Dick Davis (translator)
Dick Davis | |
---|---|
Born | Portsmouth, Hampshire, England | 18 April 1945
Citizenship | British |
Alma mater | University of Manchester (PhD) |
Occupation(s) | Scientist, writer |
Employer | Ohio State University |
Dick Davis (born 1945) is an
Born into a working-class family shortly before the end of World War II, Davis grew up in the Yorkshire fishing village of Withernsea during the 1950s, where an experimental school made it possible for Davis to become the first member of his family to attend university.
Shortly before graduating from
After teaching in Greece and Italy, in 1970 Davis decided to live permanently in Tehran during the reign of the last Shah. As a result, he taught English at the University of Tehran, and married Afkham Darbandi, about whom he has since written and published many love poems, in 1974.
After the
Davis is a Fellow of the
Davis' poetry collections have been chosen as books of the year by The Sunday Times (UK) in 1989; The Daily Telegraph (UK) in 1989; The Economist (UK) in 2002; The Washington Post in 2010, and The Times Literary Supplement (UK) in 2013.
Early life
Davis was born on 18 April 1945 in Portsmouth, Hampshire, England, but grew up in Withernsea, Yorkshire. He never knew his biological father, who left when Davis was two years old. His mother remarried soon afterwards and, even though his mother and stepfather were working-class people with very little education, they both read voraciously. Davis later recalled, "...there were many books around the house, and I was expected to read them like everyone else."[2]
He later recalled, "Portsmouth is a big naval town with a large sailor population. It's a noisy, busy, and dirty place. Our Yorkshire home was in a small village by the sea. In the past, it had been primarily a fishing village, but that was winding down when I was a child, although the boats still went out in the morning to fish in the North Sea. But mainly the village was dependent on summer tourism. Yet I can still remember that whenever there were storms at sea, there was a particular hymn we always sang in school because the fathers of some of the boys still went out in their fishing boats. The hymn was O, Hear Us When We Cry to Thee, For Those in Peril on the Sea, and, to this day, I still can't hear that hymn without a lump in my throat."[3]
Davis has said that he was very influenced by his stepfather, who had a passionate love of reading about
Davis further recalls, "I was lucky because they decided to set up an experimental school, which they called a comprehensive school, which is quite similar to public schools in the U.S. Previously in England, when you went to a state school, you were divided into two groups at the age of eleven: those who went to grammar school and those who didn't. But, back then, they were considering allowing everyone to go to the same school, and our little rural community was chosen as a pilot area. Since this was unique and experimental at the time, it attracted some very dedicated and excellent teachers who moved to Withernsea. So even though I lived in a very small and isolated village, I had some extremely good teachers, and because of them I was able to go to Cambridge. I came from a family where nobody had ever been to University, let alone Cambridge, and I believe that if I'd gone to a regular state school and didn't have all those dedicated teachers, I probably wouldn't have made it."[5]
Davis has credited the English master at the Withernsea school, John Gibson, with instilling in him a love of poetry. Davis adds that by the time he "went up to Cambridge," he had, "pretty well read the entire canon of English poetry." Gibson once urged Davis to read John Milton's Paradise Lost over summer break. Another summer, Davis was urged to read William Wordsworth's The Prelude.[6]
Davis has also said, "As an adolescent, one of my favorite books was Fitzgerald's Rubaiyat, which, as you know, is a very romanticized version of Iran. Fitzgerald had himself never visited Iran and, as a matter of fact, he never got as further east than Paris. So his translation presents a kind of imaginative vision of Iran, one which I found very attractive."[7]
Davis has said that his favorite poets during school were
Cambridge
Davis attended
When asked if he had ever attempted to write free verse, Davis replied, "I tried it for a very short time, less than a year, when I was about eighteen. Back then, it seemed to be what people were doing, and what you were supposed to do. But I very quickly realized that I wasn't interested in writing free verse. I think it was Raymond Chandler who once said you should write the kind of novels that you'd like to read, and I'd never particularly enjoyed reading free verse. I read it dutifully, of course. I read Gunn's free verse because I admired Gunn so much, and I read a lot of the American free verse poets, but I never wanted to do it myself."[11]
Davis also recalled, however,
