Is poetry only worthy of reading if its in its original language

>>8758045
depends on what you want to gain from it

"Poetry" is too broad of a descriptor to give a proper answer to this question. It depends on the type of poetry.

>>8758050
Aesthetic delight from prose and the power of its message or motif.
>>8758053
What kind would be ok with translations and what kind not?

>>8758060
>Aesthetic delight from prose
>things that have no meaning but plebs like to say

>Let me sketch two ways of looking at a poem. You can perceive a poem as an expression of the life of the language itself, something organically grown out of the very language in which it is written—in my case, Swedish. A poem written by the Swedish language through me. Impossible to carry over into another language.

>Another, and contrary, view is this: the poem as it is presented is a manifestation of another, invisible poem, written in a language behind the common languages. Thus, even the original version is a translation. A transfer into English or Malayalam is merely the invisible poem’s new attempt to come into being. The important thing is what happens between the text and the reader. Does a really committed reader ask if the written version he reads is the original or a translation?

>I never asked that question when I, in my teenage years, learned to read poetry—and to write it (both things happened at the same time). As a two-year-old child in a polyglot environment experiences the different tongues as one single language, I perceived, during the first enthusiastic poetry years, all poetry as Swedish. Eliot, Trakl, Éluard—they were all Swedish writers, as they appeared in priceless, imperfect, translations.

>Theoretically we can, to some extent justly, look at poetry translation as an absurdity. But in practice we must believe in poetry translation, if we want to believe in World Literature. That’s what we do here in Oklahoma. And I thank my translators.

>>8758087
Its not that it has no meaning, its just overused and often misused. Not sure how anyone would ejoy PROSE in a poem though.

>>8758234
nope, no meaning whatsoever. but continue deluding yourself that you're reading "for da prose" like the pleb you and op obviously are.

>>8758249

Dumb shitposter

>>8758045
Read Walter Benjamin on translation!