Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Translating the Poetry of the Urban

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Urban Literary Studies

  • 73 Accesses

Writing About the City

How do languages inhabit cities? What kinds of spoken idiom do they develop? Cockney? Verlan? “Der saloppe Groβstadtjargon, ein umgangsprachliches Parlando, das vom Kabarett und vom Simplicissimus vorbereitet worden war” (Rothe 1973: 19) [The slovenly city jargon, a colloquial parlando, which had been prepared by cabaret and the [satirical weekly magazine] Simplicissimus]? How does the poetic survive this onslaught, these serial adulterations? Hofmannsthal fears that, even in the case of “normal” linguistic usage, the city fatally contaminates the language it shares with poets:

figure a

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Baldick, Robert, ed. and trans. 1984. Pages from the Goncourt Journal. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Baudelaire, Charles. 1975. Œuvres complètes I. Ed. Claude Pichois. Paris: Gallimard.

    Google Scholar 

  • Benjamin, Walter. 2003. The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire and On some motifs in Baudelaire. In Selected writings volume 4: 1938–1940, ed. Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings, trans. Edmund Jephcott and others, 3–92; 313–55. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press/Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Benn, Gottfried. 1956. Gesammelte Gedichte. Wiesbaden/Zürich: Verlag der Arche/Limes Verlag.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bridgwater, Patrick, ed. and trans. 1968. Twentieth-century German Verse. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Collier, Peter. 1985. Nineteenth-Century Paris: Vision and nightmare. In Unreal City: Urban experience in modern European literature and art, ed. Edward Timms and David Kelley, 25–44. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dale, Peter, ed. and trans. 1986. Poems of Jules Laforgue. London: Anvil Press Poetry.

    Google Scholar 

  • De Certeau, Michel. 1980. L’Invention du quotidien I: Arts de faire. Paris: Union Générale d’Éditions.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ford, Simon. 2005. The Situationist International: A user’s guide. London: Black Dog Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Galantière, Lewis, ed. and trans. 1937. The Goncourt Journals 1851–1870. London: Cassell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goncourt, Edmond, and Jules de Goncourt. 1989. Journal: Mémoires de la vie littéraire II: 1866–1886. Ed. Robert Ricatte. Paris: Robert Laffont.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hamburger, Michael, and Christopher Middleton, eds. and trans. 1962. Modern German Poetry 1910–1960. London: MacGibbon and Kee.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hofmannsthal, Hugo von. 1970. Gedichte und kleine Dramen. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kemp, Friedhelm, ed. and trans. 2013. Charles Baudelaire: Die Blumen des Bösen. Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag.

    Google Scholar 

  • Laforgue, Jules. 1986. Œuvres complètes I: 1860–1883. Ed. Jean-Louis Debauve, Daniel Grojnowski et al. Lausanne: L’Age d’Homme.

    Google Scholar 

  • McDonough, Tom, ed. 2009. The Situationists and the city. London: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Newton, Robert P. 1971. Form in the Menschheitsdämmerung: A study of prosodic elements and style in German Expressionist poetry. The Hague: Mouton.

    Google Scholar 

  • Paisey, David, ed. and trans. 2013. Gottfried Benn: Selected poems and prose. Manchester: Carcanet Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pinthus, Kurt, ed. 1959. Menschheitsdämmerung: Ein Dokument des Expressionismus. Hamburg: Rowohlt.

    Google Scholar 

  • Réda, Jacques. 1993. Les Ruines de Paris. Paris: Gallimard.

    Google Scholar 

  • Robertson, James, trans. 2001. Fae The Flouers o Evil: Baudelaire in Scots. Kingskettle: Kettillonia.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rothe, Wolfgang, ed. 1973. Deutsche Groβstadtlyrik vom Naturalismus bis zur Gegenwart. Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam jun.

    Google Scholar 

  • Roubaud, Jacques. 1999. La Forme d’une ville change plus vite, hélas, que le cœur des humains: Cent Cinquante Poèmes 1991–1998. Paris: Gallimard.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sadler, Simon. 1999. The Situationist city. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schmid, Carlo, trans. 1976. Charles Baudelaire: Die Blumen des Bösen. Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sheringham, Michael. 1996. City space, mental space, poetic space: Paris in Breton, Benjamin and Réda. In Parisian fields, ed. Michael Sheringham, 85–114. London: Reaktion Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Simon, Sherry. 2006. Translating Montreal: Episodes in the life of a divided city. Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Simon, Sherry. 2011. Cities in translation: Intersections of language and memory. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Treharne, Mark, trans. 1996. Jacques Réda: The ruins of Paris. London: Reaktion Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Waldrop, Keith, and Rosmarie Waldrop, trans. 2006. Jacques Roubaud: The form of a city changes faster, alas, than the human heart: One hundred fifty poems (1991–1998). Normal, IL: Dalkey Archive Press.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK

    Clive Scott

Authors
  1. Clive Scott
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Clive Scott .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. London, UK

    Jeremy Tambling

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this entry

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this entry

Scott, C. (2018). Translating the Poetry of the Urban. In: Tambling, J. (eds) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Urban Literary Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62592-8_97-1

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62592-8_97-1

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-62592-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-62592-8

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Humanities

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation