César Vallejo in English: Stanley Burnshaw, Paul Muldoon, and Lawrence Venuti's Ethics of Translation

Abstract

The article reassesses Stanley Burnshaw's anthology of modern poetry, The Poem Itself (1960) in the light of more recent developments in Translation Studies. Burnshaw aimed to provide an alternative to the method of poetic recreation with a combination of source text, literal translation, and commentary. A comparison of the translation of Vallejo's ‘Piedra negra sobre una piedra blanca’ from Burnshaw's anthology with a poetic version by Paul Muldoon explores the effectiveness of Lawrence Venuti's critical vocabulary. Venuti's adoption of the target focus and cultural turn of Translation Studies creates obstacles for an understanding of Burnshaw's attempt to deliver an experience of the foreign text. Yet Venuti approves of The Poem Itself. The pedagogy outlined in his Scandals of Translation (1998) suggests a possible rehabilitation of Burnshaw's anthology as a vehicle for challenging interpretative norms.