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 making selections on the basis of a poet’s contemporary or posthumous reputation divide into two sorts: those who go for the poet’s best-known and most anthologized poems, and those who favor lesser-known ones. Thirdly, those who follow their individual, often quite unorthodox, tastes.
The reviewer of Twentieth-Century German Poetry, edited by Michael Hofmann, must assess Hofmann both as translator—a great many of the translations are by him—and as anthologist.[1]The latter involves perceiving the anthologist, at least implicitly, also as critic, and here, with his very introduction, Hofmann arouses serious
