TED HUGHES: SELECTED TRANSLATIONS

by Ted Hughes

The present volume, edited by Weissbort, surveys this aspect of Hughes' canon for the first time, offering a broad selection from his numerous translations, together with hitherto unpublished material (versions of Paul Eluard, or of Yves Bonnefoy), and excerpts from essays and letters. Strongly rooted in a native tradition, Hughes was nevertheless indebted to literary cultures other than his own, and his work far transcends national boundaries. The present volume selects from his versions from a wide variety of ancient texts - "The Tibetan Book of the Dead", "Aeschylus", "Euripides", "Ovid", "Seneca", "Racine" - and equally from a range of twentieth-century European poets and dramatists.

Genres: Poetry

256 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 2006

About the author

Edward James Hughes was an English poet, translator, and children's writer. Critics frequently rank him as one of the best poets of his generation and one of the twentieth century's greatest writers. He was appointed Poet Laureate in 1984 and held the office until his death. In 2008, The Times ranked Hughes fourth on its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
He married fellow poet Sylvia Plath in 1956, and they lived together in the United States and then in England, in a tumultuous relationship. They had two children before separating in 1962 and Plath ended her own life in 1963.

Reviews

[Robert · Rating 2 out of 5]

I will say at the outset that it is irritating that this is a "selected" rather than "collected" volume; it is time to gather up all of Hughes' literary work and make it available to people in as few volumes as possible.

The Bardo Thodol (Tibetan Book of the Dead) is a guide for the recently deceased; it is intended to help the dead avoid re-incarnation (escape the Wheel of Life). Hughes has translated/adapted several excerpts that appear as the first section of this volume. I found them fascinating for their glimpse into Buddhist attitudes to life and death.

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This volume's contents can be divided into two types: contemporary European poets and classic/classical works. The contemporary poets did very little for me and I cannot recommend this volume on their account; I liked fewer than ten individual poems. As is amply demonstrated and discussed, Hughes took the approach of obtaining as literal as possible a translation and then modifying it as little as possible. In contrast, Hughes tackled all the other works represented with a very open mind and free hand, to the extent that some of the pieces could be viewed as adaptations more than translations. These, in general, work better. The excerpts from plays cannot do the whole works justice and really one needs to get the individual editions of them to properly appreciate what Hughes has achieved. Two complete Tales from Ovid give a good idea of what to expect from the twenty others Hughes translated - it is a shame that there are not more! The real gem of the collection is the gathering together of all the excerpts from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight that Hughes completed. (Again - oh! for a complete version.) Some of these have not been published elsewhere. The verse is heavily alliterative but does not restrict itself to the original metre in the way that Tolkien's does. It is extremely lively and readable.

Over-all the collection is a big disappointment, lacking comprehensive inclusiveness and adding little new of interest to me, but I do recommend Hughes' complete volumes of Classical translations - they are tremendously rewarding.

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ted Hughes had a lifelong interest in translation; he and Daniel Weissbort founded Modern Poetry in Translation in 1965. Most of these translations were destined for other publications, however, or for the stage. They include full or partial poems by Homer, Yves Bonnefoy, Aeschylus, Yehuda Amichai, Lorenzo de Medici, Racine, Eluard and many others. Weissbort is the editor of this volume.

There are many selections from poets I had never heard of, including a stunning version of 'The Boy Changed into a Stag Cries Out at the Gate of Secrets' by the Hungarian Ferenc Juhasz.

Hughes professed a very literal approach to translation. Weissbort includes several of the word-for-word versions of the poems by his translation collaborators, so that the reader can see how closely he hewed to the line-by-line meaning. The biggest lack is the orignals, but I imagine it costs a fair amount to format a book for a wide variety of original languages with their diacritical marks, and to double the size of the book with languages few can read. Weissbort includes a thorough introduction to each of the authorial sections, noting the collaborator who provided the transcription, the destination, a bit about the poet, and comments on how closely Hughes adhered to his literal principles in the particular case at hand.

These are powerful poems, which seem to adapt to the voice of each of the poets he attempts. I found the strongest to be the Juhasz, the Amichai (with whom Hughes had a strong friendsip and workign relationship), Racine, Camillo Pennati, and Ovid. But they are all excellent.

[Kyo · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is somewhat difficult to rate these translations, since I am after all rating a book/collection by Ted Hughes mainly and not the actual poems themselves. Luckily, Hughes is quite a poetic translator, so you know he made the poems his own. Most of these poems were good and some were actually great, but what interested me most is this idea or concept of 'ownership' and 'authorship' in these translations. The words are on the hand clearly Hughes's, but they also belong to the original poets and their poems. The question of 'originality' and 'literariness' is brought to the surface, making you wonder if such a thing can actually exist and how it both works and can be detected. It also makes you wonder about the question whether a text can actually ever accurately be translated across languages in which words have different sounds, connotations and meanings.
Anyway, maybe I'm rambling, but I really enjoyed contemplating these things, and, of course, reading the poems/plays themselves!

[Jaimie · Rating 4 out of 5]

It feels a little strange to read a collection of poetry and plays in translation by another poet, but I'm glad that the editor put this selection together. Ted Hughes has been one of my favourite poets since I came across his collection Crow, so it is interesting to see the poets who he admired enough to translate and his ideas about translation theory made concrete. Thought I don't speak/read any of the languages of the original poets, it became clear that Hughes was interested in each of them because they held similar ideas, written aesthetics, or mythical themes to his own work. Even though Hughes' "literal" interpretations retain an essence of a recognizable Hughes language the reader is treated to a range of works that explore death and rebirth, origin mythology, familial relationships, and the brutality of the human existence. The editor presents Hughes' translations in chronological order to give readers an idea of how Hughes' interests and influences changed over his lifetime, but this treatment allows his overall discussion to culminate in a number of concrete observations about Hughes' acts of translation as well. He supposes that besides clearly enjoying the poets in question Hughes also translated as a means of promoting poetry from other languages and cultures. Yet more importantly, readers are sure to realize that the exercise of translation (especially in the case of some of the plays) was also a conduit for Hughes to explore ideas in language and form, and to use the structures of other languages to break away from the expected forms of English grammar and vocabulary. Hughes was obviously working at a time when poetry had already made significant moves towards deconstructed modernist forms, but working with poetry in other languages allowed him to broaden the scope of his own writing to create something unique.

[Everett · Rating 5 out of 5]

I cannot speak to the poems as translations, as far as accuracy goes, but the selection is broad, bold, and beautiful. Hughes is a phenomenal poet, and reading Ovid, Racine, and Aeschylus through his lens is an excellent way to spend the day. Kudos to Hughes and editors for including work by Wedekind, Juhasc Ferenc, and Padma Sambhava, writers with whom I had heretofore never had familiarity.

[Richard Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some excellent poems, insights into Hughes's methods of translating, and lots of information on some of the world's greatest poets.

A long blog:

https://richardswsmith.wordpress.com/...

[l · Rating 3 out of 5]

it was really cheap & i hadn't heard of some of the authors. i admire his audacity - retranslating translations without having read the original...