Brodsky Translating Brodsky - by Alexandra Berlina (Paperback)
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<p/><br></br><p><b> Book Synopsis </b></p></br></br>Is poetry lost in translation, or is it perhaps the other way around? Is it found? Gained? Won? <br/>What happens when a poet decides to give his favorite Russian poems a new life in English? Are the new texts shadows, twins or doppelgangers of their originals-or are they something completely different? Does the poet resurrect himself from the death of the author by reinterpreting his own work in another language, or does he turn into a monster: a bilingual, bicultural centaur?<br/>Alexandra Berlina, herself a poetry translator and a 2012 Barnstone Translation Prize laureate, addresses these questions in this new study of Joseph Brodsky, whose Nobel-prize-winning work has never yet been discussed from this perspective.<p/><br></br><p><b> Review Quotes </b></p></br></br><br><p>"Written in a lively style and replete with astute observations and provocative insights, Berlina's book is a joy to read. It is highly recommended." -Adrian Wanner, The Pennsylvania State University, USA, <i>Comparative Literature Studies</i> <p/>"What Brodsky inherited from the Russian tradition was a belief in poetry as a sacrament; what he inherited from the Anglo-American tradition was an enjoyment of poetry as a space for the free play of the intellect. No one has written as clearly and comprehensively as Berlina about Brodsky's successes and failures in his attempt to integrate these traditions." -- <p/>"Berlina's careful reading shows that Brodsky's self-translations add an illuminating dimension to his poetry." -- <p/>"Alexandra Berlina's careful and ingenious analysis of Brodsky's poetry throws new light on his work, and on the process of translating Russian poetry altogether. Berlina's position as a Russian writer abroad gives her great insight into the matter of Brodsky's autotranslations. Her close readings of both poems and translations are a particular joy as they benefit from her own work as a translator of Brodsky's poetry. This is an illuminating, playful and highly original guide to the great poet." -- <p/>"The author's sensitive and insightful readings of Brodsky's poems both in the Russian<br>original and in English translation-to the point where it becomes unclear which one is the original<br>and which one the translation in any given case, and whether the neat distinction between original<br>and translation ought to be taken for granted more generally-illuminate Brodsky's poetics and<br>technique to an unprecedented degree by laying bare their semantic, grammatical, syntactical, and<br>phonological workings." --<i>The Russian Review (reviewed by Michael Eskin)</i> <p/>"...An important contribution to international Brodsky studies, Berlina's book uses the poet's self-translations to arrive at detailed reinterpretations of his work... In this way Berlina redefines the concept of translation, looking at Brodsky's poems rendered into English by the poet himself as if they were variants of his original poems, comparable in status to Beckett's self-translations... Berlina's illuminating and often provocative study is worth a careful reading, if only to see how she manages to integrate Brodsky's self-translations with the poet's oeuvre and link them with his dislocated biography." --<i>Translation Studies</i> <p/>"Alexandra Berlina's fascinating and intriguing book presents a selection of poems which Brodsky translated on his own ... She clearly has an impressive command of the relevant secondary literature ... All in all, the book presents a persuasive case for translation, as well as the reading of a translation, as a way to get to closer grips with a poetic text." --<i>Translation and Literature</i> <p/>"Berlina has succeeded in achieving her ... stated goals-namely, discussing particular poems and advertising translation studies as a method of close reading. ... This is a book that should interest all readers of Brodsky's poetry, whether in Russian, English, or both, as well as those who wish to explore self-translation as a continuation of poetic creativity, not just as a secondary pursuit. Berlina writes with admirable succinctness and clarity; her authorial persona is that of an expert but approachable guide to the crossing and recrossing of borders between languages and cultures. ... She sees his self translations as occasions for the poet to play with the opportunities a new language and cultural frame of reference off ered him to rework his poems, a conclusion that is well supported by the carefully conducted and enjoyable close readings provided in this book." --<i>Slavic Review</i> <p/>"Alexandra Berlina's fascinating and intriguing book presents a selection of poems which Brodsky translated on his own, along with the original Russian and a line-for-line literal. What she then offers is a close reading of the end-product in both languages, showing a fine sensitivity not just to semantic correspondences (or failures of correspondence), but also to phonetic patterning and nuances. ... All in all, the book presents a persuasive case for translation, as well as the reading of a translation, as a way to get to closer grips with a poetic text." -Christopher Whyte, <i>Translation and Literature</i> <p/>"Alexandra Berlina makes an invaluable contribution to our understanding of one of the major poets of the late twentieth century ... her book is a model for critical engagement with translation, and a corrective to the dominance of theory over practice in the burgeoning discipline of Translation Studies ... if we hope to understand and appreciate Brodsky's accomplishment as a poet and thinker, we must confront the full corpus of his work in a dynamic, comparative fashion. Berlina does this brilliantly, and with a degree of wit that would have made her subject proud." -Boris Dralyuk, University of St. Andrews, <i>Slavic and East European Journal</i></p><br><p/><br></br><p><b> About the Author </b></p></br></br><p><b>Alexandra Berlina</b> is Postdoctoral Researcher in Literary Studies at the University of Erfurt, Germany. Her translations of Brodsky's poems Dido and Aeneas and You can't tell a gnat... have won awards from the 'Willis Barnstone Translation Prize' and the 'The Joseph Brodsky/Stephen Spender Prize'. <p/><b>Robert Chandler</b> is an award-winning poet and translator from Russian, French, and Greek. Among the writers he has translated from Russian are Alexander Pushkin, Nikolay Leskov, Vasily Grossman and Andrey Platonov. He is the co-editor of the Penguin Classics anthology <i>Russian Poetry from Pushkin to Brodsky</i> (2014). Penguin have also published his anthologies of Russian short stories and of Russian magic tales.</p>
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