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  • Tones/Countertones: English Translations, Adaptations, Imitations and Transformations of Short Poetic Texts from the Latin, Italian, French, Spanish, and German
  • Mary Ann Frese Witt
Philip Cranston, Tones/Countertones: English Translations, Adaptations, Imitations and Transformations of Short Poetic Texts from the Latin, Italian, French, Spanish, and German. Potomac, MD: Scripta Humanistica, 2002, 155 pp.

Edited by Mechthild Cranston, with an afterword by Roger Asselineau, this bilingual (or rather, multilingual) edition by seasoned poet and translator Philip Cranston not only demonstrates the variety of his talents, but also invites us to fresh readings of some familiar and beloved poems as well as acquaintance with lesser-known ones. As the title indicates, and the “Translator’s Note” explains in more detail, this is a collection of sixty-four poems, in some cases excerpts, in five languages with facing translations ranging from faithful to free and written over a period of more than fifty years. The introductory essay is of interest not only because of its explanation of the choice of poems, but also because of its insights into the mind of the translator. For example: “The right translation, for me, comes from close attention to the word—but also close communion with the syntax, the rhythms, the cadences, the heart-beat, the breathing intervals of the original” (14). Professor Cranston is particularly adept at explaining how he renders meter, rhythm, and sounds from the original language to English. He also offers some interesting comparisons of his translations to previous ones.

The poems are arranged in chronological order, beginning with classical Latin, followed by medieval and Renaissance French, Italian and Spanish, then classical, Romantic, and modernist French, German, Italian, and Spanish, ending with fourteen poems by Jules Supervielle, of whom Cranston is the major translator, and one by René Char. In two of the translations from the Latin, one from the Aeneid and one from the Acts of the Apostles, Cranston actually adds rhyme where none existed, creating a different sort of English poem from the original text. In a nonrhymed translation, his rendering of one of the most famous lines in Virgil, “forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit” (20) [“Perchance, one day, remembrance of these sorrows / (Yes, even these) will help and strengthen you” (21)] demonstrates the difference between economical Latin and discursive English: the parenthetical “yes, even these” effectively translates “et haec.” [End Page 206]

In his translation of the well-known and often-translated monologue of Francesca da Rimini in Canto V of Dante’s Inferno, Cranston, unlike other translators, manages to be faithful to the original while writing in a mellifluous English terza rima. Consider his rendering of the famous lines: “Nessun maggior dolore, / che ricordarsi del tempo felice / ne la miseria; e ciò sa ’l tuo dottore” (36) [“The greatest of all woes / Is to remember those our happy days / In time of sorrow: that thy master knows” (37)]. If the internal rhyme maggior/dolore is not retained, the dolorous rhythm of the line is, as well as the enjambment and the end rhyme in an almost literal translation. Cranston is equally skilled in replicating the rhyme schemes of Dantean and Petrarchan sonnets. In this book he translates more poems by Petrarch than by any other poet except Supervieille.

As a poet who has written light verse himself, Philip Cranston displays a light and amusing touch in translating lesser known poems such as Gil Vicente’s “Dicen que me case yo” (“Cassandra’s song”), Mellin de Saint-Gelais’s naughty “Tandis que madame dormait” (“Madame in the arms of sleep”), and Charles Dufresny’s “Phyllis et Lisandre.” He brings us a literary curiosity with his translation of Voltaire’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s “To be or not to be.” Three selections by Goethe, from Faust I, Iphigenie auf Tauris, and the short lyric “Wandrers Nachtlied” represent in a brief space something of the breadth of Goethe’s poetic styles. The first two are rendered masterfully in a majestic iambic pentameter that replicates the original; the last one, in its utter simplicity, is perhaps the most difficult to translate. The rhythm of the poem’s peaceful ending—“Warte nur, balde / Ruhest du auch” (84) is not to my...

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