The DNA of World Literature

A new Norton Anthology, edited by Professor Martin Puchner, reimagines the global literary tradition. 

Rainer Maria Rilke’s 1908 poem “Archaic Torso of Apollo,” written in German, is notoriously difficult to translate. The poem, about a fragmentary statue of Apollo, is dense with enigmatic metaphors: the speaker describes the (imagined) eyes as ripening apples, the twisted loins as smiling, the marble as the glistening skin of a predator. For more than a century, translators have sought to balance faithfulness to the poem’s meaning with maintenance of its form.

The fifth edition of the Norton Anthology of World Literature, published June 1, includes five translations of the poem for readers to consider, including two contemporary ones: one by Wien professor of drama and of English and comparative literature Martin Puchner, and one by Google Translate. Throughout the anthology, “translation labs” such as this one offer several versions of translated texts, allowing students to see how various translators capture and lose different elements of the original, said Puchner, who serves as general editor of the anthology and who has written widely about world literature and other subjects.

Read more here.