Those versions from The Black Heralds are amazing! Very different from
Trilce, and yet, in their own more traditional way, riveting. I hadn't
realized there was so much more to Vallejo I hadn't ever come across.
It's not just the translations in Rebecca's Trilce that are so fine, but the
introduction also, which, for me at least, opened up whole new perspectives
on the poems.
T
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>From: Alison Croggon <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: César Vallejo and Rebecca Seiferle
>Date: Sat, Apr 19, 2003, 2:48 am
>
> At 1:08 AM +0100 4/19/03, david.bircumshaw wrote:
>>I
>>think that he is almost impossible to translate, that's why Neruda or Paz or
>>Dario can come across better in English, the sonic and semantic and semiotic
>>qualities of CV 'on form' just can't be carried over.
>
> Given that, on this level, translating any poetry into another
> language is an impossibility: this is why I particularly like
> Rebecca's translations. The sonic and semiotic qualities are rich
> and multivalent and (may I say again) intoxicating, and her coinings
> (flowercidal, &c) are tactful, in how they slip into English in
> perhaps the same way Vallejo slips them into Spanish. They stretch
> English in a most exciting fashion.
>
> Her translations of _Trilce_ are a wow.
>
> Best
>
> Alison
> --
>
>
> Alison Croggon
> Editor
> Masthead Online
> http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/
>
> Home page
> http://www.users.bigpond.com/acroggon/
>
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