T. S. Eliot and translating his poems to other languages
Hello,
I want to read T. S. Eliot's poems in English but there is a problem. I can't even know what is the essence of the poem! I'm need to translate poem in my mind to Persian (or maybe Turkish) to understand it. But sometimes this is so hard for me. I think a way of reading Eliot's poems is group-reading. We can read each line of a specific poem and then talk about him. We can translate it to another language and then retranslate it to English (by a person who did not see the original one). I think this would be a very interesting experience. As a beginning I put firs part of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock here and I wait your comments.
Best regards, and pardon me for my bad English.
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question.
Oh, do not ask, 'What is it?'
Let us go and make our visit.
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