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THE THIRTEENTH HORSE-SONG OF FRANK MITCHELL (WHITE)
This Jerome Rothenberg's “total translation” of a Navajo song titled “The Thirteenth Horse Song of Frank Mitchell (White).”
This “total translation” is done with the help of David P. McAllester and a Wenner-Gren grant.
Overview
Based on the length and format of the originals, Rothenberg chose to translate this Navajo poem as an aural event.
There are a total of seventeen horse-songs and The Thirteenth Horse-Song is a portion of a Blessingway. A Blessingway is an event that lasts anywhere from one to nine days.
These songs tell a long story of the Navajo obtaining horses through the power of Enemy Slayer.
The key elements of this event is the creation of a sacramental environment composed of a leader and an audience. Hence it is considered a “complete translation” but the recording is also considered incomplete. (McAllister, 306).
Commentary
If you take a look at the transcription and listen to the audio, you will immediately note the call and response format or as if there is a leader and those that follow that would be characteristic of the event.
In the transcription, you also see parallelism in the lines. The first three lines beginning with some, then you have multiple lines beginning with “&”, and then you have multiples lines beginning with “with.”
Each line is left-aligned but then the following line is idented as it seems to be a continuation of the chant. A new line is started when everyone “catches up” and the leader begins with a new “line.” Often the word 'are' is transcribed as 're
The word now is written NNNOOOOW as it is elongated throughout several lines.
There are also words/sounds/letters placed in parenthesis that seemed to be more of an echo and deeper in sound.
Bibliography
“The Thirteenth Horse-Song.” jacket2.Org, media.sas.upenn.edu/jacket2/pdf/reissues/alcheringa/Alcheringa_1-2_Summer-1971.pdf.
McALLISTER, H. S. “‘The Language of Shamans’: Jerome Rothenberg's Contribution to American Indian Literature.” Western American Literature, vol. 10, no. 4, 1976, pp. 293–309. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43017882. Accessed 23 June 2021.
— Laura Lopez 2021/06/23 02:57
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