University College London

Problems in Translating Russian Poetry into English

Author(s): Leonid I. Strakhovsky
Source: The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 35, No. 84 (Dec., 1956), pp. 258-267
Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London,
School of Slavonic and East European Studies
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4204806
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258 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

were also many analogical applications of this ending to non-Slavonic

names, e.g. Machata (from Matej), Jirata (from Jiff), Janata (from Jan).
In all cases however these diminutives were always and, I dare say, ex?
clusively, names of men. Their masculine character is clearly reflected
in a great number of surnames, into which many of these diminutives
changed at the beginning of the modern period. There were so many of
them that surnames like Bohata, Vasata, Slavata, Machata, and Janata
are among the commonest in Czechoslovakia. This phenomenon is very
relevant to our subject; for when surnames were stabilised out of diverse
onomastic forms, they obviously had to be based on the names of men,
the natural heads of families. The great number of -yata family names in
Czechoslovakia provides further evidence for the view that diminutives in
-yata were of a typically masculine character.7
To sum up, let us repeat that in the documentary sources of Novgorod
not a single feminine name can be found, whether diminutive or otherwise,
ending in -yata. Admittedly this observation is not in itself conclusive,
because many personal names certainly existed in mediaeval Novgorod
without having ever been recorded in writing. More definite support for
the thesis that the diminutives were masculine only is furnished by the
evidence that each of them corresponds to a dithematic Slavonic name or,
in the formations per analogiam, to a typically masculine name. This
applies also to the disputed name Gostyata. Most probably it was derived
from Old Slavonic Gostomysl, recorded not only in Russia but in Poland
and in the area inhabited by the Elbe Slavs (see F. Miklosich, Die Bildung
der slavischen Personen- und Ortsnamen, Heidelberg, 1927, p. 51). Finally
there is the extensive use of diminutives in -yata in Czech, which argues,
still more convincingly, that this form was a specifically masculine creation
of Slavonic nomenclature.

Problems in Translating Russian into English

Poetry

Leonid I. Strakhovsky

A sensitive Englishman, the late Duff Cooper, Viscount Norwich, re?

marked in his autobiography Old Men Forget: 'The English approach to
poetry is peculiar. Very few like it and those who do are rather ashamed
of saying so, and yet it is the one art in which the English are supreme.'
This could not be said of the Russian approach. From the time of Pushkin
up to the revolution of 1917 more poetry, proportionately, has been written
7 It is that this diminutive has the same origin as the appellative suffix
quite possible
-et-, which, as a neuter, was used particularly to designate young animals. This, how?
ever, does not contradict my thesis. When the suffix -et- appeared in personal names,
it evidently took the form of a new nominative in the singular, which for all we know
was masculine and distinct from the neutral appellatives. To my knowledge the
development of this aspect of the suffix -et- has not been thoroughly investigated;
recently the matter was touched upon by V. Machek, 'Origine des themes nominaux
en -?f-,du slave', LinguaPosnaniensis,I (Poznan, 1949), p. 96.