My brother committed suicide when he was nineteen and I was twenty-one. We had the kind of relationship that brothers often have; we were very close, but we also had a strong rivalry. He was a very unhappy child, and he was diagnosed as being mentally unstable – as a schizophrenic – and he spent a lot of his adolescence in and out of institutions... my years at Cambridge were shadowed by my brother since he was often ill. He also had very bad relations with my parents, and they'd effectively turned over his care to me. So I spent a lot of time seeing him into institutions, although he would often run away. It was a very strange experience for both of us and I took his death very hard. For a long time, I couldn't deal with it and, to be honest, it's the reason that I left England. He died shortly before I graduated from Cambridge, and as soon as I graduated, I said, 'I have to get away from here.'[12]
Inside the Shah's Iran
According to Davis, "I left Cambridge in my early twenties, and I taught first in
Of his relationship with his wife Afkham Darbandi[14] Davis has said, "There were, of course problems because her parents were very much against it. It was the usual concerns, marrying a foreigner, we don't know who he is and all of that. So I stayed in Iran for two more years, and we were married in 1974."[15]
After their wedding in
When asked about the many other love poems addressed to his wife, Davis replied, "It's often occurred to me that there are so few poems that celebrate love within a marriage. It's been suggested that Petrarch would never have written all his sonnets to Laura if he'd slept with her. But marriage exists all over the world, and it's very real for many people. It's not some fantasy or illusion, and it's something I've always wanted to write about. As for my children, they're immensely important to me. You certainly don't want to burden them with your emotions; but, on the other hand, the emotions are still there, and I've tried to write about it. I must admit that I find those poems very hard to write, much more difficult than writing poems about my wife."[17]
When asked whether he and Afkham were ever at risk during the
The Davises left Iran for the United Kingdom in November 1978.[18]
Life as refugees
After arrived in the United Kingdom, Davis began writing and publishing poetry of his own. In a 1980 book review,
After also highly praising the epigrammatic quality which Davis had learned from the poetry of Emily Dickinson,[20] Gioia concluded by writing, "This obsession to condense experience and language into tight, controlled forms is matched by Davis' need to establish a moral dimension in his poetry. Morality for him seems to be an organizing principle as important as meter or diction. In some ways all three principles may even be different sides of the same vision of poetry. Implicitly or explicitly in almost every piece poetry becomes a moral judgment of experience. Some readers will clearly resist a sensibility so certain of its mission, but a mind that can recreate and evaluate a scene in a few memorable lines deserves attention in this garrulous age."[21]
Davis also made a translation with Afkham's assistance of
In 2012, Davis published Faces of Love: Hafez and the Poets of Shiraz. The book is a collection of verse by the poets of Medieval
The three poets Davis translated for the collection are
In 2015, Davis published a collection of translated poems by
According to
According to Haven, "Yet powerful affinities link The Shahnameh with the poems of this 21st century poet. The Persian Book of Kings echoes with a 'recurrent cry for justice against cruel or incompetent kings,' Dick writes in the introduction. Prison poems begin during the same era in Persia as well – Mas'ud Sa'd (1046–1121) starts the sad tradition, and it continues to this day. Political anger bubbles below the surface in Persian poetry throughout the last millennium. And so it does with Fatemeh Shams. 'It is an association that may at first sight seem counter-intuitive – the privacy of erotic passion allied with the public stance of political protest,' the translator writes, 'but the link is of course that both the passion and the politics are subversive of the status quo – of patriarchy that would deny women erotic autonomy, and of political authority that would deny them social freedom.'"[25]
Current status
Davis is
While interviewing Davis, William Baer mentioned the, "powerful spiritual resonance," in the former's poetry, as well as several of his poems, such as Maximilian Kolbe, Rembrandt's Return of the Prodigal Son, A Christmas Poem, and others, could be considered works of Christian poetry.[26]
Davis replied, "Spirituality has always been very difficult for me, and I think I'm an
While speaking of his fascination with the life stories of other immigrants and exiles, Davis spoke about how many he encountered while he and Afkham were living in
Published works
As writer
- Dick Davis (1975). In the Distance. Anvil Press Poetry. ISBN 0-85646-024-9.
- Dick Davis (1980). Seeing the World. Anvil Press Poetry. ISBN 0-85646-061-3.
- Dick Davis (1984). The Covenant. Anvil Press Poetry. ISBN 0-85646-124-5.
- Dick Davis (1996). Touchwood. Anvil Press Poetry. ISBN 0-85646-269-1.
- Dick Davis (15 June 2009). Belonging: Poems. Ohio University Press. ISBN 978-0-8040-4005-1.
- Dick Davis (1 June 2009). A Trick of Sunlight: Poems. Ohio University Press. ISBN 978-0-8040-4025-9.
