Sonnets to Orpheus: with Letters to a Young Poet (Fyfield Books) Review

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Sonnets to Orpheus: with Letters to a Young Poet (Fyfield Books) ReviewReaders should note that the one star review for this translation gives one star to amazon, not to David Young.
This is my favorite translation of the Sonnets to Orpheus -- and the only one I can read and be reminded of the original German. No translation is perfectly faithful, but Mitchell and Paterson (both beautiful translations, also) take more liberties than Young in interpreting some of Rilke's stranger lines. Look, for example, at the second stanza of sonnet II, 13:
The original reads:
Sei immer tot in Eurydike--, singender steige,
preisender steige zuruck in den reinen Bezug.
Hier, unter Schwindenden, sei, im Reiche der Neige,
sei ein klingendes Glas, das sich im Klang schon zerschlug.
Young translates:
Be dead in Eurydice, always --, climb with more song,
climb with more praise, back up into pure relation.
Here in the kingdom of decay, among what's wasting,
be a tingling glass that shatters itself with sound.
Mitchell:
Be forever dead in Eurydice -- more gladly arise
into the seamless life proclaimed in your song.
Here, in the realm of decline, among momentary days,
be the crystal cup that shattered even as it rang.
And Paterson:
Die, die through Eurydice--that you might pass
into the pure accord, praising the more, singing
the more; amongst the wanting, be the glass
that shatters in the sound of its own ringing.
These are all excellent translations -- but excellent in different ways. Notice how Mitchell skirts over the ambiguities of words like Bezug, "relation," or concepts like rising "zuruck," rising backwards. Paterson attends to those subtleties, but his translation is too charged, passionate -- "Die, die." Rilke wrote these poems at the end of his life, at a time when he'd already departed from "that passionate music," as he writes in I, 3, and developed a song that sounded more like "Ein Wehn im Gott. Ein Wind," "a gust / ripple inside the god. A wind." That's the effect Young more consistently achieves. But not always. If you're new to Rilke I'd consider this translation in conjunction with Mitchell's selected poetry.
Oh -- I should also mention that both this and the Mitchell include the German. The Paterson does not.Sonnets to Orpheus: with Letters to a Young Poet (Fyfield Books) Overview

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