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70b. Bonus: Dick Davis on Translating Persian Poetry.
There’s a feeling, I think, in English poetry that you have to be original.
That feeling isn’t really there in Persian poetry until the very modern
period. Then it is. But before then, there’s a kind of sense that there’s this
vast treasury of possibilities in poetry which everybody has used—and you can
use them too.
Dick Davis is an award-winning poet and translator, famous for his
translations of medieval Persian poetry. He has translated Attar’s The
Conference of the Birds and Nezami’s Layli and Majnun (both covered on The
Spouter-Inn), as well as Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, and his most recent translation
is The Mirror of My Heart: A Thousand Years of Persian Poetry by Women.
He joins Chris and Suzanne to talk about reading and translating Persian
poetry, how his work in translation has influenced his own poetry, and the
specific challenges in translating Layli and Majnun.
Show Notes.
Dick Davis’s translations include Layli and Majnun,
The Conference of the Birds, and others listed
below.
Our episodes on Layli and Majnun and
Conference of the Birds.
Fakhraddin Gorgani: Vis and Ramin (trans. Dick
Davis).
The Mirror of My Heart: A Thousand Years of Persian Poetry by Women (trans.
Dick Davis): hardcover bilingual edition by
Mage and English-only paperback by
Penguin
Jahan Khatun.
Hafez.
Faces of Love: Hafez and the Poets of Shiraz (trans. Dick Davis): originally
published by Mage, paperback reprint by Penguin,
bilingual edition by Mage.
Mughal empire.
Our bonus episodes with Emily Wilson
and Sassan Tabatabai.
Nezami: Khosrow and Shirin.
“Seek a Poet who your way do's bend, / And chuse an Author as you chuse a
Friend” (Wentworth Dillon, Earl of Roscomon, in An Essay on Translated
Verse).
Chapman’s Homer.
John Keats: On First Looking into Chapman's
Homer.
Nizami’s Khamsa.
On Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh.
Ferdowsi: Shahnameh (trans. Dick Davis): magnificent hardcover in three
volumes, illustrated, published by Mage, paperback single volume by
Penguin.
Support The Spouter-Inn on Patreon to help
us research and record the show, and you can hang out with us on a friendly
little Discord.
View all episodes
By Suzanne Conklin Akbari and Chris Piuma
4.8
3030 ratings
There’s a feeling, I think, in English poetry that you have to be original.
That feeling isn’t really there in Persian poetry until the very modern
period. Then it is. But before then, there’s a kind of sense that there’s this
vast treasury of possibilities in poetry which everybody has used—and you can
use them too.
Dick Davis is an award-winning poet and translator, famous for his
translations of medieval Persian poetry. He has translated Attar’s The
Conference of the Birds and Nezami’s Layli and Majnun (both covered on The
Spouter-Inn), as well as Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, and his most recent translation
is The Mirror of My Heart: A Thousand Years of Persian Poetry by Women.
He joins Chris and Suzanne to talk about reading and translating Persian
poetry, how his work in translation has influenced his own poetry, and the
specific challenges in translating Layli and Majnun.
Show Notes.
Dick Davis’s translations include Layli and Majnun,
The Conference of the Birds, and others listed
below.
Our episodes on Layli and Majnun and
Conference of the Birds.
Fakhraddin Gorgani: Vis and Ramin (trans. Dick
Davis).
The Mirror of My Heart: A Thousand Years of Persian Poetry by Women (trans.
Dick Davis): hardcover bilingual edition by
Mage and English-only paperback by
Penguin
Jahan Khatun.
Hafez.
Faces of Love: Hafez and the Poets of Shiraz (trans. Dick Davis): originally
published by Mage, paperback reprint by Penguin,
bilingual edition by Mage.
Mughal empire.
Our bonus episodes with Emily Wilson
and Sassan Tabatabai.
Nezami: Khosrow and Shirin.
“Seek a Poet who your way do's bend, / And chuse an Author as you chuse a
Friend” (Wentworth Dillon, Earl of Roscomon, in An Essay on Translated
Verse).
Chapman’s Homer.
John Keats: On First Looking into Chapman's
Homer.
Nizami’s Khamsa.
On Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh.
Ferdowsi: Shahnameh (trans. Dick Davis): magnificent hardcover in three
volumes, illustrated, published by Mage, paperback single volume by
Penguin.
Support The Spouter-Inn on Patreon to help
us research and record the show, and you can hang out with us on a friendly
little Discord.
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