Robert Fitzgerald
Robert Fitzgerald
Robert Stuart Fitzgeraldwas an American poet, critic and translator whose renderings of the Greek classics "became standard works for a generation of scholars and students." He was best known as a translator of ancient Greek and Latin. In addition, he also composed several books of his own poetry...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth12 October 1910
CountryUnited States of America
wind weather light
Yes, and there were changes of light on landscapes and changes of direction of the wind and the force of the wind and weather. That whole scene is too important in Homer to neglect.
doe performers particular
What the translator - myself in particular - does is not comparable to what the Homeric performer was doing.
latin greek different
Well, with the French language, which I understood and spoke, however imperfectly, and read in great quantities, at certain times, the matter I suppose was slightly different from either Latin or Greek.
translate courses knows
There must of course be a relationship between translating and making poems of your own, but what it is I just don't know.
beauty wish piercings
Words began to appear in English and to make some kind of equivalent. For what satisfaction it is hard to say, except that something seems unusually piercing, living, handsome, in another language, and since English is yours, you wish it to be there too.
taken imagination strange
The question is how to bring a work of imagination out of one language that was just as taken-for-granted by the persons who used it as our language is by ourselves. Nothing strange about it.
voice language
Yes, living voices in a living language, so it seemed to us.
quality wish way
Of course the other and more serious way in which it all happens is that one finds in poems and language some quality one appropriates for oneself and wishes to reproduce.
encouragement facts needs
Is encouragement what the poet needs? Open question. Maybe he needs discouragement. In fact, quite a few of them need more discouragement, the most discouragement possible.
latin vocabulary use
In fact, eloquence in English will inevitably make use of the Latin element in our vocabulary.
over-you way poet
In a way you can feel that the poet actually is looking over your shoulder, and you say to yourself, now, how would this go for him? Would this do or not?
grateful thinking
I think that everyone who took part has always been grateful for it.
thinking two way
I think there are perhaps two ways in which one can begin.
winter thinking rocks
I think it was lucky that during most of the work on the Odyssey I lived on Homer's sea in houses that were, in one case, shaken by the impact of the Mediterranean winter storms on the rocks below.