[Carl Copeland]

Originally Posted by W T Clark

"How, then, to respond as a translator? To imitate the structure of the poetry would be to violate the essential principle of Mandelstam's prosody, which is the organic, indivisible relationship of sound and meaning. The only possible course is to obey that principle, to reimagine the poem, in a way re-hear it, in one's own language and in one's own time."

Great quote, Cameron. I’m happy to read people’s “reimaginings” of Mandelstam and try thinking that their blank or free verse or whatever is giving me the same experience that Russian readers got from his formal verse a century ago. But I feel the need of a traditional form to convey the experience of unorthodox content in orthodox forms. Mandelstam didn’t invent unique forms to embody his meaning. He worked within traditional forms inherited from nineteenth-century Russian poets, who adopted them from Western Europe. Anyone who writes an IP sonnet, as Mandelstam did a few times, is doing it in the Shakespearean (and/or Petrarchan) tradition. Do I have to ignore that and invent some new form (or lack of form) to be faithful to the originality of Mandelstam?