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A review by pixie_d
Illuminations by Arthur Rimbaud
4.0
I wanted to read this after reading the Patti Smith book. Hubby had a 30-40 year old copy of Rimbaud's complete works, translated by a dedicated scholar, and I was able to compare those translations to the ones here by John Ashbery, a very famous and highly regarded poet. Even though sometimes it was only a word or a phrase that changed, the differences that Ashbery's poetic sensibility made to the translations made the difference between ho-hum reading and true poetry that sparkled and sang. Wow! I think he gives those of us who are not proficient in French a very good sense of what reading the original poetry must be like.
This edition puts the original language poems side by side with the translations, so you can see how the translator sometimes chooses certain words in English that are almost exact copies of the French words, not our everyday language, but more fanciful, elevating the mood to something other. And isn't that what poetry does, or can do, use language to illuminate states or ideas that are out of the ordinary?
This edition puts the original language poems side by side with the translations, so you can see how the translator sometimes chooses certain words in English that are almost exact copies of the French words, not our everyday language, but more fanciful, elevating the mood to something other. And isn't that what poetry does, or can do, use language to illuminate states or ideas that are out of the ordinary?