Synopsis

I have been in the habit of writing poetry, occasionally, throughout my life, which has been a long one. However, I published nothing until 1994, when I produced a small book entitled “Variations” comprising thirty-four short poems. That book is now out of print. The present volume contains most of the poems in “Variations” together with a roughly equivalent number which appear here for the first time. It contains in addition twenty-five translations of poems by foreign authors, of which more anon.

Most of my poems encapsulate some strong emotion, idea or experience which came to me demanding to be expressed in verse. Sometimes they were triggered by what was happening, or had recently happened, to me personally; sometimes by something I had thought or imagined; sometimes by vivid impressions of what other people, whether my friends or total strangers, whom I had heard or read about, may have felt or thought or experienced.

The majority of my poems date from the years 1940-1960. Relatively few have been written since, the last about ten years ago. It is not surprising, therefore, that many of them may seem old-fashioned in some ways, and I make no apology for that! A number have recently been slightly amended or even substantially rewritten. Others, which on the whole I do not consider worth publishing, have been excluded.

Next, I should like to say a little more about my poems and to mention a few of them individually.

My previous book was dedicated to the memory of Theo Hatch (1931-1992), a close friend who thought highly of my poetry and gave a great deal of encouragement. It was sad that she died before she could have the satisfaction of seeing my work in print. The present book bears a different dedication, but it has seemed right to place the poem “To Theo” at the very beginning. It is a sensitively personal poem, indeed too private to have been included in my first book, but years have passed and now I feel it appropriate to publish “To Theo” as a tribute to my late friend.

Two poems almost at the end of the collection, “Proposal of Marriage” and “Yes” (celebrating, if you like, the acceptance of the proposal), could I suppose be mistaken for personal ones, but − unlike “To Theo” − they are based on imagination only. The reader is welcome to speculate as to which other love poems are in fact personal, but should be warned that while some are, most are not!

Five poems, grouped together in the middle of this section of the book, were written during the Second World War. They express my sense of outrage; I remember how unconvincing the concept of a loving God, which had been instilled in me as a child, became during those terrible years.

Several other poems (not love poems) do indeed speak for me personally. Such are, for example, “About my Poems”, “After reading Hölderlin” and “Enough for Now”. But it is important to make the point that the use of the first person singular in a poem should not necessarily be taken at face value. The “I” in the poem cannot always be assumed to refer to the poet himself; after all, he does use his imagination!

In general, the reader will notice in this collection a variety of forms and styles and a wide range of moods, from ecstatic to nostalgic to sad and even dark. Here and there, though too infrequently (alas), touches of humour appear. I do have a sense of humour, fortunately, but it does not seem to find its way very often into my poetry!

Now to the translations.

I studied modern languages at university and for most of my working life I taught French and German language and literature. The Serbian poems were written by my maternal grandfather, Andra Gavrilović. In spite of having had a Serbian mother, I remember very little of the language; but I have a friend of Yugoslav origin, Željko Ivanković, who kindly supplied me with literal translations of the poems I have used in this book.

How does one turn a foreign poem into an equivalent English poem? Not by simply translating it literally, that’s certain. Words have different associations in different languages. A fairly close translation may give an opportunity of producing a similar poem in English, but only in a minority of cases. Besides, there is the question of form. Does a sonnet (for instance) need to be translated into a sonnet? Well, it may be, but sometimes a different form in English may help to give a rendering which is closer to the spirit of the original. In short, what is called a “translation” should often, in this context, more properly be regarded as an “adaptation”. For instance, whereas I was able to translate the famous “Sonnet d’Arvers” into what can reasonably be called a kind of sonnet in English, the Gavrilović poem “The Sign”, consisting of eight short rhyming lines, became in my adaptation a piece of free verse more than three times as long! This is of course an extreme example; I seized enthusiastically upon the idea expressed in the Serbian poem and could not resist developing it at greater length. I don’t think my granddad would have disapproved!

In short, the aim is always to convey the feeling of the foreign poem as faithfully as possible in an English poem worthy of comparison with the original. I have found this aim both challenging and inspiring.

One word about titles. I think that every poem should have a title, if only for easy identification. Some of the foreign poems have none, and in such a case I have provided one. Even when the foreign poem does have a title, I have sometimes provided a different one, usually more specific: for example, Bouilhet’s “Vers à une Femme” becomes “To the One who Let him Down” and Heine’s “Ein Weib” becomes “The Woman Laughed.” − Incidentally, because I suppose that most readers will find the Serbian language less accessible than French or German, I have provided the title of each Gavrilović poem with a literal translation in brackets.

In conclusion, I should like to express my gratitude to those whose conversation, friendship and example have been an inspiration; and to all those whose lives, by touching mine in any way, have ever moved me to write. I am truly grateful to my good friend Željko, without whose expert assistance my grandfather’s poems may well have remained unknown in this country. Finally, I want to thank Richard Fitt of Authors On Line Ltd. for helping to publish this book and for showing so much patience and giving me so much encouragement.

Andrew Finch

October 2006

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