Bring over a poem's ideas and images, and you will lose its manner; imitate prosodic effects, and you sacrifice its matter. Get the letter and you miss the spirit, which is everything in poetry; or get the spirit and you miss the letter, which is everything in poetry. But these are false dilemmas…Verse translation at its best generates a wholly new utterance in the second language.
—John Felstiner
—John Felstiner
Monday, March 11, 2013
