The World of World Poetry: Anthologies of Translated Poetry as a Subject of Study

Abstract

The combination of anthology and translation reveals a number of mechanisms at play in the arena of literary operation – principally: selection and unlocking, representation and translation, commentary and criticism – which could be characterized as ‘moments of cultural dialogue’. Anthologies of translated poetry are a fascinating subject of study as both the activity of translating and that of anthologizing presuppose modification and selection. Typically, their content is selected and given a new quality, meaning or value by someone other than their original creator and likely a translator who has filtered the poems through his own temperament. Besides, the change of setting itself impacts the texts: suddenly they are surrounded by strangers, usurped by a context and wedged in between para-texts about which, before, they knew nothing. This makes the anthology both an exceptional document of the reception process and a ‘barometer of taste’. The pivotal act in researching anthologies of translated poetry is reading these barometers, in terms of norms, values, political or ideological positions, literary, historical-literary and poetical principles.