Mexican Poetry: An Anthology [Paperback]

Octavio Paz (Compiler), Samuel Beckett (Translator), C.M. Bowra (Preface)

Book Description

Publication Date: 1985 | ISBN-10: 0394620860 | ISBN-13: 978-0394620862 | Edition: First trade paperback printing.

The renowned Mexican poet and critic Octavio Paz assembled this important anthology—the first of its kind in English translation—with a keen sense of what is both representative and universal in Mexican poetry. His informative introduction places the thirty-five selected poets within a literary and historical context that spans four centuries (1521-1910). This accomplished translation is the work of the young Samuel Beckett, just out of Trinity College, who had been awarded a grant by UNESCO to collaborate with Paz on the project.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English, Spanish (translation) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From the Inside Flap

The renowned Mexican poet and critic Octavio Paz assembled this important anthology--the first of its kind in English translation--with a keen sense of what is both representative and universal in Mexican poetry. His informative introduction places the thirty-five selected poets within a literary and historical context that spans four centuries (1521-1910). This accomplished translation is the work of the young Samuel Beckett, just out of Trinity College, who had been awarded a grant by UNESCO to collaborate with Paz on the project.

Notable among the writers who appear in this anthology are Bernardo de Balbuena (1561-1627), a master of the baroque period who celebrated the exuberant atmosphere and wealth of the New World; Juan Ruiz de Alarcon (1581?-1639), who became one of Spain's great playwrights; and Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (1651-1695), the beautiful nun whose passionate lyric poetry, written within her convent's walls, has made her, three hundred years later, a proto-feminist literary heroine.

This is a major collection of Mexican poetry from its beginnings until the modern period, compiled and translated by two giants of world literature.

Recipient of the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature and the 1982 Neustadt Prize for literature, Mexican poet, essayist, and playwright Octavio Paz is a writer of international stature. In addition to being a writer, Octavio Paz served as a Mexican diplomat in France and Japan, and as a Mexican ambassador to India.

Samuel Beckett was born in Ireland and lived in France beginning in the late 1930s, writing much of his work in French. Best known for the plays Waiting for Godot and Endgame, among many other works, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 213 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press, Inc.; First trade paperback printing. edition (1985)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0394620860
• ISBN-13: 978-0394620862
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,027,668 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars South of the Border, November 14, 2001

By 

George Schaefer - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mexican Poetry: An Anthology (Paperback)

Anthologies are the way to go when you want to discover new (or old) poets with minimal risk. Anthologies give you a sampling of many different poets and then you decide which ones you really like.

This is a method I have used to explore the wide range of world poetry out there. It gives me a taste of many poets without having to purchase a thousand books. Having financial limits, this is greatly beneficial.

"Mexican Poetry" is a collection of poems translated by Samuel Beckett and edited by Octavio Paz. These two Nobel Laureates have provided us with nearly 400 years of poetry beginning in 1521 and ending in 1910. This comprehensive book includes 35 different poets and provides a great overview of the great poetry produced by Mexico.

Paz, being a Mexican poet has great insight into the poetic history of his country. He endeavors to include poets from the entire four century span. He also writes a fine introduction to place proper historical perspective to the many poets included here.

The collection features poets such as Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz who is an early model of a feminist heroine. Her beautiful poems still resonate over three centuries later. It also has works by Bernando de Balbuena, Juan Ruis de Alarcon, Alfonso Reyes and Juana de Asbaje. This book will instill in one a sense of the breadth and range of Mexican poetry. It is a great way to familiarize oneself with a great poetic tradition that is often overlooked.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars EXCELLENT COMPILATION BY OCTAVIO PAZ; DISMAL TRANSLATION BY THE YOUNG SAMUEL BECKETT, October 18, 2007

By 

C. Scanlon "least helpful reviewer" (among us humans) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mexican Poetry: An Anthology (Paperback)

and an OK introduction by CM Bowra (I'd much rather read the French edition's intro by Paul Claudel!).

One of the greatest mysteries of modern literature (aside from the novel Ulysses) is how the young Samuel Beckett, fresh from the Protestant University in Dublin, who in the Sixties would receive the Nobel Prize for literature, could begin his career with such terrible translations funded by UNESCO and many times republished in the USA by Evergreen's Grove Press, our nation's owner of the Beckett franchise.

I am reading the 1985 Grove Press edition. The best that could happen would be a bilingual edition, in which one might gracefully and mercifully put aside the unreadable, terrible translations and read the originals as written, including the archaicisms of the Carmelite Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz.

The young Beckett also performed some unreadable translations from the French of the Bateaux Ivre, for example. This is odd as after the Second World War he became our greatest playwright in English by translating his plays (such as Waiting for Godot, Endgame, Krapp's Last Tape, Happy Days, Ohio Impromptu, Come and Go, etc.) from his own original French into English. In order for this to occur of course, he needed to pass through service as secretary to the greatest writer of the Twentieth Cnetury, Mr. James Joyce, who tragically did not survive to observe his own recognition. Beckett's novels in the main grew more diffficult (his great trilogy, ending in the Unnameable, sometimes called the Unreadable); yet to him we owe such enormously entertaining earlier novels as Murphy and Mercier et Camier

In any case, the great Mexican poet Octavio Paz, through the encouragement of UNESCO of the United Nation (while still interested in the advancement of culture and education and health and the development of peoples, of international peace and of human rights, long before this promising international body was reduced to being a mercenary arm of other interests), compiled a representative sampling of poerty from throughout the history of his heroic nation between about 1600 until three centuries later, ending in 1910. Indeed for a flavor of the translation let us look at the opening sonnet by Don Francisco de Terrazas:

I dreamed that I was thrown from a crag
by one who held my will in servitude,
and all but fallen to the griping jaws
of a wild beast in wait for me below

In terror, gropingly, I cast around
for wherewith to uphold me with my hands,
and the ones closed about a trenchant sword,
and the other twined about a little herb.

Little and little the herb came swift away,
and the sword ever sorer vexed my hand
as I more fiercely clutched its cruel edges. . . . (sic)

Oh wretched me, and how from self estranged,
that I rejoice to see me mangled thus
for dread of ending, dying, my distress!

I do not rejoice to see this sonnet mangled thus, but would rejoice to see the original as written some four centuries ago. I would indeed rejoice to do my own translation, thank you, without a twining hand nor trenchant sword.

Certainly the most valuable element of this edition is the lengthy, comprehensive and profound introduction by Octavio Paz himself (translator unidentified) which retraces the entire history and development of his nation's poetic literature, and presents the criteria for his selections in this compilation, which he admits is lacking as there is no Nahuatl nor other pre-Columbian poetry, but for which he refers to the reader to other sources.

An excellent if troubled edition, handy anthology for students of this field. But find the originals; here as in other places, particularly in poetry we find true the ancient dictum: translation is treason (which sounds so much better in the original Latin, or French, or Spanish!).