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Lot 75D

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Eliot (T.S., poet & playwright, 1888

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1p., sm. 4to, Faber and Faber Limited, 23rd November 1956, "I've looked at your translation of 'Le cimetière marin' which seems to me a very good one. There is, of course, one obvious shortcoming, or at least one obvious feature of the original which neither you nor Day Lewis has attempted to represent. That is simply that the verbal effect in French is largely due to Valéry's use of a metre which is unusual and somewhat eccentric in the French language: that is the iambic pentameter, which happens to be a perfectly normal metric in English. To a French ear, therefore, the original must have a very different sound from that of either your or Day Lewis's translation, to an English ear", small hole at head; and a photocopy of Harmsworth's reply.

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