Folk or formal, classical or modern, rhymed or in free verse, idyllic or melancholy, from any country and in any language, poetry is the most reliable vehicle for a dream trip through time and space, in the known and unknown universe.
The Sonnets to His Dark Love (Sonetos del Amor Oscuro - written in 1936 and published posthumously, in 1983) are Lorca's last poetic work, inspired by the style and themes of San Juan de la Cruz, Shakespeare and Gongora. They are his personal statement about love and poetic art, made even more poignant by the fact that he was arrested and executed by his country's dictatorial government the very same year the poems were written. The Sonnets are therefore not a complete work, cut horifically short by the poet's unjust and untimely death at the age of 37.
The purpose of this and the following articles is to provide a few (hopefully helpful) answers to a number of questions troubling the users of personal computers. Let it be made clear from the very beginning that I claim to be no qualified technician, nor comfortable enough with the more complex workings of the Infernal Machine so as to assume responsibility for any misunderstanding or erroneous use of the information given below.
The purpose of this and the following articles is to provide a few (hopefully helpful) answers to a number of questions troubling the users of personal computers. Let it be made clear from the very beginning that I claim to be no qualified technician, nor comfortable enough with the more complex workings of the Infernal Machine so as to assume responsibility for any misunderstanding or erroneous use of the information given below.
The purpose of this and the following articles is to provide a few (hopefully helpful) answers to a number of questions troubling the users of personal computers. Let it be made clear from the very beginning that I claim to be no qualified technician, nor comfortable enough with the more complex workings of the Infernal Machine so as to assume responsibility for any misunderstanding or erroneous use of the information given below.
The purpose of this and the following articles is to provide a few (hopefully helpful) answers to a number of questions troubling the users of personal computers. Let it be made clear from the very beginning that I claim to be no qualified technician, nor comfortable enough with the more complex workings of the Infernal Machine so as to assume responsibility for any misunderstanding or erroneous use of the information given below.
Translation is more than the mere issue of a mental process. It is both an intellectual enterprise and a physical task. Things become even more difficult when having to deal with a literary text: literature has its own determining features, and language, the instrument of its expression, is a self-sufficient living system in which every presupposition of perfection has been fulfilled. The risks a translator is obliged to take in this case are much similar to those taken by a surgeon who performs a delicate operation: although the result may perfectly be accomplished under conditions of utmost conscientiousness and knowledge, nothing can guarantee that the patient will eventually survive. In fact, a literary text rarely manages to survive without any more or less serious damages when transferred from one language into another. The task is excessively hazardous; skill in manipulating written speech is as essential as profound linguistic intuition and instruction; a wide spectrum of academic information is as indispensable as personal sensitivity to the subject one is occupied with.
The poetic universe of George MacBeth is determined and defined, in a large number of his poems, by plain, common, everyday things, personal objects and sometimes plants or animals which are obsessionally used in a variety of poetic images. But the poetic image is not created for its own sake; it carries along with it a great number of connotations which sometimes elevate it to the point of becoming a universal symbol and a key for the poet's philosophical anxiety.
Phuong's character in The Quiet American is one of the most difficult to define, as she holds no real leading part in the novel and her particular characteristics are shown to the reader through the eyes of Fowler, the narrator, that is through the deforming prism of both a male vision and a European spirit. Attempting thus an approach to Phuong's character, one should beware of a number of traps liable to mislead one's judgement - if it is ever possible to fully analyse a character whose only known aspects are those revealed to us by the author himself through the character mostly acting as his mouthpiece.
"Popular fiction" is by definition meant to appeal to a large, if not the largest, part of the reading public in literate societies. From the Bible (or even Homer) to Walter Scott and from Goethe to Raymond Chandler, the nature of this literary phenomenon presents a considerable range of variations according to the historical background of each era. What in particular seems to correspond to the term in question the last two or three centuries, and especially during and ever since the Industrial Revolution, consists mainly of a secondary, "unofficial" kind of literature with less, or, sometimes, no literary value (to the extent, of course, that such an attribute can be objectively assessed), easy to read and highly digestible, usually doomed to oblivion after a meteoric success. From this rule must, of course, be exempted the works which, due to their own exceptional merits, managed to resist time and establish themselves as classics, like those of Balzac, Dickens or Zola.
