Vertical Fishing Rods

I've been known to complain about the lucidity and denotative nature of French. However, this morning I've run into a word that's competitive with any connotative English word in its range of possible meanings.

It doesn't help that I was already having some trouble translating the verses prior to the line: "lancer, relancer." The preceding verses had something to do with a copper drum, which doesn't seem to be a particularly Tibetan musical instrument--I'm thinking Metail is describing some mechanical device the identity of which is not clear to me. Then the most popular (or common) translation for lancer is "thrown," which doesn't make much sense with a drum. So I google both "lancer" and "tambour" (drum), to receive back a bunch of pages that have to do with fishing. The tambour is the reel part of the fishing rod (I guess--I'm not up on fishing paraphenelia lingo), while lancer is to cast the line. So I try "cast," but that doesn't seem to make sense in the context of the line, either.

I decide to let it go and forge onto the next couple of lines: "bruit de mécanique/moulins verticaux." This translates roughly into "mechanical noise/vertical mills." OK, mechanical noise is 5 syllables, great. But "vertical mills" is only 4, plus I'm not sure what exactly vertical mills are. I look in the dictionary, to see that a few lines down, temptingly, is "moulinet," which means, fishing rod. But if Metail meant fishing rod, she would have used "moulinet," right? Is this a coincidence of the dictionary?

This reminds me of my idea, expressed in some essay I wrote on how to read ecological poetry, that dictionaries should be arranged so that words with companionable meanings follow one another, rather than alphabetical. This is along the same lines I used to arrange books, thinking how the books (or the authors) might like or appreciate one another. I appreciate dis-organization. I wish there were more of it.

Exuberant Waters Fray

I signed up for Harrap's month-long free trial, as I liked the pirated copy that M. Oliver gave me so much, but which is, alas, not transferable from my vieux computer to my nouvel computer. (I think it pretty funny that computer is ordinateur in French, but also "computer." Actually, the definitions associated with "ordinateur" are rather fertile: you've got "macro-ordinateur" and "micro-ordinateur" that mean, respectively, mainframe and microcomputer. Now, I don't think the Academicians are doing a very good job when they allow "laptop" to be translated as "micro-ordinateur portable"--you're practically begging for the English (or would that be American?) to be used.)

Anyway, before I digressed there, I signed up so that I would work on my translation of Earth's Horizons. Like, as in, that I must do work before the month elapses, because otherwise Harrap's is very expensive. So, a few days ago, I achieved this:

EVEN IF THE MASS PERSISTS IN RECOILING FROM
PRIMITIVE EXTENSIONS THAT CULMINATE ON DUPLICATE SIDES
WHERE FLESHY SUMMIT RIDGES OUTLINED IN THEIR
ROUNDNESS TILT TOWARD THE NORTH DEPRESSING PLACES
OF ERRATIC CONVERGENCES THAT THE DESERTED SLOPES
TO THE BENEFIT OF CRESTS MORE ACCIDENTAL IN THEIR
DOING WHEN THEY SHARE EXUBERANT WATERS FRAYING
OVER THE STEPPED SPURS OF WHERE THE UNDULATING HEIGHTS
DRAW AWKWARDLY THEIR CLIMBS DISAPPEARING ON THE FLANK

I had a short consultation with my father about translating "AU PROFIT DES CRETES" to "TO THE BENEFIT OF CRESTS" instead of "TO THE PROFIT OF CRESTS." I'm also not happy with "DEPRESSING" as that's got another connotation in English that overpowers the meaning of the French. I'll have to resort to the dictionary of geological terms to find some alternatives. But ultimately, all of the above lines, after this first rough translation, must be put into a line of 48 characters, per Metail's original Oulipian form. So enjoy what you see above as it will be changed, as summits tilt and waters fray, to perhaps unrecognizable form.