Broadway translations

Little remains today of the writings of the archaic Greek poet Sappho (fl. late 7th and early 6th centuries B.C.E.), whose work is said to have filled nine papyrus rolls in the great library at Alexandria some 500 years after her death. The surviving texts consist of a lamentably small and fragmented body of lyric poetry--among them, poems of invocation, desire, spite, celebration, resignation, and remembrance--that nevertheless enables us to hear the living voice of the poet Plato called the tenth Muse. Stanley Lombardo's translations give us a virtuoso embodiment of Sappho's voice, whose telltale charm, authority, immediacy, directness, intensity, and sudden changes of tone are among the hallmarks of his masterly translation. Pamela Gordon introduces us to the world of Sappho, discusses questions surrounding the transmission of her manuscripts, offers advice on reading these texts, and concludes with an enlightening discussion of same-sex desire in Sappho.

"This translation of Montesquieu's unsurpassed epistolary novel, the first to appear in over thirty years, is completely new and aims at being as literal as possible, including pulling no punches with the erotic elements. This means, among other things, that the translators have attempted to render the same word throughout the work as consistently as good sense allows. This places readers in a position to see the various ways in which Montesquieu associates one character with another. Also, by allowing Montesquieu to speak for himself, readers will be able to see more clearly than in any other translation both the seriousness and playfulness of Montesquieu's intention. Nevertheless, due attention has been paid to the beauty of the literary character of the work. This will be the standard translation for years to come. Persian Letters journeys across the unending landscape of things human, providing readers the opportunity to think through an astonishing number of themes - mastery and slavery, jealousy, philosophy and tyranny, self-deception, commerce, nature and convention, the best life for a human being, vanity, glory, and human sexuality. Given its fascination with the relationship between Islam and the West, and the power of religion in the world generally, the book is especially timely. In addition to the translation of the text, the volume includes a brilliant introduction by Stuart D. Warner on the philosophical meaning of Persian Letters; a translation of the French index from the 1758 edition, which was the first-ever index of the book, as this edition will be the first-ever index in English; editorial footnotes to help with historical and literary allusions; and a chart detailing the chronological order of the composition of the letters"--