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Title: New Poems: A Bilingual Edition (European Poetry Classics) by Rainer Maria Rilke, Stephen Cohn ISBN: 0-8101-1649-9 Publisher: Northwestern University Press Pub. Date: June, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $21.00

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Average Customer Rating: 2 (1 review)

Rating: 2
Summary: Do you want to read Rilke or Cohn?
Comment: Rilke has been attaining great popularity in the English speaking world, and for good reason. His lyric imagination and the beauty of his thought appeal immediately to the reader -- there is little that is 'inaccessible' about this poetry. 'New Poems', which appeared in 1907, may be his finest work. It was written while Rilke was heavily under the influence of Rodin, living in Paris, and it shows what poetic genius can accomplish when finally brought in contact with rigor.

The poems are therefore highly recommended. The only question is: which translation? This depends on one's taste and how you are going to use the German original alongside the English translation.

Cohn's translation falls on the very liberal side. He offends Nabokov's idea that all translations should be as literal as possible. The problem with liberal translations like Cohn's is that the more they diverge from the original in an attempt to get at the real 'sense' or 'feel' of the poem, the more they become just one more interpretation. And maybe you would have had a different one? Even, dare I say, a better one? They also pit the translator against the poet in a sense, and unless it is the rare case where the translator is a better poet than the poet being translated, this is not a good idea...

Just one example. The second stanza of Cohn's translation of "The Panther" (maybe Rilke's most famous poem, and very difficult to translate well) includes the line "pacing out that mean, constricted ground." Readers will search in vain for any of these words (much less the phrase) in the original German. Edward Snow provides a much better (and more literal) translation as:

"The supple pace of powerful, soft strides, turning in the very smallest circle, is like a dance of strength around a center in which a great will stands numbed."

Ah, that is Rilke. His ideas are so beautiful, that I want a translation that preserves that beauty, instead of turning it into something else. "New Poems" is always simple, and no translator should stuff in verbal acrobatics to accomplish what Rilke does so easily. Thus, I have to recommend Snow's translation over Cohn's. However, if you want something flashy, go for it!