Reviews for Imitations

The average rating for Imitations based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-08-20 00:00:00 Jennifer Murray Lowell's title comes from Dryden's "Preface to Ovid's Epistles" (1680), his threefold distinction between metaphrase, paraphrase and imitation; the first is word-for-word, while paraphrase takes liberties, and imitation "takes only some general hints from the Original." He cites the metaphysical poet Cowley's odes from Pindar and Horace as imitations, changing the classical poets to "newfound methods and to compounds strange," as Shakespeare's sonnet 76 describes a metaphysical poet. (See my "This Critical Age" on poetic criticism in 17C poetry. Dryden changed crits to prose.) Lowell translates fairly closely, so I would classify this book as Dryden's "Paraphrase," though to us, paraphrase sounds even further from the original. I don't have Greek and German, but I do have French, Italian, Latin and Russian. I have translated a few of the poems in this book, from Leopardi's "L'Infinito," to Rimbaud's "Bateau Ivre," and Baudelaire's "Au lecteur" ' even Russian poets like Pasternak, though he was never on my shelf like Pushkin (my model for my recent book, "Parodies Lost"'see Facebook.) Baudelaire's "Recueillement," also, see below, after the original, "Sois sage, ô ma Douleur, et tiens-tois plus tranquille…" Lowell has it so, his title metaphrase, "Meditation": "Calm down, Sorrow, we must move with care; You call for evening, it descends; it's here. The town is coffined in its atmosphere, Bringing relief to some, to others, care. Look, the dead years dressed In old clothes crowd the balconies of the sky. Regret emerges smiling from the sea, The sick sun slumbers underneath an arch …listen, my Dearest, hear the sweet night march!"(54*) I have "imitated" by taking more liberties than Lowell, adapting the title to 20C America, calling Meditation, "The Blues": Blues, be cool, keep quiet, you mutha, Intruder, second-story man, you enter with dusk, It descends. It's here, an atmosphere Surrounds the town. Builds some up, knocks me down. …Blues, take my hand, Come from them, come here. Look behind me At the defunct years, at the balconies Of heaven; in tattered copes, rise out Of the waters of Regret. The sun sleeps Moribund on a buttress; and listen, My true-blues, hear dusk's sweet steps. Baudelaire begins "Fleurs du Mal" by addressing me, his Reader, as his Brother…Hypocrite! "Hypocrite lecteur,' mon semblable,'mon frère!" This, quite a departure from the previous century's flattering references to Dear Reader. He complains that worse than the worst monster, poison, scorpion or snake is: Ennui. Pushkin, too complains about boredom, скучно. Did the Russians import it along with the French of their aristocracy, from their birth-culture, Marie Antoinette's Empire France? Bateau Ivre is now a restaurant in Berkeley, and a wine store in NYC, though anyone who has read Rimbaud's teenage poem would be appalled to buy wine from a boat whose passengers had been massacred. (Great idea to name a wine or hardware store Sandy Hook?) Leopardi's "L'Infinito" recalls for me Pascal, "Le silence eternel des ces espaces infinis m'effraie" ("Pensées" 1657), but Leopardi welcomes infinite space, though his poem concludes, "questa immensità s'annega il pensier mio," this immensity drowns my thought, happy to be drowned in "this sweet sea." Lowell has this, "It's sweet to destroy my mind And go down And wreck in this sea where I drown."(25) Sometimes Lowell adapts, say Pasternak's "По залитой зарей дороге," "dawn-filled road" in Mephistopheles, to "sunset-watered road," exchanging dawn for its opposite. (135) Unclear why, maybe because we don't think of the Devil at dawn, though the Russians seem to see Luck and Bad Luck at all times of day, of week, of year, and of life. *Pagination from the Farrar, Straus edition: NY, 1978.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-05-29 00:00:00 Greg Schooler " ...You must die, And die and die and die, until the blood of Hellas and Patroklos is avenged, killed by the running ships when I was gone." Homer, Iliad "It's sweet to destroy my mind and go down and wreck in this sea where I drown." Leopardi, L-infinito "Your restlessness makes me think of migratory birds diving at a lighthouse on an ugly night-- even your ennui is a whirlwind, circling invisibly-- the let-ups non-existent. I don't know how, so pressed, you've stood up to that puddle of diffidence, your heart." Montale, Dora Markus I decided to read this because I bought some other of Lowell's books recently and thought I would use that as an excuse to read the one book of his I already had. I'm a little familiar with Lowell's poetry, but this is the first entire book I've read. And I was worried this would be a bad one because it's translations but I'll say that I don't think it was. He says in the foreward that his "translations" are not translations in the strictest sense-he moves lines around, he adds stanzas-but his goal is not particularly to add something completely new and innovative but to translate the tone in a new setting and context. Once you get accustomed to that, I think it's clear Lowell succeeds marvelously with this collection. However I have some reservations both in style and translation. The first is just a matter of preference. I wasn't crazy about all the poets Lowell translated, or particular poems (and I should really put this in terms of the individual poems because for many of them it was my first time actually reading their poetry). Some of the early German poets, Villon, Baudelaire weren't my thing. Although I did get a sense of Baudelaire's poetry, which was fun in it's own way. Pasternak was so-so although since I actually have read some Akmatova, the poem "For Anna Akmatova" was really good. The second thing was the idea that Lowell was going for here with his imitations. It's definitely cool, but it also undermines the very notion of translation. Okay it doesn't really. If I had anything to say it would be that Lowell's poetic project succeeds. But I also feel the need to point out that if you don't know the original, then you're not getting all of what Lowell is doing with these translations. Right, that's probably obvious. For the Homer and Sappho translations I looked back at the originals after I read Lowell's and it seemed to me he did a decent job at translating. In the Iliad passage he cleverly adds "heel" to Achilles inevitable death and triples the repetition of die where there is only one die in the Iliad. Both are features of his poem that add a level of meaning for the reader not necessarily found in a more literal translation. And clearly that is what translation is, translation is hardly ever a strictly literal enterprise. But this is poetry and poetry is the realm of infinity. So what are Lowell's imitations? They're translations. And good ones! But they also have a lil extra sometimes. And unless you read the original, you might never know. But you'll also get a Lowellized version of it. A complete poetic work itself put in another context-the context of Robert Lowell and whatever you happen to know about his circle of poetry and things in general. Baudelaire was interesting to see for the first time; I had no idea how much of a pessimist he was. I feel though that, it's sort of his thing, perhaps my ignorance is showing. The other poets I wanted to point out were...Montale. He does a great job with Montale. In "The Eel" he actually accidentally adds a second unrelated poem as a second part, but the new intertext between the poems is actually really cool. (Thanks to Muldoon's The End of the Poem, for that piece of info). I like his Rilke a lot too, especially "Orpheus, Eurydice, and Hermes." The last poem is Rilke's "Pigeons", which he dedicates to Hannah Arendt. The other poem that really caught my eye was Leopardi's "L'infinito." His Sappho is...not bad. Read Anne Carson instead though. Just trust me. I got the impression that Lowell knows his stuff even if he doesn't know all the languages he's translating fluently. And I think there's also enough of Lowell's own character and style in his imitations that that part of the poetic project succeeds as well. We have a unity of style and skilled translation. I'd recommend this to...people who are more interested in reading Robert Lowell more than any of the poets he translates. This is a work unto itself and not a replacement for the originals it despoils (harvests!). One last thing: my edition has this really cool drawing that is a swirl of jagged pen marks that create the outline of a human like figure stretching out in the form of a tree almost like a dryad distorted in mid-transformation surrounded by black and white cross-hatching. Props to Frank Parker.