Customer Reviews (1)

Horrid horrid translation
Sor Juana was a seventeenth century Mexican nun who was also a notable poet. Unfortunately, this particular translation (by Trueblood) is quite execrable. Translating poetry is dicey business at best and is perhaps best handled with a literal translation and occasional footnotes. Trueblood imposed rhymes where there were none in the original and a rather jangling rhythm more appropriate for twentieth-century Madison Avenue than seventeenth-century Mexico City. His introduction also seems to distort some of Sor Juana's attitudes to meet his own ideology. Thankfully, the book also includes the poems in the original Spanish. ... Read more

Book Description
poetry & essay, Mexico, tr Weinberger & Allen ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Todo! Circula en Cada Rama del Arbol de Mis Venas
I was introduced to this book by a friend in high school.He had stolen the only copy out of my schools library.. since then it is has been an impossible task to find the book.I don't know yet if this is the right one!Villaurrutia is an amazingly dark poet who writes exactly what the mind is thinking!Great translation, but nothing close to what the spanish is really saying!-Jamie

Is this it?
An excellent collection of poems for the Modern Goth or anyone who isn't afraid of admitting that they've ever felt absolutely alone. Too bad it's so hard to find and the only published poems in translation from this poet.Dark in an age where it wasn't popular to be dark, accidentally rich inromance and rhythm, it brings literature back to a period when politicalstatements took a back seat to the root of poetry -- writing about whatyou're feeling. Again, I wish there were more of Villaurrutia's workavailable. ... Read more

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Product Description
One of only 3000 copies printed. Original linen binding. ... Read more

Product Description
Issued with a dust jacket ... Read more

Book Description

Born in Mexico City in 1914, writer, poet, and diplomat Octavio Paz won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1990, eight years before his death in 1998. The Writing in the Stars explores Paz’s life and ideas by establishing a dialogue between the structure and recurring images of his major poems and the ideas of Carl Jung.

Although other literary critics have pointed to Jungian concepts in Paz, a comprehensive study on the subject has yet to be undertaken.Rodney Williamson takes up this challenge, adopting a Jungian perspective to explore successive phases of Paz’s poetry. Williamson illustrates how archetypal images infuse Paz’s early poetry and his surrealist period and shows how the circular structure of Paz’s longer poems, such as ‘Piedra de sol’ and ‘Blanco,’ are based on the Eastern sacred circle or mandala, a major archetype of psychic wholeness in Jung. He argues that a grasp of the psychological importance of Jung’s archetypes is essential to understanding the various syntheses of creative truth and existence sought by Paz at different defining moments of his career as a poet. The Writing in the Stars will prove fascinating to anyone interested in Latin-American literature, Jungian psychology, or critical theory.

Customer Reviews (1)

Convergence of Topics
I read this book recently uponthe death of Octavio Paz. The mans mind was incredible and he was able to elucidate onsuch disparate themes as philosophy,religion and history. What is incredible is that he manages totie these diverse subjects into a major topic, Mexican Art. The Europeaninfluences on the major Mexican artists is indelible and Paz shows how onecannot exist without it's predecessor. He takes shots at such Mexican iconsasDiego Rivera and Frida Kahlo for their seemingly contradictory views.This book is not easy reading and requires a base of knowledge prior toreading. One area of interest is his first person accounts with famouspeople. Paz does not pull any punches and is a straight shooter. Theinsights he provides here are excellent. The expressions he provides areeloquent and given with great detail. A trully brilliant thinker thatoffers his thoughts for all to share and enjoy. This book makes youquestion your knowledge and makes you take the leap into a newunderstanding of what you thought you knew. Like all provacative writerswho influence, you come out the better, as a result of his insights. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (1)

EXCELLENT COMPILATION BY OCTAVIO PAZ; DISMAL TRANSLATION BY THE YOUNG SAMUEL BECKETT
and an OK introduction by CM Bowra (I'd much rather read the French edition's intro by Paul Claudel!).

