52 Comments
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Thank you, Portia! Your comments mean a lot to me. You know better than I do what an impossible job it is to translate poetry. But it's uniquely rewarding.

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Oct 18Liked by Jeffrey Streeter

Definitely poetry. I particularly like the off-rhyme of “blind” and “hands.” This stopped me, satisfyingly, on several readings.

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author

Thank you, Rona. I really appreciate your kind comments. It encourages me to try again. I enjoy translating poetry despite it being, as I said to Richard in a separate comment, impossible.

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Oct 21Liked by Jeffrey Streeter

I may be late to this party, but this is the first clue I've seen that the business that takes you all over the world is Translating. And I think in this case, the blinking eye-filled night is one of my favorite images. Beautifully done, Jeffrey!

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Thank you, Troy! I like Cortázar's image of the eyes in the sky too!

Alas, translating is just a humble spare-time pursuit for me! And perhaps it's more of a side product of my travels than anything. But I enjoy it and would like to do more.

(What I actually used to do you can see here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-streeter-writer/)

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Oct 21Liked by Jeffrey Streeter

Aha!

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Really special.

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Thank you Maureen! I'm so glad you enjoyed it.

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I didn't read your earlier piece on Cortazar, Jeff, so like Matthew thanks for the intro.

I read the poem. Ithaca. by the great Alexandrine-Greek poet C P Cavafy in an English translation at my son, Will's and Sarah's wedding. None of the audience with the part exception of Will's would have got the Greek version.

Now in a new book. Highlife & My Other Lives to be published in May 2025, I've run across copyright issues in re-telling the scene of the wedding.

I've done my own translation, the first time I've translated any poem which will appear in print let alone one of the most famous poems in twentieth century Greek poetry. I'm not displeased with the result. It has an internal coherence which follows the spirit of the original but reinvents it for a reader of contemporary English. I can see an even less lucrative career ahead than writing literary prose fiction. My next passport can read as my profession.Translator of Poetry (only.)

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author

Thank you, Richard. I look forward to reading your translation when Highlife comes out! Translating poetry is both the easiest and hardest thing to do. Easy becaomes there aren't many words and it's a labour of love. Hard because, well, it's impossible. Cortazar put it well - small victories that don’t make up for the overall resounding defeat. But as he also says, it's like love, so you keep going.

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Oct 24Liked by Jeffrey Streeter

Love this, Jeffrey. What speaks most clearly to me is the way the poem’s first half, devoted to love, is so rich in sensory detail. There’s an abrupt transition, but the seeds of it - willful blindness, the bitter sands - are present in the world of the lovers.

“ . . . the tiger is a garden at play.

Dawn breaks with the garbage trucks”

Is quite the wake-up alarm. And that tiger burns pretty bright. What a great image.

Thank you for your this wonderful introduction to Cortazar. I don’t speak or read Spanish, but this has to be on par with the original.

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author

Thank you for your kind words, and I am so glad that you enjoyed this. I hope you get to read more things by him. The stories are mesmerising. I don’t think any translator leaves a text thinking they have done it justice. Perhaps the best we can do is pay it homage. Despite or because of this, I enjoy the crazy and impossible task of translating poetry. Thank you for being such a careful and astute reader, Mary. It means a lot to me.

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Oct 21Liked by Jeffrey Streeter

I couldn't pick up his works translated in English on everand. I am obsessed to read them.

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author

I think there should be plenty of translations out there in English. Which works are you most interested in?

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I had not read your earlier post on Cortazar, but like some other readers here, thank you for the introduction. And I really enjoyed the poem!

I have to admit I studied the accompany image of the painting for some time. It is an arresting image!

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It's a powerful painting, isn't it? And I'm glad you enjoyed the poem!

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Definitely poetry. And, if I say so myself, wonderful poetry. :)

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Thank you, Michael. Although his stories are rightly the focus of most of the attention, he was a fine poet too and I'm really glad you enjoyed Los Amantes.

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Oct 21Liked by Jeffrey Streeter

I love the last part when they are dressed and dead. They have left the private anarchy of naked love.

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author

"Private anarchy of naked love," that's a fine phrase!

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Oct 24Liked by Jeffrey Streeter

you'll have to use that sometime!

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Oct 20Liked by Jeffrey Streeter

Your translation is beautiful Jeffrey, and now Im intrigued to read more of Cortázar too, nipping over to your previous post right now!

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Thank you so much, Susie!

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"How translating is similar to loving"--quite.

I keep thinking about the line in which the tiger is a garden at play.

Beautifully done, Jeffrey.

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Thank you, Holly! I appreciate that. I think you'd enjoy his story, “Bestario”.

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A gorgeous translation of a poem I have long loved. The metaphor of "not seeing" in order to see capture the essence of the ineffable and immeasurable quality of connection. You amaze, Jeffrey with your many gifts. Amantes, indeed.

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Thank you so much, Mary! I a deeply appreciate your comment. 🙏

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"Bestiario," for its description of a departure from the train station for a country house alone, remains a fundamenal story to my own work. Hey, readers, how much do you really want explained?

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An introduction and a bewitching. Thank you for sustaining the pain and the pleasure for us, Jeffrey! So much I’ve loved here.

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Thank you so much, Bree!

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Oct 19Liked by Jeffrey Streeter

This is excellent, I love Cortazar, especially Hopscotch! He is buried here in the 14th and his old flat has a nice little plaque in the 10th...

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