Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #390872 in Books
• Published on: 2004-06-01
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 1.89 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 664 pages

From Publishers Weekly
This satisfyingly fat collection has some definite virtues in tracking the poetic output of Hugo (1802-1885), France's monumental 19th-century scribe: it is organized chronologically, with prefaces that mark out his various phases, and the original French texts are included, which is a rare if necessary pleasure in understanding European poetry. Unfortunately, in terms of translation, this huge book is almost a total loss. The Blackmores (Six French Poets) are a freelance writer and a faculty member of Australia's Curtin University, respectively, and they have chosen to render Hugo's work by preserving the rhymes. What results loses almost all of Hugo's power, as his delicate combination of the plainspoken and grandiose is upset by the demands of English jingling. Perhaps Hugo's most famous lyric, "Tomorrow, at Dawn...," becomes: "I'll cross the woods, I'll cross the mountain-height./ No longer can I keep away from you.../ Alone, unknown, hands crossed, and back inclined;..." If the "mountain-height" and "inclined" seem odd, that's because they are inventions of the translators, in order to rhyme with "bright" and "mind" respectively. Hugo wrote a far simpler poem, about how he would "go by the mountain" with his "back bent" to pay his respects at his daughter's grave. It is not an isolated incident, and anyone who reads even a little French must wince at the constant unpoetic interventions in English. This is a particular pity, as the translators have clearly worked hard to set the poet's work in biographical context, even if a preface underrates his novels as "by-products of his career... in which his talents were only half involved." The rather skimpy notes and very limited bibliography are added disappointments. (Apr.) Forecast: As far as bilingual selections of Hugo's verse go, this is presently the only game in town, so university libraries and stores with larger poetry collections will be forced to act accordingly. The French versions and good intentions of the translators provide some succor.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
As Caesar straddled "the world like a colossus," according to Shakespeare's Cassius, Hugo straddles French literature. France's greatest and most monumental poet, he stretched the rules of French verse and the reach of French vocabulary as did no other poet, which makes him very difficult to translate. There are also the problems of Hugo's voluminousness and his integrity. Even excluding his verse plays, this book contains only four percent of his total poetic output, and he insisted that to select from his work was to betray it. A yea-sayer of the first order, he felt that a poet, a person, or the world, for that matter, must be taken whole, the bad with the good, to be appreciated. That said, it must also be affirmed that the Blackmores, by exploiting the metrical diversity of nineteenth-century English verse, have fashioned highly readable versions of Hugo from every volume of his poetry. They give far more than a hint of the giant who was Victor Hugo. Ray Olson
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