Three Drafts of a Punning Line
A small press is publishing a facing-page anthology of nineteenth-century sonnets and has received three drafts of line 7 of the same poem. The original line is octosyllabic and ends on a pun: the word for 'fire' and the word for 'mad' differ by a single vowel. Draft A preserves the rhyme and the pun but stretches the line to twelve syllables and introduces a word absent from the original. Draft B keeps eight syllables and the fire image, drops the pun, and ends on a flat monosyllable. Draft C keeps eight syllables, relocates the pun to line 9, and creates an enjambment the original does not have. The series editor has promised readers 'formal fidelity' in the preface, already typeset, and a literal prose crib at the back of the book. The volume goes to press in four weeks.
1. Rank the three drafts against the preface's promise of formal fidelity plus a literal crib, explaining what each sacrifices.
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Draft B ranks first on the stated promise. Eight syllables match the original, and the crib can carry the pun literally. But B sacrifices the poem's central turn; a reader who meets the joke only in the back matter has read a different poem.
Draft C ranks second. It keeps the syllable count and preserves the pun, but moving it to line 9 and adding enjambment alters where the reader feels the turn, which is a formal change even if the count is right.
Draft A ranks last against the preface. Twelve syllables visibly break a contract already printed, and the added word imports invention into a facing-page format that invites comparison. A is the most faithful to meaning and the least faithful to the book the editor promised.
2. Propose a fourth strategy and state a principle for resolving conflicts between formal and semantic equivalence.
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Try an eighth-syllable line that keeps the fire image and ends on an English near-pun-'fire' against a word like 'fired' or 'afire'-and put the literal double meaning in the crib with a bracketed gloss. If no near-pun works, keep eight syllables, keep the fire, and footnote the lost pun rather than importing it at line 9.
Principle: rank features by what the target-language reader can actually hear. Audible rhythm and the position of the turn outrank syllable count as such, and syllable count outranks a pun that only a footnote can deliver. The preface should be adjusted before press, not defended after.