Tony Harrison

I was away for a few days during which I heard of the passing of Tony Harrison. Thus my brief appreciation and obituary are delayed but if anybody qualifies for such a thing here, it is surely him.

His poems first seemed almost shockingly anachronistic on account of their classical couplets in an age of free verse and sometimes gratuitous cleverness. The other shock value he became better known for- the vernacular obscenities in v - was an entirely erroneous scandal created by the less literary sections of the tabloid press who went out of their way to misinterpret a masterpiece and attack Channel 4, the perceived 'left wing' and contemporary poetry in general by taking some of its language at even less than face value.

Gladly, poetry readers don't turn to such publications for literary criticism.

In such poems as Cypress and Cedar, A Kumquat for John Keats and his continuous flow of sonnets that took on such issues as the 'ownership of language', Harrison established himself in a much longer and deeper tradition ahead of the other film-poems he made on such subjects as the fatwa on Salman Rushdie, Alzheimer's Disease, Prometheus and his Gaze of the Gorgon on the Iraq war.

The later years of the C20th were a period in which any vestigial stereotype of the 'poet' as a fainting hypochondriac regularly overawed by their own sensitivity should have been put away for good had anybody still been reading contemporary poetry. But precious few were. The broad generation that included Tony, as well as Don Paterson, Michael Donaghy, Carol Ann Duffy, Sean O'Brien and Paul Muldoon were 'tough guys' and not many put up a more coherent or resilient barricade than Harrison who was as much a translator of Aeschylus and Greek Tragedy as a major English poet in his own right.

He might have been an anachronism in that he took part in literature as something with so much longer and deeper perspectives. They simply don't seem to make them like that anymore. Suggestions that they might never do so again might be premature but at a time when literary giants are thin on the ground and dimininshing in number, the passing of Tony Harrison feels significant.

If only the merest handful of poets are remembered in any detail from each by future generations, I'd have the house on Tony Harrison being one of those still valued in a hundred, or two hundred, years' time.

As long as 'poetry' written by humans continues to be a thing. I think it will. 

Apollo Trio in Chichester

 Apollo Trio, Chichester Cathedral, Sept 23

Some say that 1971 was pop music's best year and I'm one of them. Today's programme by the Apollo Trio prompted me to wonder what was 'classical' music's equivalent. It might be preferable to nominate a decade rather than a specific year and the 1720's is a big contender. Opinions will vary, of course, but there was a time before composers decided that music was all about them and their expression of themselves, when they served their art and their art wasn't regarded as a vehicle to serve them. 

It seems unfair that a composer like Michele Mascitti is all but unknown while his music sounds very like some household names. His Trio Sonata, op. 4 no. 10, opened with a melodic line in Lizzie Elliott-Capulli's cello with the two violins in decorative support in an Allegro. The third movement was a more halting Largo, the Giga surely with traces of Vivaldi and the Allegro finale equally jiggy.

The innate beauty that comes as standard with this sort of music was obvious in Bach's Three-part Invention in C minor, a piece written for ensemble practice but nonetheless moving. No transcription from piano was necessary. Such music is as clear, crisp, refreshing and as good for you as champagne. 

Corelli is credited as a major innovator of this baroque style. His 'churchy' Trio Sonata, op. 1 no.2 featured an emotional charge worthy of a Miserere Mei in the violins of Marino Capulli and Ray Box and achieved a stillness in its third movement with quicker tempi in the even numbered sections.

Representing England in this Italianate set was William Bates whose Trio Sonata no. 2 built two movements from such short simple phrases before a sense of twilight led into a summery conclusion. This is all music that never outstays its welcome and none did so less than Handel's, the German-born Italian composer who spent so much of his life in England. His Trio Sonata, HWV 393, doesn't extend any movement longer than it needs to. Its Andante comports itself with dignity with the violins most felicitous over the ambulatory cello part. The Allegro verily skipped along, the Largo was most winsome and the composer and musicians complimented each other in their elegant decorum. While I'm not convinced that everyone everywhere was as enlightened and well-mannered in the first half of the C18th as the music we remember it by, it left a gorgeous legacy. An exquisite performance of some very fine pieces.

Sometimes it seems necessary to review the audience, too. I could see how the misunderstanding occurred by which the Bach went unapplauded but the acclaim at the end of the concert was by no means enough. The musicians didn't even get back for a much-deserved second bow. That is to be regretted. I hope the Apollo Trio return soon and give Chichester a chance to make amends.  

