Nativity Poems: Bilingual Edition

(This is a slightly revised version of my review of the hardback edition of this book which was posted on the UK site of Amazon back in 2002.)Buy this book for the excellent translations. While there can be no substitute for reading a major poet in his own language, the efforts by Melissa Green, Seamus Heaney, Glyn Maxwell, Paul Muldoon, Derek Walcott and Richard Wilbur are arguably as good as translation of poetry ever gets.Bilingual editions are not to everyone's taste, but here this format seems to work really well, not least because approximately half of the translations in the book preserve the metre and rhyme scheme of the originals - so readers with at least some knowledge or Russian can try comparing the facing pages, which is as entertaining as it is rewarding. Brodsky's own English version of 'January 1, 1965' is a tour de force of form-preserving translation.I am not at all sure that including an interview with the author was a good idea, especially because much of the conversation there rotates around the nativity poems themselves. Yes, some poets do not mind discussing their work rationally, but publishing a transcript of such a conversation under the same cover with the poems discussed cannot but take away some of the magic.Editor's Note mentions that "Christmas" and "Nativity" are the same word in Russian. Quite. But can this ambiguity alone justify inclusion of 'Speech over spilled Milk' in this book? The only relation between this poem and the theme of the collection is that Christmas is mentioned in the first line, though it turns into New Year later on. 'Speech over Spilled Milk' is a fine poem, important for appreciating early Brodsky and beautifully translated, but here it sticks out like a sore thumb: both the subject and the style are completely out of place, and its size (nearly a quarter of the whole book!) damages the rhythm of the piece-to-piece flow which is vital in a small collection of poetry. I would probably also drop 'Lagoon', on the same basis as 'Speech...' and because the recurring image of a ship there does not mix well with the desert landscape implied by the overall concept of the collection.Purely chronological arrangement of poems is generally reserved for comprehensive editions with an academic flavour to them. Nevertheless, it does not look unnatural in this book of a very different kind. Besides, this way it is easier to notice that the nativity poems that made it into the book were written over a period of precisely 33 years. Very appropriate; I wonder whether it was intentional.Sadly, I spotted a few inaccuracies on first reading. "M.V." should read "M.B." in the dedication of '25.XII.1993' (the initials must have been transliterated twice). "Brodsky, Joseph, 1940-" in the Library of Congress Data is an unpleasant oversight: the author had been dead for over 5 years when this book was first published. There are misplaced stanzas in the translation of 'Lullaby' and a misunderstood passage about a villager in the translation of "With riverbanks of frozen chocolate, a city..." (to be fair, the syntax of the original gets rather convoluted at that point).As far as the look and feel of the hardback edition is concerned, the publishers couldn't have done a better job. It is as books used to be: a visual feast and a sheer pleasure to handle. Tastefully and sparingly illustrated with superb period photographs of snow-covered Leningrad.

Every Christmas Eve after my family is in bed, I sit by the tree and read this volume. Beautiful work.

Great array of Brodsky's contemporaries in the English language, with parallel text. Any Russian language student would get a good intro to good quality contemporary English poets here too. Lucid, hard-won wisdom in these poems.