translation

Wallace Stevens

occupation / innovator as

literary critic

nationality

American

journalist

poet

scientific organization

American Academy of Arts and Letters

Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters

is that in which the music of the language is lost, but the magic of the meaning remains.

You always lose when you translate, but there remains an echo of the original language. I had a professor at Harvard, Helen Vendler, who always said, ‘In translation, the music of the language is lost, but the magic of the meaning remains.' I think an imprint of the language is still there. It's like you're covering an object with a piece of cloth, but you can still feel it. You don't have direct access to it, but you can still feel its shape through that cloth.

is a major figure in modern poetry because he synthesizes the concerns of the modern world — the emphasis on the human self as maker of meaning, the emphasis on scientific rationality, the emphasis on creating new forms to replace outmoded beliefs — with the perennial concerns of the human spirit.

At the heart of many of Stevens's poems are harsh and unpalatable experiences revealed only gradually through his intense stylization.

Helen VendlerThinkers

Helen Vendler