Introduction
Today’s entry, along with yesterday’s,
constitute a two-part post on contemporary verse translation, featuring the
insights of 19 translators who have generously contributed their answers to my
very basic questions on the subject.
Please note: The responses for today’s post were long enough to require that I continue all the answers in separate PDF files linked from the end of each contributors' section. In other words, please click READ MORE in order to access all the best material.
These posts are meant as a somewhat casual practical guide for Anglophone
readers of non-Anglophone poetry, especially readers who don’t know the
language of the original work.
In today’s post, the contributors list translations they admire (usually with commentary), and then each ends with a note, at my request, concerning a
work of her or his own.
My questions are geared to the assumptions of ordinary
readers, not to those of most translators. In some cases, contributors very
reasonably questioned my questions, and this in turn led to interesting discussions,
some of which I’ve preserved.
Many thanks, once again, to Geoffrey Brock, Bill Coyle, Dick Davis, Rhina
Espaillat, David Ferry, Christophe Fricker, Jonathan Galassi, Rachel Hadas, Len Krisak, David Lehman, Charles
Martin, Robert Mezey, Michael Palma, Rowan Ricardo Phillips, Nathaniel Rudavsky-Brody, Roger Sedarat, Alicia Stallings,
Rimas Uzgiris, and Philip White. (See below for contributors’ notes.)
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Question(s): Please list up to five contemporary translations of poetry
that you think really work as English-language poetry while also faithfully
conveying the semantic content and something of the original’s greatness or
importance. (Feel free to include a few words of explanation, but only if you wish.) Also, in your
opinion, what is the most successful translation you’ve done? (Again, if you
like, please add a few words of explanation.)
GEOFFREY BROCK
A.K. Ramanujan’s The Interior Landscape. His versions of
these classical Tamil poems make really beautiful poems in English…. READ
MORE
Derek Mahon’s translations of
French poetry in general, and of Philippe Jaccottet in particular, are wonderful….
READ MORE
Robert Wells, Theocritus. Clive Wilmer, Radnóti. Two of my favorite 20th-century poets are poets whose works I can barely
read in the original…. READ MORE
First of all—and outside the
count of the five you ask for, on the gounds that they’re not strictly
contemporary because they’ve been around for several years—the translations of
Richard Wilbur….
READ MORE
I’m interested in what goes on inside particular lines…. READ MORE
CHRISTOPHE FRICKER
Rather than list specific translations, Christophe provided a general response to my questions, available here.
JONATHAN GALASSI
Beowulf by Seamus Heaney—and
really anything by Heaney. Anything by Ashbery…. READ MORE
A.E. Stallings’s De Rerum Naturae and Erotokritos. Stallings’s tour de force brings Lucretius across
with force, pleasure, humor, sternness, variety—dip into it anywhere and you
get lost….
READ MORE
Probably the best of the current
translators of Latin is Alicia Stallings. Her Lucretius is a daredevil
performance in that it’s done in…wait for it…fourteeners…. READ MORE
DAVID LEHMAN
Among translators or
translations I admire, I feel that Richard Wilbur is pretty much in a class by
himself…. READ MORE
Almost always, a translation that I find interesting succeeds as a poem
in English…. READ MORE
To begin with, I should say
that my most intense enthusiasm tends to be for individual poems, like Henri
Coulette’s rendering of Horace’s ode IV: 1, or Merwin’s of Lorca’s “Gacela del
Amor Imprevisto.”… READ MORE
I’m sure there are other equally fine translations that I
haven’t seen, but these are some that I have sought out, or come across, and
been impressed by (oddly enough, none of them are from the Italian)…. READ MORE
Ashbery’s Rimbaud. Galassi’s Leopardi. James’s Dante…. READ MORE
[E]very day before I translate I try to read a good translation by someone
else…. READ MORE
Going back a bit
(though still contemporary) Richard Wilbur’s verse translation of Molière…. READ MORE
I adore Housman’s “Diffugere
Nives”…. READ MORE
I have, for example, enjoyed Stephen Koestler’s versions of Borges’s
sonnets…. READ MORE
I only know a bit of a few
languages, so it’s hard for me to say exactly how accurate or “faithful” most
of the translations I’ve read and that have affected and even influenced me
are…. READ MORE
____________
Contributors’ Notes
Geoffrey Brock has translated Pavese's Disaffections and edited The
FSG Book of Twentieth-Century Italian Poetry. His translation awards
include the MLA's Lois Roth Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Bill Coyle received a 2010 NEA Fellowship to complete his translations of
Swedish poet Håkan Sandell. His book of poems, The God of This World to
His Prophet, won the 2006 New Criterion Poetry Prize.
