It feels a little strange to read a collection of poetry and plays in translation by another poet, but I'm glad that the editor put this selection together. Ted Hughes has been one of my favourite poets since I came across his collection Crow, so it is interesting to see the poets who he admired enough to translate and his ideas about translation theory made concrete. Thought I don't speak/read any of the languages of the original poets, it became clear that Hughes was interested in each of them because they held similar ideas, written aesthetics, or mythical themes to his own work. Even though Hughes' "literal" interpretations retain an essence of a recognizable Hughes language the reader is treated to a range of works that explore death and rebirth, origin mythology, familial relationships, and the brutality of the human existence. The editor presents Hughes' translations in chronological order to give readers an idea of how Hughes' interests and influences changed over his lifetime, but this treatment allows his overall discussion to culminate in a number of concrete observations about Hughes' acts of translation as well. He supposes that besides clearly enjoying the poets in question Hughes also translated as a means of promoting poetry from other languages and cultures. Yet more importantly, readers are sure to realize that the exercise of translation (especially in the case of some of the plays) was also a conduit for Hughes to explore ideas in language and form, and to use the structures of other languages to break away from the expected forms of English grammar and vocabulary. Hughes was obviously working at a time when poetry had already made significant moves towards deconstructed modernist forms, but working with poetry in other languages allowed him to broaden the scope of his own writing to create something unique. ( )

I will say at the outset that it is irritating that this is a "selected" rather than "collected" volume; it is time to gather up all of Hughes' literary work and make it available to people in as few volumes as possible.

The Bardo Thodol (Tibetan Book of the Dead) is a guide for the recently deceased; it is intended to help the dead avoid re-incarnation (escape the Wheel of Life). Hughes has translated/adapted several excerpts that appear as the first section of this volume. I found them fascinating for their glimpse into Buddhist attitudes to life and death.

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This volume's contents can be divided into two types: contemporary European poets and classic/classical works. The contemporary poets did very little for me and I cannot recommend this volume on their account; I liked fewer than ten individual poems. As is amply demonstrated and discussed, Hughes took the approach of obtaining as literal as possible a translation and then modifying it as little as possible. In contrast, Hughes tackled all the other works represented with a very open mind and free hand, to the extent that some of the pieces could be viewed as adaptations more than translations. These, in general, work better. The excerpts from plays cannot do the whole works justice and really one needs to get the individual editions of them to properly appreciate what Hughes has achieved. Two complete Tales from Ovid give a good idea of what to expect from the twenty others Hughes translated - it is a shame that there are not more! The real gem of the collection is the gathering together of all the excerpts from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight that Hughes completed. (Again - oh! for a complete version.) Some of these have not been published elsewhere. The verse is heavily alliterative but does not restrict itself to the original metre in the way that Tolkien's does. It is extremely lively and readable.

Over-all the collection is a big disappointment, lacking comprehensive inclusiveness and adding little new of interest to me, but I do recommend Hughes' complete volumes of Classical translations - they are tremendously rewarding. ( )