Showing posts with label Penguin Poets in Translation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Penguin Poets in Translation. Show all posts

Sunday, March 04, 2018

Penguin Poets in Translation



Harry Thomas, ed. Montale in English (2005)


We were in town on Thursday for the opening of Graham Fletcher's survey exhibition at the Gus Fisher gallery (which I greatly recommend for anyone who admires his wonderful "Lounge Room Tribalism" paintings). We had a bit of time to kill, which almost always means a visit to Jason Books in O'Connell Street. There I found this beautiful anthology of English translations of Eugenio Montale.
Thomas, Harry, ed. Montale in English. 2002. Handsel Books. New York: Other Press, 2005.

One of the most interesting things about it (from my point of view, at any rate) was that - although it had been put out by an American publishers - it was clearly intended for the 'Poets in Translation' series which Penguin were publishing around the turn of the millennium. In fact, the '2002' date above denotes an earlier UK publication which appears to have left few traces on the internet, at any rate.

There are two reasons for my being so pleased with this book. The first is that I do vaguely recall my friend Marco Sonzogni in Wellington mentioning that the reason he couldn't call his own anthology of English translations of Montale (which I'm included in) "Montale in English" was that there was already a book of that title. I hadn't actually seen a copy before, however.




Corno inglese. An Anthology of Eugenio Montale's Poetry in English Translation. Edited by Marco Sonzogni. ISBN-13: 978-88-7536-203-4. (Novi Ligure: Edizioni Joker, 2009)


Marco Sonzogni, ed. Corno Inglese (2009)


The second reason is because I'm always on the lookout for stray copies of Penguin Poets in Translation. There was a final volume of "Rilke in Translation" promised (to be edited by poet / translator Michael Hofmann), but this doesn't seem to have ever appeared. Who knows, though? I don't despair of finding it someday, lurking at the back of some shadowy shelf - perhaps alongside other volumes I know nothing about.

The brilliance of the concept for this series - surveying the entire history of English translations of certain representative poets who have exercised a huge influence over our poetry - was so striking that it's hard for me to believe that they can have sold poorly. The fact that they're so difficult to obtain might imply either that all of them were snapped up the moment they appeared, or that only small numbers of each title were produced. I don't know. All I know is that I lament their passing, and (especially) that the series was not continued.

Here are the volumes I know about: mostly classical Greek and Roman poets, with one Frenchman (Baudelaire), two Italians (Dante and Petrarch), and the Hebrew Psalms to vary the pattern. Why not Ronsard, though? or Mallarmé? Rimbaud, too, could easily flesh out such a volume. And then the great Russians: Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Mayakovsky, Pasternak and Tsvetayeva could easily have been featured, too.

Never mind. I guess not everyone is as keen on the subject of verse translation as I am. It is a hugely important part of poetic practice in English, though, and there's no better way of focussing a discussion of it than can be found in this beautiful series of books:


  1. Homer in English, ed. George Steiner & Aminadav Dykman (1996)

  2. Horace in English, ed. D. S. Carne-Ross & Kenneth Haynes (1996)

  3. Martial in English, ed. John P. Sullivan & Anthony J. Boyle (1996)

  4. The Psalms in English, ed. Donald Davie (1996)

  5. Virgil in English, ed. K. W. Gransden (1996)

  6. Baudelaire in English, ed. Carol Clark & Robert Sykes (1998)

  7. Ovid in English, ed. Christopher Martin (1998)

  8. Seneca in English, ed. Don Share (1998)

  9. Catullus in English, ed. Julia Haig Gaisser (2001)

  10. Juvenal in English, ed. Martin M. Winkler (2001)

  11. Dante in English, ed. Eric Griffiths & Matthew Reynolds (2005)

  12. Petrarch in English, ed. Thomas P. Roche (2005)


Mind you, there are plenty of other books going under the title of "Penguin Poetry in Translation" or "poets in translation." There was another excellent series years ago of poetry anthologies in the original languages with literal prose translations underneath:


  1. Woledge, Brian, ed. The Penguin Book of French Verse, 1 – To the Fifteenth Century: With Plain Prose Translations of Each Poem. 1961. The Penguin Poets. Ed. J. M. Cohen. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968.

