it might not have been your favourite that's true.yeah but it was rubbish
I've got no idea obviously how good woops' French is, obviously, but with my experience of reading Lorca - my Spanish is pretty decent and the poems are miles better in the originals, but I'm still grateful to have a bilingual edition and would need to refer to a dictionary without having translations there. I think it's pretty much impossible to attain the level of a native speaker even if you've lived in the country for years. Plus, even native speakers will have trouble reading poetry in their own language at times.i think you massively overate your knowledge of french and the insight it gives you into language generally. you have basic conversational french, nothing more
Link the interview plx thxRead through Celan's Breathcrystal a few times now (and read around the internet a bit on his life and a good interview with the translator Pierre Joris) and I reckon this could be one of the best poems I've ever read, the sort of thing I'll be puzzling over and picking at for years. It really slows you down and makes you think about every single word and what it could mean. Only thing I could compare it to that I know is white stones-era Prynne.
Pierre Joris/Jeremy Rothenberg are total heroes aren't they? As are all skilled dedicated translators imo, but these two have done so much and have cast the net so wide. Ended up ordering that late Celan collection even though it was quite expensive cause I trust Joris to have done a good job, and he's a good commentator/critic too, so I know the intro essay and the notes will be well worth reading.but also translated poetry has a texture and feel distinctive to itself that is quite exotic and glamourous imo
Too much?they can be done really badly. hopefully i do them ok. theyre good when theyre good arent they.