Now here's a good idea. The Little Professor regularly posts her book acquisitions, but recently also posted a wish list. If you have any of the books on her list, send them her way. Someday, they will be part of some lucky university library's Little Professor Collection of Unreadable Victorian Protestant Novels and Supporting Materials.
My wish list consists solely of books that do not exist but could. I don't mean lost books - Ovid's Medea, or the Collected Poems of Sappho. That's a different list. These are the books I would like someone to translate for me.
Robert Garnier, Les Juives (The Jewesses) (1583) - Garnier is the 16th century creator of classical French tragedy. This is not exactly a favorite genre, but I have read Mary Sidney's translation of his play on Anthony and Cleopatra (Marc-Antoine, 1578, tr. as The Tragedie of Antonie, 1592), and would like to learn more.
Agrippa d'Aubigné, Les Tragiques (1616) - a complicated epic poem that I am unlikely to understand without extensive notes. Translator, please include extensive notes.
Alfred de Vigny, Selected Poems - the few de Vigny poems I have found in English are lovely things. More please. A collection of Alfred de Musset would also be welcome, although libraries sometimes have a complete translation of his work from the early 20th century.
Théophile Gautier, Enamels and Cameos (1852) - Gautier is the author of the cross-dressing Lesbian travesty novel Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835), which is commonly available, but his poems are not, despite the attention paid to contemporaries like Baudelaire and Verlaine. Surely Gautier is no more difficult to translate than those fellows.
Ugo Foscolo, Odes and Graces, or how about a collected poems - the great Italian Romantic poet and novelist. I found a few of these on the internet somewhere, and want more - all.
E.T.A. Hoffmann, Complete Works - Penguin Classics and Oxford World Classics have kept good selections of Hoffmann's stories in print, and one can scrounge up a dozen or so more in various other collections. But Hoffmann is a major figure who should be available in English in his entirety.
Theodor Storm, Poems - some of his tales are available here and there, but not the poems.
Johann Peter Hebel, The Rhineland House-Friend, or whatever it's English title should be. A collection of humorous tales and anecdotes in the form of an almanac, sort of. Fragments I've read are excellent.
I could go on and on with the Germans, but I have indulged myself enough already. I would love to be wrong about the availability of these works. Please let me know if I am. Also, let me know what's missing from my list - fill out this agenda for translators.
Showing posts with label wish list. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wish list. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
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