Maupassant and other Other Stories

 

It's 47 years since we 'did' Maupassant for 'A' level with Mr. N.J. 'Bunny' Burrows, Gloucester's kindly answer to Mr. Chips. What easy-going and yet very rewarding days they were. In those lessons, at least. Not quite so much the laborious and entirely unenlightening periods we spent reading Racine with a teacher completely unsuited to teaching.

I have returned to Maupassant in the interim but nowhere near as much as I should have. Now in receipt of A Parisian Affair and Other Stories, I'm already looking forward to the rest of the 34 stories and then, perhaps, finding as many as possible of the rest of the 330. Some enthusiasms burn themselves out but The Complete Bach isn't doing so, all the other top, top echelon artists refuse to fade and I reckon Maupassant, as was to be expected, belongs with them.

I suppose I thought I'd been there, done that and put a tick against him but that's not how it should work. More and more, reading and music is entirely for pleasure and for its own sake, not a matter of dutiful 'bucket list' accumulation. I have no intention of going into Wagner opera, any further into Bruckner, I saw War and Peace on telly and am more likely to re-read Anna Karenina than read that. I doubt if I'll spend much more time with Ezra Pound. I know I don't get on well with C18th poetry - Dryden and Pope, or Edmund Spenser but Damascean moments can happen. All those people are highly thought-of in places and if I were to come across an encouraging insight, you never know.

But it looks like I'm well set up for reading with Maupassant.

--

I'd also be well set up vis a vis Buxtehude's BuxWV199, as below, if I could find a recording of it with the special cymbalstern effect on it but You Tube doesn't seem to have such a thing. As Dr. David Price explained, not many organs, especially in England, have such a stop. He must have thought I was fixated on such a detail but it made all the difference, to me. 

It led me to realize that in recent years, locally, I've heard things in concert that I might never hear again - that aren't available for love nor money. And by now one isn't used to such deprivation. One assumes it is an unalienable human right to have whatever music, literature or painting at the click of a computer button. And, also, I'd quite like to find some even better stuff that's not even been written.

There's a need, in my very spoilt and over-privileged life, for a CD curated by me of things that I want preserved- on my record shelves if on nobody else's. I'll probably compile the list of them next job. I'd publish it here except there would inevitably be somebody not included who I wouldn't want to offend and so I might not do that.

David Price at Lunchtime Live!

 David Price, Portsmouth Cathedral, Sept 18 

Relatively ancient and relatively modern music made up David Price's organ recital today. Three Psalm Preludes by Herbert Howells were punctuated with chorales by Buxtehude and Bach. The first two Howells pieces went from distant or crepuscular restraint to more assertive statements of intent before Prelude Set no.2, no. 3 reversed the process and rent apart the prevailing calm with a stentorian blaze that came as a bit of a shock before a strange coda in which I'm sure was to be heard 'the clack of wood under his dancing feet'.

Not everyone is expected to recognize that line from a poem about Buxtehude but it was he that provided the highlight with Komm, Heiliger Geist, BuxWV 199, with the charming chiming of bells from the cymbalstern stop and, in not the most competitive of fields, I have a new favourite organ piece.

Bach's Liebster Jesu, wir sind hier, BWV 731, was sober and reflective before that Howells finale but in some contrary way today what the organ sounds like was almost the support act for those booked onto Dr. Price's comprehensive tour of this remarkable item of engineering.

The history of the instrument is convoluted, its mechanicals are involved and its maestro's knowledge of it is fathoms deep. It is more than its numbers, its 6000 pipes from half an inch to 32 feet long and its insurance value. It is surely more complicated to drive than an aeroplane, given that computers drive aeroplanes now, with its console a bewildering array of stops, buttons and effects. A very impressive piece of kit currently in the care of one who fully appreciates it. It was a most rewarding afternoon and thanks to Portsmouth Cathedral for their dedication in putting on these recent Heritage Tours. I was glad to hear how much the Lunchtime Live! series raises in support of the cathedral's musical projects. It's an idyll in a world in which such things can be hard to find if you don't know where to look. 

Westminster Abbey

Today's early Autumn day out was to that well-known place of worship, Westminster Abbey.  As far as eminences interred there go, it is far and away our greatest National vault but one mustn't assume that every memorial indicates a last resting place. Architecturally, its straight lines make it an Armani-style church whereas St. Paul's is more Versace. 

