Lost in Translation

In Clayton Eshleman’s review of the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke (Book Review, May 26), he scrupulously takes the translation of A. Poulin Jr. to task for his inadequacy of rendering Rilke into English.

Eshleman then equates Rilke’s viewpoint with that of Paul Cezanne, a painter so dedicated to his art that he even neglected to attend his daughter’s wedding.

An impossibility, since Cezanne had only one child and that was a boy, whom he doted on. Young Cezanne used to take his father’s painting and cut out all the windows on the houses with a razor blade. Whereby the painter used to chuckle with glee that his son understood his paintings better than his critics did.

MORTON LAMPERT

Los Angeles