The Solitudes of Luis de Gongora

by Edith Grossman

Genres: Poetry, Literature

149 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Edith Marion Grossman was an American literary translator. Known for her work translating Latin American and Spanish literature to English, she translated the works of Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez, Mayra Montero, Augusto Monterroso, Jaime Manrique, Julián Ríos, Álvaro Mutis, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. She was a recipient of the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation and the 2022 Thornton Wilder Prize for Translation.

Reviews

[Duff · Rating 4 out of 5]

I appreciate Grossman as a translator, but somewhat less so in this work. However, struggling through de Gongora in Spanish was well worth it. I have a deeper appreciation for why he was so important to the next generation of Spanish poets...and gained a great deal in improving my own language capability simply because I loved the work in Spanish. That should not discourage the non-Spanish reader from reading Grossman's translation. Just want to encourage reading aloud in Spanish for the incredible music....and get the gist of it from the translation.

[Maryam · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are magical lines on them Solitudes:

Lie tus nudos ella, que los dias
disuelvan tarde en senectud dichosa;
y la que Juno es hoy a nuestra esposa,
casta Lucina -en lunas desiguales-
tantas veces repita sus umbrales.

Let her spin your thread, may your days
in happy senescence late be dissolved;
and she who tends as Juno today to our wife,
chaste Lucina -in odd different moons -
so many times cross again her thresholds.

The whole thing is an elaborate, sophisticated 400 year old poetic riddle. The reward for solving a piece of it is a little burst of delight. How kind of Edith Grossman to help us marvel at this preposterous object.
I hope Grossman continues translating Golden Age poetry. She cannot be doing it for the money.