Six Masters of the Spanish Sonnet: Francisco de Quevedo, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Antonio Machado, Federico Garcia Lorca, Jorge Luis Borges, Miguel Hernandez (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Willis Barnstone has for decades been known as perhaps America’s most gifted translator of Spanish poetry. A splendid poet himself, Barnstone has always been commended for the empathy, accuracy, and musicality of his translations. Yet Six Masters of the Spanish Sonnet is his most remarkable translation thus far; it is, in fact, more an act of wizardry than of translation. Barnstone not only offers compact but comprehensive essays on each of his six chosen masters but also over one hundred bedazzling translations—all strictly rhymed and metered, and yet amazingly free of the awkwardness we have come to expect from such attempts at equivalent renderings. Here, perhaps for the first time, English-speaking readers can appreciate something of the mastery of poetic form that characterizes the work of these great Spanish-language poets: the Catullan vigor and bawdiness of Quevedo, the austere gravities of Machado’s late sonnets, the implosive surrealist fury of Hernández, and the wry eloquence of Borges, who in a poem on the dying Heine refers to the ‘exquisite melodies / Whose instrument he was.’ Willis Barnstone allows us to hear the exquisite melodies of each of his masters. We can be grateful that he has served them so well."—David Wojahn, author of Mystery Train, his most recent collection of poetry, and coeditor of A Profile of Twentieth-Century Poetry

The translations are pure magic: texture, diction, rhyme, and meter conspire to captivate the English reader as the Spanish originals have enchanted their primary audiences."—Choice

"Willis Barnstone has given us a sustained meditation on the nature of poetry and on the scope of that quarrelsome and elegant fourteen-line form."—Preston Merchant, The Formalist

Product Description

With poems selected and translated by one of the preeminent translators of our day, this bilingual collection of 112 sonnets by six Spanish-language masters of the form ranges in time from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries and includes the works of poets from Spanish America as well as poets native to Spain. Willis Barnstone’s selection of sonnets and the extensive historical and biographical background he supplies serve as a compelling survey of Spanish-language poetry that should be of interest both to lovers of poetry in general and to scholars of Spanish-language literature in particular.

Following an introductory examination of the arrival of the sonnet in Spain and of that nation’s poetry up to Francisco de Quevedo, Barnstone takes up his six masters in chronological turn, preceding each with an essay that not only presents the sonneteer under discussion but also continues the carefully delineated history of Spanish-language poetry. Consistently engaging and informative and never dull or pedantic, these essays stand alone as appreciations—in the finest sense of that word—of some of the greatest poets ever to write. It is, however, Barnstone’s subtle, musical, clear, and concise translations that form the heart of this collection. As Barnstone himself says, "In many ways all my life has been some kind of preparation for this volume."

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press; 1st edition (May 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0809317729
• ISBN-13: 978-0809317721
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #3,252,178 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Cream of Spanish Sonets, October 19, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Six Masters of the Spanish Sonnet: Francisco de Quevedo, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Antonio Machado, Federico Garcia Lorca, Jorge Luis Borges, Miguel Hernandez (Paperback)

The translation is marvelous: I read them all before in Spanish. And the Selection? Amazingly good ! Congratulations to the translator! It`s not an easy feat to translate Garcìa Lorca or Sor Juana Inès de la Cruz...eoither The Master: Quevedo...or Machado ( the name is ANTONIO, NOT ANTONIA ) The person who selected the poems is really knowing... If you want to read and enjoy the very best of Spanish written sonets...This Book is a Poetic "Bible " Don`t miss it !

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Masterful Translations of Spanish Sonnets, March 12, 2002

By	Laure-Madeleine (NYC) - See all my reviews

The sonnet form was introduced to Spain from Sicily in the fifteenth century through the writing of El Marqués de Santillana (1398-1458), a poet who wrote Petrarchan sonnets in Spanish. During the Renaissance, the Italian sonnet made its way to most of the countries of Western Europe. In England, Edmund Spenser changed the Petrarchan rhyming form of 'abba abba cdecde' to 'abab bcbc cdcd ee,' and William Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets with the form 'abab cdcd efef gg.' As Willis Barnstone says in the introduction to his book, 'Six Masters of the Spanish Sonnet,' 'the Spanish sonnet, a literary vagabond in courtly dress, began in the court of the Sicilian Frederic II, went up to England, and finally, seven centuries after its Italian birth, with its picaresque wits and form intact, dropped down just above the Antarctic Circle to appear in the poems of the Argentine Anglophile [his maternal grandmother was English] Borges.' Professor Barnstone goes on to present a thorough history of the evolution of the Spanish sonnet and a colorful biography of six Spanish language poets who used the form. His writing is informed by his long friendship with Jorge Luis Borges. Barnstone offers here a sampling of 112 Spanish sonnets by these six masters, placed side by side along with his own magnificent translations.

