Crossings
Essays on Poetry and Translation from Hölderlin to Jaccottet

Charlie Louth

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Transcript 31

Legenda

19 February 2024  •  332pp

ISBN: 978-1-839541-54-4 (hardback)  •  RRP £95, $120, €120

ISBN: 978-1-839541-55-1 (paperback, forthcoming)

ISBN: 978-1-839541-56-8 (JSTOR ebook)

FrenchGermanPoetryPhilosophyTranslation

Crossings is a gathering of essays whose preoccupations converge in the idea that the workings of poetry and trans­lation are closely related. This is especially true in the work of Hölderlin, in whose poems the kinship is coupled with a way of reading the world and an attentiveness to transitions of all kinds: what can come over to us from the past, and what will pass on from us to posterity? What are the consequences for poetry if the present moment is understood as a perpetual transition? Translation can be a means of testing this understanding, and poetry perhaps negotiates the crossing itself. Later writers like Philippe Jaccottet, who thought of the poet’s work as a work of translation, continue this line: the poem becomes a form of attention and, as such, a thing permeable to an elsewhere. Touching on bird-flight and sonnets, aqueducts and metamorphosis, what these readings have in common is a fidelity to the movement of particular poems.

Charlie Louth is Professor of German and Comparative Literature at the Queen’s College, University of Oxford.

Reviews:

  • ‘These essays promise, and deliver, a ‘strong involvement with the weave of the poem’... The close readings are beautiful, treating the poems themselves with precision and care. But Louth is also adept at giving just the right amount of context, which, rather than seeming finicky, comes across as an act of generosity towards the reader.’ — Nicola Thomas, Times Literary Supplement 4 October 2024, 25

Bibliography entry:

Louth, Charlie, Crossings: Essays on Poetry and Translation from Hölderlin to Jaccottet, Transcript, 31 (Legenda, 2024)

First footnote reference: 35 Crossings: Essays on Poetry and Translation from Hölderlin to Jaccottet, charlie Louth, Transcript, 31 (Legenda, 2024), p. 21.

Subsequent footnote reference: 37 Louth, p. 47.

(To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.)

Bibliography entry:

Louth, Charlie. 2024. Crossings: Essays on Poetry and Translation from Hölderlin to Jaccottet, Transcript, 31 (Legenda)

Example citation: ‘A quotation occurring on page 21 of this work’ (Louth 2024: 21).

Example footnote reference: 35 Louth 2024: 21.

(To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.)

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