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 TRANSLATING RUSSIAN POETRY INTO ENGLISH 259
and more poetry widely read and discussed in Russia than in any other
country. The appearance, not only of a new book but also of a single
poem by a recognised poet, was always hailed as a literary, and almost
as a national, event. Unfortunately the great treasure-house of Russian
poetry is practically unknown to English readers because of the difficulty
of adequate translations.
A great disservice both to Russian literature and to readers of it in
English translation, has been done in the past by such translators as
-Constance Garnett in England and Isabel Hapgood in America. In recent
years the situation has changed somewhat for the better, but it is still
unsatisfactory, principally because the art of translation is practised by
professional translators and not by creative artists. But what are the
reasons for this? Is it because English writers lack the knowledge of foreign
languages or consider it beneath their dignity to render into their own
tongue the thought and art of another? In this respect Russian readers
have always been much more fortunate than their English-speaking
counterparts, for since the beginning of the 19th century Russian writers
and poets have produced a vast amount of translations of the best fiction
and poetry of the West. To mention but a few outstanding examples,
there are the poetical works of Shelley and of Poe translated in toto by
Konstantin Balmont, Longfellow's 'The Song of Hiawatha' translated by
Ivan Bunin, the j&maux et camees of Theophile Gautier translated by
Nikolay Gumilyov, or 'Hamlet', 'Macbeth', and 'Romeo and Juliet'
translated recently by Boris Pasternak. On the other hand, the great
wealth of Russian poetry still remains closed to English readers notwith?
standing the laudable efforts of such Englishmen as Oliver Elton, Maurice
Baring, Bernard Pares, C. M. Bowra, Gerald Shelley, the Australian
R. H. Morrison and the Canadian A. F. B. Clark, and the little that has
been translated is usually so flat and uninspiring that it would turn an
English reader altogether away from translations of Russian poetry. Yet
there are a few excellent translations of outstanding value which seem to
warrant renewed efforts in the field, notwithstanding intrinsic and often
seemingly insurmountable difficulties inherent in the very nature of the
Russian language, in the rules of Russian prosody, and in certain limita?
tions of the English language for the proper rendering of Russian poetry.
There is no doubt that a perfect translation of a poem must read and
sound like an original poetic composition. In other words, an English
translation of a Russian poem must be, in the first place, a good poem in
English complying with the rules of English prosody. But it should also
preserve not only the exact meaning, but also the imagery, flavour and
musicality of the original. And here the translator meets his first important
problem: how is he to render in a language which is structurally quite
different, not only the essence but also the affinities and peculiarities of
Russian poetry? It is almost as if an architect were asked to build a Georgian
mansion not of bricks, but of logs or of glass and concrete, and yet preserve
the style. This is precisely our problem, viz. to preserve the style while
using different materials. And the materials are different. In the first place,
the Russian language is strongly stressed, and whereas there can be only

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260 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

one stress in each word in Russian (there can be two or more in English),
the stress may fall on any syllable, not as in Polish, for instance, where the
stress almost always falls on the penultimate syllable, or Czech, where the
stress is always on the first syllable. This variety of stress in Russian,
while it gives the language its flexibility and musicality, is a handicap for
the translator who wishes to preserve the original musical phrasing in a
language like English, where the vast majority of words are composed of
one or two, or at most three syllables (rarely four or more), while the
Russian language abounds in words of four, five, six, and even seven or
eight syllables. Hence, when one renders a Russian polysyllabic word
into English and uses two, three and at times four words to do so, the
rhythm and musical phrasing of the original is broken, even though the
meaning may be preserved. For instance, in a poem by Gumilyov, written
in five-foot iambic lines, the last line contains only two words: a six-
syllable and a five-syllable word?neischislimyye tysyachelet'ya?which mean,
literally, 'incalculable millenia'. Yet when translating it into English,
in order to retain the same metre, I had to render it as follows: 'Through
all this world's incalculable ages.' The meaning and metre were pre?
served, but the rhythm and musicality of the original, as well as the feeling
of endlessness conveyed in the Russian, were lost, though, fortunately, I
was able to use one of the rare long words in English.
Another problem which a translator of Russian poetry into English has
to face concerns metre. Russian versification follows the syllabic-tonic
system and recognises five metres: iamb, trochee, dactyl, amphibrach, and
anapaest. At first?in the 18th century?Russian prosody followed the
syllabic system, adopted from the French, but it soon proved to be
alien to the structure of the language, with its variable stress. Hence
Russian developed the tonic system, confined to the five metres mentioned
above, while retaining elements of syllabism, in that the number of syllables
in the lines of a poem must be the same throughout the piece, or if it
varies within one stanza, the same variants must be repeated in all the
stanzas. It is true, some modern poets, particularly the so-called futurists,
broke away from this rule and adopted a purely tonic system closely
resembling the rhythms of the spoken word. But on the whole, with slight
variations, most Russian poets adhered, and still adhere, strictly to the
syllabic-tonic system which seems to be most suited to the language.
Of course there is no great difficulty in rendering an iamb (v^ ?)
or trochee (? ^) into English, but when one is confronted with the three-
syllable metres, difficulties arise immediately. In the first place, according
to George Saintsbury's Historical Manual of English Prosody, the amphibrach
(^-^ ? >*^) is not suitable to the English language, and has been used in
the past only on very rare occasions (I have my reservations on this sub?
ject, as I shall show later), whereas it is to be found in the verse of practic?
ally every outstanding Russian poet. Secondly, the dactyl (? ^^ w), very
popular with a number of Russian poets, though observable enough in
separate English words, does not seem to compound happily in English
and, according to Saintsbury, when used in sequence has a tendency,
especially in lines of some length, to rearrange itself into anapaests with

