De la simple existencia: Antología Poética

by Wallace Stevens

Wallace Stevens -escribe Andrés Sánchez Robayna- se abre a la sensibilidad contemporánea con la esencialidad que solicitamos a un poeta que, como él, fue heredero de las experiencias culminantes de la poesía moderna... De la simple existencia es un amplio recorrido por el conjunto de la obra de quien es considerado uno de los poetas más relevantes del siglo XX y una de las figuras más representativas del Modernism (es decir, de la modernidad literaria tal como se entiende en el ámbito anglosajón). En esta antología bilinge preparada por Sánchez Robayna recoge tanto algunos de sus poemas más conocidos -desde 'Mañana de domingo' hasta 'El emperador de los helados'- como aquellos otros poemas extensos en los que Stevens da completa libertad a la imaginación. El volumen se complementa con una amplia muestra de sus célebres aforismos (Adagia).

Edición bilingüe.

272 pages, Paperback

Published April 1, 2003

About the author

Wallace Stevens is a rare example of a poet whose main output came at a fairly advanced age. His first major publication (four poems from a sequence entitled "Phases" in the November 1914 edition of Poetry Magazine) was written at the age of thirty-five, although as an undergraduate at Harvard, Stevens had written poetry and exchanged sonnets with George Santayana, with whom he was close through much of his life. Many of his canonical works were written well after he turned fifty. According to the literary critic Harold Bloom, who called Stevens the "best and most representative" American poet of the time, no Western writer since Sophocles has had such a late flowering of artistic genius.

Stevens attended Harvard as a non-degree special student, after which he moved to New York City and briefly worked as a journalist. He then attended New York Law School, graduating in 1903. On a trip back to Reading in 1904 Stevens met Elsie Viola Kachel; after a long courtship, he married her in 1909. In 1913, the young couple rented a New York City apartment from sculptor Adolph A. Weinman, who made a bust of Elsie.
A daughter, Holly, was born in 1924. She later edited her father's letters and a collection of his poems.

After working for several New York law firms from 1904 to 1907, he was hired on January 13, 1908 as a lawyer for the American Bonding Company. By 1914 he had become the vice-president of the New York Office of the Equitable Surety Company of St. Louis, Missouri. When this job was abolished as a result of mergers in 1916, he joined the home office of Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company and left New York City to live in Hartford, where he would remain for the rest of his life.

Reviews

[Miguel]

Esta es una antología poética de Wallace Stevens editada por debolsillo. En Colombia se consigue muy barata en los sitios de ofertas.

El que sea una edición bilingüe permite darse cuenta lo mala que es la traducción de Andrés Sánchez Robayna, y lo sorprendente es que dice ser revisada por el Taller de traducción literaria de la Universidad de La Laguna o sea por unas ocho personas más. Supongo que muchas manos terminaron destrozando los simples poemas de Stevens.

Entre esta sobreinterpretación pedante y una traducción literal a punta de diccionario, prefiero la segunda.

[César Rey · Rating 5 out of 5]

«Poetry is a purging of the world's poverty and change and evil and death. It is a present perfecting, a satisfaction in the irremediable poverty of life».