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Reviews of For Anatole's Tomb
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Poetry Review review of For Anatole's Tomb |
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Written by Administrator
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Reading For Anatole's Tomb is not only a moving experience but also a chastening one because it reminds us what is at stake not only in the writing of poetry but in assuming language can represent the world. Patrick McGuinness's excellent parallel text translation should be required reading on all creative writing courses.
writtten by David Kennedy, 'Forms of Remembrance' Poetry Review vol 94, Winter 2005/06 |
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'Poetry Wales' review of 'For Anatole's Tomb' |
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Written by Viki Holmes
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Much has been written of
the difficulty of translating poetry, the slipperiness of words, the
impossibility of conveying the writer's meaning in words not native to
their tongue or brain. Translation itself is a word with a multiplicity
of meanings, on the one hand signalling no-change, uniformity between
the words of one language and its fellow, alternatively the act of
changing in form or shape or appearance. Change, or similarity? The
translator's job is a tightrope between these twin poles, and many fall
by the wayside. Poetry, more than any other medium, reminds us of how
words transcend themselves, how they can be a seductive but misleading
web where one singular meaning cannot be unwound from the shimmering,
multi-faceted tangle in front of the reader. Thoughts may be shared,
but are rarely duplicated. For all the en-face translations, the twins
are fraternal only, never identical. |
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'Times Literary Supplement' review of 'For Anatole's Tomb' |
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Written by Stephen Romer
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Whole Cemeteries
Among the manuscripts on
show at the Mallarme centenary exhibition, held at the Musee d'Orsay in
1998, was a bundle of 202 little squares of notepaper, scrawled over in
barely legible pencil. The startlingly small size of the paper, and the
almost furtive nature of the scrawl - so unlike Mallarme's usual
impeccable script - was instantly arresting. For this was the
manuscript of his projected poem (or prose piece, or drama, it is never
entirely clear) for his son Anatole, who died of rheumatic fever in
1879 at the age of eight. As if in keeping with the secretive look of
the manuscript, the poet never mentioned these notes in his
correspondence. The public Mallarme was engaged upon his mysterious
oeuvre, his impossibly ambitious attempt to render in words the "orphic
explanation of the earth". But in private, for many months after his
boy's death, he was engaged on a project closer to home, the "Tombeau
d'Anatole", which was never completed, or even given an official title.
In fact, the manuscript only came to the notice of the general public
in 1961, with the publication of Jean-Pierre Richard's magisterial
edition from Le Seuil.
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The Guardian, Review of For Anatole's Tomb |
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Written by James Fenton
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I'm putting together, in my
mind, a beautiful new poetry library - select, compact and profound ...
and cheap! Everything in it will be excellent. Everything has to be,
because there won't be much room. I see this library occupying no more
than a couple of shelves in a camper van, or in a cabin. Across the
front of these shelves stretches an elasticated strap, to hold the
volumes in place on bumpy roads or high seas. And this is a library, by
the way, not a curriculum. Every volume is chosen for the pleasure and
interest of the contents, and the convenience of the presentation. But
there is no ulterior motive, and no one gets credits at the end, no one
gets a degree for having assembled, or even read their way through,
this ideal library of mine. |
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'New Welsh Review' review of 'For Anatole's Tomb' |
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Written by Heather Williams, New Welsh Review
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If you think of Mallarme as
the solitary elitist who is responsible for the death of the author,
and even the demise of common-sense criticism in our literature
departments, think again. Or if you think of Mallarme as an
unparalleled wordsmith and punster, creator of equisite but empty sound
pictures, think again. The papers translated here for the first time by
Patrick McGuinness show us a young Mallarme grappling with fatherhood
and poethood, with unutterable loss and poesis. These notes,
probably written in the winter of 1879-80, in the months following the
dath of his second child and only son Anatole, aged eight, were not
published until 1961 (as Pour un tombeau d'Anatole, edited by
Jean-Pierre Richard), and were never referred to by the poet himself.
What they reveal is a unique version of the conflict between the
abstract and the concrete that had long preoccupied Mallarme (e.g.
'Igitur', c. 1869), and that would reach new heights in his greatest
works: the late sonnets, 'Prose (pour des Esseintes)', and 'Un Coup de
des'. For Anatole's Tomb is more than a translation;
McGuinness's succinct introduction, along with his essay published as
'afterword', together constitute an important work of contextualization
and sensitive reading. |
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