Re: Arndt ya gonna just fergit about the rhyme and meter?
citycabn (citycabn@gateway.net)
Mon, 18 Oct 1999 08:38:50 -0700
The title of the Gass book is "Reading Rilke." Just held it in my hands.
Stiff, stiff price of $25. Have put it on my Santa list.
My vote for best translation to date of The Duino Elegies: The good old
1939 version by a young S. Spender in collaboration with that stodgy
rhymester J.B. Leishman, published by Virginia and Leonard's press:
Hogarth. (Am not sure how I feel about that American upstart Stephen
Mitchell.) Am looking forward to reading the Gass translation and essay re
translation. *Also* held in my hands the new Galway Kinnell version of The
Elegies. Believe book title was along the lines of The Essential Rilke.
(Kinnell's The Book of Nightmares, for you poetry-loving fish, is an attempt
by a very gifted American poet to emulate and equal The Elegies. In my
humble opinion, a fine attempt, though no one in this century, for my money,
equals RMR.) The Kinnell trans. is also on my Santa list.
God, I wish M.D. Herter Norton had tackled the Elegies. At least she did
the novel, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge {okay, you prose writers,
read *that* and report back} and the playmates of The Elegies: The Sonnets
to Orpheus; and the two *huge* and essential volumes of Letters. And, yes,
the wonderful Letters to a Young Poet (which one must outgrow).
-----Original Message-----
From: William Hochman <wh14@is9.nyu.edu>
To: bananafish@lists.nyu.edu <bananafish@lists.nyu.edu>
Date: Saturday, October 16, 1999 3:06 PM
Subject: Re: Arndt ya gonna just fergit about the rhyme and meter?
>William Gass has a book on translating Rilke that includes translations of
>the Duinos...just saw pre pub proofs at TheStrand Book Store. will
>
>