Louis Zukofsky and The West Wing: Metaphors of Mentorship

Louis Zukofsky and The West Wing: Metaphors of
Mentorship, Yiddish, and Translation at Street Level1
Dr. Dror ABEND-DAVID
Chair, English Program
Ohalo College, Israel
Abstract/Résumé
Cet article utilise la traduction dans le but de mettre en évidence quelques malaises moraux
majeurs ancrés dans la réalité quotidienne d'une culture américaine en apparence hétérogène
et dont la prétention est de considérer que "tous les hommes sont semblables». La
discussion porte sur deux types de relations. L'un concerne la relation œdipienne tourmentée
et inquiétante existant entre les personnages de la Maison Blanche dans la série télévisée
américaine « West Wing » , à savoir le Directeur de la Communication Toby Ziegler et le
Président des Etats-Unis Josiah Bartlet. Le second est la relation intense et instable entre
l'Amérique du moderniste Ezra Pound et son disciple juif au caractère obstiné , Louis
Zukofsky. Tant dans le cas fictionnel de Toby Ziegler que dans celui non-fictionnel de Louis
Zukofsky, la traduction apparaît telle que la langue et la culture des communautés
immigrées se font sentir, soit dans le texte imprimé soit dans les sous-titres. Plus important
encore, la traduction ne survient pas, comme Walter Benjamin le fait valoir, dans un " style
linguistique plus élevé et plus pur», mais plutôt dans un style populaire, soulignant par làmême d'importantes différences culturelles souvent passées sous silence dans le discours
dominant. Ainsi, l'article traite des représentations complexes des deux ensembles de
relations dans les textes, ainsi que de la réalité tout aussi complexe de la politique
américaine, en particulier après la récente élection du président Barack Obama.
Keywords/Mots-Clés
Zukofsky, West Wing, translation, Yiddish, mentorship
“I am your father” says Darth Vader (David Prowse) to Luke Skywalker (Mark
Hamill) in Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (Kershner 1980).2 This
statement embodies our fears and “anxieties of influence”, as described by Harold
Bloom in relation to our concepts of mentorship and intergenerational exchange
(Bloom 1997: 77-93). In this article, mentorship is explored as a culturally motivated
social structure by comparing two seemingly unrelated pairs of masters and their
students, and the cultural gap that inevitably deconstructs the assumed harmony
1
I dedicate this article to my former colleagues at the English Department at Eastern
Mediterranean University in Northern Cyprus in gratitude for their input on the issues of ethnic
segregation and racism.
2
See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6sj89xgnl4.
1
between mentors and disciples. In both cases, as I will attempt to show, translation
serves as the proverbial lightsaber that is used by the two alleged pupils to assert their
identity and exchange a hegemonic metaphor of mentorship for an egalitarian metaphor
of exchange between neighbors and colleagues.
Brooklyn, NY, a symbol of immigrant culture and a locus of resistance to dominant
social and linguistic norms, features in the unstable and intense relationship of the first
pair of master and student described in this article: American Modernist Poet Ezra
Pound (1885-1972) and his stubborn (also American) Jewish disciple Louis Zukofsky
(1904-1978),3 a Brooklynite and son of poor immigrants.4 In 1938, Zukofsky published
the poem ‘A Foin Lass Bodders Me’, a translation of Cavalcanti’s thirteenth-century
canzone ‘Donna Mi Prega’, which had already been rendered into English by Pound
both in 1928 and in 1934 (Canto XXXVI). Zukofsky’s version, however, is in
‘Brooklynese’, a 1930s Brooklyn-based slang. In opting for Brooklynese, Zukofsky
demonstrates what in retrospect seems obvious: that his presence in the United States
while Pound was in Italy, his being in tune with the street life of New York City, and
his familiarity with the social and economic realities of the American lower middle
class earn him an American identity that Pound fails to recognize. More than
Cavalcanti’s text, Zukofsky translates his own identity from that of a marginalized
minority to the mainstream of American life.
Probably not less astounding than Zukofsky’s Brooklynese translation from 1938 was
the airing on the night of 11 December 2002 of the first scene of episode eleven of the
fourth season of The West Wing, a popular American television drama. The episode
opens in Yiddish, with English subtitles at the bottom of the screen (Misiano 1999-
3
Let me add a few words about the power differences between Louis Zukofsky and Ezra Pound:
Pound was not only older, better published and financially better off. He was also the founder of
the Imagist and Vorticist movements, and one of the leading figures in American Modern Poetry.
Pound had a great deal of influence over publications and journals related to Modern American
Poetry, some of which he edited himself, and was the mentor of various important disciples.
Zukofsky’s dependence on Pound was not only for instruction, but also for Pound’s connections
and influence.
4
While Zukofsky has spent a good part of his life in Brooklyn Heights (some 30 years), he was
actually born on the Lower East Side in Manhattan. He has spent some time, as he writes in his
Biography, “in all the boroughs of New York City” (Zukofsky 1970: 5, 13). Zukofsky also lived
for a while in Wisconsin. However, the image of Brooklyn, particularly when considering his
choice of linguistic register in ‘A Foin Lass Bodders Me’, stands most clear in the
autobiographical parts of his work.
2 Louis Zukofsky and The West Wing