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 TRANSLATING RUSSIAN POETRY INTO ENGLISH 26l

anacrusis (a syllable or half-foot prefixed to a verse and serving as a sort

of' take-off' for it, a form completely non-existent in Russian versification).
Thus, of the three-syllable metres, there remains only the anapaest, which
is common both to Russian and English verse. To complicate matters,
English prosody uses a two-syllable metre?the spondee (-) and a
tribrach ^^ s-^ ) in combination with other
three-syllable type?the (w
metres, both of which either singly or in combination are absolutely
impossible in Russian. Furthermore, the usage of polysyllabic words not
only in three-syllable but also in two-syllable metres in Russian, because of
the rule of only one accent or stress per word, creates a multiplicity of minor
stresses reaching the affinity of one-sixty-fourth of a stress, according to
Andrey Bely, which enables the Russian poet to use an infinite variety of
musical patterns within the same metre?a thing absolutely unheard of in
English poetry and, I would say, quite impossible. In addition to this, the
use of paeons, i.e., the omission or dropping of a non-accented syllable
(usually not more than one to a line) creates a type of syncopation very
difficult if not impossible to render in English verse. The use of paeons
has been particularly developed by the acmeist school, headed by Gumil?
yov, and has become a permanent feature, not only of the poetic output
of this school and its outstanding representatives Gumilyov, Akhmatova,
Mandelstam, but of all modern Russian poetry. Finally, a Russian poet
must adhere to the one metre chosen, because the mixing of metres is
strictly prohibited by the rules of Russian prosody and would not be
tolerated by the poet himself, as it would break the musical pattern and
create cacophony. Hence to a Russian poetical ear some famous English
poems, like Tennyson's 'The Dying Swan', for instance, have no metre
at all, and Saintsbury's explanation '
only proves the point, that it brings
out a scheme of dimeters wholly iambic at the lowest rate of substitution,
wholly anapaestic at the highest, mixed between, while a few instances
occur of the other usual and regular licences?trochaic and spondaic sub?
stitution, monosyllabic feet (or catalexis) and one or two brachycatalexis,
three feet instead of four'. To illustrate this, I shall reproduce here the
first stanza and the scanning as given by Saintsbury:

The plain I was grass I y, wild I and bare,

Wide, wild, I and o I pen to I the air,

Which I had built I up ev I erywhere

An un I der-roof I of dole I ful gray.

With an in I ner voice I the riv I er ran,

Adown I it float I ed a dy I ing swan,

And loud I ly did I lament.

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262 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

It was I the mid I die of I the day.

Ever I the wea I ry wind I went on,

And took I the reed- I tops as I it went.

No doubt, of course, some Russian poems, particularly those using paeons,

may sound similarly to an English poetical ear as also devoid of metre.
Therefore the translator is often faced with a grave decision?either to
make the translation sound like an English poem by sacrificing its Russian
peculiarities, which, in other words, means writing an English poem using
the theme and imagery of the Russian original rather than translating it,
as did Vladimir Nabokov in his early talented, but inaccurate renderings,
or to adhere as closely as possible to the original, preserving its flavour
and peculiarities even to the non-English metre, as in the case of the
amphibrach, thus rendering not only the essence but even the form, while
risking the possibility of producing a version unacceptable to the English
reader. I, for one, have adhered more to the second type, as I am not an
English poet, but only a Russian one.
I am also pleased to note that Vladimir Nabokov, my friend of many
years, has come recently to share my point of view. In an article in the
Partisan Review, dealing with the problems of translating Pushkin's
' '
Yevgeny Onegin', he states that to him the clumsiest literal translation is
a thousand times more useful than the prettiest paraphrase'. And he further
explains that 'the term "literal translation" is tautological, since anything
but that is not truly a translation but an imitation, an adaptation or a
parody'. This leads him eventually to a reductio ad absurdum by denying
even rhyme in translations, when he says:' I want translations with copious
footnotes, footnotes reaching up like skyscrapers to the top of this or that
page so as to leave only the gleam of one textual line between commentary
and eternity. I want such footnotes and the absolutely literal sense, with
no emasculation and no padding?I want such sense and such notes for
all the poetry in other tongues that still languishes in "poetical" versions,
begrimed and beslimed by rhyme.'
With this I cannot agree, for such translations would be useful to the
scholar, but they will not be appreciated by the layman, because they
would present a dissected body and not the whole body. I, for one, and
lovers of poetry as a whole, I am sure, would rather have a version in their
own tongue which, though as close to the original as possible, would move
them, as poetry should, instead of instructing them. As an illustration of
this I venture to offer translations of mine from Anna Akhmatova, and
Osip Mandelstam, both preceded by the Russian original.
Akhmatova's poem, published in 1921 in a collection entitled 'Buck?
thorn', is written in almost even-footed trochaic metre, the number of feet
in each line being 5-5-4-3-5-5-5-3, and thus only the seventh line break?
ing the pattern set in the first stanza. But if one were to consider this as a
poem not of two four-line stanzas, but as an octave, the slight departure in
the seventh line would be perfectly legitimate.

