In the Light of

By: Carson, Ciaran

Ciaran Carson has a distinguished history of translation from the Italian (The Inferno of Dante Alighieri, 2002), the Irish (The Midnight Court, 2005; and The Tain, 2007) as well as from the French (The Alexandrine Plan, 1998). He states in his Author s Note that these versons are not conventional translations. . . . There are instances where I have added to or taken away from the original. I have sometimes twisted Rimbaud s words. And Rimbaud s words, of course, twisted mine . . . Carson s idea of the translator s work is like the French poet s own visionary idea of how poetry conveys the hypnotic violence of the real: The poet makes himself a seer through a long, prodigious and rational disordering of the senses. Carson continues: However we gloss the title Illuminations, the poems flit within the inward eye like a brightly-coloured magic lantern slides, pictures from a marvellous book, visions of another world, scenes from an avant-garde film. Rimbaud was avant-garde before the Avant-garde; a surrealist before Surrealism; and, environmentalist avant la lettre, his critique of industrial society in some of these poems is still relevant today. In all senses he was indeed a seer. Only a poet of Carson s skills could translate the poetry of the poete maudit in the light of the original."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 193063062X
• ISBN13: 9781930630628
• Release Date: May 2013
• Publisher: Wake Forest University Press
• Length: 62 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.4" x 8.3"