Dick Davis has received the International Society of Persian Studies’ award
for best translation three times. The Washington Post named his
translation of Ferdowsi's Shahnameh one of the 10 best books of 2006.
Rhina Espaillat's three chapbooks and nine books comprise poems, essays,
short stories, and translations. Her awards include
one from the Robert Frost Foundation, for her Spanish versions of Frost.
David Ferry’s awards include the Harold Morton Landon Prize, the Ruth B.
Lilly Prize, and a National Book Award. His books of translation include Gilgamesh,
The Odes of Horace, and The Eclogues of Virgil. He is currently at work on
Virgil’s Aeneid and the Satires of Horace.
Christophe Fricker translates poetry by Edgar Bowers and Dick Davis among others, and also
trade books on politics, literature, and science, into German. His academic
work concerns the relationship between poetry, travel, and friendship.
Jonathan Galassi has translated the work of Eugenio Montale and Giacomo
Leopardi. He is currently preparing a version of Montale’s later poetry.
Rachel Hadas has translated Euripides' romance Helen, and her
translations from Modern Greek, Latin, and French are showcased in Other
Worlds Than This, a collection published by Rutgers University Press.
Len Krisak's Odes of Horace, from Carcanet, and Ovid on Love,
from University of Pennsylvania Press, will be followed in 2014 by his complete
Carmina of Catullus. He has published four books of poems.
David Lehman's just-published New and Selected Poems (Scribner, 2013)
includes translations he has done of poems or prose poems by Apollinaire, Henri
Michaux, Goethe, and Mayakovsky.
Charles Martin’s verse translation of the Metamorphosesof Ovid
(2004) received the Harold Morton Landon Prize from the Academy of American
Poets. In 2005, he received an Award for Literature from the American Academy
of Arts and Letters.
Robert Mezey has won the Lamont and Poet's Prizes. His acclaimed versions of Borges (with Richard Barnes) have appeared in such periodicals as The New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, and Poetry. [Despite interventions by a number of luminaries, they remain uncollected for reasons relating to permissions.]
Michael Palma's fully rhymed translation of Dante’s Inferno was
published by Norton in 2002 and reprinted as a Norton Critical Edition in 2007.
He is also the author of three books of poetry.
Rowan Ricardo Phillips has translated poetry and prose by many Catalan-language
writers, including Salvador Espriu’s short-story collection Ariadne in the
Grotesque Labyrinth. He is also the author of The Ground (poems).
Nathaniel Rudavsky-Brody is the winner of the 2013 Susan Sontag Prize
for Translation. He has translated Benjamin Fondane and Paul Valéry, as well as
contemporary Belgian poets.
Roger Sedarat, a translator of classical and modern Persian poetry, teaches
literary translation in the MFA program at Queens College. He has also
published two books of poems.
A.E. Stallings’s translations include Lucretius’ The Nature of Things and
the Greek mock epic The Battle of the Frogs and the Mice. She is the
author of three books of poems and recipient of a 2011 MacArthur Fellowship.
Rimas Uzgiris’s work appears in many leading journals. The recipient of a
2013 Fulbright Scholarship and a 2014 NEA Fellowship in translation, he teaches
literature and creative writing at Vilnius University.
Philip White received the 2013 Willis Barnstone Translation Prize for Wang
Changling’s "Border Tunes.” He’s currently at work on poems by Du Fu and
other Chinese poets. White has also published The Clearing (poems).