Quantum Poetics by Gwyneth Lewis

Author:Gwyneth Lewis [Lewis, Gwyneth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781780372037
Publisher: Bloodaxe Books
Published: 2015-02-15T05:00:00+00:00

Illyria and the island in The Tempest form part of Shakespeare’s self-portrait as an artist. Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru, the Welsh-language National Theatre of Wales, commissioned me to translate The Tempest into Welsh in 2012. It was a technical challenge to keep the lines in metre because, not only does Welsh poetry count syllables, not accents, the basic unit of sound in Welsh is the mirror image of that in English. Shakespeare wrote in iambic pentameter (ti-TUM, ti-TUM, ti-TUM, ti-TUM, ti-TUM). In Welsh the accent of a word is, as a rule, on the penultimate syllable, giving one a trochaic rhythm (TUM-ti, TUM-ti, TUM-ti, TUM-ti, TUM-ti). I shouldn’t have been too worried about these mirror images metrically: all I did was to steal an unaccented syllable from the end of the previous line to give an overall iambic rhythm. There was, however, one very interesting exception. I discovered that the songs in the play are composed in the Welsh trochaic measure. We know that Shakespeare included Welsh in his history plays because he had Welsh-speaking actors in his company. One of Shakespeare’s grandmothers is said to have been a Welsh speaker, so I wonder if, in writing lyrics, closer to his linguistic subconscious, he was reproducing rhythms he’d heard very young at home.

Here’s the concluding part of Ariel’s first song sequence in the play, describing the magic shipwreck conjured up by Prospero, acting as a playwright. Note how this watery grave is a portrait of a father transformed by the sea and illusion into a piece of art. We’re in Illyrian territory:

Full fathom five thy father lies,

Of his bones are coral made;

Those are pearls that were his eyes,

Nothing of him that doth fade

But doth suffer a sea-change

Into something rich and strange. (ll. 396-412)23

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