Francisco de Quevedo (1580-1645) is described as a 'monstruo de la naturaleza' [monster of nature] because of his prodigious outpouring of writing. 'Like Swift, Dostoyevski, and Kafka, he is one of the most tormented spirits and visionaries of world literature ['El Buscón' (The Swindler), 1626, is his masterpiece] and also one of the funniest writers ever to pick up a sharp, merciless pen.' Though Quevedo's sonnets are at times scatological and darkly satirical, they are also humorous and hopeful.

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648/51-1695) was a Mexican discalced Carmelite nun who is considered by some religious scholars to be the first female theologian of the Americas. Although I was familiar with her love poems and her articulate defense of a woman's right to write in 'Response to Sor Filotea,' I had not read her sonnets in translation before. As he does with all six sonneteers, Barnstone faithfully maintains Sor Juana's rhyming, meter, and cadence in his translations of her sonnets. His analysis encompasses her writing and her life, including some critique of Octavio Paz's definitive biography, 'Sor Juana, or The Traps of Faith.'

Antonio Machada (1875-1939) recalls the landscape of his native Sevilla in his sonnets. In, 'El amor y la sierra' (Love and the Sierra), he writes, 'Calabaga por agria serranía / una tarde, entre roca cenicienta. (He was galloping over harsh sierra ground, / one afternoon, amid the ashen rock).' Barnstone calls Machado 'the Wang Wei of Spain' because 'he uses the condition of external nature to express his passion.' As Petrarch had his Laura, Machado had his Guiomar (Pilar de Valderrama). In 'Dream Below the Sun,' he writes, 'Your poet / thinks of you. Distance / is of lemon and violet, / the fields still green. / Come with me, Guiomar. / The sierra will absorb us. / The day is wearing out / from oak to oak.'

Federico García Lorca (1898-1936) was a Spanish poet and playwright who was affected by Luis de Góngorra and gongorismo. His 'Gypsy Ballads' was 'the most popular book of poetry in the Spanish language in his time.' Barnstone states that 'his closest attachment, his passion, was the painter Salvador Dalí,' with whom he carried on a six year love affair. Luis Buñuel castigated him for his Andalusianism; indeed, Lorca felt that Buñuel's satiric and surrealist film 'Un chien andalu' mocked him. After traveling to New York and Havana, Lorca became 'the playwright of Spain' with his brilliant 'Bodas de Sangre' (Blood Wedding). His 'Sonnets of Dark Love,' unpublished during his lifetime, were probably written to Rafael Rodríguez Rapún, an engineering student. Barnstone believes that 'dark love' is an allusion to San Juan de la Cruz's 'dark night of the soul.'

Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) of Argentina considered himself a poet, though he was a master at prose. According to Barnstone, because of the blindness that afflicted Borges in midlife, 'he could compose and polish a sonnet while waiting for a bus or walking down the street' and then later dictate it from memory. 'Borges's speech authenticated his writing, his writing authenticated his speech. To have heard him was to read him. To have read him was to have heard him.' In 'Un ciego' (A Blindman), he says, 'No sé cuál es la cara que me mira / Cuando miro la cara del espejo; / No sé qué anciano acecha en su reflejo / Con silenciosa y ya cansada ira. (I do not know what face looks back at me / When I look at the mirrored face, nor know / What aged man conspires in the glow / Of the glass, silent and with tired fury.)'

Miguel Hernández (1910-1942), a poor goatherd and pastor from the province of Alicante in Spain, wrote his best poetry while imprisoned during the Spanish Civil War. 'In the prisons, Hernández became,' in Barnstone's opinion, 'the consummate poet of light, darkness, soul, time, and death.' One of his poems, 'Llegó con tres heridas' (He came with three wounds), is a popular song, recorded by Joan Baez on her 'Gracias a La Vida' album.

'Six Masters of the Spanish Sonnet' is recommended to all who love this poetic form and want to know more about the lives of these remarkable poets. A good index and list of references are included for further study.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Delightfull Collection of Written Art, July 18, 2000

By	KLAUS R. CALDERON (BOSTON, USA) - See all my reviews

For those who already know the various authors of this book individually, words will be in excess to describe the treasures contained therein. The five Spanish already classical authors and Jorge Luis Borges closing the group with honors are a guarantee of high quality and deep touching entertainment. Tasting the fluent and sincere social verb of Quevedo, or absorbing in silence the sweet and perfect mysticism of Juana Inés would be sufficient to recommend this book. But we find much more, Machado, García Lorca and Miguel Hernández, marked by the horrors of the Spanish Civil War, found in their sensibility, the way to transform hate and blood into the purest and most powerful poetry. About Borges, well, what can one say about a man of his talents, his well known depth is something you will find easily linked to his enormous sensibility and human solidarity. Definitively, this multiple anthology is a treasure to keep forever.