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Poetry is at least an elegance and at most a revelation.

- Robert Fitzgerald
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Author:
Robert Fitzgerald
Tags:
Poetry
Elegance
Revelation
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The heart of the matter seems to me to be the direct interaction between one's making a poem in English and a poem in the language that one understands and values. I don't see how you can do it otherwise.

In fact, eloquence in English will inevitably make use of the Latin element in our vocabulary.

There must of course be a relationship between translating and making poems of your own, but what it is I just don't know.

Words began to appear in English and to make some kind of equivalent. For what satisfaction it is hard to say, except that something seems unusually piercing, living, handsome, in another language, and since English is yours, you wish it to be there too.

In a way you can feel that the poet actually is looking over your shoulder, and you say to yourself, now, how would this go for him? Would this do or not?

I think it was lucky that during most of the work on the Odyssey I lived on Homer's sea in houses that were, in one case, shaken by the impact of the Mediterranean winter storms on the rocks below.

Homer's whole language, the language in which he lived, the language that he breathed, because he never saw it, or certainly those who formed his tradition never saw it, in characters on the pages. It was all on the tongue and in the ear.

Yes, living voices in a living language, so it seemed to us.

What the translator - myself in particular - does is not comparable to what the Homeric performer was doing.

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Poetry is at least an elegance and at most a revelation.

Poetry is at least an elegance and at most a revelation.

Poetry is at least an elegance and at most a revelation.

Poetry is at least an elegance and at most a revelation.

Poetry is at least an elegance and at most a revelation.

Poetry is at least an elegance and at most a revelation.

Poetry is at least an elegance and at most a revelation.

Poetry is at least an elegance and at most a revelation.

Poetry is at least an elegance and at most a revelation.

Poetry is at least an elegance and at most a revelation.

Poetry is at least an elegance and at most a revelation.

Poetry is at least an elegance and at most a revelation.

Poetry is at least an elegance and at most a revelation.

Poetry is at least an elegance and at most a revelation.

Poetry is at least an elegance and at most a revelation.