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/lit/ - Literature

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13578687 No.13578687 [Reply] [Original]

>reads poetry in translation
>thinks he can judge Neruda, Pessoa or any other poet based on their clunky English translations
OHNONONONONONO HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA so this is the guy you look up to, /lit/??

>> No.13578801

>namedrops fucking Neruda and Pessoa
that's gonna be a yikies from me

>> No.13578816

>>13578801
There's no such thing as "namedropping" in literature. Bloom has written a chapter in the Western Canon to them.

>> No.13578855

>>13578687
Is Neruda really good? I have hear mixed thoughts about him.

>> No.13578890

>>13578687
Reading in translation you can critique meaning but not style, I agree. A translated poem may as well be an original poem by the translator.

>> No.13578917

>>13578855
I recently read a couple of his poems in Spanish and they were really good. Then I read the English translations and they sucked the magic and life out of them. Neruda would write "mediodía quemante" (burning midday) and the translation would simply say "hot noon", among other examples. It's as if they were meaning to lessen the intesity or simplify the poems. Any Spanish language poet who says "he's bad" is either envious or lying, especially if you compare his work to theirs. Bolaño for example said Neruda had only written two good books of poetry, and one can only think "well, maybe, but you haven't even written one (1) good book of poetry, asshole." Bolaño as a poet is merely one or two steps above Rupi Kaur. So, yeah, Neruda is worth it, but you have to be in the mood.

>> No.13578927

>claims to read 400 pages an hour
why does he tell such blatant lies?

>> No.13578936

>>13578927
Maybe 400 is exaggerated, but reading at around that speed is possible when you can read entire sentences and grasp their meaning in the same time it takes for someone to read one word and digest it.

>> No.13578943

>>13578905

I like you a lot, Anon, I really do. Finally someone who really reads poetry with attention and care and who doesn’t fall for stupid hypes (Bolaño is indeed mediocre as hell as a poet).

>> No.13578964

>>13578917
>quemante
>burning
I wonder what the best translation here would be. "Quemante" as I understand it, doesn't mean that it's burning, but that it burns you when you touch it. Maybe it's a difference in dialects?

>> No.13578980

>>13578936
that's over 1600 words a minute anon, the human eye simply cannot read that fast. The average is something like 250. He also claims he could read 1000 pages an hour when he was younger, just ridiculous

>> No.13579008

>>13578943
Yeah, I wanted to get Bolaño's collected poetry but I decided to better read it on a downloaded pdf. I read the whole thing and I was like "so this is the guy who shits on Neruda and Paz?" He was passionate about poetry, but he was not a good poet himself. Usually when you shit on other artists it's because you can do it better than them. One can't say War and Peace is shit and then write Ready Player One.