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Book Reviews Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, Selected Poems, ed. by Christopher Middleton, with translations by Michael Hamburger, David Luke, Christopher Middleton, John Frederick Nims, Vernon Watkins. Boston: Suhrkamp/Insel, 1983Should a Germanist review a volume of translations from the German? Or should the reviewer be a poetry lover ignorant of die original language, one who must take the translations as original creations, springing from the page new born? The Germanist is hobbled to the original and his understanding of it. The translator thus has the doubly difficult task of convincing him or her that his rendering is both a poem that can stand alone and an accurate reflection of the original. On die "art of translation" a good deal has been said in the last thirty years, a sign that standards have been raised. One diinks of die volume On Translation, edited by Reuben Brower (1959), of die symposium edited by W. Arrowsmith and R Shattuck on The Craft and Context of Translation ( 1961 ), of R.M. Adams' Proteus, his Lies, his Truth (1973), of Chukovsky's A High Art (English version 1984), of J.F. Nims' stimulating thoughts on "Poetry: Lost in Translation?" in his marvelous coUection Sappho to Valéry (1971), of Middleton's introduction to the volume under review —these among others. And ff to some degree aU this discussion may seem to cancel itself out, still something remains in the retort, an idea of modern attitudes toward translation, even a kind of standard, though hard to formulate. The translators we meet here (with the possible exception of David Luke, who is Ui any event represented by only one poem) are aU "poets in their own right" and good ones. We should therefore expect the level of dieir renderings to be high, the result of their efforts true poetry. And this is indeed the case. I know of no other extensive selection of translations of Goetfie's lyric poetry that can approach it for overall quality. If I therefore in die following point out what seem to me to be slight 326 GOETHE SOCIETY OF NORTH AMERICA failings, they are not meant to impugn the coUection as a whole. Let him who thinks he can do better, try it! Of the approximately 140 poems included in this coUection more than 80 of die translations are by Middleton. 37 are by Hamburger, 10 by Nims, three by Vernon Wauons, two by Longfellow, one by Luke. Middleton has also reworked older translations by W.E. Aytoun and Theodore Martin and by E.A. Bowring. The tone of the coUection is thus set by the editor, who possesses a clearly recognizable voice and manner, much less self-effacing than Hamburger's, tihough not as distinctiy personal as that of Nims, whose method, though he is a mimetic translator, is to re-cast the poem into Nims-speak, bold and engaging. His (famous?) translation of "Das Tagebuch," a veritable tour de force first published in Playboy, is an extreme, though hardly atypical, example. The selection gives a fair overview of the canon. The reader with little or no German can rest assured that he has before him a representative sample of the kind and enormous variety of poetry Goethe composed. There may be a few regrettable omissions, the seventh Roman Elegy ("O wie fühl ich in Rom ..."), for example, but most of the famous poems are here as well as a number of the seldom cited, all the way from 1768 to the end of the poet's life. In die Introduction Middleton discusses his own experience in translating Goethe's verse, devoting considerable attention to the vexing question of rhyme. Anyone who has ever tried it knows that it takes infinitely more time and effort to make a mimetic translation of rhymed verse than unrhymed, no matter how stricdy structured (say elegiacs) die latter may be. But rhyme, as Middleton points out, is an essential structural element in much of Goethe's poetry—it is proof of an underlying harmony. Middleton is, I think, a bit too nervous about it. He feels that straight unabashed rhyme is liable to strike the modern ear as not quite credible. He often...

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