PARTISAN REVIEW
WHODUNIT?
Sirs:
John Hollander's poem, "Au–
tumn, 1970," on page 47 of PR
No.1, 1971, has some nice things
in it and it is easy to understand
your publishing it. What is not so
easy to understand is the failure
of you or Mr. Hollander to men–
tion that it is a rendering, and I
fear a rather vapid one, of HOlder–
lin's magnificent "Halfte des Le–
bens." Perhaps you erred in tran–
scribing the numbers - certainly
"Autumn, 1790" would be closer to
the mark. I sincerely trust that by
now you have received enough let–
ters with essentially this content
that you will have prepared a mul–
tigraphed reply - I mean, it is one
of the most famous poems in the
German language and not some–
how up for grabs.
J.
S. Winkler
Mr. Hollander replies:
You alone have triumphed in the
apprehension of the obvious, and
I leave you to conclude either a)
that you have nevertheless cor–
rected the misapprehensions of the
editors of
Partisan Review
who,
poor unfortunates, were deceived
into printing what they sincerely
believed was original work, and,
in addition, disclosed my seedy
plagiarism (at the end of my crea–
tive tether, I am forced to cull
goodies from the greats and market
them in my own vapid versions,
hoping that there will be no Wink–
lers to find me out - alas!);
or
b ) that the text is so canonical that
an "after H." might have sounded
pedantic, also given the title which
invoked the Holderlin Bicentennial,
and the deliberate inversions of
361
image operating out of a literaliz–
ing mistranslation (" the land in
the lake") , and the additional theft
from Caspar David Friedrich of
the paired figures seen from be–
hind which should also have to be
acknowledged. All of which would
drown my little dedicatory poem
in a pool of scholia.
But I fear from the tone of your
letter that you have already de–
cided, and that you must continue
your efforts on behalf of the plun–
dered dead with redoubled vigor.
Poor Ronsard! rifled by Yeats in
"When you are old and grey and
full of sleep," he will only be
avenged by the untiring Winkler;
Catullus's powdered bones stirred
with chagrin when "Vivamus, mea
Lesbia, atque amemus" was bald–
ly co-opted, not once, but twice
within a decade by Ben Jonson
("Come, my Celia") and Thomas
Campion ("My sweetest Lesbia, let
us live and love") - but there was
no Jacobean Winkler to expose
their shoddy fraud; neither would
soothing the petulance of the tra–
duced shade of Petrarch (starting
with the crude Wyatt and the
smoother and perhaps thereby viler
Surrey, and continuing through the
tum of the next century) keep you
out of work. On to it, Winkler!
Abandon all other projects: nei–
ther that naked hussy, Truth, nor
the sightless Justice will tolerate a
rival: neither unhastening Pru–
dence; nor the softie, Humor; nor
Imagination (bounteous but dis–
tant ) nor even a strange Protean
figure of Acquaintance with Liter–
a ture who haunts the purlieus of
the library stacks, has been much in
evidence. But work on, Mr. Wink–
ler, lest one of them manage to
divert your energies from their
task.
