Stephen Mitchell Archaic Torso of Apollo We cannot know his legendary head with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso is still suffused with brilliance from inside, like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low, gleams in all its power. Otherwise the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could a smile run through the placid hips and thighs to that dark center where procreation flared. Otherwise this stone would seem defaced beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders and would not glisten like a wild beast’s fur: would not, from all the borders of itself, burst like a star: for here there is no place that does not see you. You must change your life.
There are good things to be said for each of these translations, and there are people who lean toward each of them, depending on their taste, where they stand on the fidelity continuum, and what they are looking for from the translation. Bly appeals to readers who like their poetry to have the feel of good prose: simple, conversational, straightforward. This sort of free verse is the leading poetic style of the day, and the style of most translations as well. It happens, however, not to be the style of this poem, the beauty of which appears not only in its images, but also in its sounds and rhythms. And in this case, it does not capture the poem’s power. Peters opted to preserve the form and most of the content, yet still manage to be simple and conversational. His translation displays a serious problem with fidelity to strict forms by today’s translators: most are not capable of doing it well. They can write in a form, but few have the experience and resources to do it beautifully. Peters also, I think, goes a bit too far in being faithful not only to the rhyme scheme, but also to Rilke’s feminine rhymes (where the rhyming word’s stress is not on the final syllable, as in “flowing”
and “going”). A feminine rhyme is weaker and more unusual in
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