Who is the best translator of Ranier Maria Rilke into English?
June 12, 2007 7:53 PM Subscribe
Which translator of Ranier Maria Rilke into English best balances literal translation with the "feel" of the poems in the original language?
I second the vote for Stephen Mitchell. My German doesn't even come anywhere close to fluency, though, so I many well have been seduced by Mitchell, rather than Rilke.
posted by foxy_hedgehog at 8:31 PM on June 12, 2007
posted by foxy_hedgehog at 8:31 PM on June 12, 2007
I had a version (I can't recally which - Modern Library perhaps?) that featured the original German beside the translations. Thought I couldn't really read the German, I was able to get a better feel for the native meter.
posted by aladfar at 9:54 PM on June 12, 2007
posted by aladfar at 9:54 PM on June 12, 2007
My favorite translations of Rilke are by Galway Kinnell with Hannah Liebmann, and Edward Snow. This past semester I wrote a term paper about Rilke's poem "Herbsttag" and compared some of the many translations that have been done, and those two versions struck me as being very close to both the literal meaning and the feel of the original, as well as very alive in their own right.
posted by not me at 10:35 PM on June 12, 2007
posted by not me at 10:35 PM on June 12, 2007
Best answer: Discussion of Rilke translations here and here (the latter discussed in this LH thread). I hope you're not expecting a definitive answer to your question; there's no such thing as a single translation that "best balances literal translation with the 'feel' of the poems." You should compare as many as you can find and pick the one that sounds the most like great poetry to you. (And if you're really interested in Rilke, you should learn German, because he's among the least translatable of poets.)
Review of Gass book at Complete Review ("It fails, ultimately, because Gass' rendering -- the culmination of the book -- is also not particularly impressive, deflating the arguments and explanations after the fact").
posted by languagehat at 6:30 AM on June 13, 2007
Review of Gass book at Complete Review ("It fails, ultimately, because Gass' rendering -- the culmination of the book -- is also not particularly impressive, deflating the arguments and explanations after the fact").
posted by languagehat at 6:30 AM on June 13, 2007
On Valentine's day years ago, a friend of mine received from her boyfriend an old collection of Rilke's poems with the original and the translation on facing pages. It happened to have been Theodore Roethke's personal copy, and included more than a dozen of his own translations in the generous margins. I got the impression Roethke would have agreed with languagehat about the difficulty of translating Rilke.
My friend loves above all the poems Rilke wrote in French.
posted by jamjam at 8:29 AM on June 13, 2007 [1 favorite]
My friend loves above all the poems Rilke wrote in French.
posted by jamjam at 8:29 AM on June 13, 2007 [1 favorite]
languagehat:
I read the review you cite to be generally favorable towards the book, but less so with regard to Gass' translations. For example, here is the review's ultimate paragraph:
Gass' book is a worthwhile, even significant, study of Rilke. Gass writes engagingly and well, and he handles a great deal of material here without overtaxing the reader. As a study of Rilke and his work (and specifically the Duino Elegies), Reading Rilke is very good. As reflections on the problems of translation it is quite good (though it does little more than scratch the surface of these problems). As a translation of the Duino Elegies it is a curiosity and, since the translation is presented as a summa of the text and its arguments, disappointing.
Overall, it seems to me, the review was positive, as are just about all reviews of the book I've seen. Why pull the one quote out of context to scare potential readers away?
posted by pasici at 10:17 AM on June 13, 2007
I read the review you cite to be generally favorable towards the book, but less so with regard to Gass' translations. For example, here is the review's ultimate paragraph:
Gass' book is a worthwhile, even significant, study of Rilke. Gass writes engagingly and well, and he handles a great deal of material here without overtaxing the reader. As a study of Rilke and his work (and specifically the Duino Elegies), Reading Rilke is very good. As reflections on the problems of translation it is quite good (though it does little more than scratch the surface of these problems). As a translation of the Duino Elegies it is a curiosity and, since the translation is presented as a summa of the text and its arguments, disappointing.
Overall, it seems to me, the review was positive, as are just about all reviews of the book I've seen. Why pull the one quote out of context to scare potential readers away?
posted by pasici at 10:17 AM on June 13, 2007
Why pull the one quote out of context to scare potential readers away?
Yikes, I wasn't trying to scare anyone away—it just seemed like a reasonable summary/pullquote at a quick glance! My apologies to Gass fans.
posted by languagehat at 11:07 AM on June 13, 2007
Yikes, I wasn't trying to scare anyone away—it just seemed like a reasonable summary/pullquote at a quick glance! My apologies to Gass fans.
posted by languagehat at 11:07 AM on June 13, 2007
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by pasici at 8:16 PM on June 12, 2007