Seferis and Elytis as Translators


Book Description

George Seferis and Odysseus Elytis gave the Modern Greek language a substantial corpus of translations from poets working in French, Italian, Spanish, Russian, English and Ancient Greek. However, the translation practices of these two Nobel Prize-winning poets have long been inadequately observed. The present volume provides a close examination of Seferis' and Elytis' inter- and intra-lingual verse translations with the aim of discovering their translating techniques and their personal and public goals in pursuing the act of translation. Similarities and differences between the two poets are highlighted comparatively. The methodological approach, informed by recent findings in the field of descriptive translation studies and polysystem theories, investigates the function of translation in the target culture and the relation of translation to original poetic production. Throughout the book the study of translation is shown to be a powerful tool for the study of Modern Greek literature and its relation to other literatures and movements of the time, while the task of the translator and the task of the writer unfold as two components of the same endeavour.




Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies


Book Description

The Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies has been the standard reference in the field since it first appeared in 1998. The second, extensively revised and extended edition brings this unique resource up to date and offers a thorough, critical and authoritative account of one of the fastest growing disciplines in the humanities. The Encyclopedia is divided into two parts and alphabetically ordered for ease of reference: Part I (General) covers the conceptual framework and core concerns of the discipline. Categories of entries include: * central issues in translation theory (e.g. equivalence, translatability, unit of translation) * key concepts (e.g. culture, norms, ethics, ideology, shifts, quality) * approaches to translation and interpreting (e.g. sociological, linguistic, functionalist) * types of translation (e.g. literary, audiovisual, scientific and technical) * types of interpreting (e.g. signed language, dialogue, court) New additions in this section include entries on globalisation, mobility, localization, gender and sexuality, censorship, comics, advertising and retranslation, among many others. Part II (History and Traditions) covers the history of translation in major linguistic and cultural communities. It is arranged alphabetically by linguistic region. There are entries on a wide range of languages which include Russian, French, Arabic, Japanese, Chinese and Finnish, and regions including Brazil, Canada and India. Many of the entries in this section are based on hitherto unpublished research. This section includes one new entry: Southeast Asian tradition. Drawing on the expertise of over ninety contributors from thirty countries and an international panel of consultant editors, this volume offers a comprehensive overview of translation studies as an academic discipline and anticipates new directions in the field.




Voices of Modern Greece


Book Description

This anthology is composed of revised translations selected from five volumes of work by major poets of modern Greece offered by Keeley and Sherrard during the 1960s and '70s. Poems chosen are those that translate most successfully into English and that are also representative of the best work of the original poets--C.P. Cavafy, Angelos Sikelianos, George Seferis, Odysseus Elytis, and Nikos Gatsos.




The Craft of Translation


Book Description

These essays offer insights into the understanding and craft of translation. The contributors not only describe the complexity of translating literature but also suggest the implications of the act of translation for critics, scholars, teachers, and students. The demands of translation, according to these writers, require both comprehensive scholarship in preparing to translate a text and broad creativity in recreating the text in a new language. Translation, thus, becomes a model for the most exacting reading and the most serious scholarship. Some of the contributors lay bare the rigorous methods of literary translation in comparisons of various translations of the same piece some discuss the problems of translating a specific passage others speak about the lessons learned over the course of a career in translation. As these essays make clear, translators work in the space between languages and, in so doing, provide insights into the ways in which a culture makes the world verbal. --From publisher's description.




Maria Nephele


Book Description

The Nobel laureate's prizewinning poem tells of a young female radical of our age and comments on history, politics, and culture to create a portrait of the modern situation.




The Sovereign Sun


Book Description

Odysseus Elytis (1911-96) won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1979. With Seferis and the 'Generation of the Thirties', he introduced French Surrealism into Greek poetry. Kimon Friar's classic translation The Sovereign Sun begins with his brilliantly sensuous early poems. It has large selections from his master work, Axion Esti (1959), and includes the whole of his Heroic and Elegiac Song for the Lost Second Lieutenant of the Albanian Campaign (1945). His Nobel Prize citation stated: 'Against the background of Greek tradition, his poetry depicts with sensuous strength and clearsightedness modern man's struggle for freedom and creativeness.'




Odysseus Elytis


Book Description




On Poetry


Book Description

“This is a book for anyone,” Glyn Maxwell declares of On Poetry. A guide to the writing of poetry and a defense of the art, it will be especially prized by writers and readers who wish to understand why and how poetic technique matters. When Maxwell states, “With rhyme what matters is the distance between rhymes” or “the line-break is punctuation,” he compresses into simple, memorable phrases a great deal of practical wisdom. In seven chapters whose weird, gnomic titles announce the singularity of the book—“White,” “Black,” “Form,” “Pulse,” “Chime,” “Space,” and “Time”—the poet explores his belief that the greatest verse arises from a harmony of mind and body, and that poetic forms originate in human necessities: breath, heartbeat, footstep, posture. “The sound of form in poetry descended from song, molded by breath, is the sound of that creature yearning to leave a mark. The meter says tick-tock. The rhyme says remember. The whiteness says alone,” Maxwell writes. To illustrate his argument, he draws upon personal touchstones such as Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost. An experienced teacher, Maxwell also takes us inside the world of the creative writing class, where we learn from the experiences of four aspiring poets. “You master form you master time,” Maxwell says. In this guide to the most ancient and sublime of the realms of literature, Maxwell shares his mastery with us.




Irish Poets and Modern Greece


Book Description

This book explores the perception of modern Greek landscape and poetry in the writings of Seamus Heaney and Derek Mahon. Delving into travel writing, ecocriticism, translation and allusion, it offers a fresh comparative link between Greek modernity and Irish poetry that counterbalances the preeminence of Greek antiquity in existing criticism. The first section, devoted to travel and landscape, examines Mahon’s modern perception of the Aegean, inspired by his travels to the Cyclades between 1974 and 1997, as well as Heaney’s philhellenic relationship with mainland Greece between 1995 and 2004. The second section offers a close analysis of their C. P. Cavafy translations, and compares George Seferis’ original texts with their creative rendition in the writings of the Irish poets. The book will appeal to readers of poetry as well as those interested in the interactions between Ireland and Greece, two countries at the extreme points of Europe, in times of crisis.




Collected Poems


Book Description

The Greek poet C. P. Cavafy (1863-1933) lived most of his life in Alexandria, where he was content to circulate his work only among a select group of readers; but since his death he has come to be recognised and widely enjoyed as one of the great poets of the century in any language, remarkable for his use of dramatic forms and plain language within elegant formal structures, for his brilliant reanimation of myth and for his subtle treatment of erotic experience. Lawrence Durrell has written of this masterly translation: 'Cavafy has now at last fallen upon translators who can do justice to his wry melodious poems, glinting with insight as if from veins of mica.'