From Enitharmon. Apologies for cross-posting.KJL
Dear Colleague
I would like to draw your attention to a new translation of Rainer Maria
Rilke’s great work, the Duino Elegies. Published this autumn, this will be the
first British translation of these great poems for more than 15 years.
Completed in the same year as the publication of Eliot’s The Waste Land, the
Elegies constitute a magnificent godless poem in their rejection of the
transcendent and their passionate celebration of the here and now.
Troubled by our insecure place in this world and our fractured relationship
with death, the Elegies are nevertheless populated by a throng of vivid and
affecting figures: acrobats, lovers, angels, mothers, fathers, statues,
salesmen, actors and children. This bilingual edition offers twenty-first
century readers a new opportunity to experience the power of Rilke’s enduring
masterpiece.
Award winning poet, Martyn Crucefix, has completed this powerful and elegant
new translation and has also contributed a thoughtful and helpful commentary to
each of the poems which we feel will be of particular interest to students of
this text.
The edition is also provided with an clear and incisive Introduction by
Karen Leeder of New College, Oxford, which puts these famous poems into context
while exploring themes and style. Leeder comments, “These luminous new
translations by Martyn Crucefix make it marvellously clear how the poem is
committed to the real world observed with acute and visionary intensity”.
Translator Details
Martyn Crucefix’s poetry has won numerous prizes, including a major Eric
Gregory award and a Hawthornden Fellowship and has been praised as “urgent,
heartfelt, controlled and masterful” (Poetry London). His collections include
Beneath Tremendous Rain (1990), At The Mountjoy Hotel (1993), On Whistler
Mountain (1994), A Madder Ghost (Enitharmon, 1997) and An English Nazareth
(Enitharmon, 2004). He is a founder member of the group ShadoWork, specializing
in performing and writing collaboratively. For information on his work visit
www.writersartists.net.
£9.95 1 904634 23 0
--
Dr K.J. Leeder
Reader in German
Fellow and Tutor in German,
New College, Oxford
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