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 TRANSLATING RUSSIAN POETRY INTO ENGLISH 263

IIpoBOflHJia flpyra 30 nepe#Heft,

IIoCTOHJia B 30JI0T0tt nWJIH,
C KOJiOKOJieHKHcoceflHeft
3ByKH BamHHe tgkjih.
! npimyMaHHoe ?
BpoineHa cjiobo,
Pa3Be h niBeTOK, hjih nncbMO ?
A rjia3a tjih^ht yme cypoBO
B noTeMHeBinee TpioMO.

I saw I the friend I to the en I trance hall,

I stood I for a while I in the gol I den dust,

From the bel I fry nearby I a gent I le roll

Of sol I emn sounds I seemed to last I and last.

Discar I ded! That's I an invent I ed word?

Am ll a let I ter or bloom I to discard?

But the mir I ror's reflec I tion is dim I and blurred,

And the eyes I look alread I y stern I and hard.

In this translation, which I remember doing as in a trance, I did not
follow the trochaic metre of the original, but substituted a combination
of iambs and anapaests, a perfectly legitimate English metre. On the
other hand, this poem could be scanned as a three-foot amphibrach
(proving, perhaps, that Saintsbury may be wrong) with paeons, a few
anacruses (in the third, seventh, and eighth lines) and catalexis at the end of
all lines except the sixth. Yet in either scanning it preserves the content,
imagery, outer form and inner rhythm of the original, as I have been told
by those who know both languages. It is interesting to observe, perhaps,
that this translation comes closer to the metrical structure of Tennyson's
'The Dying Swan', than to poems following the rules of Russian prosody.
But then it may be just a happy accident.
Mandelstam's poem, written in 1920, is about St Petersburg-Petrograd-
Petropolis, now Leningrad.
Ha cTpaniHofi BticoTe Sjiyn^aKHinift oroHb,
Ho pa3Be TaK 3Be3^a MepijaeT ?
npo3panHaH 3Be3#a, 6jiymjstaiomluA oroHb,
TboPl 6paT, neTponoJib, yMHpaeT.

Ha CTpaniHoft bhcot6 3eMHbie chu ropaT,

3ejieHafl 3Be3^a jieTaeT.
0, ecjiH th 3Be3fla, ? bo^h h He6a 6paT,
Tbo:h 6paT, neTponojib, yMHpaeT.

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264 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

IIy(a1OBHm,HHii KopaSjib Ha CTpaniHOH BbicoTe

HeceTCH, KpbuibH pacnpaBjraeT.
3ejieHan 3Be3,n;a, b npeKpacHOii HHmeTe
TBott 6paT, IleTponojib, yMHpaeT.

IIpo3paHHafl BecHa Ha^ nepHOio HeBOii

GjiOMajiacb. Bock SeccMepTbH TaeT.
0, ecjin th 3Be3^a ? IleTponojib, ropo,o; tboh,
Tboh 6paT, IleTponojib, yMHpaeT.

On fearful heights?an erring light.

But is it thus a star is hying?
Translucent star, the erring light,
Your kin, Petropolis, is dying.

On fearful heights burn earthly dreams;

An emerald star is slowly flying.
If you are sky's and water's kin,
Your kin, Petropolis, is dying.

A monstrous ship on fearful heights

Unfurls its wings all space defying.
Oh, emerald star! In great distress
Your kin, Petropolis, is dying.