While one accepts that Edward the Confessor and Elizabeth I are royal superstars and that Richard II had a great play written about him, one wonders whether the likes of Oliver Cromwell, Cecil Rhodes and Ted Hughes are remembered quite so fondly. 

Fashions have changed somewhat over time and the high camp monument to Shakespeare contrasts with the tasteful understatement of that to Larkin. I'm somewhat more concerned about Prime Minister's Corner, though, where I chose Clement Attlee and Harold Wilson to take pictures of and wondered on what basis they were allowed in because there's been a few in recent years that deserve no more than to be buried in unconsecrated ground. 

It also seemed a bit perfunctory on the grave of William Croft to say Hic Depositum Est but maybe it doesn't sound like 'here is deposited' to someone who understands Latin but not English. Of course Shakespeare's not there and none of Bach, Beethoven or Mozart belong in this country but Purcell was genuinely English, actually born in Westminster, and we somehow stole Georg Frideric Haendel and kept him. 

As was the trouble with Lindisfarne Holy Island last year, one wants to have the place more to oneself and need to remember that one is also a tourist and you can't. I waited patiently for those whose origins were ostensibly in countries that had despots of their own to move off Oliver Cromwell so that I could reflect on how a well-intentioned agenda can get out of hand. 

On my way back to Victoria I necessarily went past Westminster Cathedral while the Duchess of Kent was being seen off by the current incumbent royals,

Duchess of Kent

A class act, as far as I can tell.

The Bells, The Bells

 Tower Tour, Portsmouth Cathedral, Sept 14

Maybe we didn't miss much by not going outside to see the view. Perhaps there isn't suitable access. The view would hardly have compared to Durham's or, for that matter, the nearby Millennium Tower. What we had was the Ringing Room, the workings of the clock and then the bells on three separate levels. It gets increasingly laddersome the higher one gets. It was okay but I don't fancy ladders much and I wouldn't have wanted it much more challenging.

The bells are, of course, by John Taylor of Loughborough who would have been a candidate for investigation by the Monopolies Commission had anybody else wanted, or known how, to cast church bells. It's not sumptuous up there but hardly needs to be.

The views of and from the organ were worth having, seeing for the first time where David Price, Sachin Gunga and their regular guests go to do their work. I've lifted this picture of it from their website because my pictures haven't come out very well. I can always go back on Thurs for the Organ Tour and hear about it properly. One could spend some time flicking through their library of organ music and be none the wiser in the same way that we were shown two books of bell ringing sequences, like Stedman Caters, which is equally enthralling for being equally incomprehensible. 

I officially cite Bells on Sunday as my favourite radio programme but that's only when All Gas and Gaiters isn't being repeated. It's esoteric, redolent of a largely disappeared England. The ringers at Portsmouth Cathedral would gladly have me, or you, because - like long distance time trial cycling, fewer people do it than once did. It being such a thing makes the idea of it quite attractive but I lack the commitment to learn something new and turn up regularly.

Oh, Babe, What Would You Say

I'm not sure I'm a lot further forward in Prokofiev Studies for having read the Life&Times book by Thomas Schipperges. I was expecting to come away with more of a sense of his personality, character, and politics and perhaps more about the music than such insights as,

Prokofiev's diatonic linearity is a manifestation of a swing away from late Romantic modernism, a full decade before the comparable paradigm shift occurred in Western European music.

And that's by no means the worst of it. The book was written in German and reads like a translation, it is sometimes heavier on ideas than enlightening anecdotes and I'm not entirely clear where Prokofiev stood in relation to the Soviet government. One reason for reading it was hearing from someone who should know that they admired him more than they admired Shostakovich and I admire Shostakovich this side idolatry but I haven't yet found reason to put Prokofiev alongsde him.

I can see that his music is in some ways less conservative than Shostakovich's but I could hear that already so, while I am slightly the wiser I'm not yet wise enough but maybe the Violin Concertos might take me further and perhaps a more 'general' lighter read might help with grasping the subject to my own satisfaction.

--

I was surprised to find Maupassant's stories not on my shelves. I'm becoming vaguer by the week as to what books and records I do have. Mention of his name somewhere prompted me to take him up again rather than invest on new titles on Marlowe and by Ian McEwan and Arundhati Roy. So they are on order to bring back memories of 'shabby gentility' at 'A' level and emphasize what tremendous books we were mostly given to read in the sixth form. Shakespeare, obviously, Joyce, Orwell, Gide. Hardy was earlier. Any appreciation of Chaucer came later and that of Lawrence faded.

