Great poets like Shelley and Goethe have made the claim that translating
poems is impossible. And yet, poems are translated; not only that, but
the metrical systems of English, French, Italian, German, Russian and
Czech have been shaped by the translation of poems. Our poetic
traditions are inspired by translations of Homer, Dante, Goethe and
Baudelaire. How can we explain this paradox?
James W. Underhill responds by offering an informed account of meter,
rhythm, rhyme, and versification. But more than that, the author
stresses that what is important in the poem--and what must be preserved
in the translated poem--is the voice that emerges in the versification.
Underhill's book draws on the author's translation experience from
French, Czech and German. His comparative analysis of the versifications
of French and English have enabled him to revise the key terms involved
in translating the poetic voice and transposing the poem's
versification. The theories of versification from the Prague School of
Linguistics, the French and Swiss schools of versification, and recent
scholarship in metrics and rhythm in the UK and in the USA have been
integrated into this synthetic but rigorously coherent approach to
translating poems. The extensive glossary at the end of the book will
prove useful for both students and teachers alike. And the detailed case
studies on translating poems by Baudelaire and Emily Dickinson allow the
author to categorize and appraise the various poetic and aesthetic
strategies and theories that are brought to bear in translating
Baudelaire into English, and Dickinson into French.
