The Golden Age: Poems of the Spanish Renaissance - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393329917 ISBN 13: 9780393329919

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2007

Synopsis

"Edith Grossman again demonstrates that she indeed is the Glenn Gould of translators."―Harold Bloom

Celebrating the Spanish Renaissance's greatest poems and offering a new appreciation of Spain's "Golden Age, " Edith Grossman turns her passionate fervor and stylistic brilliance to the works of Jorge Manrique; Garcilaso de la Vega, a soldier and courtier who wrote love poetry; Fray Luis de León, a converso Jew; San Juan de la Cruz, whose poems are the finest exemplars of Christian mysticism; Luis de Góngora, a great sensualist; Lope de Vega, Cervantes' rival; Francisco de Quevedo, the ultimate Baroque poet; and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, the nun whose haunting poetry embodied the voice of Mexico. Through these glorious voices, presented in facing-page Spanish and English, The Golden Age offers a new way to connect with the literary heritage of the Spanish-speaking world. 10 illustrations

About this title

About the Author:

Acclaimed for her best-selling translations of Cervantes, Gabriel García Márquez, and Mario Vargas Llosa, Edith Grossman has received many awards including the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation. She lives in New York City.

Billy Collins was the Poet Laureate of the United States and the State of New York. He is a Distinguished Professor at Lehman College and a Senior Distinguished Fellow of the Winter Park Institute. A Literary Lion of the New York Public Library and author of many collections of poetry, including Bright Wings: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems About Birds and Horoscopes for the Dead, he lives in Westchester, New York.

From Publishers Weekly:

The love sonnets, elegies, and Christian sacred verse of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain inspire comparisons to Shakespeare's England, and remain the foundation for later Spanish verse. Yet the most important of these poets, Lope de Vega, Luis de Gongora, and St.John of the Cross, have limited reputations in the U.S. After dozens of much-praised renderings from modern Spanish and Portugese novelists, Grossman's recent version of Don Quixote placed her among the nation's most celebrated translators. With informative capsule biographies of eight poets and facing-page (English and Spanish) versions of their work, Grossman tries to bring their glories here. Her translations convey the poets' meaning, but not necessarily their music: lines like "he raised his weary voice and faintly called/ speaking his final words to roiling waves,/ but they ne'er heard his voice, his lover's plea" may fail to excite. Replicating syllable counts, but not rhyme schemes, Grossman sounds at best forceful and clear, at worst limp and affectless. Some poets (especially St. John and the brilliant seventeenth-century Mexican nun, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz) do come through, however, thanks to the emotional clarity of their lines. Billy Collins' introduction places the poets in historical context and might help attract attention.
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About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0393329917
• ISBN 13: 9780393329919
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240