Metamorphoses: Essays

Emerging from the practice, art, and magic of translation, this essay collection concerns itself with the way certain fables of metamorphosis have captured the poetic imagination and how translation—literary metamorphosis—extends this process. The syntax and diction of the prose of John Ruskin, so important to the evolution of Proust’s prose style, is offered as an example of the way visual experience can suggest certain methods of approach to the poet. Demonstrated is how, with a wealth of...