Publisher's Synopsis
The first translations I made - from Verlaine, in 1937 - were naive attempts to convey the enthusiasm I felt for the sudden discovery of a foreign poet: Verlaine said something to me in his language which no poet in my own language had ever said before, and I wanted to show, if I could, what this quality was...
So began a wonderful addiction - wonderful for Morgan the writer, discovering new resources in each language he mastered; and wonderful for his readers for whom he has opened so many doors. 'Morgan's abilities as a translator are so generous that there is a danger of taking them for granted as he glides from Hungarian to Italian to Russian,' Robert Crawford said in the Scotsman.
There is something profligate in the range of Morgan's work as a translator. He does the labour of ten writers because his own work nourishes itself from the poetry of other lands and ages. It is part of the necessary mechanism that Morgan, as a Scot, employs to define his place as a European.
Collected Translations includes six decades ofwork. Readers will find here Morgan's celebrated Mayakovsky done into Scots, his Voznesensky, Pasternak and Vinokurov. There are the Italians and the French - Leopardi, Montale, Guillevic, and Michaux; and there are Heine, Lorca, Cernuda, Brecht, Enzensberger and Braga.... and much more.
