The Essential Gorter

Hear,  past midnight - the cacaphony of quacks where coquettish carps now flirt their backs. The little lambs are prancing! How the pasture's graced: they gambol gaily through that springtime frame of May. - M. Kruijff Lloyd Haft's foreword to Herman Gorter's May  When I was choosing my angle to write this foreword for M. Kruijff's translation of Gorter’s May , what crossed my mind was the American poet Robert Frost's famous one-liner definition of poetry: ‘Poetry is what gets lost in translation.’ As one who for decades taught Chinese poetry via translations, I can testify to the lamentably widespread truth of it. Yet, I can also affirm that it is but a partial truth. Translations of poetry can themselves be poetry. I was more or less ‘converted to’ Chinese poetry by A. C. Graham’s Poems of the Late T’ang (Penguin, 1965). Somehow the evocative elegance of Graham’s phrasing in English, together with his commentaries which assured me that he really did know what the

  Herman Gorter: Selected Poems Translated by Lloyd Haft.  Finalist of the 2022 Next Generation Indie Book Awards When times were leaf-still, long gone by, born she was, in autumn hush a bloom in bleak lightweepings standing pale light – the clouds cloak her in rains. Pale she stood her light amidst all drear, keeping light eyes, blonde hair spreading near her, tears at many an hour, white of hands – a poor light girl light-famished. Bring upon her color of bloomglow, your blood-red, o new season that is now. From Herman Gorter: Selected Poems. Translated by Lloyd Haft, 2021. Photo: M. Kruijff   It is not true that this is sunlight. This is you. This is not the wind that blues across the water: that is not so gentle: this is you. This is not the earth and not the heavens – so beautiful they’re not. This is you. From Herman Gorter: Selected Poems. Translated by Lloyd Haft, 2021. Photo: M. Kruijff  Deep goes the radiance of night and of light, translating All into feeling – see the way s

The Netherlands is a small country, and its language has never become widely known in the rest of the world. As a result, many a Dutch writer who surely would have become world-famous if he or she were writing in English or French has had to remain content with a modest and local level of fame. This has been especially true of poets, given the exceptional difficulty of translating poetry.  If Dutch were a world language, one of the poets who unquestionably would have become world-renowned is Herman Gorter (1864-1927). In Holland, he was famous from an early stage as a writer of both epic and lyric verse. Due to the lack of translations, let alone good translations, abroad he has remained known, if at all, as a once-prominent early exponent of socialism and communism. In The Netherlands, whether or not because under Covid conditions more people are staying at home and reading books, there has recently been a rediscovery of this major poet, even something of a revival. Appropriately, an

  Het ding en de mijmering Waar karperruggen doen nu hun koketterie. Hoor ’s nachts - de kikkertjeskakofonie De lammeren stuiteren! luisteren op de wei, Ze buitelen door die warme lentelijst van mei. Wie begint er niet te mijmeren op een mooie dag in mei? Zo ervoer ik die maand in mijn jeugd, in de duinen en polders van Noord-Holland. Ik herinner me de verwondering toen ik voor het eerst kikkervisjes zag in ons geheime poeltje in Bergen aan Zee. Tegenwoordig bloeien de bloemen acht dagen vroeger, vliegen de libellen eerder. Ik zag al eens eind februari een moedereend voor haar bibberende kroost uitzwemmen. Gelukkig zijn de kraaien nog gewoon nu in mei de draadjes uit het klimtouw in onze appelboom aan het stelen voor hun nest. Mei anno 2021 is nog altijd betoverend en zo moet het anderhalve eeuw geleden voor het kind Herman Gorter in de Wormerveerse polder ook al zijn geweest. Hij zou er niet heel veel later een onovertroffen gedicht naar vernoemen. Het is 19 maart 1889 als  Mei   uitk