In this WW1 anthology, Copp has translated poems into
English by some of the poets who wrote in the French language during the First
World War. Apart from the more famous
Jean Cocteau and Guillaume Apollinaire, you will find Francois Porché,
Pierre-Eugène Drieu la Rochelle, Henry-Jaques, René Arcos, Charles Vildrac,
Marcel Martinet, André Spire, Léon Chancerel and the Belgian poet Emile
Verhaeren. Each poet is introduced with
a brief biographical account which is followed by examples of their poetry –
fascinating to note that apart from Apollinaire and Verhaeren all the poets
featured survived the war. The poems
Copp has included in his anthology are mainly about the conflict itself and
reflect the brutality of the ‘war to end all wars’ that so shocked the world. I found it interesting to note, however, that
poetry written by women has not been included.
The book is obviously the fruit of a great deal of hard
work as translation is never easy and translating poetry can be extremely
tricky. In the Introduction to the anthology,
Copp explains that he has chosen “to follow Vladimir Nabokov's principle of
what he calls 'Literal' translation, that is, sticking as closely as possible
to the associative and syntactical demands of the original language”. Having previously only consulted Clive Scott
who wrote “Translating Apollinaire” (University of Exeter Press, 2014) which I
found extremely helpful, it is good to have another take on poetry translation.
I thoroughly enjoyed Michael Copp’s book and would
recommend it to anyone interested in the poetry of the First World War. However, whether or not his translations do
justice to the original poems I cannot say, for I shall have to start gathering
the collections together in order to be able to compare.
Copp, an independent scholar educated at the universities
of London, Leicester and Cambridge, also writes about the Imagist poets and
translates and lectures on both Imagist poetry and the poetry of WW1.
"Apollinaire, Cocteau & Others French Poets of the Great War" by Michael Copp, published by Austin Macauley Ltd., London, 2016.
Lucy London, May 2016
