Ezra Pound’s Rimbaud (1957): Translation and the art of the sketch
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24197/c0hpgk05Keywords:
Ezra Pound, Arthur Rimbaud, Vanni Scheiwiller, translation, sketchAbstract
This article is the first detailed study of the 1957 book of translations Rimbaud (1957) by U.S. American poet and translator Ezra Pound. As the original book form in which Pound’s translations of Arthur Rimbaud were published by the independent Italian editor Vanni Scheiwiller, Rimbaud sheds new light on Pound’s poetics of translation, his poetic dialogue with Rimbaud, and, most importantly, the ways in which the material form of a text shapes interpretative possibilities. The various drawings and sketches reproduced on the cover and throughout the small book disclose surprising affinities between the act of translating and the act of sketching, affinities that are borne out in Pound’s renderings.
Downloads
References
Alexander, Michael (1997). Ezra Pound as translator. Translation and Literature, 6.1, 23-30. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40339757 ; https://doi.org/10.3366/tal.1997.6.1.23
Arabia, Juan (2016). Una traducción de Arthur Rimbaud por Ezra Pound. Poesía. https://poesia.uc.edu.ve/una-traduccion-de-arthur-rimbaud-por-ezra-pound/.
Bacigalupo, Massimo (1980). The Formèd Trace: The Later Poetry of Ezra Pound. Columbia UP. https://doi.org/10.7312/baci91172
Bacigalupo, Massimo (1999). The strange text of Ezra Pound’s Cantos. English Studies in Africa, 42.1, 63-68. https://doi.org/10.10 80/00138399908691278
Bacigalupo, Massimo (2000). Pound/Scheiwiller: I Cantares del Pesce d’Oro. In L’oggetto libro ’99. Arte della stampa, mercato, colezionismo (pp. 130-145). Edizione Sylvestre Bonnard.
Bornstein, George (2001). Material Modernism: The Politics of the Page. Cambridge UP.
Borsuk, Amaranth (2018). The Book. MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/ mitpress/10631.001.0001
Caws, Mary Ann (2006). Surprised in Translation. University of Chicago Press.
Chartier, Roger (1995). Forms and Meanings: Texts, Performances, and Audiences from Codex to Computer. University of Pennsylvania Press. https://doi.org/10.9783/9780812200362
Corman, Cid (1957). Rimbaud by Ezra Pound [Unpublished typescript]. The Morgan Library and Museum.
Davidson, Michael (1997). Ghostlier Demarcations: Modern Poetry and the Material Word. University of California Press. https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520313194
Ferri, Linda and Tortorelli, Gianfranco (Eds.) (1988). Arcana Scheiwiller: Gli archivi di un editore. Scheiwiller.
Guerrero, Gustavo (2025). Edición y poesía: una muy breve y agitada historia. 2nd International Conference on Lyric Theory and Comparative Literature, 2 July 2025, University of Salamanca. Lecture.
Hamilton, Scott (1992). Ezra Pound and the Symbolist Inheritance. Princeton UP. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400862696
Jaillant, Lise (Ed.) (2019). Publishing Modernist Fiction and Poetry. Edinburgh UP. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781474440820
McDonald, Peter D. (2003). Modernist publishing: ‘Nomads and mapmakers.’ In David Bradshaw (Ed.) A Concise Companion to Modernism (pp. 221–42). Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/97 80470693506.ch11
McGann, Jerome (1991). The Textual Condition. Princeton UP. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691217758
McGann, Jerome (1993). Black Riders: The Visible Language of Modernism. Princeton UP. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691221465
McKenzie, D. F. (1999). Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts. Cambridge UP. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511483226
Meltzer, Marisa. (5 December 2024). Oh, to own the lost portrait of Arthur Rimbaud! The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/ 2024/12/05/style/arthur-rimbaud-portrait-verlaine-auction.html.
Perloff, Marjorie (1981). The Poetics of Indeterminacy: Rimbaud to Cage. Princeton UP.
Pound, Ezra (1951). The Letters of Ezra Pound: 1907-1941. Ed. D.D. Paige. Faber and Faber.
Pound, Ezra (1957). Rimbaud. All’insegna del pesce d’oro.
Pound, Ezra (1968). Literary Essays. New Directions.
Pound, Ezra (1971). How to Read. Haskell.
Pound, Ezra (1991a). The approach to Paris. In Lea Baechler, A. Walton Litz, and James Longenbach (Ed.), Ezra Pound’s Poetry and Prose: Contributions to Periodicals (vol. I, pp. 191-93). Garland.
Pound, Ezra (1991b). A study in French poets. In Lea Baechler, A. Walton Litz, James Longenbach (Ed.), Ezra Pound’s Poetry and Prose: Contributions to Periodicals (vol. III, pp. 17-54). Garland.
Pound, Ezra (1991c). A few don’ts by an imagiste. In Lea Baechler, A. Walton Litz, and James Longenbach (Eds.), Ezra Pound’s Poetry and Prose: Contributions to Periodicals (vol. I, pp. 120-22). Garland.
Rimbaud, Arthur (2001). Collected Poems (Trans. Martin Sorrell). Oxford University Press.
Rimbaud, Arthur (2004). Poésies. Ed. Jean-Luc Steinmetz. Flammarion.
Scheiwiller, Vanni, and Paol Franci (Eds.) (1996). Giovanni and Vanni Scheiwiller: Seventy Years of Publishing: Italy as a Publishing Bridge Between East and West. Scheiwiller.
Sieburth, Richard (1978). Instigations: Ezra Pound and Remy de Gourmont. Harvard UP. https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.97806 74424425
Xie, Ming (1999). Pound as translator. The Cambridge Companion to Ezra Pound (pp. 204-23). Cambridge UP. https://doi.org/10.1017/ CCOL0521431174.010
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Craig Osterbrock
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
The articles published at Hermēneus. Revista de Traducción e Interpretación will have a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
The journal allows the authors to retain publishing rights. Authors may reprint their articles in other media without having to request authorization, provided they indicate that the article was originally published in Hermēneus. Revista de Traducción e Interpretación.
