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Selected Poems of Rainer Maña Rilke. A Translation from the German and Commentary by Robert Bly. Harper & Row. 1981.
The publisher of the book under consideration bills his product as a "landmark ttanslation and commentary" by a "National Book Awatd-winning poet." A landmark it may be, but not in the sense the comment was meant. Rilke is not only of the finest Getman poets of the centuty, he is also the most difficult to translate, with the possible exception of Paul Celan. The first ttanslations of poems by Rilke into English appeared as fat back as 1938. Since then a number of other ttanslations have been published, some relatively good, some frankly bad - none of which could claim to come close to a hypothetical 'definite' version. A favorite subject in academe, Rilke's work and life has in the meantime given fise to a fullfledged industfy and there is no lack of imagination on most aspects of the poet's career.
Pound once said that it took a poet to translate poetry. Given his high standards, I take that to mean a poet worth his salt; but there is something Pound didn't mention: not all poets, even good ones, make great ttanslators. Now Mr BIy - whose own work is not in question here - is a poet who has spent a gteat amount of his time translating European poetty. It is therefore not surprising that he should eventually have tried his hand at Rilke. What is slightly surptising is tht a man of his expetience should have served up such a botch. There is a heavy-handedness about these English vetsions that is the exact opposite of Rilke's language. To put it crudely, Mr BIy manages a real feat: He succeeds in making that most spititual, not to say metaphysical (in the literal sense of someone concerned with what lies beyond the physis) poet sound like a Wisconsin backwoodsman, or a kind of zen Davey Crockett.
There are two major problems with Mr BIy 's way of going about...