Translucent spring o'er Neva's night

Broke down. Eternity is crying.
If you're Petropolis, oh, star,
Your town, Petropolis, is dying.

In this translation I permitted myself only a few departures from the

original, the most important being a change in the number of feet. The
poem is written, of course, in iambs, the first and third line of each stanza
containing six feet, ending in a masculine or single rhyme, while the second
and fourth are of four feet with a feminine or double rhyme. In my trans?
lation, on the other hand, while preserving the iambic metre, I had to
change the number of feet, using four for all the lines in the poem. I also
had to sacrifice rhymes in the first and third lines of each stanza in order
to keep as close to the original meaning and also to the original order of the
words. However, I was able to preserve the rhymes in the second and
fourth lines, which was a particularly difficult task, as these are feminine
rhymes with the same endings throughout the poem.
This brings us to another problem in translating Russian poetry into
English, viz. rhyme. According to Saintsbury, rhyme in English poetry is
either single (on the last syllable only), double (on the two last), or triple
'
(on the three last). Beyond three the effect would be burlesque, and this
is hard to keep out of triple rhyme, and even sometimes seems to menace
the double.' Thus the most appropriate rhyme seems to be the single one,

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 TRANSLATING RUSSIAN POETRY INTO ENGLISH 265
and the fuller in sound the better. But Russian poetry recognises the
validity not only of the single (masculine), the double (feminine) and the
triple ('dactylic'), but also of a quadruple ('hyper-dactylic') and a
quintuple ('hyper-hyper-dactylic') rhyme?an example of the latter,
taken from a poem of Valery Bryusov, being skovyvayushchiy-ocharovyvayush-
chiy. And although quadruple and quintuple rhymes are rare in Russian
poetry, they are not only possible but permissible. On the other hand,
Russian poetry abounds in double and triple rhymes, usually in combina?
tion with single rhymes. As a matter of fact, the most usual combinations
in a quatrain are either:

isl line 2nd line 3rd line 4th line

single double single double
(or) double single double single
(or) single triple single triple
(or) triple single triple single
(and more
rarely) double triple double triple
(and) triple double triple double

There are very few instances when the use of single rhymes is uniform in
the entire poem, an outstanding example being Lermontov's Mtsyri, which,
because of this, sounds rather monotonous to a Russian ear. Therefore,
a translator faces immediately the problem of having to break up not only
the metre but the rhythm when substituting single rhymes for double
ones, or single and at best double rhymes for triple ones in the original
Russian. When this occurs, the musical note created by the two- or three-
syllable rhyme is almost invariably lost, even in happy cases when a double
rhyme in Russian can be rendered by a double rhyme in English, as in
my translation of Mandelstam's poem quoted above, because the Russian
ending -dyet is musically different from the English ending -ying.
Furthermore, Saintsbury states that rhyme in English must be 'full',
i.e. consonantal (on the vowel and the following consonant or consonants),
not merely an assonance (on the vowel only), since assonance by itself is
insufficient. While on the whole Russian prosody would subscribe to this
rule, particularly so far as single rhymes are concerned, it goes a step
further by requiring that the consonant preceding the vowel should be
rhymed, particularly in words ending in a vowel, of which there are many
in Russian. In addition, Russian prosody accepts assonances of the sort
when a stressed vowel and preceding consonant are rhymed, while one of
the rhymed words may end in a 'semi-mute' consonant, such as, for
example, dityd?putydkh (Mandelstam); nash?otdand (Akhmatova); golo-
sdm?nebesd (Gumilyov); dnyd?poluvnydv (Strakhovsky). Of course such
rhymes are not permitted in contiguous lines, as they would produce an
assonance only when separated by at least another line.
But it is the double and triple rhymes in which the main problem and
difficulty lie, because in these, as far as modern Russian poetry is con?
cerned, assonance is rather the rule than the exception. And assonance in
such rhymes gives the whole poem a character and musicality of its own,

