Review (PDF) All The Odes: A Bilingual Edition (Spanish Edition)
A career-spanning volume, charting the Nobel laureate's work in the ode formPablo Neruda was a master of the ode, which he conceived as an homage to just about everything that surrounded him―from an artichoke to the clouds in the sky, from the moon to his own friendship with Federico García Lorca, from the seasons to his favorite places in Chile. He was in his late forties when he committed himself to writing an ode a week and in the end produced a total of 225, which are dispersed throughout his varied oeuvre. This bilingual volume, edited by Ilan Stavans, the distinguished translator and scholar of Latin American literature, gathers all the odes together for the first time in any language. Rendered into English by an assortment of accomplished translators that includes Philip Levine, Paul Muldoon, Mark Strand, and Margaret Sayers Peden, collectively they read like the personal diary of a man in search of meaning who sings to life itself, to our connections with one another, and to the place we have in nature and the cosmos. All the Odes is a lasting statement on the role of poetry as a lightning rod during tumultuous times.
Hardcover: 896 pages
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Bilingual edition (October 22, 2013)
Language: Spanish
ISBN-10: 0374115281
ISBN-13: 978-0374115289
Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 1.9 x 9.5 inches
Shipping Weight: 2.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
Best Sellers Rank: #292,577 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #62 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Poetry > Regional & Cultural > Caribbean & Latin American
Pablo Neruda is probably my favorite poet of all-time. I have read the majority of his works in English, so I got this text primarily for the reputed 70 odes that have yet to appear in English. The 70 odes are nearly 1/3 of the text, so that is quite substantial. The other 2/3 I am happy to read again. Many of Neruda's odes are scintillating, some are fun, and others leave something to be desired.Instead of commenting on the odes, which is the work of Neruda, and always worth 5 stars, I want to comment on the other parts of the text, namely the work of the translators/ publishing house.1) Formatting.I like it and I don't. Instead of English and Spanish on opposite pages, which would have made the text an absurd 1600 pages, they placed the English and Spanish on the same page. On one hand this is nice because we have a bilingual version of all the odes in about 800 pages. It's also nice to look across from the English and see the Spanish words near the eye. But this is precisely why it's distracting. I applaud the choice of putting the Spanish in a lighter grey text, but it is still a little distracting. When I read the odes, which have very few words per line, I can see the grey text in the corner of my eye, and since it's on the same page, my eye naturally wants to go there even though I do not read Spanish. I have gotten a bit used to this after reading 100 plus pages.2) Introduction.I honestly wanted more regarding the publication of the odes. There is mention of what Neruda published in Spanish book-wise, and references to some of the English translations, in addition to some biographical notes, and commentary on the simple style of the odes. So what is missing?
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