Impossible transmutations?: 'Orphic gesturing' in don paterson's Orpheus (2006)

초록

Don Paterson's Orpheus (2006) is an English-language version that transmutes Rilke's original Die Sonette an Orpheus (1922). Abandoning the imperative for prosodic equivalence and claiming instead to locate the 'spirit of the original', Paterson's sonnets can be reread as performing peculiar linguistic enactments of poetic truths exigent (philosopher Martin Heidegger claims) in Rilke's sonnets. In the essay 'Poetically man dwells', Heidegger claims 'Poetry is a measuring' and that the 'nature of the image is to let something be seen'; elsewhere, the philosopher argues Rilke's work performs an illuminating projection of lexis (words) and logos (order, knowing). In his version, however, Paterson foregrounds variation when ushering the spirit of Rilke's images into English sounds: through a range of creative decisions (poiesis, techné, ekphrasis), the contemporary poet achieves gestural equivalence through his radical rewriting of Rilke's glimpsed truths. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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