Transtromer's Tracks

[romac]

I can’t this poem out of my head.

Tracks

Night, two o’clock, moonlight. The train has stopped
in the middle of the plain. Distant bright points of a town
twinkle cold on the horizon.

As when someone has gone into a dream so far
that he’ll never remember he was there
when he comes back to his room.

And as when someone goes into a sickness so deep
that all his former days become twinkling points, a swarm,
cold and feeble on the horizon.

The train stands perfectly still.
Two o’clock: full moonlight, few stars.

Tomas Transtromer
(translated from the Swedish by Robert Bly)

I keep going back to this poem. The thing is, I'm not sure why. I really like it somehow, maybe the way he plays with the various components that make up the stalled night train image. The meaning of the poem keeps blurring over in my brain, but I admire the way he doesn’t go for an obvious treatment of the train/darkness/twinkling lights scene.

So now my questions.
What do you think of this poem? How do you interpret it (or – if you prefer – how do you experience the poem?)?

[SarahJF]

At the moment, for me, on a brief reading, it simply evokes one strong image.

But I'll come back in the morning, if that's OK, because first readings of anything worthwhile usually mislead, for me, anyway.

Sarah

[SarahJF]

Hi Romac,

I let it sit for a while, and I think what it does for me, is to give a really strong visual image, then almost pan-out quickly from it, with the:

As when someone has gone into a dream so far
that he’ll never remember he was there
when he comes back to his room.

So we track backwards so fast we're a bit dizzy, but can still see the image of the stars and the train from the end of the backtracking tunnel.

Then we backtrack again:

And as when someone goes into a sickness so deep
that all his former days become twinkling points, a swarm,
cold and feeble on the horizon.

But still see the 'twinkling points'.

Anyway, then we come back to the intial image through the tunnel, but the image has been modified slightly to be brisker, and not quite as self-consciously 'lovely', as if the journey backwards through dreams and sickness has both given something (the brevity, the compression, a reality) and taken something away (a slight prettiness).

Quite honestly, I can't see this reading of this poem answering any questions. But it's how I'm reading it at the moment, anyway. Manipulation of a strong central image, I suppose. I'm not brilliant at analysis, though, it has to be said.



Sarah

[romac]

Actually, Sarah, that looks like a very intelligent piece of analysis to me.
I've been having thoughts as well but am too tired to write them out tonight. However, thanks for some interesting thoughts.

Rob

[JohnBoddie]

This poem is covered in some detail by Robert Hass in his "Twentieth Century Pleasures." The translation of the poem given there has substantially more power than the version printed here, although I think both translations are by Bly.

JB

[Autumn]

Originally posted by JohnBoddie
This poem is covered in some detail by Robert Hass in his "Twentieth Century Pleasures." The translation of the poem given there has substantially more power than the version printed here, although I think both translations are by Bly.

Can I read this online or is it available only in book form?

Autumn

[Autumn]

I couldn't find the 'other' more powerful version online so I'll share my thoughts on this one. I like this poem. I find it pretty evocative. I read this as a reflective poem about life.

S1 sets the tone of the poem. Imagine yourself, alone, stranded in the middle of nowhere. The nearest things to civilisation are the distant lights of a town on the horizon and even these were described as cold.

I find S2 and S3 extremely haunting. It's like you have done something, yet you have not. It's like the past never matters or doesn't matter anymore. It's blur. You then ask yourself, why do things happen when they happen the way they happen. Is there a significance in all these things?

In the end, we're still at two o'clock. The train stands perfectly still. The moon is still there. Few stars but the world still goes round. Life still goes on.

This made me think of one of those times when I wake up in the middle of the night. You looked out the window, there are some lights in the far distant but everything else is quiet. You feel so alone and yet there are people around you, at least there're the neighbours. Then, you start thinking about your life as you try to fall asleep again.

I'm not sure if my reading of this poem is right or way off track but I like it the way I read it. I think I'd like to read more of Tomas Transtromer but I don't read Swedish so I've to look for translated versions. I wonder how many of his works were translated. Thanks for posting this, Rob.

Autumn

[JohnBoddie]

Hass's "Twentieth Century Pleasures" is available in book form, and it's highly recommended if you sincerely want to understand how accomplished poets handle literary criticism.

My copy cost $15.00 through Borders and it's easily worth twice the price. It has Hass's comments on Lowell, Wright, Transtromer, Brodsky, Winters, Creely, McMichel, Rilke, and Hass's closest subject, Miloscz. It won the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism.

The ISBN is 0-8801-539-X(paperback)

The best translations of Transtromer are by Samuel Charters. Of these, the best is the long poem "Baltics", which is commented on by Hass. I paid $60 for a copy of Carters' translation of this poem. It changed the way I think about poetry.

JB

[Autumn]

Thanks, John. It's going to cost me a bomb if I decide to purchase the books. But I'll still check with my local online bookstore to see if they can source them for me.

Autumn

[romac]

I’ve done a little research. Baltics is available from amazon.co.uk for £165 (about $300) – sounds like you made a sound investment for $60, John!

I found Hass’s book at both amazon.de and amazon.fr even though the UK site said it was unavailable – the price is fine, around €14, so I’ll make that my springtime reading. Thanks for the recommendation, John.

Robert Bly’s translations are available in a book called The half-finished heaven: the best poems of Tomas Transtromer, priced £6.91 ($ 14), although there are second-hand copies for only £4.99.

There is another selected poems published by Norton entitled Transtromer: Selected Poems (Reissue) (Pr Only): Selected Poems (Reissue) – no details are given of the translator(s) – at £7.38 ($14.95).

There is also New Collected Poems, translated by Robert Fulton, at £9.95 (about $19).

