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PARTISAN REVIEW
point is a kind of middle phenomenon. Keith Botsford described the
transfer of ephemeral works into high culture, but no one has
mentioned so far the constant transformation of high culture into
popular culture. The process goes both ways. Just think, for exam–
ple, of the changes in the status of the novel in its relatively short
history. In the eighteenth century the novel was not part of high
culture. As late as 1900 the only novels that went into the public
circulating library of the city of London were the novels of George
Eliot, because they were the only ones that were considered to have
attained a level of high seriousness. What you have is: the novel is
low culture or low high culture in the eighteenth century, gradually
becomes high culture in the nineteenth century and then, if you're
thinking about the realistic novel, or say the historical novel, it
descends back into popular culture in the twentieth century. And all
the forms like the historical novel that were dominant in the
nineteenth century still exist in a kind of subterranean popular life
while modernism and other forms of avant-garde have taken over the
high culture.
Translating Neruda
The Way to Macchu Picchu
John Felstiner.
What goes into the translating of a poem?
Taking as a text Pablo Neruda's brilliant prophetic sequence
Alturas de Macchu Picchu
(1945), the author re-creates the
entire process of translation, from his first encounter with
the poem to the last shaping of a phrase that may never come
right in English. Thus, this many-faceted book forms an
essay on the theory and practice of literary translation, a
study of Neruda's career through 1945, and an interpretation
of his major poem, all of which lead to a striking new poem
in English,
Heights of Macchu Picchu,
printed along with the
original Spanish. Illustrated. $18.50
Stanford University Press