There's a few days out lined up so any plans to fit in the 774 pages of revisting Anna Karenina is put back. Eugene Onegin is also on order, it remaining to be seen if a novel in verse can work for me because Vikram Seth's thirty years ago proved to be something of a chore.

--

The cricket season had its moments for one who can increasingly take or leave sport. The test series, mainly, proved highly compelling with two well-matched sides going to and fro. T20 and ODI's continue to set ridiculous statistics that will have to stop somewhere. Quite what it does to a young player to go for 62 off 3 overs is hard to say. But Notts go to the Oval one point behind Surrey in the championship for a perfectly scheduled head-to-head. Getting there for a 10.30 start if the last day was well set up isn't easy enough for me but it should be on the wireless.   

Gavin Stevens at Lunchtime Live!

 Gavin Stevens, Portsmouth Cathedral, Sept 11

It's never less than 'interesting' to hear a musician playing their own compositions, good, bad or indifferent. After all the shock and innovation of C20th music, where are we now, what is there left to do. Maybe keep calm and carry on.

Gavin Stevens is a composer and pianist, perhaps in that order, and his Little Suite, from 1976 when he was 14 is light years ahead of any literary achievement I'd arrived at by then. Short, almost to the point of being abrupt at times, they had a hint of impertinence, an impressive if loose relationship with Shostakovich and a cosy Reverie.

But that proved to be by way of introduction to his Sonata no. 4, from 2017. The first movement was half a beat ahead of what I'd call Andante, had a sense of tintinnabuli to it and, paradoxically, might be described as 'compounded minimalism' but made great sense- which is what one most wants from music. And led us disarmed into the spellbinding Largo, which might equally be 'lento', that took place towards the top end of the keyboard and brought to mind Arvo Pärt, most specifically in Spiegel im Spiegel, and there's not much higher praise for any such music than that. The Tempo di valzer Viennese was somewhat more assertive, the sonata being in memory of Gavin's father, and the Moderato ending was a flowing re-make of themes from the second movement. Deeply impressive. The sonata form seems to be in safe hands in the Brighton area.

Gavin's music deliberately references certain composers but it's entirely up to you what else you find in it. I once thought I'd found quotes from Demis Roussos in Errollyn Wallen's Cello Concerto and it's not for her to say I didn't. One is never too far away from something a bit 'jazz' in Gavin Stevens, though, and Scott Joplin is clearly a hero for him who ended with Bethena: a concert waltz, which had some jaunt about it but, being in memory of his much-loved second wife, not as much as The Chrysanthemum, written for her soon after they first met.

That was a great re-start to the Lunchtime Live! series. It helps the box office when the artist brings their own fan club but it's not always that the encore is the most-performed song of all time, Happy Birthday to You, mark the occasion of their 90 year old mother-in-law.

He'll be welcome back in Portsmouth any time and, gladly, he is due back in the New Year. Hopefully with at least one more of the other sonatas.

Margaret Fingerhut at Chichester

 Margaret Fingerhut, Chichester Cathedral, Sept 9th

Perhaps not all schoolchildren look forward to the first week of September but for some of us whose lives are one big holiday it is anticipated with relish. The return of Chichester Cathedral's lunchtime concert series is one of the several reasons why this is my favourite time of year.

First up was an excellent all-Chopin set by Margaret Fingerhut. The Three Mazurkas, op. 59, were a delicate enough appetizer with their, and her, unflashy charm and calm. Some words from the performer are of more use than others and Margaret's were well-chosen and offered an insight that would otherwise have been lost on me. That the third of those mazurkas ends in F# major and thus prefigures op. 60 was enlightening. Also that the Barcarolle is based on Venetian gondolier songs that Chopin would never have heard in the flesh. At first tinged with a sense of evening, they gathered in emotional impact.

The Minute Waltz, as in 'mi-nute', is the first of the three Waltzes, op.64, and was delivered without hesitation or deviation and only that repetition required by the formal processes of Western music. Listening to such familiar music- because the other two are not unfamiliar- is entirely different to hearing pieces one knows less well or not at all and it should not be taken for granted. It's a brilliant piece, here enchantingly realized. Margaret said it can't be played in 60 seconds but there's someone on You Tube doing it in 0:57, not necessarily to great artistic effect and such performances ought to be subject to drug testing. 