In the anthology Staying Alive, edited by Neil Astley, there are a few Transtromer poems including “Tracks”, this time with Fulton’s translation. It might be interesting to compare, so I’ve printed Fulton’s translation below:

Tracks

2 a.m.: moonlight. The train has stopped
out in the middle of the plain. Far away, points of light in a town,
flickering coldly at the horizon.

As when a man has gone into a dream so deep
he’ll never remember having been there
when he comes back to his room.

As when someone has gone into an illness so deep
everything his days were, becomes a few flickering points, a swarm,
cold and tiny at the horizon.

The train is standing quite still.
2 a.m.: bright moonlight, few stars.


I promise to post some thoughts soon. Autumn’s comparison with staring out a window in the middle of the night proves to me my gut feeling that the image of the train has power because we’ve all been there one way or another. It encapsulates an emotional state with a picture just about anyone will recognise.

Thanks for the feedback.

[JohnBoddie]

Here is the translation as it appears in Hass's book -

2 A.M.:moonlight. The train has stopped
out in a field. Far off sparks from a town,
flickering coldly on the horizon.

As when a man goes so deep into his dream
He will never remember that he was there
When he returns again to his room.

Or when a person goes so deep into a sickness
That his days all become flickering sparks, a swarm,
Feeble and cold on the horizon.

The train is entirely motionless.
2 o’clock: strong moonlight, few stars.

JB

[Autumn]

Thanks for posting this version, John.

'The half finished heaven' is the only title in stock at my local bookstore and it'll cost me a bit (translated to USD15.28 or GBP8.50).

I think I'll save the money to get my hands on 'Twentieth Century Pleasures' first although premier sourcing is going to cost much more.

Cheers,
Autumn

[romac]

OK, I read it on several different levels.

First, I think it’s about aloneness and detachment, as if the narrator will forever see the world “through a glass darkly”, somehow always a touch removed and separated from it – he observes from the train that has stopped in the middle of nowhere and all he can see are those lights “twinkling cold” (S1). By S4 these points have become “few stars”. He can only observe and even his observations may not be accurate. They are “cold and feeble on the horizon” (S3).

Second, it’s about memory and forgetting. The dream of S2 is forgotten, and still lurks unknown in the depths of the psyche. The sickness/illness of S3 makes his former days twinkling points, a swarm – an image of confusion, everything mixed up, flickering on and off. He can’t make sense of his life – his inner life and his outward experiences. Transtromer worked as psychologist, so this idea of people being unable to connect to their pasts, and perhaps their childhood experiences may have been important to him. One daft idea – I wondered about Bly’s use of the words “twinkle/twinkling” in his translation, whether Transtromer used the same word in Swedish as children would use for the nursery rhyme “Twinkle twinkle little star”, so connecting the poem to childhood memories, or whether “flicker/flickering” (as used by Fulton and in Hass’s book) is a more accurate translation.

Third, it’s about a moment in time that has eternal significance – this two o’clock in the morning experience when everything is frozen and he sees his life for what it is – or rather he sees that he can’t see it, that meaning is hidden from him. He understands that he is alone in a dark world with only flickering lights swarming in the distance for company – depressing, but perhaps this knowledge for Transtromer’s narrator is a kind of epiphany or turning-point.

There is a shift from S1 to S4. The train has “stopped” in S1 but stands “perfectly still” in S4. “Moonlight” becomes “full moonlight”. The lights of the town are now seen as stars, or perhaps the narrator just happens to have shifted his gaze. Some details of S1 are missed out in S4, which is stripped down, yet the details preserved have been intensified. Could the narrator be on the brink of clarity? We’ll never know for sure.

The title Tracks is interesting. Obviously there are the train tracks on which the train has stopped. But there are others too; the tracks one leaves behind that may have faded into the past, the traces that might still be observed; the tracks that mark a progression from one stage of life to another rather like the twinkling lights if they could ever stop their swarming and be arranged into some kind of coherent order.

I look forward to seeing what Robert Hass has to say. No doubt I’ll see how much I’ve misread this.

I found the poem is Czeslaw Milosz’s anthology A Book of Luminous Things. Milosz doesn’t say much about it – only one paragraph:

This poem by Transtromer is the most literally spoken in the now, and it’s so impressive that we forget to ask when – how long ago – the observer lived through it. It’s like a snapshot, though enriched by things known from the past, in a dream or during illness.

Glad some of you have enjoyed the poem in its various English incarnations.

[Alasdair]

Romac,

Thanks for posting this good poem for discussion. I have a similar but slightly different take.

For me this poem was about changing perspective or the transience of experience. In S1 the N. becomes aware of the distant lights of the town because the train has stopped. It forces him to detach himself from the local surroundings. In S2 the N. contrasts the how vivid an experience a dream is with how quickly we forget it. S3 is similar and except it is illness that makes his own life seem distant. And S4 wraps it up by drawing our attention to the moon and stars, the most distant objects available.

I think the feeling that the N. is alone is very strong. He is constantly looking at a distant group of objects: the lights of the town, his days as flickering points, the stars and moon. But I don’t get the impression of loneliness since the group of objects don’t seem attractive. The lights in the town flicker “coldly” and an insect metaphor is used for his days which are also cold. The N. is clearly not a part of a greater life but does he want to be?

On the subject of the translations I don’t like the “entirely motionless” in the penultimate line of the version in Hass's book. I don’t know why, perhaps the redundancy in the phrase “entirely motionless” bugs me more than that in “perfectly still”. Or perhaps it is that “still” seems a simpler, more direct way of describing the lack of movement. I’m not really sure. I prefer flicker to twinkle since I associate flicker most strongly with flame in the wind and this relates well to the transience of experience to me.

Thanks again for sharing this.

Alasdair