Selected Poems

Начало книги

I think that the most difficult task in the world is the translation of verses, particularly of a true poet, in whose verses there is no discrepancy between the form and the content (or meaning) – both of them always new and but a bit different (with no great disparity between them) – and where the ego of the poet is always strikingly felt. Marina Tsvetayeva said she could write as Mandelshtam did but that she didn’t want to. She was a great poet but she was greatly mistaken. She could be influenced by Mayakovsky and Pasternak and remain Tsvetayeva because they were innovators and therefore easily aped. But Mandelshtam composed verses in tradition, which is far more difficult to imitate.

Mr Robert Lowell’s translations are very free; Mr Paul Celan’s into German also free. But both are a very far cry from the original text. As far as I know the translations of Mr Greene are the best I ever saw. I can’t give my opinion about the Italian translations, as I don’t know Italian as well as English, French and German. As for Elsa Triolet’s, they are as naïve and vulgar as she was.

Читать дальше →