
broke down the doors, you splintered the enormous gates into dust that dripped
into the river with the rain and disappeared behind the shadow of shadows.
Inside, a blacksmith cast a scene that looked like the land of the dead.
Did you invite him to carry you through the gaps in the grass to his reservoir
of rusty water? Did you drink from that pool? Inanna, is our memory
of your journey a gift, or will it lead us on a path to a steamy grave
at the mouth of a river full of blood?
Each reader brings his or her own history to the table, which will influence the reading and interpretation of a poem. So, too, with translations: each translator will yield a different reading and interpretation of a poem he or she is translating. What Dalglish brought to her translation was a jazz sensibility, using riff and repetition to allow Enheduanna to truly “sing” through her poems.
61pp.
