Voicing the Distant: Shakespeare and Russian Modernist Poetry, and: Four Hundred Years of Shakespeare in Europe, and: Shakespeare and the Language of Translation, and: Shakespeare and the French Poet, and: Translating Shakespeare for the Twenty-First Century (review)

There is little indication of editorial concern with such problems in this book, where too much seems to be the result of whimsy rather than a considered and settled policy. As an instance, there is a strange obsession with the title of Dante’s great work. The ‘Editors’ Note’ says ‘We refer throughout to Dante’s last poem as the Commedia without the “Divina” which crept into its title in the sixteenth century.’ Then the question is referred to again, at more length, in the Introduction. What is said about the origins of the title is accurate; but it seems wrongheaded to insist upon changing it now after hundreds of years of general acceptance. After all, it is not like the title of Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella, where the corruption to Astrophel and Stella destroys the wit and meaning. The absurdity, and indeed futility, of harping on this point is underlined by the fact that on the very first page of this volume itself the work is referred to as the Divine Comedy. In this volume much of the work of selection and discrimination that the editors themselves should have performed is left to the reader. However, if that reader is prepared to forage, sift, and sort out, there is much of value here. J. G. Nichols Wallasey