Six Nineteenth Century French Poets: With Parallel French Text (Oxford World's Classics) Reissue Edition

I liked the book, especially that it was in both French and Englishtranslation.

I would give this four stars for an advanced French reader. If you are, you will find a good survey of 19th century French poetry. I always say that if you haven’t read Rimbaud in French, you haven’t read Rimbaud. It’s not elitism, it’s just fact. Much of his poetry is in verse and the aesthetics are lost in translation. When you do a verse translation, the content is lost. These translations (in vers libre) lose both! The translators have done free verse and taken lines that you could translate literally, and faithfully, and come out with something much more poetic then whatever it is they’ve done. A total botch. But if you want the French? This is a great survey; though, I would’ve included Gautier.

This book is an ideal introduction to some of the most well-known French poets of the period, and has a section with short biographies on each at the front of the book, as well as some background about the state of literary work in France at that point in history, which helps provide context.There's a good selection of well-known and more obscure works from each writer, and its very handy having the English translations on the facing page, so you can simply glance across for aid in understanding the language. When reading Victor Hugo's longer meanderings this is essential as you don't need to distract yourself from the power and beauty of his words to fiddle about with a dictionary.Be aware though, the verse translations into English often sacrifice a lot of the beauty and wordplay of the French in order to shoehorn the general theme into verse form; if you're using this as a language tool, a prose translation might be more useful, or alternatively, keep a dictionary to hand when the two versions part company.