This article is taken from PN Review 45, Volume 12 Number 1, September - October 1985.
A Tribute to Victor Hugo 1802-1885
A Tribute to Victor Hugo, 1802-1885
Novels and plays pass more readily through the language-barrier than poetry. We feel, despite inadequate translations, that we know Chekhov and Ibsen because dramas present situations and relationships between three-dimensional figures on a stage. We also treasure the memory of certain performances - Ashcroft in Rosmersholm, Olivier as Astrov - which help to fix the experience as part of our own heritage. Events occur in the novels of Turgenev or Kafka that we can witness or share, although we miss the special overtones that Russian or German may have for the native speaker. Even epic poetry, because on one level it offers pure narrative, can come into this category. And films, since even the most consciously literary one is an assembly of images, cross all frontiers with ease so that Mizoguchi and Eisenstein and Bergman can be referred to with an entire absence of apologetic explanation.
One's knowledge of poetry in a foreign language is bound to be partial, depending as it does on so many factors - fashion, availability of good translations, chance references. Such poets as Rilke, Po Chü-i, Neruda, Cavafy, Yevtushenko are perhaps better 'known' on these terms than many comparable British or American poets. There is of course no substitute for the response to the text itself. This is why it is vital to encourage the study of literature in the original in ...
Harry Guest is the translator of Victor Hugo's selected poems, The Distance, the Shadows (Anvil) £6.95 pb.
Novels and plays pass more readily through the language-barrier than poetry. We feel, despite inadequate translations, that we know Chekhov and Ibsen because dramas present situations and relationships between three-dimensional figures on a stage. We also treasure the memory of certain performances - Ashcroft in Rosmersholm, Olivier as Astrov - which help to fix the experience as part of our own heritage. Events occur in the novels of Turgenev or Kafka that we can witness or share, although we miss the special overtones that Russian or German may have for the native speaker. Even epic poetry, because on one level it offers pure narrative, can come into this category. And films, since even the most consciously literary one is an assembly of images, cross all frontiers with ease so that Mizoguchi and Eisenstein and Bergman can be referred to with an entire absence of apologetic explanation.
One's knowledge of poetry in a foreign language is bound to be partial, depending as it does on so many factors - fashion, availability of good translations, chance references. Such poets as Rilke, Po Chü-i, Neruda, Cavafy, Yevtushenko are perhaps better 'known' on these terms than many comparable British or American poets. There is of course no substitute for the response to the text itself. This is why it is vital to encourage the study of literature in the original in ...
The page you have requested is restricted to subscribers only. Please enter your username and password and click on 'Continue':
If you have forgotten your username and password, please enter the email address you used when you joined. Your login details will then be emailed to the address specified.
If you are not a subscriber and would like to enjoy the 288 issues containing over 11,600 poems, articles, reports, interviews and reviews,
why not subscribe to the website today?