All of which led to the Ballade no. 4, op.52, which from its haunted beginnings takes on a more perturbèd spirit but never less than melodically and then Margaret set light to the fireworks to finish. It was a fine way to herald a new season. Not next week but every other Tuesday in Autumn there are further chances to enjoy such musicianship and with my bus pass due soon I'll be making the most of all such facilities.

From Benaud to Prokofiev

 It sometimes feels as if the postings here say very much the same things most of the time. Like any long-standing columnist, a pattern emerges and leitmotifs recur. I've said that more than once, for example. But, almost finding it necessary for my own purposes to report on books and music, there are sometimes shifts in subject matter that you wouldn't get on most channels, our culture having become so atomised and media being targeted at well-defined audiences.

It's not everywhere that moves straight from Richie Benaud to Sergei Prokofiev but we will here. As a general rule it's inadvisable to buy books for me because I'll have all those I want that I know about. But, a special talent proves from time to time to get a lot of things right and whereas I might not have bought Richie Benaud's autobiography, it's good to get a nice surprise and he's about the one and only Australian cricketer that is absolutely fine with me.

He's looked up his scorebooks. I'm sure nobody can remember what score they were on some decades ago at the end of day 2 of yet another cricket match.

With glorious careers safely archived, it's less clear how it could have been otherwise. He wasn't a certainty to be made captain when he was. Problems with his fingers caused all kinds of potentially career-threatening crises until he was advised of quack remedy that worked. They rattled along at quite a rate when Richie was batting and he argues that the importance of fielding was an Australian initiative in the 1950's long before it was credited to others in the 70's.

And you could tell from the wily way he seemed to address the camera as a TV commentator that he knew his ground, that he was a fair but hard bargainer and so he had been on racial issues in South Africa, terms and conditions for players and making cricket more lively and entertaining. 

I'd possibly find a place for an Australian in my All-Time XI and make him captain if it was him and I could have XIII but it's getting mighty crowded when Garry Sobers has to be twelfth man-

Greenidge, Gavaskar, Richards, Root, Randall, D'Oliviera, Procter, Knott, Larwood, Trueman, Holding.

But next up is a biography of Prokofiev that I had to buy for myself. I'm reluctant to accept from certain local music cognoscenti that Prokofiev can really be 'better' than Shostakovich but I'll gladly have a look after the smash and grab assault of the Piano Sonatas. 

I returned to them, and the Tatiana Nikolayeva Shostakovich Preludes and Fugues because one simply can't listen to 172 discs of Bach without taking a step away.

It's not gruelling, it is absolutely fine but however wide-ranging and just this side of paradise he is, it's still a narrow approach to all music. I've ventured into some music I know by now, maybe somewhere about a quarter of the way into the Complete. While, even with Bach, one can wonder if he's going through the motions in the lesser-known hours, arriving back at the Violin Sonatas and Partitas, here played by Dmitry Sitkovesky, he is immediately restored to the stratosphere.

Questions arise, such as whether it can be right to want Bach on piano, it not having been an instrument he knew about but, yes, I do want its clarity when harpsichords and organs in due course begin to create the same impression as accorions or bagpipes and lack some nuance. And, also, once I've heard all available Bach, will I think 'that's that, then' and, thus, less of it because it's been packaged and I've been there and done that. I'd have thought not. I've done it with Chopin and almost with Satie. I think I've done it with Buxtehude. None of them were diminished by knowing that I've heard it all. 

AI

I'm sure that more worthwhile writers, musicians and maybe even painters than me look themselves up on the internet. I know they do because I've heard from some of them. It's a long time since I found anything about me I haven't known about and no news can't be bad news but you never know if somebody might have got hold of a copy of Romanticism, considered it quite glorious, and said so. Nobody has but AI summaries have been added to Google searches, and Bing and all and so it's interesting to see what it makes of Strange Fowl, the Shakespeare essay, and me as a 'poet'.

Google's AI thinks that,

David Green is a poet from Nottingham who currently resides in Portsmouth and is known for his book The Perfect Book (2018). His poetry, published under the imprint David Green (Books), covers a range of subjects, including the complexities of war, poverty, childhood memories, and the beauty of the natural world. He also maintains a blog where he discusses poetry, books, and music.

