The Distance, The Shadows: Selected Poems (Poetica) (French and English Edition) [Paperback]

Victor Hugo (Author), Harry Guest (Translator)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0856460680 | ISBN-13: 978-0856460685 | Publication Date: September 28, 1981

Victor Hugo, the most prolific and versatile of the French Romantics, is one of the greatest nineteenth-century writers. Partly because of its enormous range and variety, his poetry has remained comparatively little known outside France. In this new edition of his acclaimed translations,

Harry Guest convincingly brings into English many of Hugo's great qualities: his passion for social justice, his simple humanity and an imaginative breadth of vision which few poets have equalled. The book's usefulness is enhanced by the inclusion of the French texts, drawn as they are from so many different periods of Hugo's work.

Harry Guest was born in Penarth in 1932. He read Modern Languages at Cambridge before beginning a career as a teacher in schools and universities in Japan and England. With his wife, Lynn Guest, a historical novelist, he now lives in Exeter. A Puzzling Harvest', his collected poems 1955-2000, is also published by Anvil.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'These translations are uncanny; the voice and style are perfectly modern, yet the poems and the personality are purely or almost purely Victor Hugo.'Peter Levi --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Language Notes

Text: English, French

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Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Anvil Press Poetry (September 28, 1981)
• Language: French, English
• ISBN-10: 0856460680
• ISBN-13: 978-0856460685
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,099,229 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Poetry of great beauty and power, June 28, 2009

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William J. Fickling (Columbia, SC, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Distance, The Shadows: Selected Poems (French and English Edition) (Paperback)

Harry Guest has done a remarkable job of translating Hugo's poetry, written at all stages of his life from youth to old age, into clear, lucid, and poetic English. Hugo's poems have display a wide array of themes and subject matter, from lyrical odes to nature and on love to angry outbursts at the excesses of tyranny and the attempts of some human beings to subjugate others. Some of his poems are in effect discourses in verse on various stages of human history, from the creation of the world (literally) through biblical times (Old and New Testament) through the defeat of the Spanish Armada up through the 19th centrury and the excesses of both Napoleons, I and III. Hugo's poems in fact reminded me of Whitman, although I doubt that Whitman was influenced by Hugo.

The original French texts ate appended to the English translations so that the reader can compare the two texts. Guest's translation is more than literal. He manages to translate Hugo's texts into lyrical, poetic English, maintaining the meter of the original wherever possible, even if this has to be at the expense of a literal translation. This volume provides a most enjoyable excursion into some of the lesser known writings of a great author.