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Michael Bazzett, trans. The Popol Vuh: A New English Version. Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2018.
Popol Vuh (Popol Wuj), a K'iche' Maya epic, is widely judged as the finest piece of native American literature. Written between 1554 and 1558 in the Spanish-introduced alphabet, it recounts in vivid detail the origins of the cosmos and the history of the K'iche' people of highland Guatemala. The story opens with the lifting of the earth out of the sea, followed by several attempts by primordial gods to generate creatures to venerate them. The first three tries are failures, including making humans out of mud and wood. Then monstrous beings introduce chaos and are destroyed at the hands of two young tricksters named Hunahpu and Xbalanque. Their exploits comprise much of the narrative, including a trip to the Underworld (Xibalba) to play ball with the Lords of Death. The boys' defeat of Xibalba allows for the creation of true humans out of maize, after which they ascend into the sky as sun and moon. Popularly referred to as Hero Twins, they are comparable to similar characters in North and South American folklore.
The sixteenth-century manuscript is lost, but it was transcribed and simultaneously translated into Spanish in dual columns by a Dominican friar, Francisco Ximénez, in ca. 1701-3. Brought to scholarly attention in the nineteenth century, Popol Wuj is ranked with other great ancient literary works-the Bible, the Mahabharata, Homer's Iliad. Designated the National Book of Guatemala in 1972, Popol Wuj has been translated into many languages and is available in diverse editions. What does this new version by poet Michael Bazzett contribute?
There are already several English translations of Ximénez's K'iche' text, as Bazzett himself notes: Recinos et al. (1950), Edmonson (1971), Tedlock (1985, 1996), and Christenson (2003, 2004). What most notably distinguishes Bazzett's Popol Vuh, according to the back cover, is its translation into verse for the first time in English. Bazzett has produced an epic poem intended especially for students and the public. A New York Times Best Poetry Book of 2018, it is praised by reviewers as more accessible and pleasing to read than turgid scholarly translations. Full disclosure: I am not a poet, literature professor, or linguist; I am an anthropologist. Though not one of...