Criticism > Poetry > Wilbur, Richard - Anthony Hecht (essay date fall 2001)

Wilbur, Richard - Anthony Hecht (essay date fall 2001)

Anthony Hecht (essay date fall 2001)

SOURCE: Hecht, Anthony. “Richard Wilbur.” The Sewanee Review 109, no. 4 (fall 2001): 593-97.

[In this brief essay, the author, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, argues that Wilbur's success as a translator of Molière is due in large part to his skills as a poet.]

It was once asserted by a drama critic that Richard Wilbur's translations of Molière are so good we don't deserve them. Extravagance in this matter is not at all out of place. Consider the following indisputable facts: among the modern translators of the Homeric epics one must name T. E. Lawrence, Robert Fitzgerald, Richmond Lattimore, and Robert Fagles to head a list that would be long to the point of tiresomeness. But for Molière we have but one indispensable translator in English, who has not merely outdistanced any contemporary rash enough to attempt the task, but has quite simply made all previous translations obsolete. I own a Modern...

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