  2. Brereton, Geoffrey, ed. The Penguin Book of French Verse, 2 – Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries: With Plain Prose Translations of Each Poem. The Penguin Poets. Ed. J. M. Cohen. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1958.

  3. Hartley, Anthony, ed. The Penguin Book of French Verse, 3 – The Nineteenth Century: With Plain Prose Translations of Each Poem. The Penguin Poets. Ed. J. M. Cohen. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1957.

  4. Hartley, Anthony, ed. The Penguin Book of French Verse, 4 – The Twentieth Century: With Plain Prose Translations of Each Poem. 1959. The Penguin Poets. Ed. J. M. Cohen. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969.

  5. Forster, Leonard, ed. The Penguin Book of German Verse, with Plain Prose Translations of Each Poem. The Penguin Poets. 1957. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1959.

  6. Bridgwater, Patrick, ed. Twentieth-Century German Verse, with Plain Prose Translations of Each Poem. The Penguin Poets. 1957. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963.

  7. Trypanis, Constantine A., ed. The Penguin Book of Greek Verse: With Plain Prose Translations of Every Poem. The Penguin Poets. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971.

  8. Kay, George R., ed. The Penguin Book of Italian Verse: With Plain Prose Translations of Each Poem. 1958. The Penguin Poets. Ed. J. M. Cohen. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1960.

  9. Brittain, Frederick, ed. The Penguin Book of Latin Verse: With Plain Prose translations of Each Poem. The Penguin Poets. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1962.

  10. Obolensky, Dmitri, ed. The Penguin Book of Russian Verse: With Plain Prose translations of Each Poem. 1962. Rev. ed. 1965. The Penguin Poets, D57. Ed. J. M. Cohen. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967.

  11. Cohen, J. M., ed. The Penguin Book of Spanish Verse: With Plain Prose Translations of Each Poem. 1956. The Penguin Poets. Ed. J. M. Cohen. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1960.

  12. Caracciolo-Trejo, Enrique, ed. The Penguin Book of Latin American Verse: With Plain Prose Translations of Each Poem. Introduction by Henry Gifford. The Penguin Poets. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971.



There were others in this series, also: Books of Chinese and Japanese Verse, and other poetry anthologies from other places, but these are the only ones I'm aware of which used this very, very useful convention of combining the original with the 'plain prose translations.' I for one have to admit to having used them extensively. The really exciting innovation was when they started putting out individual volumes for the truly great, canonical poets in each language, though:


  1. Baudelaire, Charles. Selected Poems: With Plain Prose Translations of Each Poem. Trans. Francis Scarfe. The Penguin Poets. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1961.

  2. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Selected Verse: With Plain Prose Translations of Each Poem. Ed. David Luke. The Penguin Poets. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1964.

  3. Heine, Heinrich. Selected Verse: With Plain Prose Translations of Each Poem. Ed. Peter Branscombe. The Penguin Poets. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967.

  4. Hölderlin, Johann Christian Friedrich. Selected Verse: With Plain Prose Translations of Each Poem. Trans. Michael Hamburger. The Penguin Poets. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1961.

  5. Lorca, Federico García. Lorca: With Plain Prose Translations of Each Poem. Trans. J. L. Gili. 1960. The Penguin Poets. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967.

  6. Mallarmé, Stéphane. Mallarmé: With Plain Prose Translations. Ed. Anthony Hartley. 1965. The Penguin Poets. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970.

  7. Pushkin. Selected Verse: With Plain Prose translations of Each Poem. Ed. John Fennell. The Penguin Poets, D71. Ed. J. M. Cohen. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1964.

  8. Rimbaud, Arthur. Collected Poems: With Plain Prose Translations of Each Poem. Ed. & trans. Oliver Bernard. 1962. The Penguin Poets. Ed. J. M. Cohen. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969.



There may well have been more of these. The ones listed above are those I've come across myself. They don't use their usefulness over time, though. Other translations have a tendency to date, but these ones are purely functional, so my only complaint is that there weren't more of them!

