Tony Harrison: US Martial

Length / Form Published as a pamphlet, containing seventeen translations.

Relationship to Classical text The translations adhere to the general sense, scenarios, pace and mode of address of Martial’s epigrams but the setting is translated/transported, temporally and geographically, so that the poems speak about New York.

Close translation of words/phrases/excerpts Translations of Martial’s epigrams, which take on the vernacular of New York City (where Harrison was living at the time of translation). The language is colloquial, peppered with expletives and bawdy sexual imagery, as well as contemporary references (e.g. ‘crewcut’, ‘hippy’, ‘Dior’).

Classical/post-Classical intertexts Over half of the poems are translations of Martial’s more licentious offerings. In selecting them Harrison goes some way towards redressing the balance against censorship and prurience in English translations and compilations

Comment The pamphlet cover bears the image of a carved stone satyr. In a postscript Harrison describes how the stone head of satyr, on the upper storey of a neighbouring building, overlooked the New York apartment in which he was working. It is this ‘satyr-ical’, subversive overview of life in the streets below which characterises his own role as poet and translator. Harrison returns to satyr-ways in The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus (1990), a play which toys with divisions between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture.