Four Poems by Petrarch, Nerval, Baratynsky, and Gumilev

Abstract

Some fundamental things do change. In this time of gender sensibility and sexual politics, it might seem odd, even dangerous, for a male translator to offer a bouquet of poems about women embedded (pun intended) in a prehistory we have rightfully come to distrust. Yet, however enlightened and righteous our present, however idyllic our future, the past is present in those other tenses. That is the nature of art.