Saturday, June 09, 2007

Metamorphoses XI (1820): Midas


Ovid in English. Edited by Christopher Martin.
Poets in Translation. London: Penguin, 1998. 308-09:


Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley:
Midas: A Drama in two acts. 2: 83-120
[from Metamorphoses 11.106-30] Midas’s epiphany


Mid. (lifting up the cover) This is to be a king! to touch pure gold!
Would that by touching thee, Zopyrion, I could
transmute thee to a golden man;
A crowd of golden slaves to wait on me!
(Pours the water on his hands)
But how is this? the water that I touch
Falls down a stream of yellow, liquid gold.
And hardens as it falls. I cannot wash —
Pray Bacchus I may Drink! And the soft towel
With which I’d wipe my hands transmutes itself
Into a sheet of heavy gold. — No more!
I’ll sit and eat — I have not tasted food
For many hours, I have been so wrapt
In golden dreams of all that I possess,
I had not time to eat; now hunger calls
And makes me feel, though not remote in power
From the Immortal Gods, that I need food,
The only remnant of mortality!
(In vain attempts to eat of several dishes)
Alas! my fate! ‘tis gold! this peach is gold!
This bread, these grapes, & all I touch! this meat
Which by its scent quickened my appetite
Has lost its scent, its taste, — ‘tis useless gold.

Zopyrion. (aside) He’d better now have followed my advice
He starves by gold yet keeps his asses’ ears.

Midas. Asphalon, put that apple to my mouth;
If my hands touch it out perhaps I eat.
Also! I cannot bite! as it approached
I felt its fragrance, thought it would be mine,
But by the touch of my life-killing lips
‘Tis changed from a sweet fruit to tasteless gold.
Bacchus will out refresh me by his gifts,
The liquid wine congeals and flies my taste.
Go, miserable slaves! Oh, wretched king!
Away with food! its sight now makes me sick.
Bring in my couch! I will sleep off my care,
And when I wake I’ll coin some remedy
I dare not bathe this sultry day, for fear
I be enclosed in gold. Begone!
I will to rest: — Oh, miserable king!

(1820, pub. 1922)

Written two years after Frankenstein; or, The New Prometheus (1818), Mary Shelley's two-act drama "Midas" wasn't published in full until 1922 (though the short lyric "Arethusa" her husband Percy Bysshe wrote for inclusion in it has become a fabourite anthology piece).

What was it that attracted her in the theme? Frankenstein has been linked to everything from fantasies of the Shelley's first child, Clara, who died shortly before that famous "haunted summer" on Lake Geneva, to sexual jealousy of her half-sister Claire Clairmont, lover of Lord Byron (cast as the Bride of Frankenstein?) It's hard to escape the idea that Midas is, somehow, a version of her poet husband.

Consider the parallels: a man who turns everything he touches to gold, but who thereby renders himself impervious to human touch. Midas is finally cured by immersing himself in a river, thus passing on his gold-bearing gift. Shelley's own trial by water proved less favourable. He drowned at sea in 1822.


Walter Crane, “King Midas and His Daughter Who has Turned to Gold” (1892)


The book I borrowed this extract from, Ovid in English, is one of the excellent Penguin Poets in Translation Series. To date the following volumes have appeared. If you see them in a secondhand shop near you (strangely enough, they seem to go out of print almost as soon as they appear), don't buy it - leave it for me instead ...

I've marked in italics the ones I don't yet own (and have therefore had to consult in library copies):

1. Homer in English, ed. George Steiner & Aminadav Dykman (1996)
2. Horace in English, ed. D. S. Carne-Ross & Kenneth Haynes (1996)
3. Martial in English, ed. John P. Sullivan & Anthony J. Boyle (1996)
4. The Psalms in English, ed. Donald Davie (1996)
5. Virgil in English, ed. K. W. Gransden (1996)
6. Baudelaire in English, ed. Carol Clark & Robert Sykes (1998)
7. Ovid in English, ed. Christopher Martin (1998)
8. Seneca in English, ed. Don Share (1998)
9. Catullus in English, ed. Julia Haig Gaisser (2001)
10. Juvenal in English, ed. Martin M. Winkler (2001)
11. Dante in English, ed. Eric Griffiths & Matthew Reynolds (2005)
12. Petrarch in English, ed. Thomas P. Roche (2005)
13. [Rilke in English , ed. Michael Hofmann (overdue from 2008)]



Peter Sharpe, “Midas” (1999)