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266 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

very difficult if not impossible to render into English by the substitution

of a full single or even double rhyme. For example: tumdne?lobzdniy,
prinyatyy?vypito, znakomyy?omut, kdriy?uddryu, stuzhi?uzhin, more?Teo-
dorikh (Blok); pdluby?blistdla by (Bryusov); kdmnya?yazykdmi (Annensky);
khuzhe?tuzhit, mostik?trosti, zheleznom?bezdnam (Gumilyov); nasvistyvay?
neistovey, leta?etot, persten'?pesnya, stonov?znamyonakh (Akhmatova);
keleynoy?reinveyna, vozdukh?rozdykh, kuznechik?pechka, tochat?dochke (Man-
dels tam); nabrosit'?zlosti, veter?svetel, vozdukh?zvyozdakh (Strakhovsky).
To a Russian ear, these assonances, separated by an intermediate line,
sound like full rhymes, whereas, judging by Saintsbury's statement, an
English ear will not respond in the same way. Thus, when in one of my
translations I rhymed 'other' with 'udder' I was taken severely to task;
but in Russian such an assonance would be quite legitimate.
Another point concerns 'internal' rhyme, i.e. when a syllable or syl?
lables at one, or even more than one, place within the line rhyme with the
syllable or syllables at the end or with each other; and a syllable or syl?
lables within one line rhymes with those at corresponding places within
another line. In this, according to Saintsbury, lies a dangerous tendency to
break up the lines; but in Russian an 'internal' rhyme has often been
used by 20th-century poets, and also by those of the 19th century, partic?
ularly Tyutchev and Fet.
By and large the problem of rendering in English verse the equivalent
or even the approximation of the Russian rhyme presents more often than
not insurmountable difficulties, and whenever the translator attempts such
equivalent or even approximate rhymes, he is bound to feel frustrated.
Hence it is useful or even imperative at times to limit the rhyming to two
lines in a stanza instead of four, thus sacrificing the music of the
rhyme
to the preservation of metre and rhythm of the original, subject, of course,
to the unfortunate limitations of English prosody. And in poetry, whether
Russian or English, rhythm is all important.
While the preservation of the same metre in the entire poem (with some
notable exceptions in one or two poems by Tyutchev and Blok) is an
inflexible rule, the rhythm within each metre may vary almost ad infinitum
because of the already observed prevalence in Russian of polysyllabic
words and of the existence of only one stress in each word. For instance, a
four-foot iambic line (here with a feminine rhyme) will have an
entirely
different rhythm and intonation according to whether it is composed of
short or long words or a combination of both. Thus, the first line of Push?
'
kin's Yevgeny Onegin'

Moy dyddya sdmykh chestnykh prdvil

corresponds, according to the number of syllables in each word, to the

formula: 1+2 + 2 + 2 + 2, while the first line of a poem by Tyutchev
Kak demony glukhonemyye

presents the following formula: 1+3+5. There can also be combinations:

1+ 7+1, (or 7+1, with a masculine rhyme, as in one of my own poems:
nezavershivshegosya dnyd) 5+4, 6+3, 2 + 7, etc. In this way a four-foot iambic

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 TRANSLATING RUSSIAN POETRY INTO ENGLISH 267
line may follow almost endless formulae and in each case, while the metre
remains the same, the rhythm and intonation obviously vary. And accord?
ing to intonation Tyutchev's line quoted above can be read either as a
four-foot iamb or a three-foot amphibrach, which is characteristic of many
four-foot iambic lines in Russian poetry. But the amphibrach is not
acceptable in English prosody (or so Saintsbury says), hence such a partic?
ular variation in intonation cannot be rendered successfully in trans?
lation. And certainly many if not most rhythmic variations produced by
the sequence of words of short and long syllables in Russian will be lost in
an English translation for the simple reason that it would be utterly
impossible to place within one line a sequence of short and long words
corresponding to the ones in the original. Yet all these problems and
difficulties do not preclude the possibility of making English versions of
Russian poems which in content, form, and musicality will convey to an
English reader the essential poetical substance of the original.
In conclusion I should like to say that the ideal translator of Russian
poetry into English must be completely bilingual, for no matter how well
one may know another language, to the extent even of being able to think
in it, the instinctive feeling for the mother tongue will always be greater.
Hence I, for one, found it necessary to use certain 'tools' or accessories
when working on my translations. These were: (1) three of the best Russian-
English dictionaries, since no single dictionary, among those available, is
completely satisfactory; (2) Roget's Thesaurus of the English Language) and
(3) A Complete Rhyming Dictionary by Clement Wood. But, of course, the
'
first and essential tool' is inspiration, without which even the most exact
translation would be lifeless.

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