Duino Elegies: A Bilingual Edition - Hardcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

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Named for the castle of his patroness, which overlooked the Adriatic, the ten Duino Elegies, spanning a decade in their composition, are esteemed by many of Rilkes American admirers, as well as by the poet himself, as marking the pinnacle of his career. That popularity no doubt explains the number of translations of this work in recent years. Its been said that reading a translation is like looking at a tapestry from the back: The broad shapes and bold outlines remain discernible, but it is too crude a representation to permit nuances of color and texture. Its also been remarked that the entire German language consists of a single root word and all the rest are prefixes and suffixes. As if these were not obstacle enough in the translators path, there is Rilkes own pronouncement that nothing means anything beyond what is stated in his poems, as though all allusion were solely in the readers imagination. Edward Snow (English/Rice Univ.), whose Rilke translations have been honored by the Academy of American Poets, is neither deterred nor waylaid. These are intense and symbolically complex poems. It must be tempting to get caught up in mystical metaphors and in the linguistic legerdemain that turns Dastehen into the inelegant English ``being-thereness.'' But Snow sidesteps most of that academic glossing and renders the elegies in a more colloquial English, whose immediacy goes far in translating the poets often haunted intensity. Even if ones shelves are bowed with translations of the elegies, it might be time to replace an older ``classical'' version with this fresher bilingual edition. -- Copyright ©2000, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.