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spacestationtrustfund's review against another edition
2.0
The biography of Rilke and the discussion of the background of the Duino Elegies felt very unnecessary. I'm here for the translation nit-picking, okay, so let's get on with it, yeah?
The author's own translations are situated after his comparison with other translations, which felt a bit odd to me. Surely it would make more sense to present the poems in the original language, then compare various prior translation, and only then suggest your own proposed solutions? Arrangement quibbles notwithstanding, the comparisons were fascinating. I do not prefer the author's translations—he tends to favour innovation of fidelity—but I did find the dissection of other translations interesting. Overall this book is best read as a collection of a handful of different translators' ideas of how to render the Duino Elegies in English, and not as anything more.
The author's own translations are situated after his comparison with other translations, which felt a bit odd to me. Surely it would make more sense to present the poems in the original language, then compare various prior translation, and only then suggest your own proposed solutions? Arrangement quibbles notwithstanding, the comparisons were fascinating. I do not prefer the author's translations—he tends to favour innovation of fidelity—but I did find the dissection of other translations interesting. Overall this book is best read as a collection of a handful of different translators' ideas of how to render the Duino Elegies in English, and not as anything more.
_cristina's review against another edition
4.0
If, from earliest youth, your inmost self had cried out to escape its circumstances; if you’d looked about and wondered why your presence had been needed even for a moment where you were; and if that meant you had to disappear into an inner distance, leaving your face and figure to fend for themselves, seeking a realm where you could claim an absolute autonomy; if, somewhat to your shame, considering your abject and unaccomplished condition, you had immortal longings in you; if you knew without being told, without having seen any evidence, without therefore knowing, that you were unique, that inside your small delicate body, behind your heavy-lidded eyes, a wide world was contained, and every house there was haunted by dreams, dreams of greatness, ambitions that Ewald Tragy, your namesake, gave away in a petulant moment—“I am my own lawmaker and king,” he’d said, “nobody is above me, not even God”—and furthermore, if, to write the great poetry you meant to write, you had first to be a great poet (for where would this sublime stuff come from if not from a sublime soul?), then the fatal division of the self is set; then that hidden ruler must remake both actor and role and push them onto the stage. So his childhood name is eventually altered; so is his handwriting, at Lou Salomé’s suggestion, though that is accomplished through the persistent efforts of his will; consequently he must change his nature, change his life; change… change… with the worry that (in unhappy harmony with his mother’s practice) a fine label would not improve the cheap wine that had been decanted down the bottle’s slender throat to create a successful deception. Henceforward the poet will be nothing but a Poet, and wander if he must, free to find his inspiration, free to wait for the Muses’ touch, despite life’s temptations, despite the need for the crowd’s applause, because he’ll be Orpheus, singing though he seems only a head now, floating downriver in the furious flux of things, for really he’ll be whole, head and heart will be at last one. Yet in all this there is the possibility that he’ll fail in the role he has assigned himself: which is? that the perfect self (an Angel) must play the part of a perfect appearance (the puppet); in other words, in the first place, that the poetry won’t come, and he’ll be an ape or a mimic, or, in the second place, that the audience will not be there to applaud, will see the puppet is a puppet, and that, in the third place, the puppet, full of resentment at having lost a normal life for nothing, will turn upon this inside Angel and pull upon his strings, the strings once, solely in his hands, and haul him down from on high (since he’s not as on-high as all that, not as perfect as the imagined Angels of the Elegies); whereupon the whole show will be over, Doctor Serafico will have failed to heal himself—and there will be no Angel, no poetry, and no poet.
frejola's review against another edition
4.0
This is a refined introduction to Rilke via the problems of translating his poetry to English. I took away two important things in this book: I must read Gass' novels asap (what a mind) and I must continue to patiently read in German, one poem at a time.
alexlanz's review against another edition
A long intro to his translations of the Elegies; very insightful about the creative process.
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