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Book Reviews239 CARL W. COBB. Lorca's ROMANCERO GITANO: A Ballad Translation and Critical Study. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1983. 116 p. Professor Cobb's book would be most useful for a non-specialist; the work's strength is in the concentration on the Romancero Gitano, and the combination of imaginative translations and commentary. The specialist, however, does not have a need for translations, and Cobb never really answers his own question: "What kind of critical base should be set up for Federico García Lorca and the Gypsy Ballad-book that will be true to the poet's nature and purposes . . .?" Cobb's analysis is most like the commentary in Stanley Burnshaw's well received The Poem Itself, published in 1960, except that Cobb separates the commentary, in the second part of the book, from the translations. Cobb's translations use consonantal rhyme on the even-numbered lines, and sometimes the change from assonantal rhyme forces the reader to focus on words that do not exist in Lorca's text, as may be seen in the word sight in the translation of La luna vino a la fragua con su polisón de nardos. El niño la mira mira. El niño la está mirando. as The moon came down to the forge in skirts With tuberose bustle white. The boy-child looks and looks at her, Keeps looking at the sight. On other occasions the translation maintains the spirit of the text, but the words that rhyme are changed, as in the translation of Verde que te quiero verde. Verde viento. Verdes ramas. El barco sobre la mar y el caballo en la montaña. as Green grows my love, my love grows green. Green wind. Green-branching tree. Stallion on the mountain heights And ship upon the sea. At times, Cobb uses the translation as the text, as when he translates Por abajo canta el río: Volante de cielo y hojas. 240Rocky Mountain Review as From down below, the river sings: Skirt-flounce of sky and leaves. That Lorca intended volante to be skirt-flounce is a possibility; but Cobb notes, in his commentary on "La pena negra": "At the same time, the river is 'Skirt-flounce of sky and leaves,' which at the real level can be leaves eddying in the water and sky reflecting, but the word 'flounce' suggests the skirt worn by the flamenca dancer . . . ." There is a kind of completeness to Cobb's book; he deals with Lorca's life, formative influences, gypsies, and Spanish balladry. Every article and book on Lorca seem to have something to offer. Perhaps it is like Lorca's "Palimpsestos," but instead of an incompletely erased manuscript, Lorca's poetry bleeds through the translations and commentary of the critics. When Cobb, in his "A Summing Up," writes, ". . . Lorca is contemporary man enmeshed in time, . . . This radical insecurity seeks a faith, aground in reality, but Lorca, like many modern poets, has found faith only in the poem achieved, whose very fragility is a source of pride," the reader may be reminded of Lorca's own words: Ante una vidriera rota coso my lírica ropa. JOHN F. KNOWLTON Arizona State University J.M. COCKING. Proust: Collected Essays on the Writer and His Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (Cambridge Studies in French), 1982. 307 p. As the title suggests, this collectaneous volume contains studies on Proust previously published (from the early 1950's to the mid-1970's) by the author. These include a monographic general study, articles dealing with more specialized aspects of Proust's work (e.g., the interrelationships between his novel and the music and painting of his time), as well as several reviews of works on Proust by other scholars. Since Cocking's interpretation of Proust did not change significantly during the years he wrote these essays, there is a great deal of repetition and redundancy in the course ofthis volume. The book reviews make especially uninteresting reading since they do little more than point out differences between Cocking's reading of Proust and that of more recent Proustians. Like other commentators on Proust's novel, Cocking traces its dialectical movement, the hero...

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