Poetry of the Maori Translations by Barry Mitcalfe Paul's Book Arcade, 1961. 12/6d.

Te Ao Hou, June 1963, Page 50

Poetry of the Maori Translations by Barry Mitcalfe Paul's Book Arcade, 1961. 12/6d. reviewed by Peter Fairbrother Mr Mitcalfe is to be complimented on producing this book of translations of Maori poetry. There is a keen demand from both pakeha and Maori for printed waiata, with translations and notes. Much research and enquiry is necessary before one can even put pen to paper concerning one waiata; the time and effort that have gone into producing a booklet of twenty-two poems deserves praise and admiration. This is a book every New Zealander should have, and have read. It is remarkably free from misprints—an occasional ake for aku catches the eye. There are other words one wonders about, but waiata manuscripts are seldom free of spelling mistakes which seem to be perpetuated. The introduction covers all the universal aspects of poetry and relates them to Maori poetry. This comprehensive essay on Maori poetry suffers from the same cryptic quality which makes Maori poetry hard to translate. Some of Mr Mitcalfe's statements could so easily be contradicted; though if we knew his reasoning, we might agree in part. For instance, he reiterates that the Maori life of old was restricted and monotonous—as one who has hunted pork and pigeon, bobbed, gaffed, and trapped eels, dived for kina, dug pipi and tuatua, grown, harvested and stored kumara, I fail to understand why Mr Mitcalfe says a life close to nature is monotonous—and Mr Mitcalfe doesn't tell us why. And in what sense is the imagery of nature restricting? Is a tractor a more effective symbol than thunder? Or a power pylon than a tree? Nevertheless, this introduction is a good essay on the subject and should be carefully and critically read. If careful reading provokes argument, then it only confirms that it is a good essay. In his introduction and ‘translator's note’ Mr Mitcalfe adequately outlines the difficulties that any translator of poetry has, i.e. (1) how much literal translation? (2) how much interpretation? (3) will the translation resemble in form the poetry of either language, or neither? The other difficulty with Maori to English is the freedom of reference in Maori to things unmentionable in English. The cover, title page and the introduction all refer to the English versions as translations, and as such we must judge them. Often in the introduction we are told that the poetry of the Maori is cryptic: (i) ‘Translation is difficult … language was shorn of all superfluity.’ (ii) ‘Most of these devices of Maori style tend to compress, to make the language cryptic …’ Yet again we are told that: (iii) ‘It is in the transfer of impact, of the manysided image, not simply of the superficial meaning, that most Maori translators fall short.’ From this we would expect to find the English translations much longer than the Maori, but instead we find that most English versions are the same length as the Maori originals, some divided into the same stanza pattern. To the non-Maori speaker this implies line-by-line translation, and the other implication is that no attempt has been made to expand the cryptic style—or else much of the meaning has been left out. From the form of the translation one is entitled to believe that matotoru in XV means ‘small number’. In IV an interested pakeha will find tapa occurs three times with a different translation each time, but no explanation is offered. One might excuse the leaving out of some of the meaning were it not accompanied by the addition of concepts not in the original. We can search in vain to find Maori words to mean (or imply) ‘Your blood soaks into the wood,’ in XIV. Where are the Maori words for ‘pain’ and ‘death’ in XVIII? The English versions of X, XII, XIII, XIV, XVII, XVIII seem distorted by these two things—leaving out what is there, and adding what is not. Those that seem to me to be adequate translations and adequate interpretations are VIII, IX, XI, XVI, XIX, XXI, XXII. Mr Mitcalfe says: (iv) ‘[This collection] is intended simply as an insight into the ancient culture of this land.’ Yet he fails to make clear the significance of the symbolism of papa totara in II and XIV. This and other oversights make one wonder if, when he says ‘[Maori] poetic imagery was inevitably restricted in scope,’ he does so, not appreciating himself much of the symbolism. Surely, if he wants to give an insight into the concepts he would translate ‘He rongo toa mai, hau ana ki te tahatu o te rangi’ as ‘Your fame, spread even to the edge of the sky’, rather than the weak sounding ‘Your courage cries to the empty skies.’ (VII) Indeed, over all, the translations seem to lack the vigour of the original. ‘Bold Tiki! Soft Tiki!’ seems hardly adequate translation for ‘Tiki; ka riri Tiki, Tiki, ka reka Tiki.’ (XI) The first five lines of English in XX give us an insight, not into Maori culture, but into the

Victorian-spawned moral attitudes of the New Zealand pakeha. As a final point of criticism, let us take Mr Mitcalfe's statement: (v) ‘I have selected only those poems which can be isolated from their primitive cultural context.’ Why then, include XV? Is it that he has failed to see the rich allusions, the ‘many-sided images’? Or is it an attempt to do the impossible, like Maui? It seems that in many poems, Mr Mitcalfe has translated the nouns and verbs, ignoring the vital little words, then, using the images so obtained, written his own poem. (How else could he arrive at ‘the eyes’ from no mata?) If the book were titled ‘Poems by Barry Mitcalfe on themes derived from Maori poetry’ my criticisms would cease to be valid, but the cover asserts translations, and as translations they must be judged. The introduction and translator's note provide the standards of criticism for this and any other subsequent book of translations. Taking Mr Mitcalfe's statements (i. to v.) as a basis of judgement, it seems he has failed to expand the compressed, cryptic Maori, to give us the ‘many-sided image’, to give us an insight (we got a glimpse, perhaps). But I say this knowing the size of the task he undertook. It is a task that needs doing, as so many of us realize, and it really is quite an urgent task, too. There are few of us capable of doing it, fewer willing to do it, and, of these, few with the time to do it. So I repeat, ‘Congratulations, Mr Mitcalfe,’ for pioneering this field, and giving us a book to be enjoyed by the dilettante, to serve as a challenge and a standard to potential compilers of similar anthologies.