friedrich von schiller

[ifiaskaquestion]

Why is hasn't penguin, oxford etc published his poetry. I've found it quite difficult to find a reasonably priced copy of his poetry.

Is it not considered good ?

[stlukesguild]

I somewhat suspect it is due to the lack of a solid translation into English. Penguin offers Hölderlin by Michael Hamburger, THE unquestioned master of Hölderlin in English. But Schiller...? I must say that Penguin long had a reputation of being less-than-stellar with their translations... and their editorial decision to "modernize"/standardize writers such as Chaucer, Traherne, Blake, etc... did not endear them to many serious lit lovers. I will note that a brief search at Amazon revealed that Penguin currently has a translation of Schiller's Robbers and Wallenstein which the Oxford Press (also very reasonably priced) has an acclaimed volume of Don Carlos and Mary Stuart.

[ifiaskaquestion]

thankyou for the information x

Which publisher would be considered terribly good regarding translations ?

[stlukesguild]

Don't get me wrong... I have a good number of Penguin books in my own collection and many of the publisher's more recent offerings have been markedly better with regard to the choice of translation (Micheal Hamburger's Hölderlin is a particularly fine example). I don't know that there is a single publisher that offers the best translations (although New Directions and Modern Library are certainly quite good in that regard). When it comes to literature in translation it never hurts to do some research and to be as demanding with regard to the translator as to the original. Some of the best translators have gained a great reputation for translation... perhaps even greater than their reputation as creative writers in their own rite: John Ciardi, Allen Mandelbaum, Richard Howard, Donald M. Frame, Burton Raffel, W.S. Merwin, Richard Wilbur, William Arrowsmith, Jonathan Gallasi, William Weaver, Christopher Middleton, Robert Fitzgerald, Robert Fagels, Edward Snow, Stephen Mitchell, etc...) Some works have been translated marvelously by more than one translator (Homer, Horace, Dante, Virgil, etc...). Many others exist in a variety of translations that vary greatly in quality. In many more instances we must take the sole available translation on face value.

[Dark Star]

I'll agree with the notion that certain translators are known for greatness and add (a rather obvious one, I suppose) Richmond Lattimore.

I will add a word of warning about Stephen Mitchell, though. The man has a tendency to 'translate' works from languages he doesn't know (for reference, SEE: Tao Teh Ching, The Epic of Gilgamesh) so you need to make sure its an actual translation and not a 'version' of the work (as is the case with his Rilke which is, granted, amazing) before buying it.

[stlukesguild]

Dark Star... I'm of a common mind with Dante Gabriel Rossetti who writes in his translation, The Early Italian Poets:

"The life blood of... translation is this- that a good poem shall not be turned into a bad one. The only true motive for putting poetry into a fresh language must be to endow a fresh nation, as far as possible, with one more possession of beauty. Poetry not being an exact science, literality of rendering is altogether secondary to this chief aim. I say literality- not fidelity, which is by no means the same thing..."

I haven't really read Mitchell's Rilke translations side-by-side with those of other German-speaking translators (and certainly do not know enough German to make a comparison myself.) I will say, however, that only Edward Snow's translations have struck me as successful in creating "one more possession of beauty". I don't seem alone in this considering the critical acclaim for his translations offered up by figures such as W.S. Merwin, Robert Alter, Harold Bloom, etc... From what I have gleaned from Mitchell's books is that he does certainly employ the assistance of those who do speak the language in question fluently, as well as line-by-line literal translations and commentary. I will say, speaking of Mitchell's translation of Gilgamesh, that there are probably few outside of academia who speak Akkadian/Babylonian... and the one translation by such an academic that I have read was useless as literature, to put it mildly. I do agree, however, that there are some translations that are far too free. Robert Lowell's Imitations come immediately to mind... as does Christopher Logue's War Music (a translation of a key section of Homer's Iliad). In spite of this I will admit that there are certain of Lowell's "translations" that I very much admire... and I find Logue's work to be something of a brilliant re-imagining of Homer. Perhaps the worst such translation I ever read was one of Ovid's Metamorphoses which turned the work into some sort of hippie love fest. That or one of those horribly literal... and literarily worthless modern translations of the Bible which attempt to make everything understandable and reduce the work to a mere menu of what was a feast.

[Dark Star]

I can see where you're coming from but I tend to find it worrying in general when a person 'translates' from a language they don't understand; his typical method-from what I've gathered in the intro to the Tao Teh Ching and Epic of Gilgamesh-is to read different translations from the languages he knows (something close to five, I believe, which makes me wonder why he doesn't simply stick to translating works from languages he does know) and then 'interpret' the work. This is what worries me the most, the notion of 'interpretation' rather than 'translation'. In his version of The Epic of Gilgamesh, for example, he pretty much admitted to reading a few different versions then writing a 'variation' on the story; taking things out here, adding new things there...I'm not sure which translation you have, so you may be correct about it being too literal and thus worthless as a piece of literature, but I'm still not fond of labeling a partial re-write (that goes far and beyond what is necessary in translation) of a work as a 'translation' or 'version' of it...at least not without a huge warning sticker on the front informing you just how much poetic license the translator took.

Which translation of Gilgamesh do you have, for reference?

[stlukesguild]

I have two "translations" of Gilgamesh... Mitchell's and the one by David Ferry. Ferry admits that he cannot read cuneiform nor the Sumerian/Babylonian/Akkadian languages in which the work was composed. His process was to utilize the literal academic line-by-line transcriptions (with commentaries). The dry academic transcription (certainly not "translation") that I read initially I no longer have. Undoubtedly there is always a problem with translations. The translations always has the "scent" of the era in which it was written rather than the timelessness of the original (in the case in which the original is a timeless work of art). No matter how fine the King James Bible may be it is not how we might translate the original Hebrew today. Pope's Homer is certainly as much of Pope's era as of Homer's. This becomes more convoluted when a a "translation" is based upon other translations... and not upon the original. Nevertheless... I imagine translation as somewhat akin to transcription in music. One cannot simply transpose the same exact notes over one for one from a piano sonata to a string quartet or a solo cello. But the goal, I imagine, is not to copy notes in a way that perhaps cannot be achieved on another instrument or group of instruments... the goal is rather to remain true to the music.