Birger Vanwesenbeeck, associate professor in the Department of English, recently gave a keynote lecture and a guest seminar at Hobart and William Smith Colleges.
Hosted by the German Studies program and the Department of English, Dr. Vanwesenbeeck’s lecture focused on the 1908 poem, “Ein Prophet,” by the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, which was translated into English by the American poet Sylvia Plath. Plath translated the poem in German in 1954 for an undergraduate course.
Vanwesenbeeck’s lecture contradicted scholars who have dismissed the translation as a crib. It showed that Plath’s rendition not only speaks powerfully to her complicated relationship to Rilke as a poet but also resonates with some of her later poetry, particularly the poems she wrote about her German-born father.
Prior to his lecture, Vanwesenbeeck met with Dr. David Weiss’s undergraduate students, where together they compared various English translations of the Rilke poem to Plath’s rendition. The activity highlighted the extent to which Plath, unlike recent translators of the poem, was able to stay close to the original while simultaneously making it her own.
More information about the lecture can be found online.
