To Purify the Words of the Tribe, with expositions, which will surely lead to a deeper comprehension of the poetry of Stéphane Mallarmé. Selections available on cassette tape & CD.
This is the perfect book for those interested in the origins of modern writing. Translation from the French and expositions by Daisy Aldan.
This essential bilingual collection of 55 Stéphane Mallarmé poems, including his masterpiece, "Un Coup De Dés" ("A Throw of the Dice"), gives readers a fresh new perspective of Mallarmé's genius.
Translator Dr. Daisy Aldan discovered and fell in love with Mallarmé's work when she was told that her poetry was reminiscent of his. In 1956, she translated "Un Coup De Dés" into English for the first time; the result was recognition of Dr. Aldan's unparalleled deep understanding and feeling for Mallarmé.
Thanks to Daisy Aldan, Mallarmé's work can now be fully experienced in our language, which is no mean feat.
Home Planet News
read an independent review
REVIEW ...
Stéphane Mallarmé is often approached either with reverence due a god or with the disdain of ignorance. Happily, Daisy Aldan brings a lifetime of study, her own opus of poetry and critical work, and a true, intimate bilingualism to a masterful translation of the major verse poems of Stéphane Mallarmé, To Purify the Words of the Tribe, a book with facing French texts that contains her unsurpassed translation of "A Throw of the Dice" and illuminating expositions of each poem. Aldan has sometimes described herself as a "former school teacher." The demystification of these often unread, misread, and misunderstood poems testify to her democratic approach as a true pedagogue and to the difficulties of Mallarmé's very dense and crafted poems which are explicated with ease and generosity.
The poetry of Mallarmé is certainly not for a coven of priestly erudities; written during a nineteenth century of smokestacks and alienation brings the history of Western thought and symbolism into the NOW of the poet, into his life and vision. Thanks to Daisy Aldan, Mallarmé's work can now be fully experienced in our language, which is no mean feat.
Aldan, to her credit, serves Mallarmé by using her own poetic craft sparingly. In no way does she recreate the poems. Nor does Aldan aim to complicate matters by working out rhyme schemes that, in the end, would be extraneous and fail to do justice to the text. Mallarmé is, perhaps, the most concise and replete of poets and to be faithful to his content in an aesthetically satisfying way needs no rhyme or foot counting, a la français. Aldan knows, well, when to stop.
Excerpts from a review published in: Home Planet News (The Independent Literary Review), Issue No. 45, 1999