 

But, no, that is bordering on a 'fail'. While some of it is true, AI has conflated me with another 'poet' of the same name. I'm flattered to read that I'm 'known'. I'd never presume to write about war because I've not been in such a thing and wouldn't have anything to add anything to what Wilfred Owen and such writers wrote. Not on poverty, either. 

That must be the other bloke who is either a destitute ex-soldier or otherwise a victim of war, or he is prepared to attempt an empathy with the sufferings of others that I would not. King Canute and Ronnie Spector notwithstanding.

Childhood memories, yes, there are a few. The beauty of the natural world might not be a main feature in my poems. Of course it has plenty and I'm in favour of it but I suspect that 'art' is somehow more my environment. 

 

AI's got a long way to go yet. If it can't get beyond the simple facts of Green Studies and writes about entirely the wrong poems it's not going to get far in Eng Lit.

--

While I'm here. Excuse me. Can I try out a little test and see if this link works,

Strange Fowl

 

 

Two Issues with Donald Davie

Donald Davie takes poetry very seriously or at least at a very high level of thinking about it. Some might think such an attitude could detract from the enjoyment but for others it provides the enjoyment. I admired his early poems very much and appreciate his highbrow commentaries as far as I can keep up with them but on subjects like Pound, imagism and symbolism that isn't the whole way.

Not all of The Poet in the Imaginary Museum is going to get read but there's been value enough in those pieces I have. Interestingly, just because he's demandingly intelligent, rigorous and knows his stuff that doesn't mean he's always right.

In Remembering the Movement, he seems to accept there was such a thing when he says,

in the metrical places wasted on inert gestures gestures of social adaptiveness- 'no doubt', 'I suppose', 'of course', 'almost', 'perhaps'- you can see the same craven defensiveness which led us, when we were challenged or flattered or simply interviewed, to pretend that the Movement didn't exist,

and he takes a severe view of some aspects of the perceived shared mindset. While ready to be associated with them he is critical of their deprecating, ingratiating humility and the way they addressed their readers. Their fault is diagnosed as finding it,

difficult..to conceive of or approve any 'tone' that isn't ironical, and ironical in a limited way, defensive and deprecating, a way of looking at ourselves and our pretensions, not a way of looking at the world 

although he finishes by accepting that such 'applies equally well to most English and American poetry in the present century and at the present day', in 1959. So he hasn't differentiated anything about that poetry and a lot of the other poetry written in the same age and that puts strict limits on what he's managed to say. If the Movement poets had certain things in common with each other but also had some of those things in common with non-Movement poets it might be better to say that they didn't form such a coherent group and that from the start their kinship was at best loose and soon became looser to the point of unravelling.

 

It reads like tough talk and one feels intrepid taking on Davie because his acumen is intimidating and he would surely have seen off my objections with profound arguments if he'd felt it within his dignity but I can't agree with what I take to be his line of reasoning in The Translatability of Poetry, 1967, either. 

He usefully divides the idea of 'poetry' into two discrete senses. The first is what I understand it to be, an inclusive term that includes all that writing that claims to be poetry. The second is poetry as 'a hooray word' that makes it approbatory. Davie imposes this second meaning of the word onto what Robert Frost and Robert Graves said about poetry in translation but not necessarily with their permission. Davie makes claim to 'common sense' from thereon in after performing some sleight of hand. He goes on to argue that 'poetry is better, the less translatable it is' but he is already there conceding degrees of translatability and has shot himself in the foot.

As soon as any poem is made comprehensible to someone who doesn't understand its original language, its original music, for better or worse, is altered. For example, asking the computer's Translate function to render the first two lines of The Cathedrals of Liverpool, it offers,

Ce jour du Nouvel An, la bruine s'est finalement transformée en pluie et vice-versa.  

I hadn't been aware that 'vice-versa' was a Freuch usage but the point is that the 'music' is different and even if that untalented translator has successfully reproduced the sense, not even the most gifted translator ever could reproduce both sense and sound, for better or worse. 

It can't be the same poem in any other language and I'm surprised that the august Donald Davie tries to make a case for translation. By all means, some poets quite high up in my hit parade wrote in languages I'm not fluent in- Wisława Szymborska, mainly - but I like her in spite of the translation rather than because of it. 

Poetry's a limited thing, its medium being language. I'm always going to be more likely to appreciate Beethoven than Schiller or Goethe.