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FeaturesApril 2007 The three Ms of German poetry by John Simon On Twentieth-Century German Poetry: An Anthology, edited by Michael Hofmann. Verse translators come in three varieties: Those who get almost nothing right; those (the majority) who get some things right; and those rare birds who get everything, or at least almost everything, right. By everything I mean the three Ms: Music, Metaphor, and Meaning. By music I mean meter, rhythm, cadence, and, where it exists, rhyme. By metaphor I really mean imagery, but can’t resist having three Ms. Under meaning I include poetic diction, which must tackle the problem of how to handle the language of past centuries: should it be modernized and, if so, to what degree? Is there perhaps a language that manages to be timeless? You may gather that verse translation is no easy business. Whoever undertakes it is either a hack, a well-meaning innocent, or, now and then, a truly gifted translator who may or may not be a poet himself. Poetry anthologists, too, come in three varieties. Those m ... This article is available to subscribers and for individual purchaseSubscribe to TNC (Print and Online editions) Subscribe to TNC (Online only) This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 25 April 2007, on page 27 Copyright © 2012 The New Criterion | www.newcriterion.com http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/The-three-Ms-of-German-poetry-3127
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