FROM RUSSIAN WITH LOVE.

October 14, 2006 by languagehat 1 Comment

The mail brought a welcome surprise: a very kind reader took advantage of the Amazon wish list link tucked away in the right column to send me a copy of Daniel Weissbort’s From Russian With Love: Joseph Brodsky in English. As any regular reader of LH knows, I love both Brodsky and discussions of translation, so this is an exciting acquisition. Weissbort returns over and over (as I can see from the table of contents) to the wonderful untitled poem “Я входил вместо дикого зверя в клетку,” which he calls “May 24, 1980” from the date of composition, and I’ll enjoy seeing what he has to say about it. Thanks, map!

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beth says

October 14, 2006 at 10:28 pm

Well, I would love to read this too, having struggled with Brodsky in English and wondering, all the while, how much of the trouble was Brodsky and how much the difficulty of translation and how much was me. I love the work – but felt there were passages of great fluidity and then…clunks, roadblocks, oddly unexpected phrases…and then it would smooth out again.

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FROM RUSSIAN WITH LOVE.

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