The Book of Images: Poems / Revised Bilingual Edition Review
Rilke is that poet that you, if you are tormented by memories of high-school poetry lessons past (dactylic metre sound vaguely familiar?), ought try. His imagery is accessible, his meaning clear...and he manages simultaneously a beautiful degree of both spiritual and metaphorical richness.
Snow's translations of Rilke's poetry are superb; he consistently preserves the metric structure and is also conscious of the need to employ every word and consider every nuance of meaning, rather than simply settling for glossing it (a surprisingly common problem in poetry translation). In the challenging world of finding faithful poetry translation, Snow's work is outstanding...and the original material to my sense of literary aesthetics unsurpassed...little of Rilke's beauty is sacrificed in the execution of this translation. Rilke's simultaneous spareness, sensitivity, and richness endure here; rather than imposing himself upon the reader, Snow succeeds admirably at the translator's task, and brings Rilke to the English-speaking audience. Now substantially revised by Edward Snow, whom Denise Levertov once called "far and away Rilke's best translator," this bilingual edition of The Book of Images contains a number of the great poet's previously untranslated pieces. Also included are several of Rilke's best-loved lyrics, such as "Autumn," "Childhood," "Lament," "Evening," and "Entrance."
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Customer Reviews
Edward Snow's work superb - J. Hussey - Athens, GA USA
Any reader (or writer) of translation work knows the inherent difficulties--translation is often something like palimpsest or erasure, the voice of the translator becoming too loud or possibly too literal. There is no such thing as a one to one ratio in translation. What Snow's recent work with Book of Images (and I recommend his other Rilke translations, Sonnets to Orpheus, Duino Elegies) demonstrates is a labor of love: it is almost as if he has acquired Cocteau's radio from Orphée and used it to channel Rilke; I simply have not come across any more appealing translations of Rilke than his. The bilingual edition is important, and I wish all translations would do this (though I understand it can be expensive): the en face provides one the original text as well as the translated, so there exists not only a visual representation of the poetic object, but also enables anyone with a bit of knowledge of the foreign language a way in.
This is a beautiful work.
Marvelous - Mr. Steiner - New York
There is very little question that Rilke was the greatest German poet of the 20th century. The only question that remains is whether he was the greatest poet in any language. His brief, imaginative poems capture the essence of man in the modern period, alone, isolated, and without meaning.
Edward Snow has captured the grace and subtle imagery of Rilke in this altogether outstanding collection of poems, in large part because he is a great poet in his own right. Readers of Rilke will surely be familiar with a number of poems in this bilingual collection, such as Autumn:
"The leaves are falling, falling as if from far off,
as if the heavens distant gardens withered;
they fall with gestures that say "no."
And in the nights the heavy earth falls
From all the stars into aloneness.
We are falluing. This hand is falling.
And look at the others: it is in them all.
And yet there is One who holds this falling
With infinite softness in his hands." (85).
Jul 12, 2010 18:26:06
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