Le Cid and the Liar

July 15, 2009
Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning poet Wilbur has extended his string of supple translations with these two very different plays. "Le Cid" (1636) is an epic and heroic story of a couple bound by love and driven apart by honor. "The Liar" (1643) is a farce, full of wit, charm, and sparkling repartee. Wilbur's closest stylistic competitor is Vincent John Cheng's 1987 translation of "Le Cid", now out of print. Cheng includes details on his method of translation and several illuminating appendixes; Wilbur is not as forthcoming. Directors preparing to stage "Le Cid" should examine both versions, but Wilbur has pride of place for an elegant, flowing line that is easy to speak. His translation of "The Liar" moves along at a brisk and trotting pace. The play is not anthologized often or even offered as a stand-alone. The rhyme scheme of the French originals is maintained, but Wilbur's mastery of his craft transforms the English into scripts that would be delightful both to act and to observe. VERDICT Theater departments and professionals should seriously consider this fun pair for production. Readers of French literature and Wilbur's poetry will also appreciate the book.Larry Schwartz, Minnesota State Univ. Lib., Moorhead

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2009
Americas great formal poet continues to translate Frances classic drama, changing alexandrines into iambic pentameters and essaying an English diction that is casually cultivatedno dialect or billingsgate, such as the Elizabethan-Jacobean playwrights analogous to the Frenchmen Wilbur renders indulged, but no verbal pyrotechnics, either. The results are sublimely readableand actable. That said, Corneille is a harder sell than Moli're and Racine. Famous as the father of French tragedy, his best-known plays nowadays are the tragicomedy Le Cid, whose animating principle is the now moribund virtue of familial honor, and the peculiar comedy The Theatre of Illusion, which formally anticipates the metatheatricality of, say, Pirandello and Strindberg. The Liar is a romantic high farce whose complications are caused by the heros elaborate fabrications that, based in his own confusion, become so entangling that they threaten to drive all the characters mad. It is funny, but brittler than even Cowards similarly brilliant Private Lives. As for Le Cid, in Wilburs hands it makes honor as comprehensible as it is ever likely to be in the postmodern era.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)