- Rejected Narratives and Transitional Crises within the Shāhnāme, International Shāhnāme Conference, The Second Millennium: Conference Volume, Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2014.
- Contributor to A New Divan: A Lyrical Dialogue between East and West, ISBN 9781909942554
Translations
- Hafez; ISBN 978-1-101-62717-4.[29]
- Firdawsī (1 March 2004). The Legend of Seyavash. Mage Publishers, Incorporated. ISBN 978-0-934211-91-8.
- Firdawsī; Dick Davis (2000). Fathers and sons. Mage Publishers. ISBN 9780934211536.
- Ehsan Yarshater; Dick Davis; Firdawsī (1 January 1998). The lion and the throne. Mage Publishers. ISBN 978-0-934211-50-5.
- Īraj Pizishkzād; Dick Davis (1 January 2000). My Uncle Napoleon. Mage Publishers. ISBN 9780934211628.
- Fakhraddin Gorgani; Fakhr al-Dīn Gurgānī; Dick Davis (2008). Vis & Ramin. Mage Pub. ISBN 978-1-933823-17-1.
- Fatemeh Shams; Fatemeh Shams; Dick Davis (2015). Life and Legends.
- Various; Dick Davis (2019). Mirror of My Heart: A Thousand Years of Persian Poetry by Women. Mage Publishers. ISBN 978-1-949445-05-3.
References
- ^ a b "Davis Interpretation of Shahnameh in Persion". Financial Tribune. 29 May 2017. Retrieved 24 July 2018.
- ^ William Baer (2016), Thirteen on Form: Conversations with Poets, Measure Press. Pages 251–253.
- ^ William Baer (2016), Thirteen on Form: Conversations with Poets, Measure Press. Pages 251–252.
- ^ William Baer (2016), Thirteen on Form: Conversations with Poets, Measure Press. Pages 261–262.
- ^ William Baer (2016), Thirteen on Form: Conversations with Poets, Measure Press. Page 252.
- ^ William Baer (2016), Thirteen on Form: Conversations with Poets, Measure Press. Page 253.
- ^ a b William Baer (2016), Thirteen on Form: Conversations with Poets, Measure Press. Page 257.
- ^ William Baer (2016), Thirteen on Form: Conversations with Poets, Measure Press. Page 254.
- ^ a b William Baer (2016), Thirteen on Form: Conversations with Poets, Measure Press. Page 254-255.
- ^ a b "Translator, poet champions medieval Persian verse". Stanford University. 22 October 2008.
- ^ William Baer (2016), Thirteen on Form: Conversations with Poets, Measure Press. Page 255.
- ^ William Baer (2016), Thirteen on Form: Conversations with Poets, Measure Press. Page 260.
- ^ William Baer (2016), Thirteen on Form: Conversations with Poets, Measure Press. Page 255-256.
- ^ Haven, Cynthia (22 October 2008). "Translator, poet champions medieval Persian verse". Stanford University. Retrieved 17 March 2020.
- ^ a b William Baer (2016), Thirteen on Form: Conversations with Poets, Measure Press. Page 256.
- ^ William Baer (2016), Thirteen on Form: Conversations with Poets, Measure Press. Page 267.
- ^ William Baer (2016), Thirteen on Form: Conversations with Poets, Measure Press. Page 266.
- ^ "Whispers of Love". Newsweek. 4 March 2013.
- ^ Dana Gioia (2003), Barrier of a Common Language: An American Looks at Contemporary British Poetry, University of Michigan Press. Page 82.
- ^ Dana Gioia (2003), Barrier of a Common Language: An American Looks at Contemporary British Poetry, University of Michigan Press. Pages 82-83.
- ^ Dana Gioia (2003), Barrier of a Common Language: An American Looks at Contemporary British Poetry, University of Michigan Press. Page 83.
- ^ William Baer (2016), Thirteen on Form: Conversations with Poets, pages 231–275.
- ^ William Baer (2016) Thirteen on Form: Conversations with Poets, Measure Press. Pages 273–274.
- ^ Fatemeh Shams translations by Dick Davis.
- ^ a b Translator Dick Davis and the Poems of Fatemeh Shams
- ^ William Baer (2016) Thirteen on Form: Conversations with Poets, Measure Press. Page 263.
- ^ William Baer (2016) Thirteen on Form: Conversations with Poets, Measure Press. Pages 265–266.
- ^ William Baer (2016), Thirteenon Form: Conversations with Poets, pages 263–264.
- ^ The Washington PostBook World: 'Faces of Love,' translations of Persian poetry reviewed by Michael Dirda