It's sometimes tempting to believe that thinkers can be divided between the writers who see death as the main fact of life, and those who don't. The former see life as a brief interlude during which only certain limited goals are attainable. The others entertain grandiose schemes, frequently political, as if there were no tomorrow. In his recent book After Theory the Marxist critic Terry Eagleton (a former Roman Catholic) argues that literary theory's value is limited by its failure to take any account of death. In this context, it's highly significant that the most famous Mexican writer of Villaurrutia's era, Octavio Paz, defined the principle that most characterized Villaurrutia's group, the Contemporaneos, as a rejection of the obligation of the writer to engage in political struggle.
His fellow Mexican poet, Elias Nandino, describes Villaurrutia as having been "always an adolescent,"and someone who "matured and died without ever ceasing to be one." The remark describes so many modern creative personalities that it almost passes without making the impression it should.
This book of translations appears to be D.M. Stroud's most important achievement. He calls himself "a poet first, a translator second,"and of course any translator of poetry must have something of the poetic in him to even half succeed. Even so, it's tempting to compromise with him and say instead that he has a poetic nature that has to date achieved his apotheosis with a translation.
RSS