The Faber Book of Modern European Poetry [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION Until quite recently, foreign literature, particularly foreign poetry, has not fared well in Britain. I discovered this for myself back in 1965 when Penguin brought me in to beef up their series of Modern European Poets in Translation. Although this series published some of the best and most exciting poetry that was appearing at that time - the first three volumes under my editorship were Miroslav Holub, Zbigniew Herbert and Vasko Popa - the books were scarcely noticed. The series ran for twelve years and included a further twenty-two volumes, but they were reviewed hardly at all and sold badly, until the accountants finally decided enough was enough. In the circumstances, they were probably justified. With rare exceptions, of course, the audience for contemporary poetry is always small and specialized. But in those days, when Larkin's ironic form of Englishness was producing paroxysms of Little Englishism in his admirers, no one had much time for the poetry of foreigners. If they bothered with an excuse - mostly, they didn't - it was the old chestnut: poetry is what gets lost in translation. Maybe it is. For example, I am told that, for his fellow countrymen, part of Zbigniew Herbert's originality and influence resides in the way he has transformed the language and technique of Polish poetry. None of that survives translation - or is even translatable. But that does not make his poems any less extraordinary when you read him in English. They have a strength and range and independence and restraint - to use an unfashionable word, a nobility - that to my mind makes them, even in translation, better than most poems written in English in the last quarter of a century. Similarly, Miroslav Holub's poems are idiomatic, translucent and sane in a way that makes you feel they would work powerfully in any language. I hope this anthology will show that there are a number of poets whose work is so strong that, no matter what subtleties are lost in translation, it emerges from the process as poetry in its own right. The reverse is also true, alas. There are many important poets whose work does not jump the language barrier so effectively. No matter how good the translation, the reader knows that something vital has been lost and what he is getting is an approximation, a