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3.0 out of 5 stars
"Making things well is more important than making them", Feb 26 2003
Antonio Machado is in my mind the greatest European poet of the 20th century. Machado was at least as great as his better-known countryman, Federico García Lorca, and yet he is seldom read outside of Spain. Partly, this is because he hasn't had any great translators. The best translations far and away are Alan Trueblood and Willis Barnstone's, even though both of these often verge on the bland. Robert Bly's selection in "Times Alone" falls a long way short of either.Bly is definitely a competent linguist, but he doesn't really give a sense that he FEELS Machado's poetry. I don't think anybody can even begin to translate a poet competently until he basically steps inside that poet. If Bly does have a feeling for Machado -- if he sees something close to what Machado saw -- he doesn't do a very good job of reproducing it in his translations. You CAN come close to reproducing the feel of an original poem. Bly doesn't. In "Times Alone", Machado comes out sounding more like a wordy modern American poet (like his translator, in fact) instead of the self-effacing poet who despised all forms of rhetoric, verbal or otherwise. For instance, take a look at what Bly did to "Soria fría, Soria pura," one of Machado's most beautiful poems. Bly translates the magnificent opening line as "Cold Soria, intense Soria." "Intense" just doesn't do it for me like "pura". Or how about this line: "galgos flacos y agudos / que pululan / por las sórdidas callejas"? In Bly's version, this is "starving greyhounds who breed abundantly in the filthy alleys," which isn't inaccurate, but it doesn't really work in this particular poem, which is a sparse description of a dead old town up in the western Aragonese hills, dreaming silently under the deep moonlight. Plus, when you're reading along and suddenly you come to the blunt Anglo-Saxon word "courthouse" in place of the elegant Castilian "audiencia", whatever feeling of mystery and serenity Bly does manage to salvage just goes poof. Bly's English is wordy and rhetorical. You need to have something in common with the poet you're translating if you're going to be a great translator, and Bly is unlike Machado, who spurned rhetoric. ("I would leave my poetry as the soldier leaves his sword," he said, "famed for the hand that brandished it, not for the craft that forged it.") Some examples of Bly's characteristic wordiness: "miniature green meadows" for "verdes pradillos"; "washed out" for "árida"; "these gardens with private lemons" for "estos jardines de limonar" (where exactly did 'private' come from?). Overall, Bly fails to replicate the stunning simplicity of Machado's poetry. That said, his introduction and notes are very valuable. They're this book's only saving grace. 3 stars.
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