Translations – David Hurley In Japan

The Factory by Oyamada Hiroko – Opening and Closing Passages in Translation

March 31, 2020 David Hurley 0

I recently finished reading David Boyd’s lively translation of The Factory by Oyamada Hiroko, a contemporary Japanese writer of somewhat dystopian novellas who, incidentally, lives barely a stone’s throw from me somewhere in the western suburbs of Hiroshima. One of my English language students told her classmates and me about [Read more…]

A Sonnet In Lamentation Of A Dead Sparrow, After Catullus

March 1, 2012 Patrick Forse 0

Here is a loose translation of Catullus iii, Lament for Lesbia’s Pet Sparrow, in the form of a sonnet, submitted by guest blogger Patrick Leighton Forse. Catullus‘ poem has 18 lines, but a sonnet has only 14 lines, so some compression has obviously been necessary. The sonnet retains the three [Read more…]

Armida Charms The Crusaders: The Disarming Exoticism Of Pagan Eroticism

October 12, 2010 David Hurley 0

In the fourth Canto of The Liberation of Jerusalem, the seductive Syrian sorceress Armida is sent to charm the Christians and succeeds in leading a number of frail knights astray. ne nos inducas in tentationem sed libera nos a malo But where is the Christian knight of our company who [Read more…]

The Meolopoeic Fidelity Of The First Stanza Of Wickert’s Translation Of Tasso’s “Liberation Of Jerusalem”

October 7, 2010 David Hurley 2

I am reading my way through Max Wickert‘s powerful modern verse translation of Tasso’s La Gerusalemme Liberata, a translation that is faithful to the original and at the same time immensely readable. The dynamic opening stanza of the The Liberation of Jerusalem, its fidelity to the original combined with its [Read more…]