Background
Barnstone, Willis was born on November 13, 1927 in Lewiston, Maine, United States. Son of Robert Carl and Dora E. (Lempert) Barnstone.
( In a lucid, pioneering volume, Willis Barnstone explor...)
In a lucid, pioneering volume, Willis Barnstone explores the history and theory of literary translation as an art form. Arguing that literary translation goes beyond the transfer of linguistic information, he emphasizes that imaginative originality resides as much in the translation as in the source text—a view that skews conventional ideas of artistic primacy. Barnstone begins by dealing with general issues of literalness, fidelity, and originality: with translation as metaphor, aesthetic transformation, and re-creation. He looks as well at translation as a traditionally stigmatized genre. Then he discusses the history of translation, using as his paradigm the most translated book in the world, the Bible, tracing it from its original Hebrew and Greek to Jerome's Latin and the English of Tyndale and the King James Version. Citing the way authors intentionally mistranslate for religious and political purposes, Barnstone provides fascinating insights into how, by altering names in the Gospels, the Virgin Mary and Jesus cease to be Jews, the Jews are turned into villains, and Christianity becomes an original rather than a mere translation. In the next section Barnstone analyzes translation theory, ranging from the second century B.C. Letter of Aristeas to Roman Jakobson's linguistic categories and Walter Benjamin's "Task of the Translator." The book ends with an aphoristic ABC of translating.
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(Willis Barnstone has augmented his widely used anthology ...)
Willis Barnstone has augmented his widely used anthology of the Greek lyric poets with eleven newly attributed Sappho poems, making this the most complete offering of Sappho in English. Two new sections -- "Sources and Notes" and "Sappho: Her Life and Poems" -- provide the student with the classical sources and an appraisal of this greatest of Western women poets. Barnstone's lucid, elegant translations include a representative sampling of all the significant Greek lyric poets, from Archilochus, in the seventh century B.C., through Pindar ("prince of choral poets") and the other great singers of the classical age, down to the Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine periods. William McCulloh's introduction illuminates the forms and development of the Greek lyric. Barnstone introduces each poet with a brief biographical and literary sketch. The critical apparatus includes a glossary, index, bibliography, and concordance. Willis Barnstone is professor of Spanish and comparative literature at Indiana University. He is co-editor of A Book of Women Poets from Antiquity to Now, and has translated poetry of Mao Zedong, Antonio Machado, and St. John of the Cross.
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("This fresh and poignant portrait of Jorge Luis Borges in...)
"This fresh and poignant portrait of Jorge Luis Borges in his later years combines spirited and philosophical conversations, biographical anecdotes, citations from poetry, and literary analysis. Willis Barnstone, a leading translator of Borges's poems and a privileged friend for more than twenty years, presents the poet-storyteller as a figure of paradox and contradictions. He relates Borges's prodigious feats of textual memory, his wry observations of the Argentinian political scene, and his musings on the events of his long and surprising life. Barnstone also recounts Borges's friendship and deathbed marriage to his one-time student and long-time literary collaborator, Marie Kodama."
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( In a writing style that may offer a glimpse of the tape...)
In a writing style that may offer a glimpse of the tapestries woven on the looms of Athena and Arachne, Willis Barnstone presents a seamless tale of the first years of his life that moves as naturally from prose to poetry and back as day moves to night. Focusing on the five years Barnstone spent following his graduation from Bowdoin College living, thinking, and beginning to write in France, Greece, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, and England from 1948 to 1953, this fascinating and moving memoir nonetheless expands beyond those years. On one side of that period are the poet and translator’s grandparents’ immigration to the United States, his parents’ stormy relationship and his father’s eventual suicide, his childhood growing up in the apartment building where Babe Ruth lived, his first gestures toward a life of poetry in Hawthorne’s room at Bowdoin, and his first acquaintance with cultures other than his own while digging privies for Mexican peasants during a year off from college. On the other side of that period are Barnstone’s continuing life as the gypsy scholar in China, Tibet, Turkey, and Argentina and his continuing friendship with his children and former wife and the finest writers and artists the world over. "A year in Paris is good to have when one is twenty. Ernest Hemingway went there when he was twenty-one and stayed five years. He was married, poor, earning a living as a writer. He had some good things and some bad things to say about Gertrude Stein who accused him of being a member of a lost generation. I also stayed five years, but shared it with other countries. I could have happily stayed another year or two in Paris, my French was good, I was writing. But I was just married and wasn’t a newspaperman to support my wife on newspaper articles. And so I went to Greece where I could get a job. I suppose I could have hung on in Paris, as I did in Mexico, and each day in Paris the city and the friends meant more to me. But Greece was not only a job. It was a light. I didn’t know what kind of light, but it was a light I knew."
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language literature educator scholars poet
Barnstone, Willis was born on November 13, 1927 in Lewiston, Maine, United States. Son of Robert Carl and Dora E. (Lempert) Barnstone.
Bachelor cum laude, Bowdoin College, 1948. Doctor of Letters (honorary), Bowdoin College, 1981. Master of Arts with high honors, Columbia University, 1956.
Doctor of Philosophy with distinction, Yale University, 1958.
Teacher Anavrita Academy, Athens, Greece, 1949. Instructor French overseas program University Maryland, Perigueux, France, 1955-1956. Assistant professor Spanish Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, 1958-1962.
Member faculty Indiana University, Bloomington, since 1962, professor comparative literature, Spanish, Portuguese, since 1968, professor comparative literature and Latin American studies, 1972-1975, Distinguished professor comparative literature, Spanish and Portuguese, 1975-1994, District professor emeritus, since 1995. Visiting professor University Massachusetts, Amherst, summer 1965, University California, Riverside, 1968-1969. O'Conner professor literature Colgate University, spring 1971.
Fulbright lecturer Professorado de Avenida de Mayo, Buenos Aires, 1975-1976, Foreign Studies University, Peking, 1984-1985. Visiting professor Summer Institute Literature, University Texas, Austin, summer 1977.
( In a writing style that may offer a glimpse of the tape...)
( In a writing style that may offer a glimpse of the tape...)
("This fresh and poignant portrait of Jorge Luis Borges in...)
(Willis Barnstone has augmented his widely used anthology ...)
(Willis Barnstone offers an amazing sonnet sequence on his...)
( In a lucid, pioneering volume, Willis Barnstone explor...)
(Brand New!! Listed as a textbook but would make an ideal ...)
(Lever Lines for Spare Minutes: Intended as Helps to a Hig...)
(Limited to 350 copies, 325 numbered, 25 unnumbered for pr...)
(Book by Barnstone, Willis, Garrison, David, Aleixandre, V...)
(Book by Barnstone, Willis, Garrison, David, Aleixandre, V...)
(poems written in China 1984 by the translator/poet)
(University Press of New England Hardcover 1993 2A)
(Will be shipped from US. Used books may not include compa...)
Served with United States Army, 1954-1956. Member Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists and Novelists association.
Married Helle Phaedra Tzalopoulou, June 1, 1949. Children: Akiki Dora, Robert Vassilios, Anthony Dimitrios.