La Fontaine ‘Fables’ and other Poems
With a foreword by Edmund Blunden
21.5 x 13.8 cm. 143 pp. 1982
ISBN: 978-0-86140-122-2
During his life John Cairncross was considered to be the best translator of Racine’s works, both from his ability to convey the ‘feel’ of the original as well as through the accuracy of his translation. One critic has said that Mr. Cairncross’s translations are ‘the only ones that arc both compulsively readable and capture the style as fairly as our language permits’, praise echoed by others, including the New Statesman and Times Literary Supplement.
In this collection from the French, Italian, Spanish, German and Chinese, Mr. Cairncross demonstrates his ability with great skill. In La Fontaine’s Fables, as in the other translations in this volume, he captures the mood in every case. Each poem appears in the original language as well as in English, and, ending with a number of John Cairncross’s own poems, this book is a true pleasure to read.