One of the greatest mysteries of modern literature (aside from the novel Ulysses) is how the young Samuel Beckett, fresh from the Protestant University in Dublin, who in the Sixties would receive the Nobel Prize for literature, could begin his career with such terrible translations funded by UNESCO and many times republished in the USA by Evergreen's Grove Press, our nation's owner of the Beckett franchise.

I am reading the 1985 Grove Press edition. The best that could happen would be a bilingual edition, in which one might gracefully and mercifully put aside the unreadable, terrible translations and read the originals as written, including the archaicisms of the Carmelite Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz.

The young Beckett also performed some unreadable translations from the French of the Bateaux Ivre, for example. This is odd as after the Second World War he became our greatest playwright in English by translating his plays (such as Waiting for Godot, Endgame, Krapp's Last Tape, Happy Days, Ohio Impromptu, Come and Go, etc.) from his own original French into English. In order for this to occur of course, he needed to pass through service as secretary to the greatest writer of the Twentieth Cnetury, Mr. James Joyce, who tragically did not survive to observe his own recognition. Beckett's novels in the main grew more diffficult (his great trilogy, ending in the Unnameable, sometimes called the Unreadable); yet to him we owe such enormously entertaining earlier novels as Murphy and Mercier et Camier

In any case, the great Mexican poet Octavio Paz, through the encouragement of UNESCO of the United Nation (while still interested in the advancement of culture and education and health and the development of peoples, of international peace and of human rights, long before this promising international body was reduced to being a mercenary arm of other interests), compiled a representative sampling of poerty from throughout the history of his heroic nation between about 1600 until three centuries later, ending in 1910. Indeed for a flavor of the translation let us look at the opening sonnet by Don Francisco de Terrazas:

I dreamed that I was thrown from a crag
by one who held my will in servitude,
and all but fallen to the griping jaws
of a wild beast in wait for me below

In terror, gropingly, I cast around
for wherewith to uphold me with my hands,
and the ones closed about a trenchant sword,
and the other twined about a little herb.

Little and little the herb came swift away,
and the sword ever sorer vexed my hand
as I more fiercely clutched its cruel edges. . . . (sic)

Oh wretched me, and how from self estranged,
that I rejoice to see me mangled thus
for dread of ending, dying, my distress!

I do not rejoice to see this sonnet mangled thus, but would rejoice to see the original as written some four centuries ago. I would indeed rejoice to do my own translation, thank you, without a twining hand nor trenchant sword.

Certainly the most valuable element of this edition is the lengthy, comprehensive and profound introduction by Octavio Paz himself (translator unidentified) which retraces the entire history and development of his nation's poetic literature, and presents the criteria for his selections in this compilation, which he admits is lacking as there is no Nahuatl nor other pre-Columbian poetry, but for which he refers to the reader to other sources.

An excellent if troubled edition, handy anthology for students of this field. But find the originals; here as in other places, particularly in poetry we find true the ancient dictum: translation is treason (which sounds so much better in the original Latin, or French, or Spanish!). ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from Letras Libres, published by Editorial Vuelta, S.A. de C.V. on August 1, 2004. The length of the article is 2086 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Una pasión a varias voces.(Los puentes de la traducción. Octavio Paz y la poesía francesa)(Reseña de libro)
Author: Elsa Cross
Publication: Letras Libres (Magazine/Journal)
Date: August 1, 2004
Publisher: Editorial Vuelta, S.A. de C.V.
Volume: 6Issue: 68Page: 85(3)

Article Type: Reseña de libro

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from New Criterion, published by Foundation for Cultural Review on February 1, 2001. The length of the article is 2342 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Octavio Paz.(Review) (book review)
Author: Stephen Schwartz
Publication: New Criterion (Magazine/Journal)
Date: February 1, 2001
Publisher: Foundation for Cultural Review
Volume: 19Issue: 6Page: 68

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more