European poetry classics

"This bilingual edition of Sonnets of Love & Death introduces today's readers to the intriguing world of Jean de Sponde, a neglected sixteenth-century poet who has at last taken his proper place in the pantheon of French poets. David R. Slavitt's finely crafted translation respects both the content and form of Sponde's original while deftly employing contemporary English poetics that appeal to modern sensibilities.". "Considered one of the most important poets of the Renaissance period and a precursor to John Donne, in his poetry Sponde reflects the tensions - both stylistic and philosophical - of his time. This collection of sonnets, abounding in metaphor, paradox, antithesis, and hyperbole, is a restless personal exploration of the body and the spirit, of the concrete and the abstract, of passion and anguish"--BOOK JACKET.

"As a member of the mid-sixteenth-century literary group the Pleiade, Joachim du Bellay sought to elevate his native French to the level of the classical languages - a goal pursued with great spirit, elegance, irony, and wit in the poems of The Regrets. Widely viewed as one of the finest sonnet sequences in all of French literature, this Renaissance masterpiece wryly echoes the homesickness and longing of Ovid's poetry written in exile - because du Bellay finds himself lost in Rome, the very home Ovid longed for. In this translation by David R. Slavitt, these poems retain their original formal playfulness as well as their gracefully rendered but nonetheless moving melancholy. In decadent Rome, among hypocrites, thieves, and snobs, du Bellay uses his poetry as an opportunity for social satire and caustic self-criticism; it becomes a salvation of sorts, an approach peculiarly modern in its blending of the classical, the social, and the personal."--BOOK JACKET.

"The eighty-four poems in Milestones mark Marina Tsvetaeva's passing from mere youthful talent to complete mastery of her craft. Composed between January and December 1916, these poems find the twenty-four-year-old poet thirsting for the fullness of life while, at the same time, contemplating the inevitability of death - a theme to which she was to return many times in her career. Tsvetaeva's work of this time also reflects her knowledge of and pride in her native culture, especially the preeminence of Moscow. Throughout the verse she opens up to the wonders of nature and to her little daughter Alya, who would later come to figure widely in the work and legacy of her mother. Milestones displays a sensual array of moods, themes, styles, and rhythms - all the ingredients that would in time reveal Tsvetaeva as one of the most daring and original poets of her age."--Jacket.

Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) is undoubtedly Germany's most significant poet of the nineteenth century, second in importance only to Goethe. Heine's poetry appeared in all major European languages and was immensely popular throughout the nineteenth century, but has been neglected by modern readers. Now the eminent translator Walter W. Arndt has rectified this situation by producing sparkling new translations of Heine's love poems. Although many of Heine's poems are deceptively simple on the surface, the multiple allusions, word plays, and shifts and breaks in diction and tone make them almost untranslatable. Arndt not only renders the meaning of the originals, but preserves the poems' rhyme schemes as well as their moods and multiple cultural resonances. Arndt captures both the simplicity of the Germanic folk song structure and the Romantic pathos and imagery that Heine both evokes and undermines, revealing the identification with and alienation from German culture expressed so poignantly in Heine's poetry. This bilingual edition includes an illuminating introduction by Heine scholar Jeffrey L. Sammons.